Some Partial-Media Experiences
May. 25th, 2015 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerI bought a book at a used book store a little while ago about the silent movie era and read part of it during my vacation; afterwards, a few new thoughts in my mind, I found the time to return to a documentary series I'd recorded off Turner Classic Movies a few years ago, and by the time it was getting to the changeover from silence to sound I was thinking of all the movies I've recorded off that channel and stored away on home-made DVDs with the thought that one day, maybe, I'll squeeze out some time not spent watching anime (or doing anything else) and broaden what I take in. A few titles from the silent movie era have seemed notable enough for me to have added them to my considerable pile, but I suppose that as I was doing that I was still remembering the day back in elementary school we were assembled in the gym to watch a silent movie without context-setting or musical accompaniment and it didn't go that well. Not that long after that my family did record some Charlie Chaplin shorts off the educational channel that did have musical accompaniment, but I never seemed quite able to really get around to them.
However, just a few years ago I'd happened to see in a museum exhibition on video games a comparison between Buster Keaton's short comedy Seven Days and the action of the Super Mario Brothers games; much more recently, I happened on a different comparison between that movie's grand finale and one particular bit of slapstick in the Star Wars movies. Just to get started, I found and watched Keaton's even shorter "two-reeler" One Week, which I could remember some very approving comments about from the documentary, and was quite able to get through it. Now, I considered myself ready to move on to something only a bit longer.
The longer movie might have been a bit slower to get going, but there really was something interesting about assuming what people were talking about without needing to hear the words. (It did so happen there were a few unfortunate moments that seemed racially insensitive to our modern perspectives, but I suppose they might have turned up in the sound era as well.) The finale, too, was energetic and entertaining. I did get to thinking, though, that being familiar with the short "The Railrodder" Keaton made four decades later with the National Film Board of Canada and Canadian National Railways, it was somehow surprising to see him as a young man, however stone-faced he was.
With that, I managed to head on to something else that just might be thought of as "part of the experience" (and maybe with a trace more truth to that) with another "reconstructed" episode of Doctor Who, put together by fans from the audio tape recordings people could make at home in the 1960s and production stills. To try and sweeten the experience they'd colourised the pictures, and maybe that did help; I was able to imagine some motion in any case, and it was different from reading a script. I also wondered if this was the first of the episodes where William Hartnell didn't appear, having heard this grew a little infamous as his health declined, but he did turn up near the end.
However, just a few years ago I'd happened to see in a museum exhibition on video games a comparison between Buster Keaton's short comedy Seven Days and the action of the Super Mario Brothers games; much more recently, I happened on a different comparison between that movie's grand finale and one particular bit of slapstick in the Star Wars movies. Just to get started, I found and watched Keaton's even shorter "two-reeler" One Week, which I could remember some very approving comments about from the documentary, and was quite able to get through it. Now, I considered myself ready to move on to something only a bit longer.
The longer movie might have been a bit slower to get going, but there really was something interesting about assuming what people were talking about without needing to hear the words. (It did so happen there were a few unfortunate moments that seemed racially insensitive to our modern perspectives, but I suppose they might have turned up in the sound era as well.) The finale, too, was energetic and entertaining. I did get to thinking, though, that being familiar with the short "The Railrodder" Keaton made four decades later with the National Film Board of Canada and Canadian National Railways, it was somehow surprising to see him as a young man, however stone-faced he was.
With that, I managed to head on to something else that just might be thought of as "part of the experience" (and maybe with a trace more truth to that) with another "reconstructed" episode of Doctor Who, put together by fans from the audio tape recordings people could make at home in the 1960s and production stills. To try and sweeten the experience they'd colourised the pictures, and maybe that did help; I was able to imagine some motion in any case, and it was different from reading a script. I also wondered if this was the first of the episodes where William Hartnell didn't appear, having heard this grew a little infamous as his health declined, but he did turn up near the end.