Fantastic video, thank you! I knew that Arbuckle was a ver close friend and mentor to Buster but I had never seen that intro letter Arbuckle wrote about Buster before, wow! Buster was always so grateful to Roscoe. Thank you again for this upload! 😊. So hard to see that Sherlock Jr. Was not appreciated back then as it is now. Keaton was ahead of his time. 😉
Some of how the narrator says certain shots were done are quite a bit oversimplified and thus more-or-less erroneous. Wanna learn more precise details about how Keaton (and many others) did these trick shots? Then read my entire lengthy post here and you'll get a much better idea how these wonderful shots were really achieved. For starters….. Actually, beautifully-engineered Mitchell cameras of those days of silent cinema had the ability to hold a frame of processed film on "registration pins" right in the gate of the camera. Placing the frame anywhere besides the actual camera gate to line up a shot (before raw film was put into the camera) would result in an out-of-focus image. The camera body itself could be "racked over" (physically moved on a precision made track) for the actual gate of the camera to be viewable in the viewfinder of the camera. With the frame locked firmly in the gate, trick ("EFX") shots could be perfectly (or near perfectly) lined up. Early visual EFX guys did this a lot for "matte shots", extending ancient building (Ancient Roman colosseums for the first "Ben Hur", etc.) EFX shots were of often shot much longer than needed, so that parts of them could be used for line--up tests. Once a camera was perfectly lined up with it's subject matter, the body of the camera would be "racked back" to line up with the shooting lens of the camera, and film would be loaded into the camera and the shot would be filmed. (More modern film cameras, Panavision, etc. used a "video-tap" that allowed the filmmaker to see exactly what the gate of the camera was seeing as the camera ran film thru the camera. The need for "rack-over" cameras was eventually eliminated. Now state-of-the-art digital movie cameras, so-called "Red" cameras, which is a brand name) do this even MORE precisely and easily in our current all digital-video filmmaking world.) For decades, Kodak even made special film with more precise sprocket holes in them (using brand-newly-made metal punches engineered to be accurate down to one 100 thousandth of an inch, that hadn't yet been worn down from punching hundreds of thousands of sprocket holes) to create "raw" film exclusively for these kinds of camera trick shots, to achieve a steadiness that was usually not needed in non-trick shots that didn't need splitting into different sections, with sprocket holes made by metal punches that had a little bit more wear on them. All film made by brand-new punches was always saved and used for EFX shots exclusively. After punching only x-amount of feet of film, each metal punch was "retired" from generating EFX film and another brand new metal punch was installed, and the slightly worn punch was used only for making sprocket holes only in non-EFX film stock. Precise Optical printers existed back then, more-or-less invented and refined several times by an old visual effects friend of mine, Linwood G. Dunn, who later won two Oscars for his technical optical printer developments. (Dunn was later the owner of one of four optical effects houses that worked on the original Star Trek TV series.) It was often the optical printer that created and used the mattes (rather than placing "black tape" on the camera, which was not as precise) that were used to split screens for composites double-exposed later on. Also, matte paintings and glass painting were sometimes placed in front of the "locked-down" cameras to do EFX shots. These paintings could be all black, or have painted imagery on them, which varied from shot to shot and film to film. Mitchell also made "bi-pack" cameras that could run two strips of film thru the camera at once, with two sets of film-holding "magazines" mounted on top of the camera. One roll of film would be normal negative film, and the other roll would be very-hi-contrast film used to generate mattes that moved, called "traveling mattes" in the film industry. Mates could be "male" with a black area surrounded by white, or "Female" with a white area surrounded by black. Optical printers were used to generate oppose mattes, and labs could process any roll of film to be a negative or positive piece of film. The mattes prevented parts of images from being printed onto a master composite negative that would be edited into the final film. Separate passes using different (opposite) mattes would be run thru the optical printer to make the final composite images. The shot of Keaton passing in front of the train was filmed backwards, as the narrator says, but it was also filmed at an extremely slow frame rate, say 1 frame per second, with both Keaton's vehicle and the train moving extremely slowly, say 1-2 MPH. This allowed them to precisely time all the action to happen, while still being very safe about filming it. You can tell the low frame rate cuz Keaton and his head are jittering from frame to frame as he moved slightly (but continuously) in between the exposures of each frame of film, almost making the shot an animated sequence. This shot is effectively a "time-lapse" shot, due to the very low frame rate. This is still a good documentary, cuz it hints that Keaton did a lot of camera trick shots, which was true. They were just often (almost always) more complex to do and required other :post-production: equipment than the narrator suggests. 0 This highly technical explanation is pretty long, isn't it? That's why filmmakers and publicity people seldom talked about it to the public for decades, rather choosing to over-simlify it in interviews for magazines and publicity releases than they really were. Even in technical magazines like "American Cinematographer" explanations for how complex sequences were done were oversimplified cuz each visual EFX guy wanted to not reveal all the secrets of how he did this or that impressive shot on any given film. Full explanations seldom came out until each person retired from he film industry and thus had nothing to loose from revealing more details in a magazine article, or, sometimes even his own book, sometimes even published by the ASC ("American Society of Cinematographers"). Variations of these complex techniques are still being used in films today, with all the compositing being done digitally in computers rather than via optical printers, which allows for even more precision in compositing. Genius film pioneers like Keaton, Linn Dunn, (and before them, Georges Melies, and others) showed us what COULD be done when the technology was applied with precision and imagination, and so analytical films like the one posted here DOES do us a great service by starting us on the process of getting us to think in terms of how these shots and films were achieved. Dan Fiebiger (EFX tech, and EFX historian, Portland, Oregon).
But that`s just general theory, right? You don`t know exactly what type of camera was used on this production. I read about Keaton making "The Play House" and even though Bell and Howell camera (which was able to count frames) was already invented by that time - still it was the coamera operator who counted the frames to film as well as to rewind the film back to film another side of split. That means Keaton didn`t have Bell and Howell camera even in 1922 - a decade after the camera came to exist. I`m a FX history amateur from Russia - very interested in those details!
+Nadezhda Markalova WOW!,even his great rivals chaplin and harold lloyd used bell and howell cameras,mr. lloyd's as far back as 1918 back at the bradbury mansion period(the rolin film company).
Thank you. As insightful as the narrator's insights were, I agree they were a bit simplified and the complexities are better informed with your insights.
Monty Python's Terry Jones describes Sherlock Jr as the most surreal mainstream film of its time, possibly of all time. Maybe it was too surreal for audiences and critics of the day. I've read romances of the day where the local lothario is called a Sheikh; it's supposed to come from Rudolf Valentino's film The Sheikh, which was a roaring success with the ladies. Apparently there was a shorter-lived trend of naming young women "Shebas" to go along with the "Sheikhs".
the navigator is overrated to me,it has some great scenes but overall not among his masterpieces to me, now the film that shall take the place of that film is seven chances which for some very strange reason buster called the worst film he ever made. boy! he was his own toughest critic, it was sprinkled with great gags (very noticeably toward the finale) and the remarkable finale even tops the one in the navigator.
This "making of Sherlock" is more commentary on what is obvious and a history of career than the making of. You wandered, lost focus and wasted my time.
his pool shots doe..... i don't know much about pool, but this guy...... could probably be a pool champion loool
Buster Keaton is the GOAT.
shoe (reverse cap)
he was such a goat that he acted in a movie called the goat
@@ademvoli4406 shoe
Wow! That was absolutely fascinating! I appreciate Buster 100x more than before. What a genius!
Special effects were beyond belief for the time
Sherlock Jr. was my first Keaton film I got to watch. Will always have a special place in my heart ❤
Fantastic video! Arbuckle's stuff usually don't grab me much but I recognise the affect he had on Buster. This video was enlightening.
Bravo! such a fine "study" of this great film! and I'm happy that one of my books is, yes,
SHERLOCK JR! ANDY HORTON
I love anything with Buster info. Thanks for posting.
Very insightful, especially the part about relationship with and influence of Roscoe.
I absolutely love Sherlock Jr. A great and funny motion picture.
Brilliant analysis and brilliant presentation.
brilliant movie! Very fascinating to learn the behind-the-scenes!
Stunning to think Keaton's audience was not impressed with this film,though today is viewed/rightly deemed sheer & utter genius 🎥🎬
Thanks, I truly enjoyed that.
There will never be another buster keaton
Fantastic video, thank you! I knew that Arbuckle was a ver close friend and mentor to Buster but I had never seen that intro letter Arbuckle wrote about Buster before, wow! Buster was always so grateful to Roscoe. Thank you again for this upload! 😊. So hard to see that Sherlock Jr. Was not appreciated back then as it is now. Keaton was ahead of his time. 😉
You’re welcome!!!
Some of how the narrator says certain shots were done are quite a bit oversimplified and thus more-or-less erroneous.
Wanna learn more precise details about how Keaton (and many others) did these trick shots? Then read my entire lengthy post here and you'll get a much better idea how these wonderful shots were really achieved.
For starters…..
Actually, beautifully-engineered Mitchell cameras of those days of silent cinema had the ability to hold a frame of processed film on "registration pins" right in the gate of the camera. Placing the frame anywhere besides the actual camera gate to line up a shot (before raw film was put into the camera) would result in an out-of-focus image. The camera body itself could be "racked over" (physically moved on a precision made track) for the actual gate of the camera to be viewable in the viewfinder of the camera. With the frame locked firmly in the gate, trick ("EFX") shots could be perfectly (or near perfectly) lined up. Early visual EFX guys did this a lot for "matte shots", extending ancient building (Ancient Roman colosseums for the first "Ben Hur", etc.) EFX shots were of often shot much longer than needed, so that parts of them could be used for line--up tests.
Once a camera was perfectly lined up with it's subject matter, the body of the camera would be "racked back" to line up with the shooting lens of the camera, and film would be loaded into the camera and the shot would be filmed. (More modern film cameras, Panavision, etc. used a "video-tap" that allowed the filmmaker to see exactly what the gate of the camera was seeing as the camera ran film thru the camera. The need for "rack-over" cameras was eventually eliminated. Now state-of-the-art digital movie cameras, so-called "Red" cameras, which is a brand name) do this even MORE precisely and easily in our current all digital-video filmmaking world.)
For decades, Kodak even made special film with more precise sprocket holes in them (using brand-newly-made metal punches engineered to be accurate down to one 100 thousandth of an inch, that hadn't yet been worn down from punching hundreds of thousands of sprocket holes) to create "raw" film exclusively for these kinds of camera trick shots, to achieve a steadiness that was usually not needed in non-trick shots that didn't need splitting into different sections, with sprocket holes made by metal punches that had a little bit more wear on them. All film made by brand-new punches was always saved and used for EFX shots exclusively. After punching only x-amount of feet of film, each metal punch was "retired" from generating EFX film and another brand new metal punch was installed, and the slightly worn punch was used only for making sprocket holes only in non-EFX film stock.
Precise Optical printers existed back then, more-or-less invented and refined several times by an old visual effects friend of mine, Linwood G. Dunn, who later won two Oscars for his technical optical printer developments. (Dunn was later the owner of one of four optical effects houses that worked on the original Star Trek TV series.) It was often the optical printer that created and used the mattes (rather than placing "black tape" on the camera, which was not as precise) that were used to split screens for composites double-exposed later on. Also, matte paintings and glass painting were sometimes placed in front of the "locked-down" cameras to do EFX shots. These paintings could be all black, or have painted imagery on them, which varied from shot to shot and film to film.
Mitchell also made "bi-pack" cameras that could run two strips of film thru the camera at once, with two sets of film-holding "magazines" mounted on top of the camera. One roll of film would be normal negative film, and the other roll would be very-hi-contrast film used to generate mattes that moved, called "traveling mattes" in the film industry. Mates could be "male" with a black area surrounded by white, or "Female" with a white area surrounded by black. Optical printers were used to generate oppose mattes, and labs could process any roll of film to be a negative or positive piece of film. The mattes prevented parts of images from being printed onto a master composite negative that would be edited into the final film. Separate passes using different (opposite) mattes would be run thru the optical printer to make the final composite images.
The shot of Keaton passing in front of the train was filmed backwards, as the narrator says, but it was also filmed at an extremely slow frame rate, say 1 frame per second, with both Keaton's vehicle and the train moving extremely slowly, say 1-2 MPH. This allowed them to precisely time all the action to happen, while still being very safe about filming it. You can tell the low frame rate cuz Keaton and his head are jittering from frame to frame as he moved slightly (but continuously) in between the exposures of each frame of film, almost making the shot an animated sequence. This shot is effectively a "time-lapse" shot, due to the very low frame rate.
This is still a good documentary, cuz it hints that Keaton did a lot of camera trick shots, which was true. They were just often (almost always) more complex to do and required other :post-production: equipment than the narrator suggests. 0
This highly technical explanation is pretty long, isn't it? That's why filmmakers and publicity people seldom talked about it to the public for decades, rather choosing to over-simlify it in interviews for magazines and publicity releases than they really were. Even in technical magazines like "American Cinematographer" explanations for how complex sequences were done were oversimplified cuz each visual EFX guy wanted to not reveal all the secrets of how he did this or that impressive shot on any given film. Full explanations seldom came out until each person retired from he film industry and thus had nothing to loose from revealing more details in a magazine article, or, sometimes even his own book, sometimes even published by the ASC ("American Society of Cinematographers").
Variations of these complex techniques are still being used in films today, with all the compositing being done digitally in computers rather than via optical printers, which allows for even more precision in compositing.
Genius film pioneers like Keaton, Linn Dunn, (and before them, Georges Melies, and others) showed us what COULD be done when the technology was applied with precision and imagination, and so analytical films like the one posted here DOES do us a great service by starting us on the process of getting us to think in terms of how these shots and films were achieved.
Dan Fiebiger (EFX tech, and EFX historian, Portland, Oregon).
But that`s just general theory, right? You don`t know exactly what type of camera was used on this production. I read about Keaton making "The Play House" and even though Bell and Howell camera (which was able to count frames) was already invented by that time - still it was the coamera operator who counted the frames to film as well as to rewind the film back to film another side of split. That means Keaton didn`t have Bell and Howell camera even in 1922 - a decade after the camera came to exist.
I`m a FX history amateur from Russia - very interested in those details!
+Nadezhda Markalova WOW!,even his great rivals chaplin and harold lloyd used bell and howell cameras,mr. lloyd's as far back as 1918 back at the bradbury mansion period(the rolin film company).
Thanks for this , a great insight
Thank you. As insightful as the narrator's insights were, I agree they were a bit simplified and the complexities are better informed with your insights.
My favorite buster keaton film or feature film of his (I love the paleface,cops,and convict 13)and even the high sign i like very much.
Joseph Calderon Agreed, those are all terrific ones from Buster!
+gruvdrums Hi!, what's your favorite buster film?. current film comedies can't compare at all. don't you agree or not!.
The Cook and anything with the Buster touch.
+Holly Bischoff Have you got latest restoration of the cook,from the buster keaton shorts collection?
thank you so much for uploading this❤️
Very smart man, be interesting to talk with :D
Thank you!
very nice!
Monty Python's Terry Jones describes Sherlock Jr as the most surreal mainstream film of its time, possibly of all time. Maybe it was too surreal for audiences and critics of the day.
I've read romances of the day where the local lothario is called a Sheikh; it's supposed to come from Rudolf Valentino's film The Sheikh, which was a roaring success with the ladies. Apparently there was a shorter-lived trend of naming young women "Shebas" to go along with the "Sheikhs".
Benny Hill considered funnier than Monty Python by 2 TV stations--WOR and WLVI.
@@bobknapp1969Ah good ol' ch 9 WOR -TV.
What about Joe Keaton? Father of Buster Keaton.
And Joe Roberts.
the navigator is overrated to me,it has some great scenes but overall not among his masterpieces to me, now the film that shall take the place of that film is seven chances which for some very strange reason buster called the worst film he ever made. boy! he was his own toughest critic, it was sprinkled with great gags (very noticeably toward the finale) and the remarkable finale even tops the one in the navigator.
lol
18:45
Does anyone know who the narrator of this video is or who created it?
I want to know too
Brad Brooks... he's listed in the ending credits
Loved it until it cut out midway thru!
This "making of Sherlock" is more commentary on what is obvious and a history of career than the making of. You wandered, lost focus and wasted my time.
stuff it free thinker