Tweet The Artist (2011) a contemporary silent

Looks good. But a slight casual flicker and slight grain would make it a bit closer to the "silents feeling".
And just a little bit discreet frame instability too.

The trailer is now available on YouTube.

Looks good. But a slight casual flicker and slight grain would make it a bit closer to the "silents feeling".
And just a little bit discreet frame instability too.

Were films of the 1920s made to flicker and look grainy? I don't think so.

~Roger

Not grainy in pejorative way, but a little grain..

Flicker was present in all silent films, due limitations of film development technics. SOme had more and others had less...

The film look like shot at 20 or 22 frames per second.
Only to avoid problems with Richard M Roberts...

I would prefer a variable shooting speed, depending of the emotional or feeling of a scene.

But perhaps they can't be 100% nitrate look like, casue in the film there are also moments of they looking nirate film at a theater, and so one thing can't be right equal to other, since it's two worlds.

Looks good. But a slight casual flicker and slight grain would make it a bit closer to the "silents feeling".
And just a little bit discreet frame instability too.

Were films of the 1920s made to flicker and look grainy? I don't think so.

~Roger

The dancing scenes in this trailler remambers more the early 30's.

Not grainy in pejorative way, but a little grain..

I'm sure you'll see grain in the theater. If you saw it in this highly compressed and resized version it would mean there's too much and that it's too big.

But as a general concept, I agree. I really like the look and feel that grain can give.

Fear not, there will be grain!

Here is an excerpt from an interview with DP Guillaume Schiffman:

Did you shoot in black and white?
No, in colour. You can still find black and white
film stock and we did go to the best black and white
lab in Los Angeles but it didn’t work for us. Today’s
black and white is too precise, too sharp. So we
shot the whole film in 500 ASA colour so it would
be grainier. I lit it with filters I don’t normally use,
so the whites would be diffused and that the blacks
slightly underplayed. Then afterwards, I worked the
shadows and the faces with lights...

The full interview, along with those of other principals can be found here:

http://www.festival-cannes.com/assets/Image/Direct/041179.PDF

I hope this film awake interest in public for vintage styles, and somone decide do do a technicolor film next year.


Asa 500 today look so good compared to 25 years ago...
Color film stock was a mess even up to middle 80's, in terms of shoot with low light.

Who remambers One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the scenes shot with very low light, knows what I'm talking about. You could pick up grains with your fingers while watching.

Actual 35mm film, with low asa, could look similar to 70mm prints from the 60's, if was scanned in 8K and projected in a 4K or 6K digital projector.

If they use 35mm cameras to record in super 35mm, which is the film 90 degree, the width in the direction of film strip, and scan in 8K... project in 6K, I'm sure it would look amazing in terms of detail.

I think it's a matter of time until 6K or 8K projects became available and we get back to have projections as rich in detail as 70mm prints, or even more.

If home cinema became too good, like HD by Blu Ray, they will nedd to find better things to move people to theater.

In 10 or 15 years I bet a image resolution implementation technology will rise and some old block busters films will get new image detail.

Here's a great quote:

The shoot being silent, did you give your actors much direction during the takes?

What I did was play music on the set and it literally carried them. So much so that at the end, they couldn’t do without it! I played mostly Hollywood music of the ’40s and ’50s: Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, Frank Waxman, but also George Gershwin, Cole Porter... I used SUNSET
BOULEVARD a lot but I also played THE WAY WE WERE and even Philippe Sarde’s music for THE THINGS OF LIFE. It’s a beautiful melody and I knew
Jean has a particular relationship with that theme. I didn’t warn him the first time I played it and I knew that by playing it on set I’d trigger something during the take. That’s exactly what happened. I did the
same with Bérénice when she arrives in hospital; I played the theme from LAURA, which she loves. It was a real bonus for them, I think. At other times I also played some of the first themes that Ludovic Bource composed. To act in a scene while music is being played is a wonderful way to help you find the mood. For the actors, it was their relation to acting that was different, more sensitive, more intimate, and more immediate. It was really lovely for me to watch them blossom thanks to the music. When you
find the appropriate theme for a sequence, it can be a lot clearer than all the explanations you could think of. In fact, I realized on this film that talking is something wonderful but also fundamentally simplistic."

To me, the frame rate in the trailer seems to be lower (choppier) than in other neo-silents I have seen. I love this.

On one of the sites listed previously with some behind-the-scenes footage, there is a shot of the camera with a piece of tape reading "22 fps" on it. Not sure if that was their constant speed, or if it was altered for specific scenes.

But it was agreed among them, handcranking would have been taking things too far!

Is it just me, but I don't see the point in making a serious silent film. Of course, if a director has an interesting story to tell, anything can be good. Serious films benefit more from dialogue than a visual comedy film, I think. Using dialogue benefits a serious subject. Comedies are different, however. A comedy can also gain a wider acceptance by the general public than a serious film. Take Mel Brooks' film Silent Movie (1976), for instance. It had a budget of $4,400,000 and grossed $36,145,695; whereas, I can't think of one "serious" modern silent film that ever made any money. Every year, there are plenty of great film dramas that come out that are overlooked by the public, so the odds are stacked against a silent drama, I think.

Anyway, Dr Plonk seems more interesting than The Artist to me. There's also another clip on YouTube here about Dr Plonk that should be checked out.

You're probably right. That isn't going to stop any Nitratevillain from seeing it.

Bob

Is it just me, but I don't see the point in making a serious silent film. Of course, if a director has an interesting story to tell, anything can be good. Serious films benefit more from dialogue than a visual comedy film, I think.

I think it may be easier to make a silent comedy than a silent drama, but I still see the point in silent drama. There's an artistic detachment that lends itself to more poetic, non-realist stories. It's a different art form. Sunrise would be horrible as a talkie, and even films like Faust, Beau Geste, and Phantom of the Opera made better silent films than talkies. I would love to see a silent film version of Sunset Boulevard or La Belle et la Bête, where the story is communicated through body language, facial expression, and other silent film tricks like symbolic use of objects.

I guess it's why people still go to ballet as well as the opera.

Is it just me, but I don't see the point in making a serious silent film. Of course, if a director has an interesting story to tell, anything can be good. Serious films benefit more from dialogue than a visual comedy film, I think.

You're probably right. That isn't going to stop any Nitratevillain from seeing it.

Don't get me wrong - I'd still want to see it. But I wouldn't go to the trouble of seeing it in a theater (if I could) like I would for a silent comedy. So, you can count me in as one of those Nitratevillains who'd want to see it.

You can count me IN as someone who will see it in theatres. It looks so much more professional than the photos of the silent comedy that's been posted in this thread, and also from what I read, has been thoughtfully and lovingly made. The filmmakers seem to want to honor silent filmmaking, and so I will honor them with my presence.

Forgive my ignorance, or if I say something nonsense.

But why any silent movie maker tried to use subtitles instead of intertitles, at least in some ocasions?

It could change many things in silent films.


I supose the technology wasn't good to make it quickly, or it would require to go two film generations futher to have a fast process.
The intertiltes also have a artistic conmotation, and subtitles may distract someones from the view of the film itself.


Today, the optical subtitle process it's make by a separated film footage, with just the subitle image. After expose the film from the negative, the film it's exposed to the subtitle.

Some early mini-reviews of The Artist have been popping up on Twitter this morning. For the most part, critical consensus is overwhelmingly positive with a dash of contrarian or less enthusiastic opinion. But, in all, I think all of us have good reason to be excited about this film.

Guy Lodge, for instance, is quite enthusiastic and has some nice things to say:

THE ARTIST (B+) A joy: lush, infectiously affectionate tribute to lost art, avoids exercise status with Dujardin's quicksilver performance.

...as is the BFI:

The Artist | The most fun in #cannes so far, an imaginative and witty pastiche of silent movies, dealing with the transition to sound – GA

...and Peter Bradshaw also had a good time:

The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius is a total, total joy!

James Rocchi, meanwhile, gives us a bigger picture of how the notoriously expressive Cannes crowd responded:

THE ARTIST: Silent film about the silent-film era's conceit matched by its charms, and its humor by heart; the crowd went wild,with reason.

And if you needed a wet blanket to douse out the enthusiasm, here's Mike D'Angelo:

The Artist (Hazanavicius): 52. Depicting the end of the silent era *as* a silent film is an inspired idea. Film itself is less inspired.

You can also read a full review on The Playlist here. I'm sure there will be more posted throughout the day.

Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy also loved The Artist. Here's his review today:'

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review ... iew-188493

[silentfilm]

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=13606672

Ssh, No Talking: Silent Movie Charms Cannes Fest

By DAVID GERMAIN AP Movie Writer
CANNES, France May 15, 2011 (AP)

The talk Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival was about the movie that doesn't talk: a silent film about a 1920s Hollywood star toppled by the age of talkies.

French director Michel Hazanavicius' "The Artist" employs lush music, well-chosen but restrained sound effects and no spoken words save in one brief scene.

The result is an old-timey comic melodrama about the pitfalls of artistic pride and the power of romantic redemption that earned sustained applause at its first press screening, a rarity for notoriously snooty Cannes critics.

A last-minute addition to the lineup of 20 films competing for the festival's top honor, the Palme d'Or, "The Artist" is shot in black and white, conveys its limited dialogue through silent-movie title cards and is presented in the boxy format of early cinema instead of today's widescreen panoramas.

"We live in a time when people are crazy about 3-D films, people are crazy about technical innovation. Everything seems to be focused on images, and suddenly someone wanted to tell a very odd tale using this format that is a silent movie in black and white," ''The Artist" producer Thomas Langmann said before the film's official Cannes premiere Sunday night.

"The Artist" spins the tale of the fictional George Valentin (Jean Dujardin, who also starred in Hazanavicius' James Bond spoofs "OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies" and "OSS 117: Lost in Rio") a silent-era superstar who has wealth, fame, fawning fans and an adorably clever dog who shares the screen with him.

George finds himself cast aside as talking pictures arrive and the 1929 market crash finishes him off financially. Meanwhile, rising star Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo, who costarred in "OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies"), who owes her career to a few small kindnesses from George, seeks to return the favor.

But George's pride is an obstacle that even Peppy's compassion may not overcome.

Like the films of Charles Chaplin, "The Artist" blends moments of hilarious comedy with deep pathos. Hazanavicius pored over classics from the silent age and decided that such a mix was vital to a story told virtually without words.

"I looked at them a lot to understand the rules of the game, and very quickly, I realized that comedy, and ironic comedy furthermore, would not hold water over an hour and a half," Hazanavicius said. "A silent film moreover imposes a certain way of experiencing the film on the spectator, so melodrama and a love story fit best with that format.

"Chaplin is above all a comic," he added, "but all his feature films are melodramas with some little snippets of humor."

"The Artist" also features John Goodman as George and Peppy's studio boss, James Cromwell as George's devoted chauffeur, Penelope Ann Miller as George's unhappy wife and Missi Pyle as a silent-screen starlet.

The actors bring a wonderful combination of modern intimacy and the larger-than-life hamminess of old Hollywood. Grand posturing blends with subtle gestures, shameless mugging melds with restrained glances.

Dujardin said watching silent films, "I realized that one didn't need to have a script. One could convey so much through one's body, in fact, and one's gestures."

Bejo studied actresses not only in silent film but also from the early years of talkies.

"I loved Joan Crawford when she was very young, because she was really relaxed physically, her way of dancing and moving and putting her hands on her hips and winking her eyes," Bejo said. "I watched Marlene Dietrich wink, I studied how she closed her eyes, how she entered a room. Her whole body came into a room in a special way."

One thing Hazanavicius avoided was another non-talkie of modern times, Mel Brooks' 1976 comedy "Silent Movie." Hazanavicius said he adores Brooks but that "Silent Movie" was a parody he did not want to view before shooting his own silent film.

The director admitted borrowing liberally from other films, though, weaving in visual and musical references from many classics, including Fritz Lang's late-1920s thriller "Spies."

"Sometimes these are a form of tribute, sometimes they are just sort of quotes. Sometimes I just sort of borrow or steal," Hazanavicius said. "I think if things are done tastefully, it's fine.

"I just love the images so much. And what's Fritz Lang going to say about it, anyway?"

[Mike Gebert]

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Here's the trailer. Overall it looks fine... though I wish the photography were softer, it definitely has the hard front-to-back focus of a modern black and white film.

Daily Variety gives a big thumbs up to THE ARTIST as well:

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117945233

Fear not, there will be grain!

Here is an excerpt from an interview with DP Guillaume Schiffman:

Did you shoot in black and white?
No, in colour. You can still find black and white
film stock and we did go to the best black and white
lab in Los Angeles but it didn’t work for us. Today’s
black and white is too precise, too sharp. So we
shot the whole film in 500 ASA colour so it would
be grainier. I lit it with filters I don’t normally use,
so the whites would be diffused and that the blacks
slightly underplayed. Then afterwards, I worked the
shadows and the faces with lights...

The full interview, along with those of other principals can be found here:

http://www.festival-cannes.com/assets/Image/Direct/041179.PDF

As a still photographer who shoots on film I can tell you that even using vintage cameras is not enough to get the look identical to that of older films. Today's black and white films are marvelously sharp in their detail. In fact, look at a 1960s black and white movie (say Gammera the Invincible or To Kill a Mockingbird) and then watch a well preserved Hi-Def silent transfer of the late silent era (e.g. MoC's release of City Girl) and you'll see that there's just a different level of detail there. If you go back even further the way that films handled color (such as reds and blues) In many silent films a woman with blue eyes would appear with just white eyes.

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Here's the trailer. Overall it looks fine... though I wish the photography were softer, it definitely has the hard front-to-back focus of a modern black and white film.

I agree. The depth of field is way too great. My biggest complaint on the trailer is that they look like they are trying too hard.

That said, if it gets a wide release I might go see it. It's rare that I go to the theater but this might be an exception.

As a still photographer who shoots on film I can tell you that even using vintage cameras is not enough to get the look identical to that of older films. Today's black and white films are marvelously sharp in their detail. In fact, look at a 1960s black and white movie (say Gammera the Invincible or To Kill a Mockingbird) and then watch a well preserved Hi-Def silent transfer of the late silent era (e.g. MoC's release of City Girl) and you'll see that there's just a different level of detail there. If you go back even further the way that films handled color (such as reds and blues) In many silent films a woman with blue eyes would appear with just white eyes.

Small world! I too am a still photographer who shoots on film. More often than not, I'm working toward a vintage look and in general, the results are pleasing. The fact that modern photographers like Rocky Schenck can replicate the look with such fidelity is proof it can be done with modern materials.

I've also attempted duplicating a silent movie look in 16mm with a hand-cranked Bolex (just like the old Bell & Howell, one turn exposes 8 frames). The reason I bring it up is in response to your mentioning of how blue eyes recorded on early B&W film. Of course you (and everyone else here) are aware that comes from using orthochromatic film, which is overly sensitive to blue and all but insensitive to red. When shooting the 16mm film, we used a blue filter to simulate the ortho look. The footage looks very good, but our project stalled when we saw Forgotten Silver, which has a similar premise, although with a much larger budget!

Panchromatic film stocks were used in the later years of the silent era (wasn't Noah's Ark among the first to use pan film?), but the ortho look can be simulated when deriving the B&W from the color negative, as was used for The Artist. Optically, it would be a matter of the correct filtration. I'd love to know how the post production work was done on this film. As is the case these days, the final look was likely accomplished via digital intermediate.

The use of color filmststock to ultimately replicate a vintage B&W look reminded me of the television program "Morton & Hayes" from 20 years ago. An interview in American Cinematographer revealed that through testing, modern color stocks, destaurated in post, offered the best vintage look. As with just about any such project, something isn't quite right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahuE3rHabxU

But it is so much more than just a few elements, and outside of some of the best clips in that aforementioned Peter Jackson film (in which color film was used for the "archival" footage as well), The Artist appears (to me) to have most successfully achieved the overall feel of the era.

Panchromatic film stocks were used in the later years of the silent era (wasn't Noah's Ark among the first to use pan film?)

I'd heard that Beau Geste was among the first, but I also remember something about how Wings used that unusual pan film to get the clouds to show up. They were probably all "first."

One of the earliest to use Panchromatic film stock is Romola (1924, H. king). Alas there is only a 16mm print left...

Deadline Hollywood also gives a great review to THE ARTIST, and talks about how great it is to see something positive as compared to all the brutal, violent, misogynistic films screening at Cannes right now. He said the jaded journalists enthusiastically clapped for the film and that at the premiere, the film received a 10 minute standing ovation.

http://www.deadline.com/2011/05/cannes- ... ontenders/

[Danny Burk]

Small world! I too am a still photographer who shoots on film. More often than not, I'm working toward a vintage look and in general, the results are pleasing.

Likewise - looks like there are quite a number of us here.

I agree that older films have less visible depth-of-field; my guess is that this was a necessity due to much slower films at the time (for non-photographers, by this I mean a lower ISO of the film stock, which pertains to its sensitivity to light and has nothing to do with projection speed); consequently the filmmakers had to shoot with wide apertures, resulting in a lessened DOF.

To emulate this, one could use a neutral density filter to cut down light reaching the camera, enabling filming with a wider aperture. Older film stock was also grainier; this could be obtained by shooting with a high ISO film stock. Of course this would increase the need for a neutral density filter to cut back light reaching the film, but one can always use a stronger ND filter.

Anyway, I won't quibble about minor details. I'm looking forward very much to seeing the film, which seems sincere in its efforts to recreate a genuine silent feature without being a parody, or relying on silly faux effects such as digitally applied scratches.

[Mike Gebert]

You know, I'm not saying it needed a slavish 20s look. That might be getting too far into Guy Maddin territory. But to me, focus that tails off quickly is part of what's expressive in 1920s movies-- it's as much a way of focusing the eye in a particular place (notably a face) as a spotlight or an iris. Without it, you just don't have one of the tools that they had then, even if it was, in part, an accidental one (but so is any technology, really).

That said, if it's a good movie that evokes the period and tells a moving story... good for it, I'm looking forward to it.

Exactly, I'd rather not get hung up on nitpicking if the film works as a whole. Based on the trailer, the authenticity of the photography looks like it will probably fall somewhere between That's Adequate and Zelig. But it looks far more than "adequate" in the service of the story, and I agree that too much effort to introduce artifacts of earlier technology could be distracting. And after the authenticity this team brought to the OSS 117 films, I expect this movie may look even better than the trailer suggests.

And why should I be surprised to find other photographers here? Especially those who still use film. Danny, the images on your site are breathtaking! Much of my traditional work is 6x7 B&W and wet darkroom, and after looking at your work, I'm hesitant to share any of mine!

Now the big question is how will I make it to October?