New Chaplin Mutuals and Keystone Sets from Flicker Alley

[Jim Roots]

Blu-Rays of classic films are the best reason to go out and get a player and nice big flatscreen monitor (or better yet, HD projector). The experience of seeing Wings or City Girl on a first class system is NOTHING like seeing them on VHS, LD or DVD. Blu-ray is as close as we're ever going to get to a time machine to be able to see these films as they were originally screened on first release. I've been around for most of the era of home video, and the concept of "movies at home" has finally come to fruition. I can't wait to see the Mutuals in perfect condition with great musical accompaniment on the ten foot screen in my home theater. A dream come true.

Raise your hand, all those who can afford a ten-foot screen in their home.

Jim

[fwtep]

My ten foot "screen" is a painted wall. And it's not even one that I painted, it was just white (slightly off-white) when I moved in. Further, it's textured, so you'd think it would look terrible, but you don't see the texture at all. But if someone wanted an actual screen, screen material for a ten foot screen can be had for as little as US$100. So $850 for the projector and $100 for the screen gives you a ten foot screen, as opposed to spending *more* than that for a tiny LCD screen.

[bigshot]

I think my motorized ten foot screen cost under $300. My projection system was the best money I ever spent. If you figure out how much you spend on movies and cable TV, cheaping out on the way you look at them isn't a great idea.

[Frederica]

I can't wait to see the Mutuals in perfect condition with great musical accompaniment on the ten foot screen in my home theater. A dream come true.

Raise your hand, all those who can afford a ten-foot screen in their home.

Jim

(Insert standard Zen Master remark here...)

[Christopher Jacobs]

Blu-Rays of classic films are the best reason to go out and get a player and nice big flatscreen monitor (or better yet, HD projector). The experience of seeing Wings or City Girl on a first class system is NOTHING like seeing them on VHS, LD or DVD. Blu-ray is as close as we're ever going to get to a time machine to be able to see these films as they were originally screened on first release. I've been around for most of the era of home video, and the concept of "movies at home" has finally come to fruition. I can't wait to see the Mutuals in perfect condition with great musical accompaniment on the ten foot screen in my home theater. A dream come true.

Raise your hand, all those who can afford a ten-foot screen in their home.

Jim

My ten-foot screen is a $10 slab of sheetrock 4-feet by 10-feet, that cost maybe an additional $50-$90 for some 2x2 studs, concrete screws, sheetrock screws, and spackle, to mount it on the wall and fill in the screw indentations, plus some matte white paint to make it whiter and an evening's worth of time to install and paint.

For maybe an extra $100 you can get some black fleece or velveteen to use as masking and find some old discarded curtain rods so you can pull the masking in and out to fit each aspect ratio properly.

All that adds up to the cost of several Blu-rays or a good-sized box set, far less than a single new 16mm film print (or most used ones). So what's the big deal?

It's the difference between having your own personal private revival theatre equal or superior to most current commercial cinemas, or just watching a movie on TV or your computer. After installing my projection screen and getting a 1080p projector, I literally find it almost impossible to bear watching an entire movie on a 40-inch TV set, much less a computer screen. TV sets are for TV shows (mainly news, weather, and sports), and can be occasionally handy for spot-checking a movie scene or watching bonus features.

[sc1957]

To put up a ten-foot screen, whether it's a blank wall or a cotton sheet, I'd have to add an entire new room (at least) to my house. I'll stick with my 40".

[mwalls]

I have a 9' x 12' outdoor screen that I show 16mm on. For that size screen, I need a pretty good throw distance. What kind of throw distance do you need with these 1080 projection systems?

Thanks,
Matthew

[fwtep]

That's a bummer Scott. I was lucky in that my TV room lends itself pretty well to using a projector and the only effort involved was mounting the projector on the ceiling (and $16 for the mount). And for the kids, nothing beats video games on a huge screen.

[fwtep]

I have a 9' x 12' outdoor screen that I show 16mm on. For that size screen, I need a pretty good throw distance. What kind of throw distance do you need with these 1080 projection systems?

Thanks,
Matthew

With the projector I have, my distance is 16' but that's just because I wanted the projector near the rear wall instead of farther into the room. It could easily throw the same 10' screen from a few feet closer. At 16' I have it zoomed in a bit to make the screen smaller than the max size that it would be at that distance.

[Christopher Jacobs]

I have a 9' x 12' outdoor screen that I show 16mm on. For that size screen, I need a pretty good throw distance. What kind of throw distance do you need with these 1080 projection systems?

Thanks,
Matthew

My throw is roughly 15 feet, and the zoom range on my projector lets me keep a constant screen height of 4 feet, while zooming in and out to fit aspect ratios from 1.18 through 2.55 (although a couple of inches on each side get cut off in the latter case, as 10/4 = only 2.5). My projector happens to have a zoom memory with settings that can be custom-labeled, so I just have to go into the menu and select 16x9 (which fits the height for anything 1.78:1 and narrower), 2.4 scope, 1.85, 2.2 70mm, 2.0 Superscope, etc., and then slightly fine-tune the focus for the new setting (which is supposed to be remembered along with the zoom setting but often gets a hair off with each change). For 2.76:1 movies I still need some letterboxing to fit the entire image on the screen or else cut off a substantial bit on each side.

When I run 16mm from the same distance I can get a picture slightly larger than 3x4 feet, and with scope slightly wider than 8 feet.

[Jim Roots]

Well, you guys have done a pretty convincing job of showing how a 10-foot "screen" can be done in the home. Now we need to round up certain N'Villains and send them over to your house to complain about the "spackle effect" of your textured wallpaper that makes all the actors look like smallpox victims, and the "screen glare" resulting from your white paint, and the way the baseboard throws off the aspect ratio...

Jim

[fwtep]

Of course, if you need a big image with a short throw, check out Sony's ultra short throw 4K projector. It'll do a 10 foot image from only two feet away. And it's only $30,000! A bargain!

http://www.cnet.com/products/sony-4k-ul ... projector/

[Paul E. Gierucki]

Heads up! Today is the final day to order the Mack Sennett / Chaplin Mutuals Combo pack!
Both collections will still be available for pre-order, but not with the additional discount.

http://www.flickeralley.com" target="_blank

[Christopher Jacobs]

Heads up! Today is the final day to order the Mack Sennett / Chaplin Mutuals Combo pack!
Both collections will still be available for pre-order, but not with the additional discount.

http://www.flickeralley.com" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

Thanks for the reminder -- I almost forgot that today was already April 30th! Now pre-ordered, and can't wait to see the HD images projected 4 feet tall!

[Rick Lanham]

Ordered my bundle a few days ago. Looking forward to it.

Rick

[Jim Roots]

Thanks for the reminder -- I almost forgot that today was already April 30th! Now pre-ordered, and can't wait to see the HD images projected 4 feet tall!

How many feet wide?

Jim

[Christopher Jacobs]

Thanks for the reminder -- I almost forgot that today was already April 30th! Now pre-ordered, and can't wait to see the HD images projected 4 feet tall!

How many feet wide?

Jim

Well, with a 4-foot height I'm expecting they should be pretty close to 5 feet 4 inches wide, assuming they were transferred in the original aspect ratios. Some films or shots might be only 4 feet 9 inches wide if the only surviving material had a soundtrack covering up the left edge of the picture area. It's narrow enough in any case that I'll definitely be sitting in my front row about six feet from the screen.

[Pasquale Ventura]

Watch movies with a tape measure handy I see.

[fwtep]

Gotta see if those classics really measure up!

[All Darc]

The Chaplin Keystone Project requeired a effort of many film archives and collector around the world to try to find the best surviving film materials.

Have the Mack Sennett collection any similar effort?

[All Darc]

Interesting information:

http://macksennett.blogspot.com.br/2010 ... -upon.html" target="_blank


Surviving status Mack of Sennett films

[Mike Gebert]

The Chaplin Keystone Project requeired a effort of many film archives and collector around the world to try to find the best surviving film materials.

Have the Mack Sennett collection any similar effort?

As Paul Gierucki said in the interview here:

There is no single source from which one can acquire the entire Keystone / Sennett Library. Rather the best surviving materials had to be located, cleared, licensed, and shipped from various archives, museums, and private collections around the world. The logistics of this alone were staggering. (Brittany and I referred to this production, internally, with the code name: Project Impossible!)

The reconstructions are mastered in HD from a variety of elements including archival 35mm nitrate negs and positives, 35mm safety materials, paper prints, 16mm negs and positive prints, we also used 9.5mm and 8mm for completeness, and sometimes the lone known surviving print. The quality of the materials has been a mixed bag ranging from flawless to abysmal and everything in between. The workload to get everything looking just right has been absolutely massive.

[radiotelefonia]

The Chaplin Keystone Project requeired a effort of many film archives and collector around the world to try to find the best surviving film materials.

Have the Mack Sennett collection any similar effort?

As Paul Gierucki said in the interview here:

There is no single source from which one can acquire the entire Keystone / Sennett Library. Rather the best surviving materials had to be located, cleared, licensed, and shipped from various archives, museums, and private collections around the world. The logistics of this alone were staggering. (Brittany and I referred to this production, internally, with the code name: Project Impossible!)

The reconstructions are mastered in HD from a variety of elements including archival 35mm nitrate negs and positives, 35mm safety materials, paper prints, 16mm negs and positive prints, we also used 9.5mm and 8mm for completeness, and sometimes the lone known surviving print. The quality of the materials has been a mixed bag ranging from flawless to abysmal and everything in between. The workload to get everything looking just right has been absolutely massive.

The only print from CRUEL, CRUEL LOVE comes from a 16mm reduction print. In 1958 Francisco Vigévano and Salvador Sammaritano (one of Fernando Martín Peña's mentors) rescued a nitrate print in Uruguay and copied it to 16mm for preservation purposes in Argentina. Funds came from the members of Sammaritano's Cineclub Núcleo that later managed to get a TV show that I used to watch and it is the inspiration of Fernando's own show.

[All Darc]

Thank you guys for the information.
It's very nice to see more great international effot and cooperation to restore such old silents.

The Sennett films produced was about 500, and 300 or so survived today. A good rate considering the surviving status of overal silent films in USA it's about only 10% or 15%.

The Sennett films from 1915 survived for almost all titles due paper prints have be made for nearly all.


The Chaplin Keystione will be included. I'm curious if there had made some update in the restoration, or have some few more footage or better footage found for some scene or for some title. Probably Recreation (1914) will come from a little better source than the DVD set.

[bigshot]

WOW! That's all I can say! WOW!! Click through to YouTube and select 720p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN-4r6UbPgk" target="_blank

[Mike Gebert]

[Silentvalerio]

GREAT AND FANTASTIC NEWS!
The copy of the new Flicker Alley version of Chaplin's Mutual Comedies Blu-Ray release will have an even more improved image restoration than the versions aired on french channel Arte!
Flicker Alley: congratulations!

(Note: click open image on another page, because I don't know how to display it)

Join in my group: https://www.facebook.com/silentvaleriopage" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank

[Scoundrel]

[maliejandra]

I am so impressed with my Chaplin at Keystone set. Previously, my exposure to these films were the horrible Madacy prints, so seeing this is like seeing new movies. I never thought the Kid Auto Races was all that funny before, but I laughed and laughed at the simplicity of the film, which is relevant again in the modern world of selfies and society's lust for attention. My husband (who isn't a fan) watched a few with me, and couldn't understand why I was marveling at the prints so much, until a short clip of a washed-out bit popped onto the screen (because it was the only available print of that segment), right as I was trying to explain what the films looked like when I first saw them. Perfect timing and it made my point very well. I highly recommend this set.

[Mr. Bear]

I am so impressed with my Chaplin at Keystone set. Previously, my exposure to these films were the horrible Madacy prints, so seeing this is like seeing new movies. I never thought the Kid Auto Races was all that funny before, but I laughed and laughed at the simplicity of the film, which is relevant again in the modern world of selfies and society's lust for attention. My husband (who isn't a fan) watched a few with me, and couldn't understand why I was marveling at the prints so much, until a short clip of a washed-out bit popped onto the screen (because it was the only available print of that segment), right as I was trying to explain what the films looked like when I first saw them. Perfect timing and it made my point very well. I highly recommend this set.

I say the same thing too, those Madacy sets are wretched.
Watching the Flicker Alley box was like watching them over for the first time.