Our resident public domain and creative content expert, Jason, is back to share his frightening film knowledge.
In reading about Tim Burton being recently attached to the film adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, I was once again disappointed by his career choices. I know I’m not alone in feeling like his work on adaptations and remakes is far inferior to his early work on original screenplays, and Edward Scissorhands is still my favorite of his films. His style clearly derives a lot from German Expressionism in general, and the influence is very clear when comparing Johnny Depp’s Scissorhands to the sleepwalking killer in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Fritz Lang’s early work and Nosferatu seem to be the most common touchstones for German Expressionism in cinema, but I always think of Caligari. The twisted designs of the sets define the genre for me. Why don’t more films look this cool?
The film also introduced me to the word “somnambulist,” which sounds much more supernatural than “sleepwalker.” A person walking in their sleep is something I would picture in a comedy, but a somnambulist is clearly horror material.
Cesare is the sleepwalker in question, whose talents also include predicting the future when in his sleep-trance state. The titular Dr. Caligari exhibits Cesare’s skills as a carnival attraction, but the duo have been linked to a series of murders. Caligari also looks a lot like Burton’s version of The Penguin from Batman Returns, which is still my favorite Batman film. I take a lot of heat for that.
Caligari is a surreal delight in all it’s delusional imagery. The narrative structure is also pretty forward-thinking for the silent era, and the first-person perspective of the film as relayed through a narrator of questionable sanity reminds me of the psychological thrillers of David Lynch.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is available for free download from archive.org. As always with public domain films, many budget DVDs are available and should be avoided for their low quality. Look for the Kino version.
Today is a really exciting day for all of us involved in the field of accessibility. President Obama is going to be signing the 21st Century Communications & Video Accessibility Act of 2010. He will also be delivering brief remarks on the expected impact of this law on people with disabilities. The White House is even going to stream it LIVE at 1:05 CST/2:05 EST.
We at CaptionMax are so excited that we want everyone to watch it! So below is a stream of the live feed from the White House. Come back at 1:05 CST/ 2:05 EST. Sit back, grab a bowl of popcorn, and enjoy watching this historic bill finally become a law!
If you have any problems with the video on our site, go watch on the White House’s website: here.
(Oh, and if you want more information our COO Gerald wrote a great breakdown of the act here.)
Because CaptionMax has become universally known as being the authority on all things caption and description related, we often get questions from consumers on various topics. The answers are mostly up on our FAQ section of the website, and if you haven’t checked it out—well, what are you waiting for?
Ironically one of the most popular questions we receive is “How do I get the captions off my TV set?” We would like to tell everyone that their life will be 100% better if they just leave the captions on, but alas, some people just don’t get it, and for them we provide detailed instructions in our FAQs.
My mother and father are not only big fans of CaptionMax (imagine that!) they are caption super-users. They both lost most of their hearing partly due to the 30 years of having kids in the house yelling at each other and over each other.
Being happily retired in Arizona, TV watching when it’s too hot to go outside has been elevated to a sport. So needless to say, captions are imperative. You gotta have some way to understand what Dr. G is saying when your spouse is yelling “Where did you hide my keys and the Valu-rite yellow mustard? You know I hate this frilly French Dijon crap!”
Well, my mom doesn’t need any stinking FAQ when her captions don’t work, and she certainly doesn’t need a new TV if her old Zenith is on the fritz.
I offered them a new HD flat screen, but they opted to stay “green” and simply purchase a rubber mallet instead. Watch this video and see how the wise elders deal with a cantankerous old TV set. You may learn something new.
Our resident public domain and creative content expert, Jason, is back to share his film knowledge.
Hey, have you heard of Charade? I hadn’t ever heard of Charade until I saw it on TCM some years back. Why don’t people talk about Charade more? You’ve got Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn together in the same movie being charming and looking good, and it’s not even that creepy that he’s kind of old for her. Hey, it’s Cary Grant. I buy it. I don’t buy the Fred Astaire thing in Funny Face, but Cary Grant I get.
As if Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn aren’t enough to get you to see a movie, you’ve also got a young Walter Matthau. People don’t talk about Charade enough, but when they do, they definitely don’t talk about Walter Matthau enough. You didn’t need him for this movie to be awesome, but he sure makes this movie a lot more awesome.
Also, did you know Alfred Hitchcock directed it? Okay, he didn’t, but you’d believe it if I hadn’t told you otherwise. And I guess if you don’t read opening credits, but you’re going to read these opening credits:
Okay, now you’re not going to watch this movie?
I feel compelled to give some kind of plot summary or talk about what is so great about Charade, but I really loved being surprised by this movie when I saw it knowing nothing about it. It’s a comedic thriller with movie stars giving you exactly what you want from them. They go to some locations that look pretty in the big widescreen Technicolor format, and I really don’t understand why it’s not counted among the all-time classics more. Grant and Hepburn certainly did better work, but not together. It’s definitely a Hitchcock knockoff, but it’s the best one ever made. Plus, Walter Matthau’s in it. Walter Matthau in a Cary Grant movie. Seriously, what else do you want?
For those of you on the cutting edge of home video, Charade is coming to BluRay later this month, and this is a movie that will look great in HD. Oh, and look at that, CaptionMax has already captioned and audio described Charade. What do you know?
CaptionMax is proud to announce that our very own Jason Mitchell will be writing a monthly blog about his favorite free movies. He is our resident public domain and creative content expert, while also being a stellar caption editor. Check out his first column and get ready to watch some fantastic films with us.
When I was asked to write about my favorite movies that are now in the public domain, I was really excited about the project, but I faced a big problem. Where do I start? The number of really great films that have somehow lost their copyright in America is surprising, especially when so many are rightfully considered some of the best films ever made.
Then I happened to see the trailer for the upcoming film Unstoppable (no captions). A big-budget action movie centered around a train chase? Sounds familiar.
The General was Buster Keaton’s personal favorite of all his films. It was selected by the Library of Congress to be preserved in the United States National Film Registry in the first year that the registry was enacted, and Roger Ebert considers it one of the ten greatest films ever made. It’s pretty good.
The General recounts the true-life events of the Great Locomotive Chase of 1862, a raid by the Union forces against the Confederacy during the Civil War. Keaton plays an train engineer rejected from enlisting with the Confederate army who becomes a hero through his efforts to stop the Union raid. These efforts involve increasingly amazing stunt work by Keaton as he’s pitted against the mechanized steel of the locomotive.
Keaton was given one of the largest budgets of the silent film era, and The General includes what were then the most expensive action sequences filmed in cinema’s brief history. The climax of the film features a bridge collapsing as a train crosses it. The wreckage remained in the river bed below for nearly 20 years after, serving as a tourist attraction until the metal was salvaged during World War II.
For those averse to silent film, fear not. The General manages to avoid the silent film conventions many take issue with:
There’s not a lot of dialogue. Although silent films found ways to minimize dialogue, there’s usually a lot of scenes where people move their mouths followed by intertitles explaining what was just said. This tends to slow the action down and disconnect the dialogue from the performance. The General is heavy on the action and light on the intertitles.
It’s not boring. Coming in at around 75 minutes, The General is particularly fast-paced and even short by modern standards, pretty much amounting to an extended chase scene.
It’s not a lot of people waving their arms around. Due to the lack of dialogue and acting’s roots in the theater, a lot of silent film acting is overly theatrical. This melodramatic style is often exaggerated by silent films being played too fast in modern video transfers (A standard film playback speed wasn’t established until the sound era made it necessary). Buster Keaton specializes, however, in a comedy of understated reaction. The Great Stone Face is constantly assaulted with the unforgiving forces of the Industrial Age, and he takes it all in stride. Keaton never questions why life’s obstacles are so numerous and severe. He accepts fate’s cruelty and trudges on.
The General was a failure at the box office, and reviews faulted it for being neither a straight comedy or a straight thriller. After its release, Buster Keaton increasingly lost creative control over his projects and began working under contract for MGM, where he was no longer allowed to perform his own stunts. Keaton would later make a cameo appearance in Sunset Boulevard playing himself, a silent film star whose career was over in the sound era.
You can download The General at archive.org, along with many other works in the public domain, but Kino has made a great transfer of Keaton’s best-preserved film for DVD and Blu-Ray. Get a taste of The General’s amazing stunt work in this clip from the documentary Buster Keaton Rides Again:
(this video has no captions — sorry, we’re just borrowing the content — but hopefully everyone will enjoy his fantastic stunt work)
Anyone who has ever been to Hollywood can tell you that it is not everything the movies led you to believe. It’s dirty, the traffic is terrible, and parking is impossible. And if you’re trying to get in or out when there’s a show at the Hollywood Bowl, you better budget at least two additional hours into your commuting time. In other words, it’s not particularly glamorous. So just who exactly is adding all that glitz and gloss to TV and movies? Why, your friendly local post production facilities.
Post production is a giant umbrella that encompasses all the work that goes into making a production watchable after shooting is over: editing, ADR, music for the soundtrack, special effects, the transfer of film to video, and, of course, closed captioning are all part of that process. And since deadlines are the name of the game, many pieces of that puzzle are constructed simultaneously. You’ve probably seen pictures of a TV set, where a living room only has three walls and no roof. Well, putting the finishing touches on an episode of TV is kind of similar.
The video that a captioner watches will often have green screen instead of CGI, questionable language, temporary dialogue, and extremely dark un-color-corrected video. If you’ve ever watched an episode of television where the captions only ID the main character as (man), you can begin to see why. It’s because when the captions were created, the captioner was probably staring at a near-black screen while listening to an unknown production assistant attempting to recreate the lines that the star will later record in ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement, which involves actors re-recording all the lines which were unintelligible during the original shoot). While this process often leads to some pretty hilarious temporary audio (Shot of Macho male star “I need to get my hands…” Shot over his shoulder as a cheery female voice finishes his sentence “On Aimee’s computer!”), what’s more impressive is the way that all these processes are able to come together for the final delivery.
With tight deadlines looming over everyone’s heads, the last minute details that post production covers are finished and passed on from one facility to the next like a baton in a relay. Urgent emails are sent at 3:00 a.m. Line substitutions are communicated over the phone. A final video may not even be available until the morning of the episode’s airdate. Final captions will be emailed, messengers on motorbikes (to better navigate the insane traffic) will deliver masters from encoding facilities, and shows will air looking as slick and polished as if they were produced with all the time in the world. And that final illusion is what makes “Hollywood” so impressive. Week in and week out, every level of production from the initial story breaking to the captioning, will work crazy hours to deliver a show. And if you occasionally see a stray microphone or an slightly puzzling ID in the finished project, know that what you’re actually getting a glimpse of is the real Hollywood magic: all the missing microphones and correct IDs. Which is pretty awesome, when you think about it.
Audio description…video description…or just plain description?? You’ve seen those phrases but what do they mean? Why is it important? How do you tell someone what description is?
CaptionMax to the rescue! We’ve just made a video that explains it all!
We are happy to show people what description is quickly and easily. We also think our team of describers is the best.
CaptionMax has described over 3,000 hours of educational programs through U.S. Department of Education grants. Now that you’ve watched our video, go to our description page and show your support for description!
Did you know that broadcasters aren’t required to describe their programs? Video is a frequently used resource in the classroom, and blind students can miss out on critical information on the screen.
How can you help?
1. Go to our description page and write a letter of support to the government!
2. Watch our quick video about description and pass it along to your friends. Help us raise awareness.
3. Send our website info to your friends. A chorus of voices in support of description will send a strong message to the government.
With your help, we can continue to expand description on TV and in the classroom. Thank you for supporting description.
We are so happy that over 4,000 people have watched His Girl Friday and are getting exposed to quality audio description and captioning.
Even more exciting is what we were able to accomplish this Thursday. The amazingly talented, creative, and busy actress and activist Marlee Matlin produced a pilot for a new series, My Deaf Family. To add accessibility for ALL, Marlee allowed us to add audio description to her pilot and host it on our YouTube channel. In one single day, we received the video, captioned it, audio described it, proofed it thoroughly, and posted a fully accessible version on our YouTube channel. How amazing is that!
We posted it here for all of our blog readers to enjoy. We also have some links under the video where you can learn more about Marlee Matlin and her activism. She is truly an inspiration for all of us. Thank you, Marlee, for letting us support and promote your project!
Did you guys know that CaptionMax has a YouTube page? Our YouTube page is where we will post public domain content that we’ve captioned and described. Right now we have His Girl Friday and Charade available. His Girl Friday has already gotten over 1,200 views! (It was big news for us on Twitter this week.) That’s 1,200 people who are listening to description! We are also planning to post D.O.A and some more movies soon, so stay tuned…
Our page also features a video tour of our world headquarters. Max himself leads the way around our state-of-the-art, LEED-designed building in Minneapolis. Head over and take a look if you’ve never seen our MPLS office. (Hopefully, we can get a tour of our Burbank office up soon, too.)
Lastly, just in case you don’t follow us on Twitter or YouTube, we are re-posting His Girl Friday here on Fun Film Friday. Because, really, what’s better on a Friday than watching a classic movie with impressive captions and superb audio description?!
Enjoy…and if you have questions about captioning for YouTube or audio description, contact us here or fill out a cost request. Thanks!
