silent cinema

REVENGE starring Dolores Del Rio – hokum, but erotically charged

Pardon for this not being the final installment on the basic aesthetics of the silent era, but I was buying a house and it closed about a month earlier than expected and I’ve been immersed in a move and haven’t had the patience for deciding on frames and clips. It’s already written though. But I […]

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The basic visual aesthetics of the silent era pt. 2: lab work and speed

rack and tank film processing Another visual quality characteristic of the silent era you might notice is a pulsating in the image.  The blacks do not stay at a constant level, but in a continual, subtle fluctuation.  For most of the silent era, motion picture film, camera negative as well as positive prints, were processed by hand via

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The basic visual aesthetics of the silent era pt. 1: ortho film and color

If you are new to films from the silent era, you may have noticed a distinctive look to the image, or depending on what you’ve seen, even thought the films look bad due to early technology being primitive and incapable of any level of quality.  There are numerous reasons why films from the silent era

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