[78-L] Was it staged? - 1906 film of a cable car ride

[Michael Shoshani]

On Fri, 2011-03-25 at 10:19 -0500, Ken "Silver Showcase" wrote:

> The idea that the "proper" silent film speed is16 fps, (sometimes 18fps) 
> comes from when 16mm sound projectors were introduced in the 30s.  

 [snip] 

> There are some 16mm 
> projectors with variable speed motors, but its cheaper to build motors 
> that can be switched between two standard speeds so most 16mm projectors 
> with sound capability were made with two speeds, one at 24fps labeled 
> "sound," and the other at around 18fps labeled "silent."  The 16mm 
> projectionist had only those two choices for silent films and because 
> most of those speed switches were labeled as "sound" and "silent" 
> instead of the actual speed of projection people got the idea that there 
> was a standard silent speed.

That there was a standard silent speed at least by the 1920s is evident
from the Western Electric film "Finding His Voice". The key is not the
frames per second but the *feet per minute*. There's a spot in Finding
His Voice in which "Mutey", the silent film, has his pulse raised from
sixty to ninety. This is a direct reference to the standard silent speed
of 60 feet per minute, and the standard sound speed of 90 feet per
minute. (There are 16 frames in a foot of 35MM film; 60 feet per minute
works out to one foot (16 frames) per second, while 90 feet per minute
works out to a foot and a half (24 frames) per second.) 

Additionally, hand-cranked cameras exposed half a foot, 8 frames, for
every revolution of the crank. Two cranks per second seems to have been
fairly standard early on; silent animated cartoons going back to before
WWII have their action divided up into 16 frames per second, even though
their cameras were geared to only expose a single frame per crank. 

The standard Academy leader counts down from 11 to 3 by flashing a black
number against a clear background every 16 frames. Those numbers mark
the number of feet of leader remaining, but at 60 feet per minute they
also count the seconds. Which is exactly what the later (and more
familiar today) SMPTE leader does at 24FPS. 

Michael Shoshani