20:20
This is an exquisite arrangement. Okay, what are we reviewing? Okay, what do you think when you watch this? Oh, this. this brings me joy. This is Buster Keaton. I mean, we've been repeating a lot of his tricks for years, recreating them and reimagining them. So I.I'm a big fan. Would you say he was a big inspiration for what you do now? Oh, Buster, Charlie, Harold Lloyd were a big inspiration for our work. I especially like that the story can be watched without any dialogue. This is not necessary. And all the tricks are perfectly acceptable. So that's one of the things we're trying to do here. It's crazy that they did it in practice, because there
was no CGI back then. I know Chaplin was famous for using painted backgrounds for some stunts to make it look like he was falling off a cliff, even though it was actually in the foreground. I think they almost died many times while filming their stunts. Do you think you could do it practically the same way they did? Can we recreate everything practically? Yes. How are they? Just recreate these tricks? Mhm. I think we could do it. OK. I mean, it's been a hundred years. We must be capable of this. Is n't that right?
Yes, let's try. Okay, let's do this. Actually, I think it's quite risky. If for some reason it bends the wrong way, remove, remove, remove, remove. Modern films rely heavily on CGI, visual effects, and AI to pull off some of the big stunts you see in theaters. And while technology is incredible, when I look back and see what filmmakers could have done a hundred years ago, I can't help but feel like we've lost something along the way. The guys who invented action comedy, like Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd, were performing crazy, deadly stunts back in the 1920s. And this was before the internet, before computers, without green screens or
fancy visual effects. They had to shoot almost everything directly on camera. So I'm going to recreate some of the craziest tricks the way they were done 100 years ago to find out if we really need to rely on everything we've created since then, or if we've lost something by trying to make things simpler. First up is this famous Buster Keaton stunt where he literally dives through a person's stomach. This is cool. We use an old film camera. This is Bolex. Just to take a reproduction shot and see how close we can get to the original. Perfectly. Did you hear? Oh, I like that sound. Is n't that wonderful?
Steeply. Behind our beauty there is a secret hatch that opens. Look at this. Inside is a hole. So I'm going to dive through what looks like a belly, but Noah will be suspended above me, I'm going to land, they're going to close the door, and I'm going to hope that when I jump, I don't hit Noah in the face or anything. And her dress, it's actually cool, it attaches to the walls with magnets and then closes in the back. And I think that's pretty close to how Buster actually did it with his team. I'm going to jump right in here. How was it? Ticklish? I felt like that Pillsbury dough man right now. He kicked me in the ass.
Can you see how I jump? Did I hit you? No. I mean, yes, but that's okay. Oh. Steel toe. It was fun to pull off, but the next trick is going to be even crazier, and the last one might be the most dangerous thing I've ever done for a YouTube video. Indeed , it was very risky. This is another Buster Keaton stunt where he catches up to a streetcar, grabs the back of it, and it moves so fast that it lifts his feet off the ground, and he is pulled back into the streetcar. A very funny trick, but it's obvious he wasn't moving that fast, and he did it with a cable attached to his back-as he ran, the cable pulled him up, making it look like he was hanging from a moving vehicle. So to recreate this, we built a tram car, the back of it, and
mounted it on a van. We laid a cable from the top of the tram to my suit, under which I was wearing a safety harness. This is a complicated logistics, because we also had to place an operator in a nearby car. But a big problem arose. The winch was working too slowly. And a winch is a device with a cable that pulls me up. So I decided to run in slow motion, and we slowed down the car so that when the video was sped up it would look like we were moving at normal speed. Oh, what a nice clip from this suspension. We'll see how it works at the end of the video. Now we move on to Charlie Chaplin, good old Charlie, with his famous roller skating stunt where he skates blindfolded right next to a huge hole in the
ground. I haven't skated in years, but I think it's like riding a bike. How difficult can it be? I need to stop. It turned out to be quite difficult. And he did it blindfolded, so I'll try too. I wonder if Charlie used protection for tricks. I seriously lost about 5 kilos just by sweating. This is technically not a trick because there is no pit, unless you consider roller skating a trick, which is debatable. They did this using a technique called " matte painting": you paint the desired image on the glass, which creates the illusion of a background in the frame. Since I'm not a very good artist, we'll use special effects. I just broke all that glass.
Next, we recreate Harold Lloyd's trick from the movie "Safety First!". He climbs up the side of the building and grabs hold of the giant clock. And then he starts falling off the wall and hangs hundreds of feet above the street, even though he's not actually there. It's just on the roof, and it's one of my favorite early Hollywood sets. They simply built a fake brick wall on the roof and set up the camera so that the roof underneath was not visible. From this angle, it seems that Harold is hanging in the air above the city. This is really cool. We realized that our studio roof was a great fit, so we built the clock there and chose the angle. So that I could grab the clock and hang on it, we had to get stuntmen to hold the ropes, because
during the first attempts the weight would tear everything apart. So they were able to slowly lower me so I could hang dramatically, like in the original video. And we happened to pick the hottest day in all of Los Angeles. This is ridiculous. And now the final trick. Unlike other YouTube videos where the best stuff is shown at the beginning, we saved the best for last. This is an epic shot of Buster Keaton: he's standing outside a building during a storm, the front wall falls in, and thanks to a small window, he remains unharmed because he's standing in that exact spot. He emerges completely unharmed. And it's just crazy when you look at it: the weight of that wall, if you calculate it, is enormous, and it could literally kill him. So, uh, I'm
nervous about recreating this. My team built a wall for me with a huge hole. Right when we started lifting it off the ground in the parking lot, it looked pretty questionable. Uh, just be ready, if something suddenly starts to bend, you know, run to the side. I actually think it's quite risky, considering how she bends. What if it bends the wrong way for some reason, but you guys didn't tighten the hinges? Film. So I decided to test it out with a dummy first to see how Yeah, so we're going to fake it. Buster can keep it to himself. So, now that we've filmed everything, let's watch them and give them ratings.
Good. This is a Buster Keaton original. He runs, disappears into the suitcase. One does not know where they are going. So let's take a look at our reconstruction. This is a version shot on film, which is very good. This is my favorite at the moment. I love how practical it was. I mean, you're literally watching the version that was shot on film. There is no editing here. Compositionally-one to one. The other actors stand exactly where they were. The only thing we didn't do was pick the right color jacket for the guy on the right. If we were to rate it on a ten-point scale, we would score eight out of ten. I can't
rank higher out of respect for Buster. I think Buster would love it if he saw this today. Next we have a trolley car chase Let's see how we did here. This is Buster Keaton too. And what I still can't figure out is how they made his cable disappear. I think there are a few shots where you can barely see him, but I have no idea. This is my version. And honestly, it was worth a try. It was worth a try, we definitely didn't fail for lack of effort. But I do n't even know how he was able to lift his body so high with the strength of his abs and core muscles. We're visual effects guys, so technically we could have removed my belay and cable, but again, the goal is to do it the way they did it, with the same tools they had. And, uh, we
failed at that. That's about three out of 10. As my children say, we were " swallowed." Blind skating. This is one of my favorite Charlie Chaplin tricks because of the painted background technique. Um, oh. It looks good. I think I believe that. And yes, we edited it. First, I will say that Charlie is a much better skateboarder. This is actually very difficult to do, so respect, Charlie. I think it's a solid seven, seven out of 10. Six or seven out of 10. Hanging from the clock tower. I.I can't wait. This will be my favorite moment because every time I watch it, I'm still amazed at how cool it looks.
You really believe in the illusion that it hangs over the city. This is just madness. Okay, here's my reconstruction. So, technically we did the right thing by filming on a real roof. The thing is, our city background isn't lively enough. We are also too close for some reason, and we had to place the camera higher to create the illusion of looking down on the streets from above. So I think we slightly failed this task. I give it a seven out of 10. Okay. We have a classic falling wall. This is Buster's version. This is the wall. My God. This is just terrible. And this is my version.
Not bad. It doesn't look so bad. But knowing that it was a technical trick and we added visual effects, it's an automatic fail. You can also see the rotoscoping around my hair, which I masked out, and I like that reference motif with the chapel, but yeah. I think this is a complete failure. One in 10. After all this, has your opinion of these guys or the difficulty of the job changed?
Oh, I have a lot of respect for all the people from the silent film era who were able to do this with such primitive technology. What I notice is interesting: the shots where we actually used effects, green screen, and other rotoscoping look worse. There's something that I think everyone on our team can recognize because we have experience working with visual effects. This is something to consider when making films: ask yourself, why do we use green screen at all? Or what can we do practically first, instead of.well, you know, we have this assumption here that we'll fix everything in post-production, but maybe we should approach filmmaking with the thought: what can we actually do?
Okay, well, thanks for watching. Write in the comments which shot you liked the most and which moment from cinema history we should recreate next, because I think it would be interesting to make a few more videos like this
