Remarkable Special Effect

That's the best scene in the whole film, alongside the ending. I was getting a little tired of seeing Buster Keaton losing at every sport he was trying, and then bam!

I think those dark places on their shorts were different material to give them traction to hold themselves in their seats in the boat when they were rowing, but that is just a guess.


"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."

Thank you for pointing that out. I find it very frustrating when so many people hail Chaplin as a genius and innovator but not many remember Buster Keaton for all his many talents.

"We've got lumps of it round the back."

I was thinking about this recently. I remember seeing that effect used in the early 2000s in Donnie Darko, and being impressed with it. Keaton did it in 1927.

I have no idea how it was achieved, but I believe you could do it without an optical printer by simply shooting the whole sequence in slow motion, then in the edit, remove all your extra frames so you're back up to speed with 16 fps for the moments you want normal speed. That could achieve the desired effect without a shift in exposure and without access to an optical printer.


What's the ugliest part of your body?

I can't remember what movie it was, but he made a sequence where numerous doubles of him played the orchestra. Keaton acted out every single Buster on the screen. He just kept rewinding the film and recording over it. Same thing we do today, but no one was doing it at the time.

There was also the theater scene in Sherlock Jr. where he seems to teleport to different scenes. That was really cool.

Let's not forget all the technical gags he came up with as well. He was all around impressive for the era.