A tramp at home – footage of Mark Twain

October 1, 2012 • 9:53 am

by Matthew Cobb

Here’s some great and unique footage of Mark Twain in his home in Connecticut. The YouTube caption says:

Silent film footage taken in 1909 by Thomas Edison at Stormfield (CT) at Mark Twain’s estate. Twain is shown walkng around his home and playing cards with his daughters Clara and Jean. The flickering is due to film deterioration, but this is the only known footage of the great author.

h/t Christina Purcell

36 thoughts on “A tramp at home – footage of Mark Twain”

  1. Neat!

    Anybody know why old footage like this is never presented at the same frame rate as it was shot at? It’s always sped up. If I had to guess, it was originally shot in the range of 20 fps and is being shown at a modern 24 fps, or something like that.

    b&

    1. Apparently that modern 24 fps is about to get an upgrade. Peter Jackson shot the new Hobbit movies at 48 fps. I guess that will become the new industry standard in a little while.

      1. I wonder, though. The purpose of art is rarely to make a perfect replica of our normal visual experiences.

        We perceive the world with essentially an infinite depth of field — everything we see is in sharp focus (or not if you’ve forgotten your glasses…), even though the human eye has a more limited depth of field. There’re lots of factors that go into this, but the brain’s image processing is biggest.

        However, it’s a favorite technique of photographers to make images with a shallow depth of field, such that only the subject is in sharp focus and everything else is blurry.

        I suspect that, rather than 48 fps becoming a new standard, we’ll instead see filmmakers start to experiment with different frame rates for different effects, much as photographers already do with depth of field. We’ll also probably get filmmakers start to experiment with different shutter speeds rather than the standard 180° rule.

        …this is all coming from somebody who only shoots stills, so I could be way off base….

        b&

      2. I wonder if the 48fps isn’t more for somehow foiling film pirates. (Hobbit hobbles hijackers?)

        I heard somewhere that that’s the basis for the resurgence of 3D movies, anyway. No idea if that’s true, tho.

        1. The film executives may be stupid enough to think that, but, considering that pirates generally just strip the (really shitty) encryption from the DVD / BluRay / whatever, they really would have to be idiotic to think so.

          Then again, judging from past evidence, they probably really are that stupid….

          b&

    2. One problem is that there is no original frame rate. The cameras were hand-cranked, and the frame rate varied with the speed of the person operating the camera.

      Beyond that, it may be a case of the closest natural frame rate being too low to provide the illusion of movement. So perhaps it’s sped up to look like a movie rather than a flickering slide show.

      Or, maybe someone discovered that it’s less jarring to see things go faster than normal than slower, so the lowest crank speed becomes the display frame rate.

      Just guesses.

      1. I just watched it again, looking for things like something being dropped that could provide a precise calibration of frame rate, but didn’t find any.

        Still, I’d bet that any competent animation artist should be able to peg the right frame rate just by eyeballing it. That’d be true even if the frame rate is variable — but just getting the average frame rate correct would be a huge improvement.

        Said artist should also be able to come up with some sort of filter to minimize any jerkiness resulting from a low frame rate — say, by adding morphed or blended inter-frames.

        Personally, I’d prefer jerkiness with the physics unfolding at the proper speed than the sped-up-but-still-jerky result we have which, on top of the rest, has the physics looking worng to boot.

        b&

    3. With very rare exception, silent films were not meant to be shown at the same rate they were taken at. And if you’ve ever seen that happen you’d understand why. It’s slow ant tedious (I say this as a huge lifelong fan of silent film, too). There’s plenty of proof for speeding up being normal. For example, during the silent feature era theaters were given suggested running times for each reel and none of the surviving material shows a real-time running speed. Also, look at the silent films made and released during the sound era– they are sped up as well even though they could have been shot at 24 and projected at 24.

      By the way, the earliest Edison films were shot at 48fps, so The Hobbit is far from the first film to be shot at that rate.

      1. I guess that’s just an aesthetic I never appreciated.

        And I’m surprised that Edison did his first films that fast. You need shutter speeds twice as fast, which means film twice as sensitive or lenses twice as bright or twice as much light (or some combination of the above). Projection is also going to need a faster shutter and more light. Not to mention, you’re burning through twice as much film and your reels only hold half as much.

        Much easier and cheaper to shoot slower.

        b&

        1. I should point out, of course, that the amount which the films were sped up varied greatly, often from shot to shot and sometimes within shots. For example, comedies were sped up a bit more than dramas, but generally NOT to the extent that you see Keystone comedies sped up today. What I mean is more like, say 4 to 6 frames faster. The stereotype of silent films that look like they’re being projected at twice their normal speed is wrong.

          And don’t forget that it’s also something your eye gets used to. So seeing one or two little clips per year is very different than it being all you ever see, day in and day out. So for people of the time it was much more natural.

          1. Fascinating.

            Was it the job of the projectionist to vary the playback rate, or did it somehow get baked into the developed print of the film?

            b&

          2. It was the projectionist. And they didn’t always follow the instructions. They might, for example, speed things up in order to get an extra showing in. For a while, cameramen tried to counter that, but obviously it would turn into an arms race so they eventually stopped.

          3. I imagine the addition of sound, even if only in the form of a set score for a musician to play, would have helped ensure a set running time.

            Thanks for the history lesson!

            b&

    2. …and it looks as though they didn’t have any tea in the cups in the first place. Edison must have been a cruel director- “Sorry. No tea, no poker deck. We don’t have the budget for those.”

  4. Clemens looked to be in fairly good shape for his age, especially after having to quickly run around his house for a second pass before Edison’s camera!

  6. Priceless footage. Seeing the age of that clip reminds me of the teen-ager who asked the reference librarian for photos of Jesus.

    1. Centurion: “Damn, a Kodak moment and me without my camera”.

      Jesus: “Don’t worry, I’ll be back in three days and you can take all the shots you want”.

      Centurion: “Only if you get back up on that cross”.

      Jesus: “Not likely”.

      Centurion: “Then forget it. I already have plenty of Jewish zombie shots. This place is crawling with them”.

      Jesus: “Well, I’ll be hanging out here for a while, if you want to go get your camera”.

      Centurion: “I left in in Rome, forget it”.

      1. You and still learning jest, but the kid actually was on to something.

        If Jesus were even vaguely like what he was portrayed as in the Gospels, we’d have a pretty good idea of what he looked like. After all, we know exactly what each of the Twelve Caesars looked like; for about what you currently spend on a month’s rent / mortgage, you can go and buy, for your very own private collection, a coin with a Caesar’s likeness minted during his lifetime.

        Even if nobody would have made any statues (or whatever) of Jesus during his lifetime (and, really, how could somebody not sculpt the physical manifestation of the god who created Life, the Universe, and Everything — especially when said god was so eager for his followers to convert the world to his new religion? — then we’d have clues in the Gospels themselves. Jesus would have been tall, towering over the crowds, or small such that those in back pressed closer to see. His blue eyes would have pierced to the heart of those who challenged him, or his gentle brown eyes would have comforted those he healed. You get the idea.

        And then, when we start getting paintings / whatever of Jesus (as I recall, in the second century?), he looks exactly like whatever classical god the artist was modeling him after. That’s the case from ancient all the way through modern times; many portrayals of Jesus, all unique to the artist.

        That’s the way it is with fictional characters, especially gods. Not so much for historical figures.

        Cheers,

        b&

  8. I don’t why I find it so hilarious, but seeing him walking around (and round and round) the house like that… dear god (if you forgive my language), priceless indeed.

    2. Much better — thanks!

      …though I think you might have overshot the mark a bit, and the inconsistent nature of the frame rate is now apparent.

      I’d love to see some careful reconstructions of some of these old films, but I don’t have either the skills, passion, or money to make that happen….

      b&

  12. Just incredible. This is some wonderful footage of an atheist filming an atheist. Thank you Mr. Coyne for this nugget from the past.

    1. I live pretty close to Redding, about 15 minutes away, and I’ve spent some time there. There’s a Mark Twain Road which I once drove down hoping to see something that reminded me of Mr. Twain, but there is nothing but McMansions and trees there. Down the street from that is the Redding library which is called the Mark Twain Library. I’ve never heard of or seen anything else of historical value regarding Mark Twain around there, but now I’m going to find out. In the next day or two I’m going to drive over to the MT Library and ask where his estate was. I’ll let you know right here in case anyone is interested.

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