Sunday, June 13, 2010

Drunk Camerman??

I must have seen every Popeye cartoon at least one hundred times and it wasn't until last week when I took note of the titles of "Seasin's Greetinks!". The camerawork is really messed up. I never noticed it in the past. I have reason to believe the cameraman may have been a tad intoxicated when he shot the titles. See if you agree with me -


Paramount logo out of focus screen right.

Titles not centered.

Shaky door opening.


The title card is on an angle.

A quick adjustment. That's better.

A shaky truck in and - whoops, it's out of focus.

Focus camera.



See it all in motion.


6 comments:

Steven M. said...

I see the errors and I agree with you. The camerman must of been drunk shooting this.

The Crazy HR said...

Yeah, this is really messed up. Even Turner noticed that this was messed up so they cut the left side and zoomed a little bit, which can also be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb8zxyQcTFQ

Anonymous said...

Now that is some sloppy camera work. Yeesh, I see what you mean, Bob.

Brubaker said...

I can just imagine the projectionist, screening the cartoon during its original release, thinking the lens is out of focus and trying to adjust it.

The Crazy HR said...

The titles look a lot better on the colorized version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ofAVLPqEMo
I think those who colorized the cartoons in Korea payed attention to the opening titles...

J Lee said...

Either drunk, or they had a rookie running the camera that day -- judging from the opening titles for the first few Popeyes done in Miami, they had a newbie doing the camera at that time, too, since there are a couple of unusual or incorrect exposures on those (check out the iris out on "Wotta Nightmare").