One More Home Made Cartoon Compilation

Some would say that tinkering around with silent-era "Out of The Inkwell" cartoons is a superfluous exercise in "re-inventing the wheel." But, in the interest of learning more about my Pinnacle Studio 12 video software and my own cartoon nerdiness, I went and did it any way

So, "Neener, neener, neener," says I.

In 2007 and 2008, Warner Home Video released a baker's dozen of these "Out of The Inkwell" cartoons as bonus features on their POPEYE THE SAILOR box sets. Unfortunately, the versions of these shorts they offered up were absolutely mute. So I made it my mission to add music and sound effects to enhance my own viewing experience.


The earliest cartoons, from 1919/1920, had dark, blurry "Bray Studios" title cards. I replaced them with my own versions and added vintage music tracks from old 78s.


The next group of cartoons, from 1921 - 1924, received new music beds from the 78 rpm archive as well as laboriously synched-up sound effects. The Pinnacle Studio 12 has a rather limited palette of sfx, but through the use of judicious sound-editing I managed to mix it up a bit. "Trip To Mars" turned out especially well, I felt.


The last three cartoons in the set received "Stuart Productions" music montages. Missing main title cards were also created and inserted.


Two "bonus" cartoons were added:


1. "Finding His Voice" was an early sound cartoon that the Fleischers produced in association with the Western Electric company. It explains how the sound-on-film process works. I've had a 16mm print of this for decades and it always bothered me that the sound track falls out of synch about two minutes into the film. I was able to bring the whole picture back into synchronization and it is amazing how well-timed this thing actually is! Mind you, the animators had not yet perfected how to animate dialog, but they were obviously giving it their best shot.


2. In the cartoon "Koko Back Tracks" time is made to run backwards and hilarity ensues. I took this cartoon, reversed it and created "Koko Back Tracks (Backwards)" which has to be about the most useless bonus feature ever. But, hey, "Dat's how I roll!"


Have I finally sated my unwholesome desire to tweak old cartoons via my computer's video editor? Is the animated monkey finally off my back? Don't I have anything better to do?




I wish I knew.

More Home-Made Cartoon Comps

What better way to while away the house-bound Winter months than to nerd out with my various low-end video editing programs? (Also, being unemployed helps to create a huge window of opportunity!)

Thus was "CARTOON CAPERS" born.

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Initially, I had concentrated on tweaking silent-era cartoons and this spilled over into the first volume. Included are Three silent "Aesop's Fables" and a like number of "Out Of The Inkwell" cartoons.

From then on, I decided to concentrate on sound-era cartoons.

My first task was to take the Felischer Talkartoon "Radio Riot" and re-synchronize the soundtrack. For some reason, the track on my video copy slid 'way out of synch throughout the cartoon. It actually turned out pretty good and emboldened me to continue my experiments.

The Terytoon, "Bull Ero" was interesting. The source for my video copy seemed to have been made up of a couple of prints that were spliced together in such a way as to repeat certain scenes and make for a very confusing narrative. (Suddenly that's an issue for a Terrytoon?) I did a little scene shuffling and trimming. I also lifted a song from the middle of the cartoon and used it as the "bed" for the new title cards I created.

For "Farmer Al Falfa's Ape Girl" I simply took stills of the existing title cards and redid the opening to remove some unsteady framing issues. I did a similar thing for "The Lorelei" but also increased the brightness, as it looked rather murky.

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I felt my experiments on the first group went well enough to continue with a second volume of all-sound cartoons.

"Jazz Mad" was another dark and murky-looking Terrytoon that needed considerable "brightening up." I made no attempt to re-edit it as no amount of fussing could possible make a dent in this cartoon's incoherence.

"Ye Olde Songs" and "Radio" got new title cards.

The Fleischer cartoons "Yip-Yip-Yippy" and "Pudgy and the Lost Kitten" got new title sequences. In the case of "Yip-Etc." it was to re-do the curious case of the main title being inserted twice during the sequence. The Pudgy ones were done to remove some German subtitles. I didn't remove the subtitles during the cartoon itself, though.

The "Stone Age Cartoons" all received new title sequences to spiff up edits, sound track glitches, etc.

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I tackled "cleaning up" the titles on a bunch of "Scrappy" cartoons. Particularly he short main title for "Scrappy's Expedition."

I redid the main titles for a bunch of "Oswald" cartoons, as well. This was mainly to get rid of the Sunset Films TV titles and to approximate (my concept) of their theatrical versions.

Included are also some "Aesop's Sound Fables" that I had been wanting to tweak for some time now. Number one on my "hit list" was an entry from a dollar DVD called "Frisky Frolics." The whole cartoon was about two seconds out of synch and I was able to remedy this using the experience gleaned from the "Radio Riot" experiment, above.

The title sequence for "Cinderella Blues" had some framing problems and I was able to remedy that by grabbing a section that was stable and looping it over the soundtrack. The synch wandered in one part due to a splice in the track, but it seems to corrects itself quickly enough.

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For volume four, I took an entire disc of Terrytoons and played with them.

Nearly all of them got new title sequences to remove the standard cut-n-paste TV title cards. I left a few with "Castle Films" and "Barker Bill" title sequences in tact just because I liked them that way.

I think I'll stop after four volumes. Unless, or course, another pile of old cartoons fall into my lap and I once again am bitten by the bug to tamper with them.

And Make It Snappy!

Call it "synchronicity."

Call it "serendipity."

Call it "ippity-bippity."

Through a series of events, I managed to score a pile of overlooked "golden age" cartoons on video and meet an interesting fellow in the process.



Back around 1991 or so, I received a copy of "The Whole Toon Catalog." This was an impressive mail order company that handled a pretty comprehensive array of videos. They included the mainstream releases of the day from the likes of Disney and Warners, as well as "niche" producers. (This was back in the days of VHS cassettes, kiddies.)

One of these obscure labels was "Snappy Video." As I went through the catalog, circling titles of interest, their name kept coming up over and over. Clearly, my fantasy shopping list was going to be a budget-breaker.

Also around this time my wife had gone back to school to earn her Radiologic Technologist degree. In order to finance some of the educational costs, I decided to put some films up for sale in "The Big Reel" which was "the" monthly swap-sheet for film collectors.



One of the items for sale was an incomplete print of "Dumbo." It was missing the first hundred feet, so I had it listed at a fairly reasonable price.

Amongst the calls I received in response to the ad was from a fellow named Steve Stanchfield, who was interested in that print of Dumbo. In the course of our conversation, he mentioned that he was the guy behind those "Snappy Video" releases.

Oh, WOW!

Long story short, I bartered that print of Dumbo for copies of all his current titles. This was mutually beneficial, as Steve was able to burn off some stock (I'm guessing, maybe $50 worth of raw materials) and I was able to grab maybe $200 worth of videos. Sweet!



One of Steve's releases was an excellent collection of Popeye cartoons that had fallen into "public domain" status. I wrote an enthusiastic review of this tape for the "Official Popeye Fan Club" newsletter and included ordering info.

This served to give Steve a nice spike in sales for this title and it also brought the OPFC to his attention.

Every year the OPFC has a "Popeye Picnic" celebration during Labor Day weekend in Chester, Illinois. This was E. C. Segar's home town.

In 1994 there were particularly big doings at the Picnic and I finally caved in and attended. Who should I meet there by Mr. Stanchfield, himself?



The highlight of the picnic was sitting with Steve, Leonard Kohl and several other spinach-heads at the annual banquet. We drew all over the paper table cloth and had a swell time "geeking out."

I lost track of Steve for about ten years after that. My googling on the internet for "Snappy Video" only served to conjure up page hits for a video capture device with the same name.

Of course, the internet being what it is, Steve eventually surfaced on a couple of cartoon message boards about five years ago, with a new video company called Thunderbean Animation. Once again we resumed our bartering; only this time it was based on my providing cartoons to be included in his new collections in exchange for copies of the resulting DVDs.

Sometimes you never know how these threads are going to weave together in this rich tapestry of cartoon nerdom.

The Bugs Bunny Show

Thanks to my on-line pal, Tom, I have had four of my 16mm prints of The Bugs Bunny Show transferred to DVD-R. Here's the menu for the disc:

The segments that the WB crew created to bridge the cartoons are so cool. Look at these weird combinations of characters:

Bugs with the "Goofy Gophers"


Bug with Sylvester (hawking Post cereals!)

Bugs & Pepe LePew (Bugs can't take it!)

Yosemite Sam & Pepe

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Here are a couple "made-for-TV" title cards:

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A Freleng character (Rocky) in a McKimson-directed segment!

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Some opportunities for re-using theatrical animation over TV backgrounds:

I'd sure like to get more of these early 'sixties show on video someday. Anybody want to trade?

Popeye? Why the Audacity!

Here is a yellow, five inch, 78 rpm record that is a touchstone of my childhood. Jack Mercer singing "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man!"

My original copy is long gone, but I've had this one for some years, now. I have not, however, owned 78 rpm turntable sice maybe 1978.

AUDACITY TO THE RESCUE!

I recorded a wav file with my turntable set to 45 rpm and then used the speed change option in the to convert the file from 45 rpm to 78 rpm.

It worked like a charm, but...

The original recording on the record was sped up so that it sounded like one of his nephews, rather than Popeye, himself, was singing.

AUDACITY TO THE RESCUE, ONCE AGAIN!

I found that by bringing the pitch down one whole note (from "C" to "B-flat") the sailor's voce was more natural. Well, as "natural" as Popeye's voice can sound.

It worked like a charm, but...

This record also had some pretty bad pops and click on it.

AUDACITY TO, well, you know.

I zoomed in on each click and used the "repair" tool to neutralize them. This works better than the click filter, I find, but it is infinitely more tedious.

One last tweak...

The last few seconds of the record had some fatal skips, so I edited in a repeat chorus and forced a fade out.

Click on the link, below, to download the resulting mp3.

POPEYE GOLDEN RECORD



Well, blow me down!

Not Quite The Chipmunks

What happens when you run The Chipmunks Sing The Beatles Hits through the de-novelizer?

Download the zip file I have attached to find out!

Track list:

01 ALL MY LOVING
02 DO YOU WANT TO KNOW A SECRET
03 SHE LOVES YOU
04 THERE IS NO TRACK 04
05 LOVE ME DO
06 TWIST AND SHOUT
07 A HARD DAYS NIGHT
08 PS I LOVE YOU
09 I SAW HER STANDING THERE
10 CAN'T BUY ME LOVE
11 PLEASE PLEASE ME
12 I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND

I "pitch corrected" The Chipmunks vocals to normal speed and then re-synced them against the original backing tracks to create a Frankenstein vintage Beatles Cash-In LP.

Why?

Because I could!

Download the zip file here.

Garage Full of HIT RECORDS

I've put together a pile of mid-sixties sides from the Tiffany's of USA budget labels, HIT RECORDS.

The emphasis here is "Nuggets" style / "garage band" / "psych-pop" material.

Enjoy the HIT RECORDS versions of tunes originally made famous by the likes of THE KINKS, SAM THE SHAM & THE PHAROS, THE DOORS, THE BOX TOPS, CREAM and P.J. PROBY!

Track list:

Various / Garage Full Of Hit Records

101-Dandy
102-Little Red Riding Hood
103-The Hair On My Chinny Chin Chin
104-Hello I Love You
105-Sunshine Of Your Love
106-Hurdy Gurdy Man
107-Hanky Panky
108-Little Bit Of Soul
109-Eve Of Destruction
110-Hang On Sloopy
111-I Got You Babe
112-Do Wah Diddy Diddy
113-I Can't Get No Satisfaction
114-Keep On Dancing
115-Sugar Sugar
116-Last Train To Clarksville
117- It's A Beautiful Morning
118-Catch Us If You Can
119-Cry Like A Baby
120-Just A Little Bit Better
121-When I Grow Up To Be A Man
122-Jolly Green Giant
123-People Are Strange
124-Whatcha Gonna Do
125-Hold Me

GARAGE FULL OF HIT RECORDS