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Buster Keaton - The Art of the Gag

Every Frame a Painting · 8.4M views · 2015-11-21 · 8:35

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Overview

An Every Frame a Painting video essay on Buster Keaton's visual comedy, examining how he built and framed his gags. It uses clips from his silent films to show the thinking behind them.

On Hacker News

Recommended as a short, excellent analysis of Keaton and visual comedy.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2019–2025

Topics

Film analysis & criticismStand-up & sketch comedy
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buster keatonsilent filmvideo essaygagsfilm analysis

What people said

keiferski · 2025-01 · Recommendation

Video of some of his better stunts: [LINK] And a great Every Frame a Painting film essay on his work: [VIDEO] He was truly an innovator that makes today’s “films of people talking to each other” look amateurish. A few months ago the local theatre was playing Sherlock Jr. with a live band, and it was awesome. Try to see it in similar circumstances if possible.

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mimimi31 · 2022-07 · Recommendation

Reminds me of some of the videos from Every Frame a Painting about visual comedy in film. Specifically "Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual Comedy" [1] and "Buster Keaton - The Art of the Gag" [2]. They give and explain some great examples from different movies. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

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scott_s · 2019-04 · Recommendation

The Every Frame a Painting channel on YouTube has an excellent short piece on Buster Keaton covering some similar themes, but with more of a focus on camera frames than architecture: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Every Frame a Painting, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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