Buster Keaton - The Art of the Gag

0:03 Hi my name is Tony and this is Every Frame a Painting.

0:08 There are some filmmakers who are so influential that no matter where you look,

0:12 you see traces of them everywhere.

0:16 I see this filmmaker's framing in the works of Wes Anderson.

0:23 His acrobatics and stunts in Jackie Chan.

0:28 And his deadpan posture in Bill Murray.

0:34 He, of course, is Buster Keaton,

0:36 one of the three great silent comedians "He was,

0:39 as we’re now beginning to realize...

0:42 ...the greatest of all the clowns in the history of the cinema." And nearly

0:48 a hundred years later I think he still

0:50 has plenty to teach us about visual comedy.

0:52 So today, let’s take a look at how the master builds a gag.

0:56 Ready?

1:00 Let's go.

1:07 The first thing you need to know about visual comedy

1:10 is that you have to tell your story through action.

1:12 Keaton was a visual storyteller and he never liked it

1:15 when other directors told their story through the title cards.

1:18 -"The average picture used 240 titles...

1:21 "...that was about the average." -"240 was the average?" -"Yes.

1:25 And the most I ever used was 56" He

1:28 avoided title cards by focusing on gesture and pantomime.

1:31 In this shot, you never find out what these two are talking about.

1:34 Everything you need to know is conveyed through the table&

1:37 their body language "But what you had to say...

1:40 "You had to communicate to the audience

1:42 in only one way..." -"Through action" -"Right.

1:47 We eliminated subtitles..." "...just as fast as we could if we could possibly

1:50 tell it in action" Keaton believed that each gesture you did should be unique.

1:55 Never do the same thing twice.

2:00 Every single fall...

2:02 is an opportunity… for creativity.

2:08 But once you know the action we come to the second problem:

2:11 Where do you put the camera?

2:18 Visual gags generally work best from one particular angle.

2:22 And if you change the angle...

2:24 then you’re changing the gag and it might not work as well.

2:27 Finding the right angle is a matter of trial and error.

2:30 So let’s take a look at two possible camera placements for the same joke.

2:33 Here’s the first one.

2:42 And here’s the second.

2:52 You’ll notice in first angle, the car takes up most of the frame and we

2:55 don’t get a clear look at Buster until he turns around.

2:58 But in the second angle,

2:59 the car’s placed in the background and we always have a clear view of his face.

3:04 This split second, where he doesn’t know what’s happening but we do...

3:07 ...that’s much better from over here.

3:10 And in the first angle, the framing splits our attention.

3:13 Our eyes want to look at his face and the sign at the same time.

3:17 But after reframing the scene...

3:19 Our eyes naturally look at him...

3:21 then the sign then back to him.

3:24 Much better.

3:28 Now we come to the third question...

3:31 What are the rules of this particular world?

3:35 Buster’s world is flat and governed by one law.

3:43 If the camera can’t see it, then the characters can’t see it either.

3:47 In Buster’s world, the characters are limited by the sides

3:48 of the frame and by what’s visible to us, the audience.

3:53 And this allows him to do jokes that make sense visually but not logically.

4:00 A lot of his gags are about human movement in the flat world.

4:03 He can go to the right...

4:05 to the left...

4:07 up...

4:09 down...

4:11 away from the lens...

4:13 or towards it.

4:15 Look familiar?

4:16 -"She’s been murdered.

4:17 And you think I did it." -"Hey!" Like Wes Anderson,

4:25 Buster Keaton found humor in geometry.

4:31 He often placed the camera further back so you could see the shape of a joke.

4:34 There are circles...

4:37 triangles...

4:39 parallel lines...

4:40 and of course, the shape of the frame itself: the rectangle.

4:45 I think staging like this is great because it encourages the audience

4:49 to look around the frame and see the humor for themselves.

4:53 In this shot, think about where your eyes are looking.

4:59 Now where’s he?

5:02 Some of these gags have their roots in vaudeville

5:04 and are designed to play like magic tricks.

5:11 And like all great magic tricks part of the fun

5:14 is trying to guess how it was done.

5:19 Keaton had a name for gags like these.

5:21 He called them “impossible gags.” They're some

5:26 of his most inventive and surreal jokes.

5:30 But as a storyteller,

5:31 he found them tricky because they broke the rules of his world.

5:34 -"We had to stop doing impossible gags,

5:37 what we call cartoon gags." -"We lost all of that when we started making

5:42 feature pictures." -"They had to be believable

5:45 or your story wouldn’t hold up." So instead,

5:48 he focused on what he called the natural gag.

5:52 The joke that emerges organically from the character and the situation.

5:56 Consider what he does with this door.

6:04 Keaton claimed that for visual comedy...

6:05 you had to keep yourself open to improvisation.

6:08 -"How much of it was planned and how much

6:10 came out in the actual doing?" -"How much was improvised,

6:13 you know?" -"Well as a rule,

6:15 about 50 percent…" -"...you have in your mind before you

6:19 start the picture..." -"...and the rest you develop as you’re

6:22 making it." Sometimes he would find a joke he liked

6:25 so much that he would do a callback to it later.

6:30 But other times, jokes that he’d planned beforehand wouldn’t work on the day.

6:33 So he would just get rid of them...

6:36 -"...because they don’t stand up and they don’t work well." -"And then

6:39 the accidental ones come." He was supposed to make this jump.

6:43 But since he missed...

6:45 He decided to keep the mistake and build on it.

6:49 -"So you seldom got a scene like that good

6:51 the second time." -"You generally got em that first one."

6:54 -"Maybe that’s one of the reasons..." -"...there was so

6:56 much laughter in the house the other night." -"I mean,

6:59 the younger people and I had this feeling..." -"...that what we were

7:01 seeing was happening now." -"That it had happened only once..." -"...It was

7:07 not something that was pre-done and done and done." And that brings

7:10 us to the last thing about Buster Keaton and his most famous rule.

7:16 Never fake a gag.

7:18 For Keaton, there was only one way to convince the audience...

7:21 ...that what they were seeing was real.

7:23 He had to actually do it… ...without cutting.

7:29 He was so strict about this that he once said...

7:32 “Either we get this in one shot… ...or we throw out

7:39 the gag." And it’s why he remains vital nearly 100 years later.

7:43 Not just for his skill but for his integrity.

7:46 That’s really him.

7:50 And no advancement in technology can mimic this.

7:53 Even now, we’re amazed when filmmakers actually do it for real.

7:57 But I think he did it better 95 years ago.

8:01 So no matter how many times...

8:02 you’ve seen someone else pay homage to him… Nothing beats the real thing.