Buster Keaton - The Art of the Gag

Every Frame a Painting
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2019–2025
YouTube
8.4M views · 10 years ago · essay · evergreen

An Every Frame a Painting video essay on Buster Keaton's silent comedy, looking at how he built gags through camera framing, staging and timing. It shows clips to explain how the visual craft makes the jokes work.

HN people share it as the great, short film essay on Keaton, especially for its focus on camera frames and how visual comedy is built.

“And a great Every Frame a Painting film essay on his work”
Visual storytelling & cinematography
#busterkeaton#visualcomedy#filmcraft#framing#silentfilm#videoessay

5 comments from Hacker News

k
@keiferski2025 · in “How did they make cars fall apart in old movies (2017)”
Video of some of his better stunts: link And a great Every Frame a Painting film essay on his work: ▶ this 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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m
@mimimi312022 · in “Rowan Atkinson: Visual Comedy (1992) [video]”
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] ▶ this video
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s
@smacktoward2019 · in “Buster Keaton and the Art of the Gag (2015) [video]”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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s
@scott_s2019 · in “Buster Keaton: Anarchitect”
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: ▶ this video
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j
@js82019 · in “Buster Keaton: Anarchitect”
I also liked this one: ▶ this video
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