SECOND BY SECOND BY SECOND

The speed of motion picture film as it flies through the projector has changed several times through the years. In the silent film era, where ShambleJam takes place, film was often hand cranked at an attempted 16 frames per second. Being hand cranked of course meant there was a lot of timing fluctuations back then. Our brains can detect flutters in movie film moving 15 frames per second or less, hence a lot of these old films look quite jumpy. Wally is dealing with 16 frames a second… years later, when sound was introduced, the film rate had to rise to 24 frames per second because otherwise the sound track would fluctuate! It meant more work for animators, and if Wally knew this, I’m sure he would have been relieved there was no sound – yet!