June 11, 2007

• Betty Boop: A new MikeVideo Internet Movie

     

  

  "Betty Boop" (10:00 min.)  is my latest "internet movie", now available in Xanga Videos.  This MikeVideo Internet Movie was wholly created Sunday, June 10, 2007. It is a compliation video showcasing selections from the original Betty Boop cartoons from the decade of the thirties. Consisting of different footage from roughly twenty Betty Boop catoons made from 1932 to 1934, I have included scenes which showcase the virtuosity of the Fleischer Brothers Studio product of the time, with stunning surrealistic animation, and "special effects" including the rotoscoping of dancing figures. Betty's risque sense of humor, the tendency for her to get herself in trouble, and lose her clothes, and her evocative singing voice are all sampled in the selection utilized for inclusion. I contemplated adding more elaborate editing and transition effects, but opted for a more straightforward presentation of the black and white cartoons themselves, with little "embellishment". The Fleischers had their own indelible "stamp", 180 degrees away from Disney. While Disney was content to make "children's cartoons", the Fleischers created humorous, satirical adult cartoons with quite a bit of sexual innuendo and imagery. Betty was their first "star" and the cartoon studio is also known for Popeye, Superman, and the Sing Along Shorts, with the "bouncing ball" following the words.
  This marks the first major addition to "The Betty Boop Pages" website in two years, since the last internet movie, "Betty Boop Dreams", (also on Xanga Videos) was added in January 2006.

  The Betty Boop Pages website was begun in 2001. It is by far the most "popular" of my sites, even though it rarely is updated anymore. For two or three years after it began life on the web, I added multiple theme pages for each holiday, and I created dozens of high quality composite images using for the most part photos of my Danbury Mint collectible dolls and figurines. I belonged  to numerous  "Betty Boop Groups" on Yahoo. Women for the most part are Boop fans, and a lot of people who have signed my guestbooks and written me emails over the years do not know Betty from her original 1930s cartoons, but only know her image from the vast collectibles market and on the web. I got my first porcelain collectible in 1978, and I've invested a lot of money in the Danbury Mint collectibles and cartoon serical artworks by Myron Waldman, who is in his 90s and was one of the actual animators at the Fleischer studios.

  Most of the Betty Boop fansites online share the same photos, from calendars, lithographs, and endlessly repeating fan art. King Features, which owns the rights to the cartoon character made famous in the late 20s and 30s by the Fleischer brothers, added it's own "official" Betty Boop site to the web in the early aughts. Although there are always rumors of new cartoons in the offing, for the most part, Betty made her last appearance on screen in 1939. Almost none of the fansites featuring Betty Boop concentrate on the cartoons themselves. I added an "Images from the Cartoons" section  to The Betty Boop Pages, but did not add lots of content. I always made promises to update more, but other sites in the AllThingsMike Universe took precedence, and once I started the blog, WhenWordsCollide, I rarely did anything to the Betty Boop Pages. Along with my composites, which comprise the first "Betty Boop Dreams" video, I always wanted to do something creative with the original images themselves. "Betty Boop" is the culmination of that wish.

  When I began my YouTube subscription in December of 2005, I made plans for an Internet Movie featuring Betty Boop. Each of the websites was designed with the idea that eventually I would stream video from each of them. Using the chroma key feature of the video editing sofware I used, Pinnacle's Video Studio, I created "Betty Boop Dreams" in 2006. Scored to Supertramp's song, "Dreamer", I haphazardly arranged some still photos of my Boop dolls superimposed over moving images from my videography and added a sldeshow of some my composites from the website. Nothing was "planned". I just used images I already had in the computer. Ostensibly a test video for use of the chroma key function, some of the "shots" work quite well. When posted to YouTube, one viewer noticed that Betty was "walking" through Disneyland in one of the segments, and mentioned that the Fleischers and Disney were bitter rivals, which of course I knew. I still have plans to construct a "Betty Boop Dreams Part 2" now that I have more than a working knowledge of matting and chroma key. Some of my later "masterpieces" like "ArtViews" and 'Cultural Blender Part 1" owe their existence to the "test" footage in "Betty Boop Dreams."

  A copy of the YouTube stream of the "Betty Boop Dreams" video, which is 3 minutes and 38 seconds long, the length of the song acoompanying the footage, was given prime space on the first page of The Betty Pages website. Of the over 25,000 views it has received on the internet, 750 have come from it's inclusion on The Betty Pages site. I have wanted to do something with images from the cartoons themselves, utilizing the VHS tapes of the complete cartoons I purchased in 1995. The complete set of cartoons has never been released on either laserdisc or DVD, but the tapes are of relatively high quality, and I knew that once I was able to copy them into my computer, I should be able to make a compilation tape incorporating the cartoons.

  Almost as an afterthought, I began the creation of "Betty Boop" this morning, and now have a 10 minute video comprised of some of the highlights of her "film career". Anyone who isn't familiar with the original cartoons can now sample the "history" of Betty Boop's tenure at the Fleischer Studios by viewing "Betty Boop". The music has always been at the forefront of the toons, and I've got quite a few of Betty's "performances", and some of Cab Calloway's "The Old Man of the Mountain" from the cartoon of the same name.

  I've done not only some interesting and creative editing, but I've added some chroma key and colorization effects to make it interesting. It should be noted that although some of these images and the cartoons themselves are in the public domain. Betty Boop is a copyrighted cartoon character, property of the King Features Syndicate. I offer my compilation video gratis, and there is no intention of making any money off of pre existing artistic endeavors. I watched many of Betty's early cartoons when I was a young lad. Nowadays the old black and white cartoons are sadly lacking in popular culture, but hopefully I can bring back memories, and make some new ones with this little video.

  I'm an unabashed "fan" of the old Betty Boop cartoons, and this is my tribute to them, and to the Fleischer Brothers Animation Studios. Don't forget to disable the music player in the left sidebar before watching the video.

  • 8:38 am
  • 27 Comments