Anybody got a sample of this transition from the series? I can’t say I’m familiar with that “whip pan”, and my youtube-foo isn’t finding one.
I assume he’s talking about something like this, but I’m not familiar with the series, and I’m not sure that imagery fits what the OP linked to as the first frame.
Look here.
The standard UNCLE swish/zip/whip or whatever you call it is right near the end before the guest star listings.
All I can see are moving circles and lines. How does one capture the individual frames? Can it be done from YouTube type video, or only from the DVDs, or only from VHS? Or…?
I think you need either a DVD or a type of file, such as .avi, you can play on your computers. Some media players let you step forward and backwards from frame to frame, making it simple to zero in on a particular instant.
You can’t tell by watching the moving image, but I assure you Fritz is in there.
How many examples did you examine? More than one, I hope.
Funny that you should mention that vaporizer thing; I was also remember being very freaked out by that as a child. Nice to know I wasn’t the only kid traumatized by that.
Man from UNCLE was my favorite show when I was 8 years old. When it was released on DVD a few years ago, I revisited it and was shocked at how cheap-looking it was.
Great job on analyzing the swish-pan, by the way.
My guess is that they recorded that effect on a piece of videotape that previously had that Fritz Weaver thing on it, and didn’t notice that a little bit of it was still there.
Now…can anyone decipher the “spin pan” used at the beginning of the '60s Batman episodes?
Film. They used film, kid.
It might have been someone’s inside joke, but unless you had a film print and a way of viewing individual frames, you weren’t going to see it.
You’re welcome to try. SmartDeblur (what I used to clear up the bottom example of the UNCLE frame) is a great forensic tool for bringing out details in blurry photos, though i don’t know how well it will do on a spinning image. The results may be full of artifacts, but it can show stuff you never would have suspected was there.
Just so long as the swirl is counter clockwise.
Even I don’t get that one.
imdb trivia says that the original pilot was shot in color – perhaps that was a credits test-frame that somebody picked up off the floor, as it were.
I’m going to venture that it was a splicing error between two pieces of film, one that had the title card you found, one with the swish pan. so one erroneous frame of the previous scene got attached to the swish-pan film segment and stuck that way.
You didn’t answer my previous question: how many of these swish pans did you examine for the first frame? If the answer is “one”, then I’m skeptical that (admittedly awesome) frame is found on many or more than one MI transition. It’s a cool find, but let’s keep things scientific.
I did say that all the pans from “The Arabian Affair” were the same, and that the same pan was used in the black and white (though according to IMDb it was shot in color) pilot. So I reckon it was used hundreds of times and there’s virtually no chance they didn’t intend for the Fritz frame to be in it, else they would have fixed it.
But I suppose no one’s talking, fifty years on.
I have submitted this bit of trivia page to the IMDb trivia page for “Man From UNCLE.” Unfortunately, there is no way to attribute trivia to discoverers, so I can’t give you credit there. But, if it shows up in the next couple of weeks, you’ll know it’s because of you.
Hey! I was watching this episode 15 minutes ago and found it by accident as I was doing a slow frame advance at that point. Then searched ‘fritz weaver uncle’ and found this thread. Interestingly, you don’t always hit that Weaver frame. I found I had to hit play, then pause and do frame by frame to find it again. I’ve been doing this for lots of the episodes cuz it’s fun to find goofs. Like film crew people ducking out of frame here and there.
BTW, I found the same frame in all same wipes in that episode.
I’d guess it’s a frame from this series:
A joint British–American production with NBC and MGM involvement, produced the year before Man from UNCLE debuted. Seems the only thing missing is Sam Rolfe’s involvement.