Gramofón
In 1981, the series moved from the "mother" studio in Bartolomějská to the studio's Čiklovka branch, most likely to save space. Only two people followed the series there: director Luboš Beneš and animator Karel Chocholín. The rest of the crew consisted of Čiklovka members, all new to the series. One of the most important members of the new team was cameraman Vladímir Malík. In Croatian as well as in Czech, there's saying that if you know something thoroughly, you have it in your pinkie finger. Malík could definitely claim that, not only because his surname translates to pinkie, but because he was the best cameraman of the three on the original series. Camera errors (such as shots out of focus) were at a minimum when he was behind the scenes, while his work is also full of intricate details like lush shadows. Since the early 1970s, Ivan Vít, who later returned to the characters in 1989, was his assistant. Malík had bags of experience at Čiklovka - he was there when directors Břetislav Pojar and Josef Kluge opened the branch in 1959. However, his work on ... a je to! was among his last at Čiklovka, as he was shifted to the main branch in 1982. Here is a wonderful short documentary about his life made in 2011. Malík was born in 1931 and is currently 89 years old, hopefully still going strong. His predecessor in the role, Jiří Šafář, died in 2018 aged 97, so maybe being cameraman on the series is a good omen for a long life.
And here he is working in the studio (year unknown):
Gramofón is the episode where Malík's imprint is most felt. Remember, ... a je to! was made on a shoestring budget, often with time constraints, so not many innovations and time-consuming methods could be utilized. Still, the crew managed to make this episode look very atmospheric.
In accordance with the new surroundings, the titles got a makeover.
Pat looks at his shiny gramophone. Unlike some episodes, this one features technology which is a relic of the past. Still, I don't think children would have much problem understanding what a record player does after watching it. The wallpapers and a lot of the props would later be reused in Křížovka, an episode which looks entirely different. Take a look at the detailed windows - to me, the setting looks as if Pat's flat is on a high skyscraper and has a view to lower ones.
Here's a strange, almost unnoticeable goof. For some time, part of the frame furthest left remains unused.
The clock prop on the top is interesting. I think it was used only in this episode.
It is a Columbia. Columbia did, of course, make similar players and it's a possibility the prop was made after a real model. Any gramophone experts in the house?
The records vary; some are more detailed, others less. In this sequence, Pat pulls up a white/blue-labelled one, but is then again shown destroying a red-labelled one.
And Mat's record is ***
A couple of frames of Pat's record-destroying efficiency quadrupling.
Where have we seen this? Of course, in Tapety. Props were reused whenever possible.
This one is an MR.
*** Mat's record is a Henkel! Henkel is a famous chemical company, but did they make records as well? It doesn't seem so. Maybe the "label" was cut from some of their products. Can anyone name the music pieces playing in this scene?
What is hiding in the drawers? Some notebook with an Omega sign and... a croissant?
Here are two more incidents of animator Chocholín, for whichever reason, cutting corners in consecutive frames. This one is okay and even funny.
But this one isn't! Mat has the destroyed bicycle in his hand in one frame and in the next frame, it is already on the floor! This shot always bothered me. Maybe the frames were skipped by mistake.
A look at the magnificent machine. As this is taking place at night, their neighbors must be losing their minds!
In accordance with the new surroundings, the titles got a makeover.
Pat looks at his shiny gramophone. Unlike some episodes, this one features technology which is a relic of the past. Still, I don't think children would have much problem understanding what a record player does after watching it. The wallpapers and a lot of the props would later be reused in Křížovka, an episode which looks entirely different. Take a look at the detailed windows - to me, the setting looks as if Pat's flat is on a high skyscraper and has a view to lower ones.
Here's a strange, almost unnoticeable goof. For some time, part of the frame furthest left remains unused.
The clock prop on the top is interesting. I think it was used only in this episode.
 |
| the carnage begins... |
Something is missing here... the fridge! It is there in Grill - or is it? You will see.
The antique gramophone is a prop of beauty.
It is a Columbia. Columbia did, of course, make similar players and it's a possibility the prop was made after a real model. Any gramophone experts in the house?
 |
| here's an antique Columbia from intertique.com |
The record player prop was in the spotlight again in an 1987 episode of Jája a Pája, where their grandfather's favorite gramophone gets foolishly exchanged for a "magic" coffee grinder by the boys. Their neighbor Porkbutt (Krkovička) convinced them that the grinder produces lollipops. I won't spoil the rest for you, so here's the episode, animated by Jan Klos (if you haven't watched this series yet, see how many more props from ... a je to! you can spot):
The records vary; some are more detailed, others less. In this sequence, Pat pulls up a white/blue-labelled one, but is then again shown destroying a red-labelled one.
And Mat's record is ***
A couple of frames of Pat's record-destroying efficiency quadrupling.
Where have we seen this? Of course, in Tapety. Props were reused whenever possible.
This one is an MR.
*** Mat's record is a Henkel! Henkel is a famous chemical company, but did they make records as well? It doesn't seem so. Maybe the "label" was cut from some of their products. Can anyone name the music pieces playing in this scene?
What is hiding in the drawers? Some notebook with an Omega sign and... a croissant?
A look at the magnificent machine. As this is taking place at night, their neighbors must be losing their minds!
Grill
Another important newcomer arrives with this episode. It is, of course, animator Jan Klos. After watching the whole old series again, my belief that Klos is the best animator ever to tackle these two characters has solidified. He is such an amazing animator that some of his work should be watched frame-by-frame, by taking your time on each and every one of them. Grill is no exception. Before making this post, I just had to watch the episode again and in doing so discovered a couple a ton more of his frames which I had to include as well. Klos' handling of Pat and Mat is quite varied, with different nuances in different parts of his 4-year career with the characters. Grill is special in that regard. I've previously written about how an important change when it came to how Pat and Mat act was the discarding of the different mouth shapes for shock, sadness and similar emotions. Grill was the final episode to use them.
Klos, having just arrived to the series, doesn't try to incorporate too much character (this will become one of his preoccupations later on), but we will see he also works on that field as well. Pat and Mat are, even for him at this stage, puppets whose main purpose is executing the gag. However, Klos, especially in the second part of the film, imbues them with such manic energy that you believe they are unstoppable and capable of literally everything, culminating in the brilliant sequence where the two attempt to construct a fireplace in the flat's living room. This is the fastest the characters get under Beneš's direction and it gives them such a carefree attitude that the failure of the grill hits the viewers like a sucker punch. Such a happy-go-lucky approach was also probably a reflection of Klos' own animation career at the time, which was, unknowingly for him, at a crossroads.
Up until 1981, he had spent the majority of his time at Čiklovka animating for famed director Břetislav Pojar, together with his "adopted father" Boris Masník, on various higher-budget films. I believe his work at ... a je to! was to be just a passing gig done between other projects. Yet, Pojar was soon banned from working in the studio as a consequence of his inability to fulfill a bureaucratic production plan with set deadlines and costs. He devoted his time to Canada's NFB, while his crew in the studio was dispersed. Klos ended up staying with second-rate director Beneš up until 1987. He was grateful to Beneš for the chance to animate puppets, but he also often ended up in artistic disagreements with the director which, by his own words, made his life miserable. That life was, for many years, preoccupied with trying to amuse the spectator, which is a feat he accomplishes fully in Grill with much hard work, the extent of which only gets understood with a thorough look.
I could go on talking about Klos for days, but it is much better if you take another look at his work. You will probably discover something new. After completing these passages, I accidentally discovered a small mistake from the filming of this episode. During one scene, the knob on the microwave falls off! It is then immediately returned to its original state. I watched Grill countless times and I have only now noticed this mistake, precisely because Klos makes you so engrossed in the characters and what they do.
Let's take a closer look at some things Klos does to keep us entertained. He uses a wide variety of tools and instruments which keep the puppets in position. That is nothing unusual in itself, but it seems Klos used them much more often than other animators, in places where they are maybe not a necessity, but are there by choice. A lot of them can be found just in this one scene, where Pat goes to the refrigerator to retrieve another chicken. Pat is very eager to get there - he practically jumps to the refrigerator, which is why his left foot is left hanging in the air in this frame.
While taking the chicken with the pliers, although we can't exactly see it, Pat's left foot is probably elevated just a bit.
The way the next moves play out shows a lot of Klos' work. Here, Klos has to show Pat applying extra pressure to close the door of the chicken-packed fridge. The animation of Pat getting into position to ram the doors shut with his body is done in a very interesting way, unnoticeable in a first, second or even third viewing. The action consists of five stages: Pat's left foot is first elevated with an object similar to a Lego block. Then, another block is added: this is the highest the puppet is placed. On the way down, the second block gets removed, followed by the first. That's not the end, as in the subsequent frame Pat is held to the floor by a string. Only then the puppet is finally brought down and all that is rest is to close the door. This anticipation is what makes the process entertaining, which you can see below.
This is from a previous scene in the episode. Notice the new curtains and the addition of the plates to the kitchen wall. A great pose as the two briefly think what to do...
... before Pat takes the plunge. Mat remains static.
Of course, the aids are sometimes necessary. The flying chicken cannot be photographed in the air and has to be held to the floor, as does the heavy flame gun.
But look at how the puppets are fixed in these frames, where it is not entirely necessary. It is an effort by Klos to give them that extra punch in moving from A to B.
The book is, of course, the same one used in Dielňa, but its content is now colored. Also, keep an eye out for a blue book which is a recurring prop. The ironing board is fixed to the opened kitchen cupboard, but also to the floor with a string in the middle.
Being the best animator on the series doesn't mean Klos is immune to small mistakes. Here is a screwdriver just barely protruding from the right corner. Keep in mind: the animators could not check what the camera is filming (the exact framing of the shot) until around 1984.
And here's some sort of wiring.
Here's Klos fiddling with the cap for the first time to portray Pat's mild shock. It works much better than changing a mouth's shape. He will use the caps in many different forms in the next years.
Mat grabs the bucket and sprints towards the hallway. As he is doing all of this very fast, the bucket's swaying is also animated. Such a level of dedication was not shown by the series' other animators.
Another prop that has to be tied, this time to the top.
Czech viewers of the blog could help out here: it seems the bags say dum pot... and domy, so something related to house. Any guesses?
The matchbox prop is a bit botched and shortened. It should read The Key.
This is just a really funny frame I had to include.
The fridge seemed to be a bit of a nuisance, as it was placed in three different positions throughout the episode: 1) stuck to the oven, 2) with some space in between, 3) completely removed:
Klos is often playful and translates that playfulness to the characters. Actually, this is one of those instances where the characters finally get injected with some personality. Mat is wriggling his beanie trying to come up with a solution. He does just that and raises the beanie in excitement. Instead of just taking the sausages, Pat pulls his neighbor's beanie down again and steals them! I bet this wasn't in the script and Klos added it on his own.
It seems all the ovens in Mat's kitchen are faulty. Now this one is missing a knob!
Another show of character from a few minutes prior. Pat giving the are you #%&/ kiddin' me look:
As we are approaching the end of the post, here are two great Klos' sequences from this episode. Pat and Mat are at their wildest when preparing the materials for their bricklaying escapades. Things happen at such a rapid pace. Tell me, how many of you reading this never noticed that Mat remains completely static for about a second? It is a neat trick. Our eyes are focused on catching the next bit of the action (and in this case, Pat is the agent) so much that we don't even register it.
What takes the cake (or the chicken?) as the most intense sequence, though, happens a few shots before. Pat and Mat get in each other's ways while trying to reach the hallway. If these moves were played out any faster, they would have been incomprehensible to the viewer. They take less than 2 seconds, but could be played at 10 times the speed without becoming monotonous as there is a lot of stuff packed into them. In the context of the episode, it is a miniature passage, but it is simply marvelous: Klos' excellent performance in a nutshell. Blink and you'll miss it!
That does it! A very rare form of the final gesture: right-right handshake + left-right elbowshake:
As a bonus, here's a promotional photo from the filming of this episode which I would like to see in its full glory. It appears the crew added a clock for this purpose. Taken from an ancient version of patmat.cz:
And it is finally time to conclude this post. When I started organizing it in my head, I never suspected that I would include so many screenshots and write so much just for these two episodes. However, what can I say, they truly are GReat (Gramofón, Grill) episodes and deserve it, especially Grill, which should be in everyone's top 5 list of the entire run.
Another very interesting and perceptive post, and a brilliant analysis of elements of Jan Klos's
ReplyDeleteanimation technique.
You point out various instances where Klos supports a puppet with either a pin (painted black), a fine metal rod, or sometimes blocks. Often, there's a very practical reason for doing this, when the ankle joint of the foot attached to the set will not support the weight of the puppet in the position the animator requires, so the pin is put there to support it and stop it falling over. The test of whether the ankle joints on a puppet are correctly tensioned (or strong enough) is whether they can support a puppet in a quite off-balanced pose. Often, a puppet can't do this (or the ankle joint gets loose), and a pin is needed to keep the puppet in the correct position. In the scene with the lathe, I'm pretty sure the supporting rod that lifts Mat up into the air just prior to his exit is actually the tie-down rod that normally attaches the puppet to the set. Klos often gets extra use out of this simple device which most animators use simply for its basic purpose, which is to attach the puppet's foot to the set. Klos always seems to be finding ways to get extra expressive possibilities out of the things he has available. It's the same with the characters' hats - many animators simply don't touch them, but, as you point out, you can see Klos experimenting with ways to use the hats to create more expressive actions - he starts with changing their positions on the heads, which he finds alters the expressions, and ends up in later episodes with them popping into the air to show that a character has had an idea .
All of this points to what I think is a distinctive feature of Klos's animation - which is that he makes the extra effort, or "goes the extra mile" to create funny and expressive movement. The swinging bucket that you point out is "Grill" is a simple example, but it's there in almost everything he does.
Adding little details or "flourishes" to the animation as Klos does takes extra time and effort, and often animators who are under strict time pressure due to the schedule will not attempt these sorts of details in their animation because it slows them down, and makes them less productive. This perhaps explains why Klos said he was much slower than animators such as Mensdorff-Pouilly. I think I made a mistake in a previous comment in saying that Klos probably animated fast: I mistook the apparent ease and flow of Klos' animation as meaning he must have worked very quickly and instinctively - but looking at the details he works into the scenes, and the extra effort he makes, I realise now that he probably worked relatively slowly and meticulously. In the long run, Klos's animation is often more memorable than the work of the other animators, because he pushes the expressive possibilities further than they do.
Thanks for the kind words and your expertise, I enjoyed reading about the different devices available to Klos and how they are usually used. We definitely agree that Klos goes the extra mile.
DeleteIt does make sense that Klos was a bit slower for adding all of his little touches, but I don't think he was siginifcantly slower. He couldn't have take much time anyway as he was paid by used film meter - crucially, film that actually made it to the screens. It seems Mensdorff-Pouilly is just extremely fast: František Váša had no problem saying Mensdorff was a faster animator than him in a chat a few days ago. In the newest series (2018-20), Mensdorff completed about double the amount of footage his colleague Jan Smrčka did. His productiveness does seem to be counterproductive in certain films, as I've heard his style being criticized for "always producing the same movements". Conversely, Karel Chocholín and Klos did about the same amount of work from 1981-85 (when Klos also worked on theatrical shorts), while Klos also did quite a lot of work on Jája a Pája compared to others and still managed to animate more than 2/3 of Pojar's Romance z temnot. That film is a very interesting story for another time.
I just discovered this promotional video from the studio made in 1995. Here's a snippet of Jan Klos working on Broučci: https://youtu.be/CefPJy9qWwU?t=58
DeleteThat's very interesting. I think you probably would have the best sense of how fast Klos was relative to the other animators, given that you've spoken to some of them. Talking of Jan Smrčka, my personal opinion is that he is almost as good an animator as Klos, maybe even as good. I don't know whether that's a controversial view in the world of Pat & Mat aficionados. I am one of those people who first discovered Pat & Mat through the "A Je To…" series, and that has remained the high point for me. Because I was studying the series from the point of view of a working puppet animator, I began to lose interest with the episodes after Klos stopped animating. I started to feel that there weren't enough "little touches" and extra surprising details, the sort of things Klos always contributed, and the animation became, in my opinion, a bit more routine and lacking in surprise, though it was often perfectly adequate. I only recently had a look at a few newer episodes, and I was very, very impressed by Jan Smrčka's animation in "Bazén" ("Pool" in English), which is on YouTube. I found myself enjoying it as much as Klos's work, which is very surprising for me. Smrcka's work seemed to have a similar inventiveness, and a similar complete control of animation technique as Klos's work did. His animation of any shots involving water in "Bazén" is extraordinary. I felt I could see many echoes of Klos's work in Smrcka's, even some of Klos's "tricks". I will be very interested to read your views on Smrčka if you eventually cover his work on your blog.
ReplyDeleteHaha, your quip about "the world of Pat & Mat aficionados" cracked me up. I think most of them visit this blog and I've only discussed the animators with a handful of them. Your views about Smrčka are far from controversial. In fact, a follower of the blog recently commented that Smrčka was his favorite animator on the series. Those comments and some others about Smrčka can be found under the "Repurposed sets" post.
DeleteYou mentioned an aspect of Smrčka's work that I also find his best quality: absolute control. If we were to compare puppet animation to drawn animation, we could say that Smrčka's P+M stay "on model" in most of the frames: if you were to make a random still from his work, you could use it as some promotional image. This is where he is much better than AMP (and I do think that Smrčka is a better animator overall on the series at this point in time as well), whose work is often "off model". When the screenshot from Pizza came out, without watching the episode I could immediately tell that it was AMP's work due to the slightly wonky poses of the characters. There are also some shots in the new episodes where AMP gets a bit sloppy, which is definitely a consequence of his high-speed, but also distinctive style.
If you like Smrčka's work, you should check out the "Pat a Mat na venkove" series, in which he animated (without any time constraints, I think) 12 of the 13 episodes, taking over from Bedřich Glaser after the first episode. He also took over from Glaser in 2003 and I get much, much more enjoyment from Smrčka's episodes in that series compared to Glaser's (which was the last shot on film), whose style and choices are often frustrating.
An episode from the newest three series which contains some animation by Smrčka you should definitely check out is "Krtek". It is also filled with water scenes: one in which P+M get carried away by it (starting at 6:05) is one of the most beautifully animated scenes in recent years. From the newest episodes, he exclusively animated Myčka, Sauna, Palačinky and Garážová vrata (hopefully, I haven't missed any).
Immediately after finishing, I remembered that Mensdorff also has some scenes in Sauna as well, those taking place outside. I should probably write a list one day for future referencing.
DeleteThankyou for recommending the series and episodes that Smrčka worked on - I will definitely check them out.
ReplyDeleteGramofon
ReplyDeleteI have no clue has to why this episode can be found on the second (Czech) DVD, as it was clearly one of the earlier episodes. About the second shortcut Karel Chocholin takes: he probably intended to animate it so quickly that he didn't have to make the bike float, which would have cost more time. I agree that didn't work out well. I also didn't like how fast the episode comes to a conclusion and that we don't see anything from the building of the machine. The final shot must have taken quite some time and a lot of focus with all those moving elements. Most hilarious bit of this episode? Pat's frying pan skills. Or is it Mat giving us the finger when he switches off the blender?
Grill
What else can I say about Jan Klos? It's a feast to watch the episodes he worked on every single time. P&M's limitless optimism is best shown in his episodes. Their careless reaction to breaking two windows is priceless. I wouldn't be surprised if his handling of the puppets convinced Benes and Jiranek they didn't need the different mouth shapes. He doesn't change them until the very end of the episode. As well as in Dielna, I think the second object Klos accidentally left on the set are tweezers. In the shot where they destroy the second window, it looks like Klos borrowed Karel Chocholin's puppets, or at least Pat. His hat isn't as tall as Klos'. Even though it's the first time we see the wooden container they make the cement in, it's already falling apart when Pat takes some cement out of it. Funniest bit of this episode to me is how they draw the outlines of their oven extremely fast and to perfection (you'd expect this to go wrong as well), but when they've only just started building it, you can already tell it's going to be a mess. I also liked how they throw the squashed chicken out of the window ('it's already broken, so why not').
It’s great to have an actual animator on this blog. I should say I don’t have any experience with stop motion other than watching Pat & Mat over and over again, but it’s nice to read that there’s another Jan Smrcka fan in the house. The things you mention about Jan Klos using all kinds of materials to support the puppets is something I noticed in Smrcka’s work as well. He frequently supports the puppets, for example when they are ‘speed walking’. That might not have been necessary if he changed their position just a little bit, and yet he feels it gives his animation something extra. The way he works with water is amazing. He sometimes uses a kind of foil for quickly running water and hair gel in other situations, often with wires in it. Talking about going the extra mile: in Krtek, you can see a drop of gasoline sliding down the jerrycan. It’s only a small detail and it probably wasn’t even in the script, but it really adds to the experience. Another example I immediately think of can be found in Promitacka. When P&M want to use the paint sprayer for the second time, only one drop of paint comes out, beautifully splashing on the floor. Elsewhere in the comments, Marin said that Klos and Smrcka worked together at Kratky Film in the 90s. We don’t know if they worked on their own or if Smrcka was Klos’ pupil, but it does explain a lot of the similarities in their work.
Gramofon is also on TDK DVD #5 as opposed to #3. This is because Gramofon and Telocvicna are two episodes which were placed completely out of order on the episode list used by aiF in the 1990s. I wrote about the faulty episode orders in the very first posts on this blog. The bit with the squashed chicken being thrown out of the window in Grill is even funnier when you see that Mat breaks a bit more of the window in the process. Well, if it is broken, break it a bit more.
DeleteAs for Klos and his pupils, you should remember that Klos was a lecturer (and Pojar's assistant) at FAMU's Department of animation for around 25 years, so he was one of the people who taught most of the animators who graduated there.
I discovered that there is a list of people who graduated from FAMU's Animation Department and Smrčka is there, having graduated in 1995. So, Klos was definitely his teacher at some point. Interestingly, his thesis didn't have anything to do with puppetry: "Techniques and artistic resources of the cartoon" (link: https://www.famu.cz/cs/katedry-programy/katedra-animovane-tvorby/pro-studenty/seznam-diplomovych-praci/)
DeleteI noticed the drop of gasoline sliding down the jerrycan in "Krtek" too. As an animator, I know that it takes extra work to get this effect, and it always impresses me because I know that the animator cares enough to make the extra effort. Something you end up learning as an animator is that it's often these little details that are the most memorable. Smrčka's water effects are brilliant, mainly because he takes traditional stop-motion effects to a new level: traditionally, for running water, we have always used what we call here "cling film" (polyvinyl chloride), which is fine clear film used to wrap sandwiches or to cover food. This looks just like running water if twisted and animated. Smrčka uses this, but I have never seen it done so brilliantly. Otherwise, as you say, hair gel is sometimes used, and other types of gel I won't go into…also clear perspex as a base for the gel. I have shown some of Smrčka's water effects, such as those in Bazén, to other animators I know, and they are generally amazed and quite unsure exactly how Smrčka achieves his effects. I find the idea that Smrčka may have been Klos's pupil very interesting - it would certainly explain how Smrčka's animation seems to have many similarities to Klos's work. Supporting puppets on pins or blocks is a lot easier and quicker than the alternative, which is suspending them from very fine monofilament (fishing line or invisible thread) from a rig above the set. You may notice in some episodes where this is occasionally done, and the puppet often moves a bit while the frame is being exposed, causing it to blur unintentionally. This is because it's very hard to keep a puppet still when suspended from wires! There has been a convention in Czech stop-motion, right from the earliest days after the war, where running characters never leave the ground - they always do what seems better described as a "very fast walk". This is because animators don't want to go to the trouble of lifting the puppet off the ground during a run. What the Pat & Mat animators did was take this limitation, and turn it into a real asset by making the "runs" ridiculously fast. What was originally a limitation and a compromise becomes a source of comedy in Pat & Mat. I'd like to think Klos took this to the farthest extreme, but maybe not - I don't know who was originally responsible for this device. Klos continued to use it in "Jaja & Paja", and it was just as effective there.
ReplyDeleteIt is great to hear how the animation from even the newest episodes of the series can be inspiring for fellow animators. Yes, puppets are rarely suspended from a rig, but an example from the oldest series comes to mind: Korčule. That episode is another one which merits a whole post about Klos' work.
DeleteOne of those songs which we can hear, is Radeckého pochod (Radecký's march; https://youtu.be/6MHfveultR8), in Czech republic known especialy from Jaroslav Hašek's Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk). I'm sorry, but I can't spot the other ones.
ReplyDeleteThe other music track in Gramofón is Humoresque composed by Antonín Dvořák: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR9msTsmpZs
DeleteActually Radetsky March by Johann Strauss. It was heard in Good Soldier Svejk even in 1986 where Mensdorff and Pospisilova were animators
DeleteYes, of course, that's the perfect example…it shows virtuoso use of wire work. It is a bit of a shame that Klos is credited here as Ján Keks, because it's one of the episodes he could be most proud of. At least we know.
ReplyDelete"The clock prop on the top is interesting. I think it was used only in this episode." - This clock prop also appeared in Promítačka/Projector episode. Pat used it (also with the gasoline canister (appeared in Výlet and Windsurfing) and some papers) to get higher to see stars.
ReplyDeleteGreat catch. So, barely used and then reappears more than 30 years later. I see it is in a quite decrepit state in Promítačka.
DeletePromítačka episode is something simular to Karty episode - there is so much stuff from previous episodes. You can even notice a kitchen unit from ...A je to! serie (it seems it's upside down).
DeleteYeah, I agree. It is in a quite a bit decrepit state.
Deletewill you do other minutiaes about others episodes?
ReplyDeleteYes, more will come, but I don't know when I will get to finish them.
DeleteI think the flour says "Dům Potravy".
ReplyDeleteIt's a Czech thing. Basically a very big grocery store full of goods.
That's probably where Mat bought his guláš can lol
The episode Jája a Pája (Jája and Paja) named Jak připravovali dárek k narozeninám (Lebeda's Birthday) featured a gramophone.
ReplyDeleteWho voiced the episode Grill, the one Pat and Mat cough at the end.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness! Vera Benesova worked as an editor, Vladimir Malik worked as an cameraman and Viktor Mayer worked as an production management. Both three worked in Jiri Barta's Disc Jockey (1980), years before A Je To! episode Gramophone filmed.
ReplyDelete