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The Girl at the
Cupola
(1912)

This short Selig drama stars Kathlyn Williams and Charles Clary. At the core of the story is a conflict between business executives and labor.

Harpodeon
2010 DVD edition

In the Days of the Thundering Herd (1914), black & white, 35 minutes, not rated, with The Girl at the Cupola (1912), black & white, 14 minutes, not rated.

Harpodeon, unknown catalog number, no UPC number.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc, 1.33:1 aspect ratio image in windowboxed 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan MPEG-2 format, SDR (standard dynamic range), ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? Kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 48 kHz 2.0 stereo sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles; chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $6.99.
Release date: January 2010.
Country of origin: USA

Ratings (1-10): video: 5 / audio: 6 / additional content: 5 / overall: 5.

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a 16mm reduction print. The video transfer is tightly framed and inset shots of handwritten notes are cropped off on all sides making reading their content difficult. The quality of the video transfer is not great, as the image is made up of a pattern of dots and the overall resolution is low. The image doesn’t look bad on a standard television, but on a high-definition monitor the effect can be distracting. The slightly windowboxed video transfer will appear as full-frame on most television monitors.

The film is presented with three optional music scores compiled and performed on MIDI digital piano. The music, here, is better than a score of preexisting recordings that has been cobbled together on the cheap.

Not exactly ideal, but reasonably priced, this disc is currently the only known home video edition of this Selig film.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from HARPODEON.