Ida Z's Film Class Notes: The Beginnings of Film Animation

The Beginnings of Film Animation

Films using some aspects of animation existed from the beginnings of the cinema. Émile Reynaud’s drawn images for his projecting Praxinoscope were important forerunners for cinematic animation. Quick-draw artists from vaudeville—among them J. Stuart Blackton, one of the founders of Vitagraph—performed in several early films. There is some evidence that in 1890s’ advertising films and films made for toy projectors, filmmakers created movement of objects or drawings by photographing them one frame at a time.

The earliest major film animating objects was Vitagraph’s The Haunted Hotel (1907), directed by Blackton. Here the “magical” movement occurred within a live-action film. A hotel patron is plagued by supernatural forces, rendered onscreen through double exposures, wires, stop motion, and other tricks. In one scene, we see a close view of objects on a table. A knife moves on its own to cut and butter bread. The Haunted Hotel was one of the first releases by Vitagraph’s new Paris office, and it was widely imitated abroad.

The Haunted Hotel (J. Stuart Blackton, 1907)
Film Clip

Émile Cohl, who worked primarily for Gaumont from 1908 to 1910, was the first person to devote his energies to drawn animation. His earliest cartoon was Fantasmagorie (1908). In order to create steady movement, Cohl placed each drawing on a plate of glass illuminated from beneath and then traced the image onto the next sheet of paper, making slight changes in the figures. His many films were often based on bizarre, stream-of-consciousness transformations of a series of shapes, one into another. Cohl also made live-action films, often incorporating some animated sequences. Like Méliès, Cohl retired from filmmaking in the teens and lived a life of poverty; he died in 1938.

Fantasmagorie (Émile Cohl, 1908)
Film Clip

In the United States, eminent comic-strip artist and vaudevillian Winsor McCay also began making drawn animated films, initially to project in his stage act. His first film was Little Nemo, completed in 1911; it featured characters from his famous newspaper strip “Little Nemo in Slumberland.” The film contains a live-action prologue that shows how the enormous number of drawings necessary for the animation were made. McCay made a second cartoon, The Story of a Mosquito, in 1912, and a third, Gertie, in 1914. (Modern prints of these films contain live-action shots that McCay added later so that they could be shown without him present.) Mosquito and Gertie contain sketchy background settings, which an assistant traced on every page. McCay made a few more films, utilizing new labor-saving techniques created after 1912.

Little Nemo (Winsor McCay, 1911)
Film Clip

First Narration Screen

How the proposition was received by his artist friends.

Next narration screen:

Winsor McCay agrees to make four thousand pen drawings that will move,
one month from the date.

Winsor McCay at desk, showing four thousand drawings ready for Vitagraph
Company's moving picture camera.

Narration:
One month later, Among his friends, and the result of his months work.

In 1910, perhaps the greatest puppet animator of all time began his work. In Russia, Polish director Ladislav Starevicz made some fiction shorts “acted” by insects. The realistic movements in these films baffled audiences and reviewers. Like other animators, Starevicz was indeed a man of “magical patience,” but he was manipulating plastic puppets with wire joints, changing their positions from frame to frame. His most famous early film is The Revenge of a Kinematograph Cameraman (1912). Its witty story and detailed movements of the insect puppets remain engrossing today. Starevicz made many more animated and live-action films in Russia; then he fled to Paris in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. There he remained active until the 1960s.

The Revenge of a Kinematograph Cameraman (Ladislav Starevicz, 1912)
Film Clip

Film narration screen:
Mr and Mrs Beetle have too calm a home life.
Mr. Beetle is restless and makes frequent trips to the city.