Major Post 2: Persistence of Vision

Posted on by Sydney McPherson

In class 2, we discussed artists that learned to work with the “persistence of vision” that our eyes have. Emile Reynaud’s optical theater was quite and amazing creation. It surpassed the ideas of the thaumatrope, phenakistocope, and zoetrope. Reynaud hand painted over 500 drawings to make a short 15-minute film. I would love to see an optical theater in action with the live orchestra and try my hand at operating the hand cranks.

Other artists whose work I enjoyed were Georges Melies and Winsor McCay. Melies’ “The Untamable Whiskers” used an interesting technique to give the appearance that the man is changing form. Melies overlapped his strips of film to create the gradual transitions. I also enjoyed “A Trip to the Moon” by Melies. He built out the more important props in 3dimensions and created painted backdrops for the rest of the settings. This creates dynamic visuals and depth without needing full sets. The paintings almost trick the viewer’s eye and they’re so well painted that it just works.

A film by Winsor McCay that I enjoyed was “Gertie the Dinosaur”. McCay made 10 thousand drawings and it took him 6 months., however it was worth the work because the animation is fluid and beautifully drawn. I like that McCay interacts with Gertie using the text and uses a simple story to develop Gertie’s personality.

Sydney McPherson

Major Post 01

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

A long time ago, I saw a clip of A Trip To The Moon showing on the TV. Later I found that the movie name was named Hugo. It caught my interest but that was the semi-ending part of the movie so I went ahead to watch this again on my computer. Until recently, I knew my mistake on thinking that A Trip To The Moon was just a part of the movie Hugo, it was a stand-alone animation from the old times, one of the very first animation.

Hugo is a historical adventure drama film, directed and produced by Martin Scorsese. The story is talking about a boy who lived in the Gare Montparnasse railway station in Paris in the 1930s. His clockmaker father found a broken automaton at the museum. He and Hugo tried to repair it, documenting everything about it in a notebook. Unfortunately his father died in a fire. Hugo continued to repair the automaton, believing it contained a message from his father. The final piece he needed was a heart-shaped key. In the station, he met Isabelle who would like to go on an adventure with Hugo and later was found wearing a heart-shaped key. When the automaton activated, it drew a famous scene of A Trip To The Moon, reviewing that Isabelle’s godfather, Georges Méliès was a film maker but gave up after the effect of WW1. Hugo and Isabelle went on a quest to hopefully find a way to invigorate Georges.

Hugo film