On this day in 1908, the first animated film was released: Émile Cohl's "Fantasmagorie"

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com⁩ to ⁨moviesandtv@lemmy.film⁩

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/La_Fantasmagorie_%281908%29.webm

An animated film by French caricaturist, cartoonist and animator Émile Cohl. It is one of the earliest examples of hand-drawn animation, and considered by many film historians to be the very first animated cartoon. Despite appearances the animation is not created on a blackboard but rather on paper, the blackboard effect achieved by shooting each of the 700 drawings onto negative film. The title is a reference to the “fantasmograph”, a mid-19th century variant of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images on to surrounding walls.

(The Public Domain Review)

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elbarto777@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
In case you just want to see the actual film:

youtu.be/o1d28X0lkJ4

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- can@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  archive.org link
  
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- antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I linked the video on Wikimedia in OP. Here’s the link again: …wikimedia.org/…/La_Fantasmagorie_(1908).webm
  
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- PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks [bot] ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): piped.video/o1d28X0lkJ4
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
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MrGerrit@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Image

But seriously, very impressive to see the creativity in this. I thought the first animated film would be more crude.

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Donjuanme@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
First thing I did was try to turn up the volume on my phone. Then I realized it was pre audio. Then I started to rewatch it and caught myself thinking “why am I watching this dank-meme video without audio?”. That this is nearly as trippy, maybe more trippy, than some of the dank videos I’ve seen on the Internet these days, it’s amazing how far we haven’t come, or how perverse we’ve always been.

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- antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  Then I realized it was pre audio
  
  Probably it was screened with largely improvised live music (piano), so this isn’t quite the original experience. There’s a version with some music on archive.org linked in this thread. Watching the silents without any audio feels weird, “empty”, and the original audiences must’ve felt the same.
  
  And yeah, early films were a bit similar to circus attractions, so the comparison is pretty good. They wanted to show something visually striking, so e.g. they filmed many variants of “serpentine dances”, or fights between a chimney sweeper covered in coal and miller covered in flour.
  
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  - can@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Someone commented on archive that the music was a bit out of its era so I’m curious what contemporary accompaniment would have been like.
    
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  - Hank@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    That fight film has such an early internet vibe. Just some dudes filming bullshit they think is entertaining.
    
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  - PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks [bot] ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Here is an alternative Piped link(s): piped.video/watch?v=YostqK_hFkE
    
    piped.video/watch?v=ag1qu38qKfg
    
    Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
    
    I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
    
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lloram239@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Even earlier examples animation’ish tech that predates film would be the Magic lantern in 1603, Phenakistiscope in 1831 and Zoetrope in 1834. Though all of them where limited to a couple of dozen frames at best.

Wonder if it would have been possible to have invented longer animation before film, having a long strip of frames mass produced by a printing press might have been possible, but probably not very economical.

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Blastasaurus@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Wow I’m surprised this isn’t more common knowledge. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

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