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.
Here’s one example of an original musician from the silents’ era, playing some fragments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lwsA0n8OBY
The overall sound was like that, but of course different pianists had different styles and repertoires of typical melodies that they’d improvise with.
Some more ambitious feature length films would employ ensembles or an entire orchestra, which is what Griffith did first for the Birth of a Nation. Of course in that case the music had to be written in advance, though I’m not sure how much of it has been preserved over the decades.
That was pretty cool. Thanks for sharing
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=5lwsA0n8OBY
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