James Stuart Blackton

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James Stuart Blackton 1912

James Stuart Blackton (often J. Stuart Blackton ; born January 5, 1875 in Sheffield , Yorkshire , † August 13, 1941 in Hollywood , California ) was a British - American cartoonist , film producer , director and pioneer of animated films .

Life

Blackton was born in England and immigrated to New York City with his family when he was ten years old. From 1894 on he appeared, with little success, together with Albert E. Smith and Ronald A. Reader as a cartoonist and storyteller in vaudeville theaters. Blackton earned his living primarily as a reporter and illustrator for the New York Evening World newspaper . For a public presentation of Thomas Edison's film projector Vitascope in 1896, he was supposed to interview the inventor and make drawings. Edison showed him his Black Maria film production facility and produced a short film for showing, which he sold to Blackton along with a few other films.

The first own "cartoons"

Blackton purchased a Vitascope apparatus for demonstration to his vaudeville audience. He founded the Vitagraph Company of America with Albert E. Smith in 1897 to produce his own films. Vitagraph quickly developed into a financially successful company and Blackton could afford to try out spontaneous ideas. Just like Georges Méliès in France, he first began to experiment with the stop trick , in which the camera paused, a small change made in the image and then the film recording continued. He first combined this discovery with his own drawings in 1900 in The Enchanted Drawing . Other film trick elements that Blackton applying an end together with Smith, were transitions and multiple exposures .

The further development of the stop-motion technology came about around 1905 while filming a series of stop-trick recordings. Blackton applied this principle to the last resort, creating the illusion of movement by stringing together individual images without actually recording actual movement with a constant number of images per second. The oldest films based on this technique include Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces and The Haunted Hotel .

In 1908 Blackton created the first American screen adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and by 1912 numerous other Shakespeare film adaptations were made under his direction and production. Other important works by Blackton were film adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the cartoon Little Nemo , together with Winsor McCay .

In 1915 he was a co-founder of the American producers' association AMPPA ; In 1917 Blackton left Vitagraph to start his own business. In 1921 he traveled to England and shot three costume dramas there, but returned to the United States in 1923 as Albert E. Smith's junior partner. In 1926 Smith sold the Vitagraph Company for a profit to Warner Brothers . Blackton lived well on his share until the 1929 stock market crash that wiped out his savings. He spent the rest of his life showing his old films and working for the Anglo American Film Company . He died in a car accident in Hollywood.

Filmography (selection)

Short films
  • 1898: The Burglar on the Roof
  • 1900: Happy Hooligan
  • 1900: The Enchanted Drawing
  • 1900: Hooligan assists the Magician
  • 1901: Miniature Railway (documentation)
  • 1901: Panoramic View of Boston Subway from an Electric Car (Documentation)
  • 1902: Happy Hooligan, Nothing But Fun
  • 1905: A Gentleman of France
  • 1906: A Modern Oliver Twist
  • 1906: Humorous Phases of Funny Faces
  • 1906: The San Francisco Earthquake (Documentation on the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 )
  • 1906: The Automobile Thieves
  • 1907: The Haunted Hotel
  • 1908: The Thieving Hand
  • 1908: Salome
  • 1908: The Elf King: A Norwegian Fairy Tale
  • 1908: Richard III
  • 1908: Making Moving Pictures
  • 1908: Macbeth
  • 1909: The Life of Napoleon
  • 1909: The Life of Moses
  • 1909: King Lear
  • 1910: The Last of the Saxons
  • 1911: The Death of King Edward III
Silent films
  • 1921: The Virgin Queen
  • 1922: The Glorious Adventure
  • 1925: The Happy Warrior
  • 1926: Bride of the Storm

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b J. Stuart Blackton on britannica.com, accessed on August 23, 2013.
  2. ↑ James Stuart Blackton - 1906/1907 ( Memento of the original from November 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at animation.filmtv.ucla.edu, accessed August 23, 2013.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / animation.filmtv.ucla.edu
personal data
SURNAME Blackton, James Stuart
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blackton, J. Stuart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American cartoonist, film producer, director and animated film pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Sheffield , Yorkshire, UK
DATE OF DEATH August 13, 1941
Place of death Hollywood , California, United States