I'm sure that when the awesome people who brought us GIFs like "Cupcake Dog" or Kate Upton doing the Cat Daddy, they had no idea that they were participating in cinema's earliest attempts at filmmaking. I mean -- what is a GIF if not a digital reproduction of early animations created in devices that utilized the same persistence of vision principals we use today? Right? In other words, GIFs are phenakistoscopes, praxinoscopes, and zoetropes for the 21st century. Don't think so? Well, you might change your mind once you see Richard Balzer bring these 19th century animations to life using the technology of the 21st century. Behold -- 19th century GIFs.
According to an article from The Verge, Balzer began collecting magic lanterns, phenakistoscopes, praxinoscopes, and zoetropes -- all sorts of optic toys that we used in the 19th century. These toys, in fact, were the very early rumblings of a cinematic revolution that was about to spring forth. These devices were either illustrated with pictures on a disc or a strip, and then animated by spinning the device. The viewer would look through the slit (depending on the device,) and be able to see the illustrations animate.
Balzer, no doubt seeing the similar packaging, began turning these short animations, some of them dating back 150 years, into GIFs and posting them on his Tumblr. It's truly amazing to see animations that would have otherwise been lost for the majority of the population, considering first, that they were designed to be enjoyed by one person at a time in the first place, and second, are old and were forgotten at flea markets.
According to the article, however, the process was somewhat challenging. Balzer enlisted LA-based animator Brian Duffy to help convert his collection into GIFs, and each device brought with it its own reproduction challenges:
For phenakistoscope animations, the process was rather straightforward. Working out of the refurbished barn where Balzer keeps his collection, Duffy would photograph each illustration and then sequence it in Photoshop to create a GIF. The zoetropes proved more difficult because they involved long strips measuring 2 feet in length rather than simple circles. The most challenging aspect, Duffy says, was the timing. Unlike contemporary cinema, which largely operates under the same 24-frame-per-second standard, the early animations in Balzer’s collection unfolded at different rates.
Here are a few "GIFs" from Belzer's collection:
Only a small percentage of Belzer's materials have been made into GIFs, but new animations are uploaded every week to his Tumblr, so be sure to check them out! Also, if you're interested in learning about how early animation devices, like the zoetrope, work and operate, check out Balzer's virtual museum here.
What do you think of these animations? What relevance does Balzer's work to cinema today?
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