ENTERTAINMENT
STAN MEDLEY – AN INTERVIEW
AssociatedNews.US
(AN) – In this interview with Durk Dugan of AssociatedNews.US, Hollywood behind-the-scenes deal maker, Stan Medley, discusses animation.
DD: Ok, now I see you have recently posted some web sites featuring various historic clips – animations, movies, old TV shows, etc. What are you trying to do there?
SM: Nothing in particular. Just a hobby. These are just some fun sites to view some historic animations, TV shows, Movies, etc. from the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, etc. We get all our stuff from public domain sites.
DD: You must like animation as you have quite a bit of the old classics on your site.
SM: Well we have tons more on our internet TV Channel. Great stuff. I am particularly interested in the history and evolution of animation.
DD: That is interesting. What is the evolution of animation?
SM: Well man’s intent to animate can be traced back thousands of years – they have found cave, burial and earthenware drawings depicting a series of illustrations approximating motion. Since we believe they had no way of actually showing the images in motion we typically don’t call this animation. However, I don’t know if that is necessarily true. That we can just arbitrarily say these cultures had no animation may be an error.
In modern times we have had paper flip books, which can “animate” a series of drawing. Every child had one or made one growing up. Who is to say that they didn’t have some similar “flip book” technology back in those societies to actually implement their intent to animate? A “flip book” is an actual animation technology and it would mean that animation could have actually have begun 4000 or 5000 years ago. And who knows perhaps these early civilizations could have had a zoetrope type device.
DD: What is a zoetrope?
SM: A zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid presentation of still pictures. It is cylindrical with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder are images from a set of sequenced drawings. As the cylinder spins around the viewer looks through the slits at the pictures on the opposite side of the cylinder’s interior. The slits keep the pictures from blurring together so that the viewer sees a rapid succession of images which produces the appearance of motion.
Historians say the earliest zoetrope was created in China around 180 AD. This early device hung over a lamp and was driven by convection. The rising air turned vanes at the top from which were hung translucent paper. Pictures painted on the panels would appear to move if the device was spun at the right speed.
The modern zoetrope was invented in 1834 in England. It didn’t become popular until the 1860s, when it was patented by makers in both England and America. The American developer, William F. Lincoln, named his toy the “zoetrope”, which means “wheel of life” and which is the name we use for the device today.
But you see a device like this could have even been invented and used in what we consider prehistoric times. Then there was the phenakistoscope.
DD: Ok, what is a phenakistoscope?
SM: The phenakistoscope an even earlier animation device than the zoetrope. It was invented in 1831 simultaneously in Belgium and Austria. The phenakistoscope was a spinning disc mounted vertically on some kind of a handle.
Around the center of the disc were a series of pictures drawn in a manner corresponding to the frames of the animation; around the outside of the device were a series of radial slits. The viewer would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc’s reflection in a mirror. The slits across the reflected images kept them from blurring together and the viewer would see a rapid succession of images with the appearance of motion. Unlike the zoetrope, the phenakistoscope could only be used by one person at a time.
As technology along with popularity increased in the early twentieth century the phenakistoscope became know as a “Nickelodeon”, (because they charged a nickel to operate it). The term “Nickelodeon” would eventually be used even more broadly to describe events charging a “nickel”.
DD: Quite interesting. So now you are telling me little historical facts that I didn’t know at all. Is there more to this animation evolution?
SM: Well all this information is on the internet. You just have to have enough interest to research and read it.
DD: I have heard that you have a photographic memory.
SM: Well actually I do…sometimes…for certain things I am interested in. I can recall a lot of the stuff that I have read on animation sort of photographically. But unilaterally I would not say I always have a photographic memory. But to continue with the answer to your question.
The praxinoscope was the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France in 1877. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of illustrations placed around the inside surface of a spinning cylinder. The praxinoscope was an improvement on the zoetrope because it replaced the narrow viewing slits of the zoetrope with an inner circle of mirrors.
The mirrors were situated so that the reflections of the illustrations appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. When the viewer looked in the mirrors, they would see a rapid succession of images which appeared as motion. The praxinoscope also had a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope.
In 1889 Reynaud developed the “Theatre Optique” a version of the praxinoscope capable of projecting images on a screen from a longer roll of pictures. This allowed the operator to show hand-drawn animated cartoons to larger audiences. But the popularity of the “Theatre Optique” was quickly overshadowed by the photographic film projector which was created about 1895.
About the Author
Durk Dugan is a journalist and publicist for AssociatedNews.US, a free news service for the media. For more information on AssociatedNews.US go to http://www.AssociatedNews.US. For more information on Stan Medley visit http://StanMedley.info.