These vintage photographs offer a glimpse into the making of 1959 classic Disney film Sleeping Beauty.
Sleeping Beauty was a spectacular piece of animation that has held up very well after all these years. The detail that went into it is incredible and it was the studio’s most costly production until The Rescuers over 18 years later. Due to so few theaters being able to run it at 70mm, a higher resolution widescreen format, the movie did so poorly that there were mass layoffs throughout the animation department. It has since been re-released multiple times and on rare occasions there are screenings of the 70mm version that audiences have gushed about.
Sleeping Beauty was the last movie to use traditionally inked cels, which were replaced by Xerox technology in 101 Dalmations and on. It was also printed in 70mm, which had fallen out of favor by the time the movie was released after 8 years in the making.
Most viewers only saw the film in 35mm and Walt Disney was furiously disappointed to learn their efforts went mainly unnoticed. The movie under-performed at the box office and Walt Disney decided to stay away from fairy tales. It wasn’t until after he passed away that the studio decided to try another fairy tale with The Little Mermaid.
Helene Stanley, a dancer and model, as the live-action model used for Princess Aurora’s movement reference.
Young Prince Phillip and Queen Leah
King Hubert and King Stefan
Ed Kemmer was the live-action reference model for Prince Phillip.
Animated album covers are a fanart meme in which fans of a band or type of music create endless GIF loop versions of the illustrations or photographs featured on the record cover. These 15 hilarious animated classic album covers are collected from Beautiful Album Covers' blog.
Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin had their encounter with Bigfoot on October 20, 1967. The Patterson-Gimlin (PG) film used a 16mm Kodak Cine 100 camera. Only 59.5 seconds long, it remains as one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the existence of Sasquatches to this day.
The footage was filmed alongside Bluff Creek, a tributary of the Klamath River, about 25 logging-road miles northwest of Orleans, California, in Humboldt County. The film site is roughly 38 miles south of Oregon and 18 miles east of the Pacific Ocean. For decades, the exact location of the site was lost, primarily because of re-growth of foliage in the streambed after the flood of 1964. It was rediscovered in 2011. It is just south of a north-running segment of the creek informally known as "the bowling alley".
Patterson died of cancer in 1972 and "maintained right to the end that the creature on the film was real". Patterson's friend, Gimlin, has always denied being involved in any part of a hoax with Patterson. Gimlin mostly avoided publicly discussing the subject from at least the early 1970s until about 2005 (except for three appearances), when he began giving interviews and appearing at Bigfoot conferences.
Nearly 50 years later, Bob Gimlin told Outside magazine that he wishes he'd never left his home in Oregon to go searching for Bigfoot with Patterson.
"They'd come driving in my driveway all times of the night and go ‘Bob! We want to go out Bigfoot hunting!’" he said. "I can understand why they don't believe in it — because I didn't believe it either. But I saw one. And I know what I saw. And I know it wasn't a man in a suit. It couldn't have been!"
The Discovery Channel talks about the Patterson–Gimlin Bigfoot sighting and footage.
As their stories went, in the early afternoon of Friday, October 20, 1967, Patterson and Gimlin were riding generally northeast (upstream) on horseback along the east bank of Bluff Creek. At sometime between 1:15 and 1:40 PM they "came to an overturned tree with a large root system at a turn in the creek, almost as high as a room". When they rounded it, "there was a logjam—a 'crow's nest'—left over from the flood of '64," and then they spotted the figure behind it nearly simultaneously. It was either "crouching beside the creek to their left" or "standing" there, on the opposite bank. Gimlin later described himself as in a mild state of shock after first seeing the figure.
Patterson initially estimated its height at six and one-half to seven feet, and later raised his estimate to about seven and one-half feet. Some later analysts, anthropologist Grover Krantz among them, have suggested Patterson's later estimate was about one foot too tall. Gimlin's estimate was six feet even.
The film shows what Patterson and Gimlin claimed was a large, hairy, bipedal, apelike figure with short, "silvery brown" or "dark reddish-brown" or "black" hair covering most of its body, including its prominent breasts. The figure in the Patterson–Gimlin film generally matches the descriptions of Bigfoot offered by others who claim to have seen one.
Patterson estimated he was about 25 ft (7.6 m) away from the creature at his closest. Patterson said that his horse reared upon sensing the figure, and he spent about twenty seconds extricating himself from the saddle, controlling his horse, getting around to its other side, and getting his camera from a saddlebag before he could run toward the figure while operating his camera. He yelled "Cover me" to Gimlin, "meaning to get the gun out". He crossed the creek on horseback after Patterson had run well beyond it, riding on a path somewhat to the left of Patterson's and somewhat beyond his position. Perez estimates he came within 60–90 feet of "Patty". Then, rifle in hand, he dismounted, but did not point his rifle at the creature.
The figure had walked away from them to a distance of about 120 ft (36.5 m) before Patterson began to run after it. The resulting film (about 59.5 seconds long at 16 fps) is initially quite shaky until Patterson got about 80 ft (24.4 m) from the figure. At that point, the figure glanced over its right shoulder at the men and Patterson fell to his knees; on Krantz's map this corresponds to frame 264. To researcher John Green, Patterson would later characterize the creature's expression as one of "contempt and disgust...you know how it is when the umpire tells you 'one more word and you're out of the game.' That's the way it felt."
Frame 352 of the film, alleged to depict a female Bigfoot, known informally as "Patty," looking back at Patterson and Gimlin.
Shortly after this point the steady, middle portion of the film begins, containing the famous look-back frame 352. Patterson said, "it turned a total of I think three times," the other times therefore being before the filming began and/or while he was running with his finger off the trigger. Shortly after glancing over its shoulder on film, the creature disappeared behind a grove of trees for 14 seconds, then reappeared in the film's final 15 seconds after Patterson moved ten feet to a better vantage point, fading into the trees again and being lost to view at a distance of 265 feet as the reel of film ran out.
Gimlin remounted and followed it on horseback, keeping his distance, until it disappeared around a bend in the road three hundred yards away. Patterson called him back at that point, feeling vulnerable on foot without a rifle, because he feared the creature's mate might approach. The entire encounter had lasted less than two minutes.
Next, Gimlin and Patterson rounded up Patterson's horses, which had run off in the opposite direction, downstream, before the filming began. Patterson got his second roll of film from his saddlebag and filmed the tracks. Then the men tracked "Patty" for either one mile or three miles (5 km), but "lost it in the heavy undergrowth". They went to their campsite three miles south, picked up plaster, returned to the initial site, measured the creature's step-length, and made two plaster casts, one each of the best-quality right and left prints.
When you can’t rely on a computer to improve (or fake) a movie scene, you gotta improvise. And back in the days of silent films, filmmakers were really, really good at coming up with creative ways to cook up special effects. It was a master class of using specific camera angles, splicing together shots, using glass matte paintings, and twisting perspectives to make things look as realistic as possible.
Silent Movie GIFs is an excellent resource that reveals how things used to be done in the past. He detailed a lot of famous examples in a wonderful post here. It’s a fun read for anyone.
1. Harold Lloyd hanging off a clock in Safety Last! (1923)
When Safety Last! was made, it wasn't feasible to insert a fake background using rear projection or a green screen, so they used a trick of perspective. The set was built at the right height for Lloyd's climb, but on the roof of a building across the street. As Lloyd climbed higher, the set was moved to taller buildings.
2. Charlie Chaplin roller-skating in a department store in Modern Times (1936)
A good example of the classic movie making technique of glass matte painting. Part of the background was painted on a piece of glass, which was placed in front of the camera.
3. Colleen Moore's eye trick in Ella Cinders (1926)
The two halves of her face were filmed separately, using a matte shot. Basically, a piece of glass with half the frame painted black was placed in front of the camera, so only one side the film was exposed. The film was then wound back, the glass was switched for one with black on the other side. The key was to avoid having either the camera or the Moore's face shift in position while shooting, or the effect would be ruined.
It is not uncommon these days to see previously black and white photographs in colors, but have you ever seen them in the process of getting colorized.
Dutch website NSMBL shared a collection of very intriguing GIFs that show vintage pictures getting colorized—as colors are gradually added to these images, one would be better able to appreciate the difference between the “before” and “after” versions.
Sallie Gardner at a Gallop is a series of photographs consisting of a galloping horse, the result of a photographic experiment by Eadweard Muybridge on June 15, 1878. Sometimes cited as an early silent film, the series and later experiments like it were precursors to the development of motion pictures.
The series consists of 24 photographs shot in rapid succession that were shown on a zoopraxiscope. Muybridge was commissioned by Leland Stanford, the industrialist and horseman, who was interested in gait analysis. The purpose of the shoot was to determine whether a galloping horse ever lifts all four feet completely off the ground during the gait; at this speed, the human eye cannot break down the action.
The Horse in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge. Noted photographer, Eadweard Muybridge was hired, in 1872, by Leland Stanford a railroad baron and future university founder, to find out if there was moment mid-stride where horses had all hooves off the ground. It took several years but Muybridge delivered having captured a horse, named "Sallie Gardner," owned by Stanford; running at a 1:40 gait over the Palo Alto track, on 19th June 1878. Muybridge used a dozen cameras all triggered one after another with a set of strings.
Development
Leland Stanford had a large farm at which he bred, trained and raced both Standardbreds, used for trotting races in which a driver rides in a sulky while driving the horse; and Thoroughbreds, ridden by jockeys and raced at a gallop. He was interested in improving the performance of his horses of both types and in the scientific questions of their gait action.
During July 1877, the photographer Muybridge tried to settle Stanford's question with a series of progressively clearer, single photographs of Stanford's trotter, Occident, at a racing-speed gait at the Union Park Racetrack in Sacramento, California. He captured the horse in a photograph with all four feet off the ground. One of the prints was sent to the local California press, but because they found that the film negative was retouched, the press dismissed it. As negative retouching was an acceptable and common practice at the time, the photograph won Muybridge an award at the Twelfth San Francisco Industrial Exhibition. Lantern slides of the trotting horse photographs survive.
The following year, Stanford financed Muybridge's next project: to use multiple cameras to photograph a Thoroughbred at a gallop at Stanford's farm in Palo Alto on June 15, 1878, in the presence of the press. Muybridge photographed the businessman's Kentucky-bred mare named Sallie Gardner running.
The Horse in Motion by Eadweard Muybridge. "Sallie Gardner," owned by Leland Stanford; running at a 1:40 gait over the Palo Alto track, 19th June 1878. Frames 1-11 used for animation, frame 12 not used.
He had arranged the cameras along a track parallel to the horse's path. Muybridge used 24 cameras which were 27 inches (69 cm) apart. The shutters were controlled by trip wires triggered by the horse's legs. The photographs were taken in succession one twenty-fifth of a second apart, with the shutter speeds calculated to be less than 1/2000 s. The jockey Domm set the mare to travel at a speed of 1:40, which meant that she was galloping at a mile per 1 minute and 40 seconds, equivalent to 36 miles per hour (58 km/h).
The stop-action photographs showed the mare lifted all four legs off the ground at certain points during the gallop. Run together, the photographs produced the effect of the horse in motion, or a film. Muybridge produced his prints onsite; when the press noticed the broken straps on Sallie's saddle in the prints, they became convinced of the prints' authenticity. Scientific American was among the publications that carried reports of Muybridge's groundbreaking 1878 work. While there have been rumors that Stanford had a large bet riding on the outcome of the study, the historian Phillip Prodger has said, "I personally believe that the story of the bet is apocryphal. There are really no primary accounts of this bet ever having taken place. Everything is hearsay and secondhand information."
Muybridge sequence of a horse galloping. Animated sequence of a race horse galloping. Photos taken by Eadweard Muybridge, first published in 1887 at Philadelphia (Animal Locomotion).
Partnering with Giphy, the new library contains about 150 moments, including Ernest Hemingway having a drink, the exploding swastika in Nuremberg from the end of the second world war and the Beatles’ arrival in America.
The goal of the library is to bring a new audience into the work of Nara. Each gif links back to the National Archives catalog so users can discover its origins.
“Gifs help keep us relevant, but also further the agency’s mission of providing access to our holdings to the public,” Darren A Cole, with the web and social media branch of the National Archives Office of Innovation, told Hyperallergic.
Footage of the 1950s Avrocar.
Nazi swastika destroyed from ‘The War Ends in Europe’ (1945) newsreel.
Bear captured in early footage of National Parks.
Architect William Van Alen dressed as the Chrysler Building, which he was in charge of designing, at the 1931 Beaux-Arts Ball.
Animation from the 1974 Cocktail Construction Chart.
Before the onset of the Great Depression, the Roaring Twenties were a time of economic prosperity, new technology and perhaps most famously, dancing. Here, 10-year-old Mildred Unger takes one of the hippest dance crazes of the time to the skies as she performs the Charleston on the wing of an airplane in 1927!
Meet Mildred Unger. In this footage taken in 1927, she's just 10 years old.
But just because she's 10, doesn't mean she's not fearless. Here she is getting into a plane...
...so she can stand on its wings without any apparent safety gear on. She is doing this so...
...she can dance the Charleston 2,000 feet in the air.
You might want to hold your breath as you watch this incredible footage.
These stunning photographs were taken from between the 1900s and 1920s which turned into stereoscopics. Stereoscopic GIFs alternate between the left and right images of a stereogram, capturing the same image from two different vantage points positioned inches apart.
Stereoscopics or 3D imaging is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. Most stereoscopic methods present two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. These two-dimensional images are then combined in the brain to give the perception of 3D depth.
Prof. A. H. Thompson, ca. 1873.
Actresses LeClaire and Forbes, ca. 1865.
Victorian dancers, 1899.
The elephants of the Barnum & Bailey Circus parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in May 1894.
Edgar Williams playing in the garden outside his parents' house Viewbank on Maitland Street, Dunedin, Sep 1894.
.gif)
.gif)
.gif)
.gif)
.gif)
.gif)
.gif)
.gif)
.gif)
.gif)
