Message-Id: <199904301419.HAA16874@dns.ccit.arizona.edu> Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 10:25:06 -0400 From: Tamara Swora-Gober <mailto:tswo@LOC.GOV> Subject: LC National Digital Library Program announces the release To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
This message has been widely posted************************** The Library of Congress National Digital Library Program and the Motion Picture Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division announce the release of "Origins of American Animation," available on the American Memory web site at :
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/oahtml/oahome.html
The twenty-one films and two fragments include examples of clay, puppet, and cut-out animation and span the years 1900 to 1921. The films are available as MPEG, Quicktime, and videostreaming versions. The films are accompanied by a piano score written by Philip Carli and notes written by Scott Simmon. They point to a connection between newspaper comic strips and early animated films, as represented by Keeping Up With the Joneses, Krazy Kat, and The Katzenjammer Kids. As well as showing the development of animation, these films also reveal the social attitudes of early twentieth-century America.
The motion pictures used for the original videotape presentation were taken from 35mm and 16mm prints and transferred to D2 composite digital videotape. For this American Memory presentation, a BetaSp videotape copy was made from the D2 master, and the BetaSp copy was digitized.
The motion pictures chosen for digitization were all black-and-white and silent. A piano score written and performed by Philip Carli has been added to these films and is not part of the original motion picture. The original motion pictures were shot with hand-cranked cameras at varying frame rates, generally at 22 frames per second (fps). In the video mastering process, the playback speeds were adjusted to present the appearance of natural motion to the greatest degree possible.
Origins of Animation joins several other early motion picture collections available at the the American Memory site. These include,
“Inventing Entertainment: The Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies” (341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles) http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edhome.html
“Inside and American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works,1904” (21 actuality films showing various views of Westinghouse companies) http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/ermphome.html
“The Spanish-American War in Motion-Pictures” (53 motion pictures), http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sawhtml/sawhome.html
“The Last Days of a President: Films of McKinley and the Pan-american Exposition, 1901” (twenty-eight actuality motion pictures from the Paper Print Collection of the Library of Congress) http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/ermphome.html
“Variety Stage Motion Pictures” (61 motion pictures) http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vshtml/vsfilm.html
“The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906 (45 films) http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/ermphome.html
“Before and After the Great Earthquake and Fire: Early Films of San Francisco, 1897-1916” (26 films). http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/ermphome.html
For more information about these collections, contact Karen Lund at mailto:klun@loc.gov.