Fantasmagorie

Emile Cohl’s Fantasmagorie made in 1908 was one of the most revolutionary works of animation at his time and still to this day. Fantasmagorie is a frame by frame hand drawn animation made with around 700 frames drawn on paper and then shooting each frame onto negative film. This process made the animation a black background with the animation in a white outline.

Throughout Fantasmagorie Cohl tries to emphasize the hand drawn quality of his animation. The black and white aspect of the film makes the animation look like a chalkboard and further puts a focus on the hand drawn quality of the entire film. In two different parts of the film both in the beginning of the animation as well as towards the middle of the film Emile uses live action film to show himself drawing the little character, and as well as fixing the character when he breaks after falling. By adding himself into the frame throughout the movie Cohl reminds the viewer that the entire film is drawn by him.

Cohl’s stream of conscious animation is also quite revolutionary for the time. The majority of moving pictures at the time followed a pretty linear story line, however Cohl takes advantage of the animation process and often morphs one frame into the next telling a quite abstract story. Cohl’s little character morphs from a woman’s hat, a flower, a ball catching toy and several other items throughout the film. Due to limitations of special effects in film at the time Cohl took full advantage of the freedom that an animator has when creating an animated film.

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