LC National Digital Library Program announces release of-Origins of American Animation

[Tamara Swora-Gober <tswo@xxxxxxx>]

This message has been widely posted

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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 klun@xxxxxxxx