Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

{{Short description|1906 film by J. Stuart Blackton}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}

{{Use American English|date=January 2025}}

{{Infobox film

| name = Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

| image = Humorous Phases of Funny Faces HD.webm

| director = J. Stuart Blackton

| producer = J. Stuart Blackton

| writer =

| starring = J. Stuart Blackton

| cinematography =

| editing =

| distributor = Vitagraph Company of America

| released = {{Film date|1906|04|06}}

| runtime = 3 minutes

| country = United States

| language = silent

}}

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is a 1906 short silent animated cartoon directed by James Stuart Blackton and generally regarded by film historians as the first animated film recorded on standard picture film.{{cite book|last=Beckerman|first=Howard|title=Animation: the whole story|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EjW6cCE4v1QC&pg=PA16|access-date=16 August 2011|date=2003-09-01|publisher=Skyhorse Publishing Inc.|isbn=978-1-58115-301-9|page=16}}Magill's Survey of Silent Films, Vol2. FLE-POT p.562 edited by Frank N. Magill c.1982 {{ISBN|0-89356-241-6}} (3 book set {{ISBN|0-89356-239-4}}) Retrieved June 27, 2018

Content

In the cartoon, animated hand-drawn scenes appear on a chalkboard, including a clown playing with a hat and a dog jumping through a hoop. In the beginning, though, the cartoonist's hands are included, too, as he draws the first several lines on the chalkboard in standard live action. From there, the stop-motion technique is used to show what appears to be drawings completing—and then moving—by themselves with no artist on screen.

Techniques

File:Humorous Phases of Funny Faces screenshot.jpg technique]]

Stop-motion as well as cutout animation are used, just as Edwin Porter moved his letters in How Jones Lost His Roll, and The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog. However, there is a very short section of the film where things are made to appear to move by altering the drawings themselves from frame to frame.

The film moves at 20 frames per second.

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See also

References

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