3 Grainy GIFs And The Wealth Of Cinematic History Behind Them (Or How Edison Invented The Cat Video)

Still from Fantasmagorie

Let’s not kid ourselves: most GIFs are the Internet’s version of pretty, shiny things we can’t help but stare endlessly at. With them, entertainment usually trumps education.

But the good folks over at Okkult Motion Pictures couldn’t be bothered with the distinction and merged the two schools of engagement together. Their EXCERPTS series transforms images from open source films of important historical and artistic merit into the internet drug we’ve come to love: GIFs!

Enchanted by the history behind three of their most grainy and narrative-packed GIFs, we decided to look into the stories behind the images.

Thomas Edison And Friends Invent The YouTube Of 1894

The Boxing Cats (Professor Welton’s) (1894)

The year is 1894. July. The locale: West Orange, New Jersey. Internet Cat Video Festivals are as real to the people of the time as cloning sheep. But already Thomas Edison saw a new cultural movement buried in the possibility of moving pictures. After shooting snippets of life with his single camera invention, the Kinetograph, he’d charge a nickel for folks to see it through its sister invention, the Kinetoscope.

As seen above, Edison understood that people were more attracted to views of the whimsical or what some considered “tasteless” than more narratively involved productions. Less for the inventor was more. Like YouTube today, Edison’s pint-sized films were a democratic platform—people from all walks of life had the means and understanding to appreciate and enjoy them. The formula would eventually lose out to the giants of Hollywood industry, but we’re now seeing a renaissance of the Edison imprint with the emergence of Vine and Instagram’s video feature. 

In The Boxing Cats Edison, along with his assistant William Kennedy, Laurie Dickson and fellow filmmaker William Heise predicated people’s love for cats on camera. Some might damn them for doing so, but the Internet wouldn’t be quite the same without our unhealthy fascination with them. Just think, this was shot in Edison’s Black Maria movie studio, the world’s first, which sat atop a turntable so that it could be repositioned according to the sun for best light conditions. All for cats!

B.M.M.: Before Mickey Mouse

Fantasmagorie (1908)

Before Toy Story, before Peludópolis, and before Steamboat Willie, there was the French animated film Fantasmagorie. Composed of 700 double-exposed drawings, it was the world’s first fully-animated cartoon, and one of 250 made by its director Émile Cohl.

The idea for animated films was born from the stop-motion techniques being used in live-action films such as J. Stuart Blackton‘s The Enchanted Drawing, which eventually became their own pseudo-animation films. Just look at Blackton’s later work Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, which blurs the lines of stop-motion and animation to the point of technique-bending. Intrigued by these techniques—and probably enchanted by the big money attached to a blooming field—Cohl gave hand-drawn animation a shot.

Filmmakers like Ladislas Starevich took Cohl’s work and pursued it a step further. Known as the father (who’s the mother?) of puppet-animated films, Starevich would open the doors for classics like Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.

IBM Protected The World From Star Wars

On Guard! The Story of SAGE (1956)

Look at your cell phone. It might be tens of thousands of times more powerful than the computer system once responsible from preventing our complete annihilation. And tens of billions of dollars less expensive. The AN/FSQ-7, known as the largest computer to ever be built, was used in pairs to make up SAGE, an automated control system for tracking and intercepting enemy aircraft.

As the nugget of Cold War propaganda On Guard! The Story of SAGE narrates, SAGE operated much like the PRISM program does today: collecting oceans of incoming information to prevent impending attacks. The difference being that the government then at least made informational documentaries telling us about these programs.

SAGE would ultimately prove outdated before it proved useful but its creation allowed IBM to become the powerhouse it is today. Its novel technology would eventually be used in the pursuit of computer graphics which have become an integral part of making movies.

As the film notes, until the creation of SAGE, all computer information would be provided through printed sheets of paper. (Imagine having to “see” these GIFs, “watch” this film, or read this article on paper layouts). With SAGE, information could now be displayed in a graphical interface. Attention spans, and films, would never be the same again.