Théâtre Optique
The Théâtre Optique (Optical Theatre) is an animated moving picture system invented by Émile Reynaud and patented in 1888.
His Pantomimes Lumineuses series of animated films include Pauvre Pierrot and Autour d'une cabine.
[1][2] Reynaud's Théâtre Optique predated Auguste and Louis Lumière's first commercial, public screening of the cinematograph on 28 December 1895, which has long been seen as the birth of film.
[1] The plates were coated with shellac and framed in a cardboard strip of which the sides were clad in fabric bands attached with split pins.
The movable mirror could be adjusted to project the moving characters at the desired place within an immobile background image on the screen.
Reynaud would manipulate the speed of the film by hand and repeat movements to produce a visual story that could last longer than 10 minutes.
[3][4][5] Some synchronized sound effects were automated at key moments marked with silver tabs on the flexible band to activate an electromagnet.
Mechanical animation projections and other more primitive moving picture techniques had already been featured long before in visual storytelling in magic lantern shows, especially in phantasmagoria.
[12] On October 28, 1892, Reynaud debuted his Pantomimes Lumineuses animation films at the Cabinet Fantastique of the Musée Grévin in Paris.
The show included three Pantomimes Illumineuses films, Pauvre Pierrot!, Un bon bock, and Le Clown et ses chiens.
According to his unfortunate contract with Musée Grevin, signed on 8 October 1892, Reynaud received 500 francs per month plus 10% of the box office.
[13] A few days later he would be visited by a French inventor and producer Léon Gaumont, to buy the invention and donate it to the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers.
[citation needed] The moving picture shows of Émile Reynaud have been inscribed in Memory of the World Register of UNESCO in 2015.
[14] The Pantomimes Lumineuses premiere on 28 October 1892 marks the first occurrence of public theatrical exhibition of motion pictures on film.
[7] It has been suggested that Thomas Edison may have picked up this idea for the development of the Kinetoscope when he visited the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889, where Reynaud won a bronze medal for all his works and purportedly exhibited his Théâtre Optique.
After the introduction of the cinématographe, it took over 10 years before animated films returned to the theatres (with Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) by J. Stuart Blackton).
A rêve au coin du feu made use of a flashback for the first time as a narrative element to explain the past of the protagonist when his house was devoured by the flames.
