[4][d] The short's plot relies extensively on the filming and editing technique of substitution splicing, also known as "stop trick", a special effect that creates the illusion of various characters or objects suddenly vanishing on screen.

[5][6] Film-stock copies are preserved among the holdings of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and in the collection of the British Film Institute in London.

[4][7] The film's storyline centers on a "doltish" young messenger or "errand boy" who manages to obtain a small spray bottle filled with a fluid that when misted directly onto a person or an object causes that individual or item to vanish suddenly and entirely for at least 10 minutes.

[7] Initially, the young man simply delights in making people disappear, using the fluid to create panic and confusion by spraying and "erasing" a bridegroom at a wedding, various workers, and pedestrians.

Another summary of the plot, an even more detailed one, is provided in the June 20, 1909 issue of the New York trade journal The Moving Picture World:THE INVISIBLE FLUID (Biograph)—Had the poor melancholy Dane, Hamlet, lived in this, the twentieth century, he would never have given voice to the remark, "Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!"

[1][8] That community is a short distance, just across the Hudson River, from the Manhattan borough of New York City, which in 1908 was home to the American Mutoscope and Biography Company's main studio.

[1][9] Company records also credit the filming of this short to Wilhelm ("Billy") Bitzer, who had begun working as a staff cinematographer for Biograph in 1896 and by 1908 was widely regarded "as the greatest camera man in the business".

[13][14] The story and cinematography of The Invisible Fluid rely extensively on the filming and editing technique of substitution splicing to create the illusion of characters in various scenes suddenly disappearing.

[15] Méliès used this splicing method in an array of his early projects, including in his 75-second 1896 film Escamotage d'une dame chez Robert-Houdin (known too by the abbreviated English title The Vanishing Lady).

The studio's directors, camera operators, and film editors or "cutters" had begun using the process as early as 1900, portraying on screen the disappearance of a burglar in Biograph's comedy short Sherlock Holmes Baffled.

[6] Film-stock copies of The Invisible Fluid survive in the Library of Congress (LOC), which also holds a 255-foot paper roll of contact prints produced directly, frame-by-frame, from Biograph's original nitrate negative footage.

[7][e] Submitted by the studio to the United States government in June 1908, shortly before the film's release, the roll is part of the original documentation required by federal authorities for motion picture companies in their applications to obtain copyright protection for their productions.