above: Louis Le Prince
His first experiment was entitled the "Roundhay Garden Scene" in which Le Prince’s wife’s family moved about in their garden in the district of Roundhay.
above: Roundhay Garden Scene
For his second experiment Le Prince filmed 2 seconds of traffic crossing the Leeds Bridge in downtown Leeds.
above: detail of Leeds Bridge
In 2005 the LEEDS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL commissioned Cory McAbee to create a trailer for their 19th year.
McAbee’s first concept was to focus on the conspiracy theories surrounding La Prince and the Thomas Edison Corporation. La Prince relied on devices owned by the Edison Corporation to file for the patent of his invention. The patent was met with endless delays. In 1890, while traveling to the US for the first planned public demonstration of his invention, La Prince mysteriously vanished from a train. His body and luggage were never found. Over a century later a photograph was discovered in a police archive of a drowned man who is believed to have been La Prince.
Shortly after the disappearance Edison claimed patent for the motion picture camera and projector. In 1898, Le Prince's son Adolphe came to New York to fight the Edison Corporation on behalf of his late father. Though he was defeated in court by the Edison legal team he continued to pursue. Two years later Adolphe Le Prince was found shot to death on Fire Island near New York. It was presumed to have been either suicide or a hunting accident.
McAbee had planned to make a 45 second documentary and wanted to incorporate samples of the original test footage. At the time he was only able to locate very tiny and pixilated frames from the Leeds Bridge footage. After studying the frames he made the discovery that every person in the film was doing something. He abandoned the La Prince VS. Edison conspiracy theme and focused on the footage itself. The new idea was that these were the first motions ever captured on film, therefore the first time that any of these motions had ever been performed. Because it is primarily a sci-fi/fantacy festival McAbee gave the trailer a Victorian “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers” twist.
To make the poor resolution frames work on a large scale McAbee went over each of the frames with pencil to minimize the pixilation and to smooth out the details. He enlarged each of the altered frames on a Xerox machine and then xeroxed each of the copies. This gave the graphite an ink-like quality. The process was historically fitting in that La Prince recorded his images on paper film. Not celluloid.
above: hand-altered 8.5 X 11 xerox
The audio track was developed and recorded from start to finish in less than 2 hours by Lurie, Swart and McAbee.
above: Lurie, Swart & McAbee - Leeds, England.
19th LEEDS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL trailer
-
FILM CREDITS INCLUDE:
CORY McABEE / WRITER / DIRECTOR / PRODUCER
TODD ROHAL / EDITOR
BOBBY LURIE / MUSICAL PRODUCER
ALAN FARMELLO / AUDIO ENGINEER / MIX
RECORDED @ MAVERICKS STUDIO. NYC
CORY McABEE / VOCALS / ELECTRIC AUTOHARP / HARMONICA
FRANK SWART / BASS / BASS VI
BOBBY LURIE / DRUMS
COMMISSIONED BY THE LEEDS INTERNATIONAL FILMS FESTIVAL. LEEDS, ENGLAND
ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE FOOTAGE BY LOUIS LA PRINCE. 1888
More soon,
The Smallest Star
American Astronaut
The Billy Nayer Show
BSG Records
