Leslie Elton — How Cartoon Comedies Are Made (1916) 🇺🇸
How Leslie Elton carries a comedy company to the studio in his vest pocket and turns out film farces with no other aid than a camera
The Photoplay Art has just begun to settle down or up to its proper level. Instead of a few thousand companies turning out a hundred photoplays a day and trusting to able film salesmen to get them before the public, a half-dozen capable producers are soon to supply the entire market with pictures on their merit alone. Programs will soon consist of one dramatic feature, a topical, scenic and a comedy. One big organization of producers will supply the feature, that is an easy guess — but who’s going to supply the comedy?
Since Mr. Chaplin [Charles Chaplin] introduced his own peculiar style of screen capers, the public seems to be unable to laugh at another sort. Cheerful Charlie, even at a salary of $670,000 a year, can hardly supply enough to go around. Comedians who are at all comparable with Chaplin are demanding salaries which the manufacturers swear are ruinous to them. What is the answer? There must be comedies — there is but one Chaplin, and his imitators are expensive without being funny.
The answer is at present, the Cartoon Comedy. The able cartoonist can take his pen and with plenty of paper and an idea, turn out reel after reel of farcical film. This work is much in demand just now for many reasons, not the least of which is the novelty and the average manufacturer’s unwillingness to pay exorbitant salaries to flesh-and-blood comedies who may not prove popular or funny. The cartoon film also saves the wages of directors, players, property-men, etc., and it obviates the wear and tear on scenery and properties. For all these reasons, few programs are now without the cartoon comedy and, while all have seen them, we doubt if any of the general photoplay loving public have any conception of the method employed in their manufacture.
The writer found Leslie Elton, whose “Billie and Squint” series have recently graduated from the St. Louis-Democrat and a newspaper syndicate, to the films, just finishing drawing No. 2784. With the other two thousand seven hundred and eighty-three, this when photographed under his supervision, would make about a 700-foot film cartoon comedy — almost, but not quite one reel.
The wealth of detail attached to the drawing and arranging this single effort is amazing. First Mr. Elton concocts the scenario, which in this case consists of eighteen scenes and the introduction of half dozen characters, whose ventures are consistently startling and humorous and culminate in chaotic misadventure, while “Billy” walks off with an Edna Purviance sort of a girl — presumably to that great apostle of preparedness on the screen — the marrying minister.
Mr. Elton explained to us that the chief charm of the cartoonist’s characters’ comedy lay in their ability to do “stunts” which no human could possibly perform. And to prove it he showed us a scene wherein “Billy” in a ring conflict with a large colored gentleman delivered a straight-from-the-shoulder punch which, owing to the dusky battler’s facial expression landed in his mouth, with the result that “Billy’s” fist went down his opponent’s throat to his shoulder! In other scenes, apparently respectable ladies and gentlemen hopped lightly from telegraph pole to roof-top and alighted in waiting autos, which promptly somersaulted and climbed trees with the utmost sang froid — and then some!
As to the mechanics of the film cartoon’s construction the scenario is the first step. Then the artist draws the first scene, which may be a parlor. This is on stiff board, about the size of your desk-top, and consists of a sort of picture frame outline, with piano and whatever furniture is to be used, in cut-out outline around the edges. All action taking place in this scene is drawn on separate sheets of paper, which are photographed eventually with the frame over them.
The entrance of a character into the parlor is accomplished only after several hours’ labor on the part of the cartoonist. He must first draw on a white sheet of paper the tip of the expected arrival’s toe. Then on another blank, a little more toe, on another a half a foot, then he produces an artistic pedal extremity, which sheet after sheet finally evolves into the complete figure of the visitor. The other characters make their entrance in the same laborious way, and whatever action is planned to take place in our little cardboard parlor is drawn bit by bit, each additional movement requiring another page, as it were.
For instance, the action of two people shaking hands is only produced by drawing more than a hundred separate pictures of them standing face to face, but in each succeeding drawing the hands a little more advanced in the action. Say that Scene 1 is finished. It consists of five hundred separate drawings, and the frame, which represents the location of the action. To turn this into film ready for projection the process is somewhat as follows:
A regulation motion picture camera is rigged over the table on which the action is to be “staged.” Lens pointing straight down toward the table surface. With sufficient lights above and at the sides to assure a good, clear photography, the cartoonist places the sheet of paper numbered “1,” which we have presumed to be the tip of “Billy’s” toe, directly underneath, and over it the cardboard frame and one exposure is made by the camera operator, or possibly two or three. The result will be when the film is developed, a strip of three photographs of a parlor scene with a gentleman’s toe protruding through the door. The artist then removes No. 1, and replaces it with drawing No. 2, which shows a little more shoe leather. More exposures by cameraman, and more substitution by artist — until the entire five hundred drawings have been photographed beneath the cardboard parlor frame and scene first is filmed. As there are from two to fifty exposures made of each drawing — depending on the nature of the action — the first scene may consist of a hundred feet of film or 1600 separate photographs, when completed. Each in itself would mean nothing, but when projected at the rate of sixteen a second successively upon a picture screen, the spectator sees “Billy” enter his parlor jauntily, remove his hat and lay it with his cane upon the piano, strike a few notes on the keyboard, express surprise, reach into the instrument’s bowls, and take out a horse, two sheep, a family of kittens and several cows and hens, which he tosses lightly into his hat and hands to the maid who enters at the sound of music (!), and then settle down to harmonious efforts, which are only concluded by the entrance of the young lady who is presumed to reside there, and their dual exit by way of the bay-window!
Thus does Mr. Elton build the photoplay cartoon comedy, getting comic effects which were impossible in any other way. He only requires the story, plenty of paper and ink — and his magic right hand. The film manufacturer only needs supply him with a camera and operator and some lights, and he will turn out reels of screams that obviate the engagement of a company of players — and in consequence, the weekly line-up at the company’s treasury for salaries — which is a thing that the picture makers are only too glad to avoid in these parlous times. Hence the services of Leslie Elton and his fellow craftsmen are much in demand.
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The illustrations show “Billy” getting ready for an auto tour. Several thousand drawings are made to complete the 800 feet of film.
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Collection: Photoplay Magazine, June 1916 (The Photo-Play Journal for June, 1916)
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