Time for Animated Films
Animated Films are ones in which individual drawings, paintings, or illustrations are photographed frame by frame (stop-frame cinematography). Usually, each frame differs slightly from the one preceding it, giving the illusion of movement when frames are projected in rapid succession at 24 frames per second. The earliest cinema animation was composed of frame-by-frame, hand-drawn images. When combined with movement, the illustrator’s two-dimensional static art came alive and created pure and imaginative cinematic images – animals and other inanimate objects could become evil villains or heroes.
Animations are not a strictly-defined genre category, but rather a film technique, although they often contain genre-like elements. Animation, fairy tales, and stop-motion films often appeal to children, but it would marginalize animations to view them only as “children’s entertainment.” Animated films are often directed to, or appeal most to children, but easily can be enjoyed by all. See section on children’s-family films.
To create the animations, individually-created images were painted directly onto the frames of a flexible strip of transparent gelatin (with film perforations on the edges), and run through his projection system. The three animated films lasted about 12-15 minutes each. Depending upon one’s definition of terms, some consider Pauvre Pierrot the oldest-surviving animated film ever made and publicly broadcast.