Roundhay Garden Scene/Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge by Louis Le Prince (1888), Handel's oratorio, Israel in Egypt by Sir August Manns (1888)

1888, the year of the death of the composer Charles-Valentin Alkan (Chopin's friend and neighbour) is also the year of the earliest surviving recording of music and earliest recorded film.

Combined on this video is the earliest surviving recording of music (a live performance of Handel's oratorio, Israel in Egypt conducted by Sir August Manns, recorded by Edison engineer George E. Gouraud at Crystal Palace, London, England, 29th June 1888) and the earliest surviving recorded film (shot by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince in Leeds, England in October 1888): Roundhay Garden Scene (filmed 14 October 1888) and Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (filmed late October 1888).

In the Roundhay Garden Scene (filmed in the garden of the Whitley family home in Oakwood Grange Road, Roundhay, Leeds, England) are the following people (from the left at beginning of sequence): Adolphe Le Prince (the film maker's son), Miss Harriet Hartley, Mrs. Sarah Whitley, (the film maker's mother-in-law), and Joseph Whitley (the film maker's business partner). The original film was shot at 12 frames per second and lasts 2 seconds. Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge was filmed in Leeds, England in late October 1888, at 20 frames per second.On Friday 29th June 1888, from 2pm, a performance of Handel's oratorio Israel in Egypt was captured on a number of wax cylinder recordings. This performance was part of the trienniel Handel Festivals mounted in the UK. They were recorded from the press gallery in Crystal Palace by Edison-representative Colonel Gouraud, as a way to test and show off Edison's phonograph. Three of these cylinders still survive.

The conductor was Sir August Manns, conducting an orchestra of some 500 musicians and a choir of over 4,000 voices, in front of an audience of 23,722 people.

These are the earliest deliberate recordings of music known to exist (earlier recordings from the 1870s are considered lost). Fortunately these can be played back at a quite definite pitch, as we know the pitch of the Crystal Palace organ at this time.

Unfortunately, the recordings are in very poor shape, audibly speaking. You are going to have a very hard time grappling with the sound, and trying to make out anything. Each cylinder contains a number of tracks. This is what you are hearing:

Cylinder 1 (0:00 - 2:27) -

The first text is "[Mo]ses, and the children of Israel sung unto the Lord and spake saying", from the chorus at the opening of Part II (very hard to hear the orchestra in this).

Following this is "I will sing unto the Lord for he hath triumphed" from the next number in Part II (you should be able to hear the altos and tenors singing at the start of this). Near the end you might make out the word "gloriously" sung in Handelian semiquavers.

Cylinder 2 (2:30 - 5:10) -

The first track on this cylinder is effectively inaudible. We do not know what the music is on it.

The second track is no.24 from the Oratorio: "Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power". Unfortunately, the stylus sticks in this track.

The third track is from the same number at "Thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy", also with some stylus sticking problems.

Track 4 is yet more of this movement, ending with "For He hath triumphed gloriously".

Cylinder 3 (5:14 - 7:45) -

The first track is the last part of movement 37: "...ever, the Lord shall reign for ever and ever".

The second track is a fragment of number 39: "For ever and ever"

The third track is a continuation of the previous one from "...shall reign for ever and ever", and continuing as far as "For He hath triumphed gloriously".

The last track is the very end of the oratorio, from "...horse and his rider, the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea".

It's all very hard to make out. You can perceive a very slow tempo being employed at least.

Incidentally, Colonel Gourard was also present at the "phonograph party" in 1888 which captured Sullivan's voice, and his voice too exists on wax cylinder.

For more info about these rolls, there is a fantastic website to read here: http://www.webrarian.co.uk/crystalpalace
For more information on: Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Aim%C3%A9_Augustin_Le_PrinceFor more information on: Sir August Manns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Manns

Edison phonograph cylinders (1888): Handel - Israel in Egypt

Earliest surviving film and sound recording 1888

Pull My Daisy (1959) by Frank Robert and Alfred Leslie

Pull My Daisy (1959) is a short film that typifies the Beat Generation. Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, Daisy was adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of his play, Beat Generation; Kerouac also provided improvised narration. It starred poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, artists Larry Rivers and Alice Neel, musician David Amram, actors Richard Bellamy and Delphine Seyrig, dancer Sally Gross, and Pablo Frank, Robert Frank's then-young son.

Based on an incident in the life of Beat icon Neal Cassady and his wife, the painter Carolyn, the film tells the story of a railway brakeman whose wife invites a respectable bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results.

Originally intended to be called The Beat Generation the title Pull My Daisy was taken from the poem of the same name written by Kerouac, Ginsberg and Cassady in the late 1940s. Part of the original poem was used as a lyric in David Amram's jazz composition that opens the film.

The Beat philosophy emphasized spontaneity, and the film conveyed the quality of having been thrown together or even improvised. Pull My Daisy was accordingly praised for years as an improvisational masterpiece, until Leslie revealed in a November 28, 1968 article in The Village Voice that the film was actually carefully planned, rehearsed, and directed by him and Frank, who shot the film on a professionally lit studio set.

Leslie and Frank discuss the film at length in Jack Sargeant's book Naked Lens: Beat Cinema. An illustrated transcript of the film's narration was also published in 1961 by Grove Press.

Pull My Daisy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1996, as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The impromptu narration juxtaposed with particular shots portray the Beat Generation in an autobiographical sense. The film editing process began with a picture lock and was a conservative, narrative story arc conceived by Jack Kerouac, directed by Alfred Leslie and shot by Robert Frank. The narration was then improvised by Kerouac resulting in a film that defines the Beat Generation, making a comment on a number of topics representative of conservative America, including protests to industrialization, education, anti-Semitism, sexuality, gender roles, religion and patriotism.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_My_Daisy

Click HERE to watch Pull My Daisy!

Watch the making of Pull My Daisy below.

London After Midnight (1927) by Tod Browning (Restoration Still version, 2002)

London After Midnight (1927) is a silent mystery film with horror overtones. The film stars Lon Chaney, Marceline Day, Conrad Nagel, Henry B. Walthall, and Polly Moran and was directed by Tod Browning. It is also a lost film, quite possibly the most famous and eagerly-sought of all lost films. The last known print of the film was stored by MGM in Vault #7. In 1967, an electrical fire broke out in the vault that destroyed countless films from the silent era, including this last known print.
In 2002, Turner Classic Movies commissioned famed restoration producer Rick Schmidlin (Greed, Touch of Evil) to produce a 45 min. reconstruction of the film, using still photographs. This was well received by horror fans and Schmidlin received the Rondo Award for his efforts.
For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_After_Midnight_%28film%29

Fred Ott's Sneeze (A.K.A.-Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze) (1894) by William K.L. Dickson (Edison Studios)

Fred Ott's Sneeze (also known as Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze) is an 1894 American, short, black-and-white, silent documentary film shot by William K.L. Dickson and starring Fred Ott. It was the first motion picture to be copyrighted in the United States.

In the five-second film one of Thomas Edison's assistants, Fred Ott, takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. According to the Library of Congress, "It was filmed for publicity purposes as a series of still photographs to accompany an article in Harper's Weekly".

The film was produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company, which had begun making films in 1890 under the direction of Dickson, one of the earliest film pioneers. It was filmed within the Black Maria studio at West Orange, New Jersey, in the USA, which was America's first movie studio. It was filmed between January 2, 1894 and January 7, 1894 and was displayed, at the time, through the means of a Kinetoscope.

The earliest surviving copyrighted motion picture, the Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze is a short film made by W. K. L. Dickson in January 1894 for advertising purposes. Often referred to as "Fred Ott's Sneeze," this is is one of the world's earliest motion pictures and America's best known early film production. The star is Fred Ott, an Edison employee known to his fellow workers in the laboratory for his comic sneezing and other gags. This item was received in the Library of Congress on January 9, 1894, as a copyright deposit from Dickson.

Refrence from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Ott%27s_Sneeze

The Sneeze was submitted for copyright as 45 frames from the motion picture printed as positive prints on paper rather than as a reel of film. The prints were mounted on cardboard and submitted to the Copyright Office in this form. The video of the Sneeze on loc.gov was later rephotographed and turned into a moving image from these mounted frames.

CREATED/PUBLISHED
United States : Edison Manufacturing Co., 1894.

NOTES
Copyright: W. K. L. Dickson; 9Jan1894; 2887.
Filmed ca. January 2-7, 1894, in Edison's Black Maria studio.

RELATED NAMES
Dickson, W. K.-L. (William Kennedy-Laurie), 1860-1935, production.
Ott, Frederic P., performer.
Heise, William, camera.
Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
Hendricks (Gordon) Collection (Library of Congress)
Paper Print Collection (Library of Congress)

Frankenstein (1910) by J. Searle Dawley (Edison Studios)

Frankenstein is a 1910 film made by Edison Studios that was written and directed by J. Searle Dawley. It was the first motion picture adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The unbilled cast included Augustus Phillips as Dr. Frankenstein, Charles Ogle as the Monster, and Mary Fuller as the doctor's fiancée.

Shot in three days, it was filmed at the Edison Studios in the Bronx, New York City. Although some sources credit Thomas Edison as the producer, he in fact played no direct part in the activities of the motion picture company that bore his name.

For many years, this film was believed to be a lost film. In 1963, a plot description (reprinted above) and stills were discovered published in the March 15, 1910 issue of an old Edison film catalog, The Edison Kinetogram.

In the 1950s, a print of this film was purchased by a Wisconsin film collector, Alois F. Dettlaff, who did not realize its rarity until many years later. Its existence was first revealed in the mid-1970s. Although somewhat deteriorated, the film was in viewable condition, complete with titles and tints as seen in 1910. Dettlaff had a 35 mm preservation copy made by the George Eastman House in the late 1970s.

For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein_%281910_film%29

Fluxus Film No.16 - (Bottoms short version) Four (1966) by Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono (オノ・ ヨーコ, Ono Yōko^?, kanji: 小野洋子; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese-American artist, musician, author and peace activist, also known for her marriage to John Lennon and her groundbreaking work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking. John Lennon once described her as "the world's most famous unknown artist: everybody knows her name, but nobody knows what she does."

Ono was a sometime member of Fluxus, a loose association of Dada-inspired avant-garde artists that developed in the early 1960s. Fluxus founder George Maciunas, a friend of Ono's during the 60s, admired her work and promoted it with enthusiasm. Maciunas invited Ono to join the Fluxus group, but she declined because she wanted to remain an independent artist.

As an experimental filmmaker, Ono made made sixteen films between 1964 and 1972, and gained particular renown for a 1966 Fluxus film called simply No. 4, but often referred to as "Bottoms". The film consists of a series of close-ups of human buttocks as the subject walks on a treadmill. The screen is divided into four almost equal sections by the elements of the gluteal cleft and the horizontal gluteal crease. The soundtrack consists of interviews with those who are being filmed as well as those considering joining the project.

This is the shorter 5½ min. version of 'Bottoms' also known as Flux Film No.16.

For more information on Yoko Ono: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoko_ono
For more information on the Fluxus Movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus

Fluxus Films No.14 - One (1966) by Yoko Ono