springfieldrental Review of The Sculptor's Nightmare

The Sculptor's Nightmare (1908)

Ground-breaking Movie Using Clay Animation Special Effects

[8/10 · 5 January 2021]

Remember the movie "Chicken Run" and the TV series "Gumby?" Their creators used a technique called clay animation. Claymation is a laborious and time-consuming process where the camera takes one-frame at a time while filming a slight movement/shape of the characters and props using plasticine clay. At least twelve changes are required for one second of film movement. A 30-minute movie requires at least 21,600 stops of the camera to change the figures' positions. But its results are amazing when all of the recorded frames are played back in rapid succession before the viewer. The earliest surviving movie using clay animation in a plot is Biograph Studio's 1908 "The Sculptor's Nightmare." D. W Griffith and a soon-to-be-comic genius Mack Sennett can be seen acting in the seven-minute one-reeler. Wallace McCutcheon Sr., in one of his last movies he filmed, was the Biograph main director before Griffith took his place. The clay effects appear two-thirds into the movie.