Comedy for Animators

Chapter 4Shadow and Light

In the beginning, there was the prank.

When motion pictures first appeared, movie cameras were used simply to record normal events. They showed things such as workers leaving a factory, or a train entering a station. It wasn’t long before simple stories were created for film. Since reels of film were extremely short, the story also had to be very short. So, in 1895, Louie Lumière staged a simple prank. His film, originally titled Le Jardinere, is now commonly referred to as L’Arroseur Arrosé, or in English, The Sprinkler Sprinkled. It shows a man using a hose to water a garden. A boy enters the frame and steps on the hose, stopping the water flow. When the gardener looks into the nozzle, the boy releases the pressure ...