L'Homme Machine (1885) FULL VIDEO

 

L'Homme Machine (1885)

Country of Origin:  France

A machine tries to replicate a man walking. One of the earliest animated films. It is cited as one of the earliest examples of an animated film, featuring a schematic stick-figure man walking. It reduced human movement to its most basic lines and dots (a collection of 2 dots and 5 lines) while remaining identifiable as a person.

The film is arguably the earliest attempt at motion capture animation. Marey achieved this by filming individuals dressed in black with white stripes and dots on their joints, allowing him to isolate and animate the mechanics of human locomotion.

Unlike early films intended for entertainment, L'homme machine was a scientific "schematic visualization". Marey used it to understand the physiology of human movement, applying a method that captured multiple phases of motion on a single surface.

Marey used a single-lens camera (often his "chronophotographic gun") to record these sequences, a significant departure from contemporary Eadweard Muybridge, who used multiple cameras to capture motion.