Performance Art

Flipbook

Animated Gifs

I remember when gifs first really became a big thing. There was a popular app called Gifboom that allowed you to make your own gifs and post them, similar to Instagram where you had followers, could follow others, etc. Since gifs have gotten bigger and become even more popular, there’s apps you can download to your phone that creates a “gif keyboard”, similar to the emoji keyboard and accessed the same way, where you can search for gifs and send them in texts. Admittedly I do have one of these apps and honestly it is quite fun to use every now and then to jazz up any normal conversation.

Clay Animation

After seeing some clay animation examples under the “Time Bases Media” page on the main blog, it immediately made me think of the movie The Year Without A Santa Clause. The movie premiered in 1974 and even though I don’t celebrate Christmas, my family and I watch it every year when it comes on TV during the holiday season. The movie consists of a multitude of individual takes and is really quite enjoyable.

Emile Cohl

After watching Fantasmagorie by Emil Cohl fro 1908 I was impressed to say the least. He drew about 700 different pictures on glass plates before putting it all together to create an animation. It appears all these drawings were done in chalk and I was surprised to learn that chalk drawings actually common attractions in vaudeville shows, but Cohl instead filmed black lines on paper and then printed in negative to create the illusion of chalk. Out of all of this I personally think it’s pretty neat that I got to witness one of the first animated cartoons over 100 years later.

             

Broadway

I consider myself lucky as I’ve had the opportunity to see several shows on Broadway throughout my childhood, living about 2 ½ hours outside of NYC definitely has it’s perks.  Off the top of my head I can recall seeing The Lion King, Momma Mia, Mary Poppins, Spiderman, The Little Mermaid, The House of Blue Leaves, Wicked, American Idiot etc. My uncle lives in Manhattan and whenever we visit he makes it a point to take us to one. He travels a lot for work but you can totally tell when he’s home catching a Broadway show, or any show of that matter, is one of his favorite things to do. After learning more about Broadway extensively in class I have a better understanding of what goes into it, where it comes from, and why.

             

Cabaret Shows

Before class I knew very vaguely what cabaret shows were, but it wasn’t until we went into detail about them that I realized that I had actually experienced several. I went to Disney on vacation when I was younger a few times, and there was always the option to eat breakfast with your favorite Disney characters. They’d be roaming around in costumes and introducing themselves to every table but would also preform a song at the beginning or end. I don’t think it ever had occurred to be that something as simple as this actually played a huge part in our entertainment history and I find it interesting that unless educated on this, most people probably wouldn’t even realize.

Vaudeville

Before class I honestly hadn’t heard of a vaudeville show before. I think it’s interesting that this show seemed to combine everything from freak shows to burlesque acts. What I find especially interesting, however, is that vaudeville shows kind of played off of their audiences so to speak. My understanding is that shows varied based on the social class of the audience, to tailor to different settings, etc. All in all I think vaudeville was an interesting show and am glad to have at least some knowledge on this part of history.