Accordion Player
About Accordion Player
Adolphe Le Prince stands on the steps of a house and plays a diatonic button accordion. The camera does not move. He is dressed as he is in Roundhay Garden Scene, and the lens sits in a similar place. The shot lasts about ten seconds.
Cast & crew
More about Accordion Player
Louis Le Prince filmed his son Adolphe with the single-lens camera. Joseph Whitley was Le Prince's father-in-law. The date is given as October 14, 1888, and it may be the same day as Roundhay Garden Scene. Adolphe's clothes and the camera position match that film.
Themes
Background
The strip belongs to the 1888 Leeds tests, before public film projection. It was an experiment in moving pictures, not a released show.
Making
Le Prince was testing a single-lens camera at the Whitley house in Leeds, using family as the only performers.
Look
Louis Le Prince framed one static view of the steps. The figure's hands and the accordion are the only motion.
Technique
The single-lens camera records a continuous figure instead of the multi-lens strips Le Prince had tried earlier.
Preservation
The sequence survives, about ten seconds, among the Le Prince films from October 1888.
Notes
- It is one of the few Le Prince sequences that still exist.
- The accordion is a diatonic button instrument, not a piano accordion.
- There is no second angle and no cut.
- Roundhay Garden Scene, shot in the same garden period, is the better-known Le Prince film.
Scenes
- Adolphe plays the button accordion on the Whitley steps while the camera stays put.
