Lightning Sketches
About Lightning Sketches
J. Stuart Blackton, billed as the cartoonist, draws at high speed and turns written words into pictures. The first word is a racial epithet, which becomes a caricature of a Black man. The next word, Cohen, becomes a caricature of a Jewish man. Another man comes in and smudges the drawing surface, and Blackton turns the smudge into a sketch of that man. A drinking glass, a bottle of milk, and a bottle of seltzer then move by themselves.
Cast & crew
More about Lightning Sketches
Blackton directed and produced the Vitagraph short and appears in it. Released 27 July 1907. Copyright 15 July 1907, H96559, claimant Vitagraph Company of America. AFI and Silent Era list the length as 600 feet. IMDb and other short listings say 2 minutes. Those two figures do not describe the same running time. Black and white, silent. A print exists and is in the public domain in the United States.
Themes
Making
Blackton stands at the board and works the gags in real time: a word becomes a face, a smudge becomes the man who made it, and the drawn bottles start to act.
Technique
The camera holds on the drawing surface while lettering turns into caricature and a glass, a milk bottle, and a seltzer bottle are animated.
Preservation
Silent Era lists the survival status as print exists, public domain in the United States. A copy is on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- AFI points to Blackton's The Enchanted Drawing (1900), Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906), and The Magic Fountain Pen (1909).
- This is not Georges Méliès's 1896 series A Lightning Sketch.
- Moving Picture World and the New York Clipper both noted the release on 27 July 1907.
- Silent Era records home-video editions on Blu-ray and DVD without naming the labels.
Scenes
- A racial epithet on the board becomes a caricature of a Black man, and the name Cohen becomes a caricature of a Jewish man.
- A visitor's smudge is redrawn as the visitor.
- The glass, the milk bottle, and the seltzer bottle move on their own.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-lightning-sketches)
