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THE JUMP CUT AND SEQUENTIAL FRAMING Kuniyoshi often used a technique that mimicked a film's storyboard. Or should we say, the other way around. With regards to action sequences, in his warrior prints, he would often draw a character twice in the same scene—once preparing for a blow and once landing it. The ‘Triptych Pan’ was used by Kuniyoshi. He would design them so that if you scanned from right to left, the action unfolded in time. This is effectively a #trackingshot or a #pan, where the artist controls the speed at which you digest the narrative. Here from Utagawa Kuniyoshi is his ‘One Hundred Tales’ storyboard made of three three-sheet sets called ‘triptychs.’

Jacques de Vaucanson made other automata; the Tambourine Player and the most famous being a duck that defecated. But unlike The Flute Player, the duck was far less popular due to what it did vs. the playing of music. The de Vaucanson duck top images, showing the internal mechanism, from a publication from the mid-1800s. Bottom right a replica of Jacques de Vaucanson’s digesting duck automaton, from the Museum of Automata, Grenoble, France. The original apparatus met its demise in a fire in 1879.

THE PHANTASMAGORIA BEFORE THE PHANTASMAGORIA The Colosseum, already a ruin by the 16th century, was an evocative setting. Its vast, open structure would have provided a dramatic backdrop for projections, with flickering light casting images on walls or screens. Cellini’s account emphasizes the emotional impact on the audience, who were reportedly awestruck, highlighting the event’s blend of art, technology, and spectacle. Below, a scene taken from the Berlioz's opera Benvenuto Cellini depicting the #Roscoe report on the #Phantasmagoria-type dressed stage at the Coliseum (or #Amphitheatre), Rome in 1540.