W. J. Ganz Studio – Out of the Melting Pot (1927)

Quote:
“Many early short subjects cloaked genuine aesthetic discourse inside novelty approaches, such as the exploration of slow, fast, or reverse motion, distortion and abstraction, and other altered perceptions induced via camera tricks. The transitions of zoo animals from abstract to realistic renditions highlight the differences between the two states.” – Bruce Posner

Quote:
This short starts out as a blurry, abstract image, then shifts until an animal at the zoo is revealed, like a puddle of melted wax becoming a candle. This happens several times.

I am not sure of how this effect was achieved. Perhaps it was a pair of anamorphic lens, with one slowly twisting until it exactly countered the distorting effects of the other. It is one of the few experimental films of the era that shows some actual experimentation. However, this was 1927, and sound was coming in. The camera would spend the next half dozen years tied down next to the sound recording booth. A lot of techniques vanished for a while. This one never got off the ground. — imdb review

Out of the Melting Pot (1927).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 min 55 s
Size: 	41.4 MiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	674x480 ~> 674x505
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 994 kb/s
BPP: 	0.386
Audio

https://nitro.download/view/57817EDD9A0AB2B/Out_of_the_Melting_Pot_(1927).mkv

Language(s):None
Subtitles:None