Lauren Schott
Billy Bitzer began his career in filmmaking in 1894, when he began working for The Magic Introduction Company. This was a period before the movie theatre was in popular use, and the peep-show was the only way to see the thirteen second films. Billy Bitzer, also known as G.W. Bitzer, was in film in its very earliest stages, and indeed, film may never have developed as it has were it not for his influential career.
Courtesy of Billy Bitzer - His Story: Billy Bitzer with Camera 1898
Billy Bitzer is known popularly as a cameraman, although titles such as this were not as strictly applied as they are at present. Reportedly, Bitzer did a little of everything on a set, with exception to acting. In his autobiography, Bitzer admits, “In those days, lots of people acted in films who had other jobs around the studio. Don’t laugh, but I was too nervous and full of stage fright before a camera. I never would take a chance on acting.” This limitation did not stop him, however. Bitzer, more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it, pioneered effects in lighting and camerawork essential to the fundamentals of modern day film.
Courtesy of Billy Bitzer - His Story: Billy Bitzer Reassembling Camera for the MoMA 1940
The bulk of Bitzer’s early work was released under the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Here he created such films as Little Egypt, The Birth of the Pearl (both early pornographic films) and Two Brothers (a Mexican romance). In this period he also met one of the strongest influences in his career in 1908, D.W. Griffith. The two became fast friends after Griffith made the jump from acting (where he, in Bitzer’s opinion, floundered) to directing (where Bitzer admired his genius) successfully; Bitzer and Griffith trusted each other to the extent that, “In all the years we worked together, even after I finally left Biograph with Mr. Griffith, there was never a written contract, only a handshake and our trust in each other.”
The friendship and collaboration between the two was fortuitous for both film in general and the Biograph Company itself (as well as subsequent companies for whom they worked). Griffith’s artistic visions and Bitzer’s unceasing ability to bring these visions to fruition turned popular and profitable. Griffith, unsatisfied with mediocrity in his films, refused to settle the same tricks other filmmakers and companies were pulling, and so, despite constant discouraging from the penny pinching board of Biograph, Bitzer, “encouraged by Mr. Griffith, …went ahead with…experiments anyway.”
To simply list some of these innovations, one might name the fuzzy-cornered cutoffs on prints; wash-drawing; certain shields for lenses, and certain lenses themselves; and cutting within a scene; not to mention his hand in creating a 1915 feature-length film entitled The Birth of a Nation, which grossed $20,000,000 in its first few years of showing, skyrocketing the world of lengthy movies into popularity. (Although Billy Bitzer is often attributed with inventing the close-up as well, he emphasizes in his autobiography that Edison’s Frank Ott’s Sneeze from 1894 is, in fact, an earlier example. )
Many of these innovations and creations were the result of necessity in Bitzer’s mind. For example, noticing the way light glanced off white pebbles to highlight a talking couple’s faces, Bitzer applied this to film and created a reverse-lighting effect. Where he had been unhappy with, “…the ugly shadows that usually made hollow masks of faces on the screen,” Bitzer now had a way of eradicating that effect. This new concept in turn created a, “…misty rainbow effect,” leading him to invent a shade for the camera lens which then led to the slightly fuzzy-edged cutoff on prints. Bitzer became known as a master of lighting; film was golden in the hands of Billy Bitzer, and audiences cued around the block to see the films in which his innovations resided.
Interestingly, one leap Bitzer made into the world of film is rarely discussed. This, of course, would be his brief foray into the world of animation with his 1908 American Mutoscope and Biograph Company film The Sculptor’s Nightmare.
The film begins with a group of gentleman arguing around a table. The argument is heated and leads the audience to understand that the group is fighting over which political figure should be sculpted to replace the bust behind them. No conclusion is drawn within this argument, and the group of gentlemen tussles and leave the room.
They rejoin in the studio of a sculptor and each faction scrambles to bribe him into sculpting their personal choices (all the while the model that he had been sculpting is hiding behind a screen, leading to a comical exchange between herself and a gentleman who notices her). Each group having bribed the sculptor, they leave him to work; he instead celebrates his good fortune with his model, only to discover and momentarily lament the fact that the gentlemen have practically destroyed his studio in their enthusiasm.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress: Screen Captures from The Sculptor's Nightmare
The sculptor and his model leave with their bribes and eat a meal, in which the sculptor becomes inebriated. He causes an uproar after having offended a woman who came to talk with the model, and the restaurant is thrown into chaos as the customers subdue the sculptor, the police arrive and the sculptor is taken away to jail.
Shouting after his jailors, the sculptor finally gives up and stumbles drunkenly to his bed, where he falls asleep. While his body remains prone on his bed, his dreams act themselves out on the foreground; first one pedestal, then a second, then a third appear. Through stop film animation, lumps of clay assemble themselves atop the pedestals and sculpt themselves into Democrat William Jennings Bryan, Republican Charles W. Fairbanks and William Howard Taft.
The sculptor stands and marvels at them (as does the audience, as one of the busts smokes his pipe), and they suddenly disappear. The sculptor returns to his bed and another pedestal appears. Clay this time forms itself into a small bear, which animates itself and waves, looking about. The bear dissolves and its clay forms itself this time into Theodore Roosevelt. The sculptor stands and marvels at the bust, which then disappears. The sculptor returns to his bed, shaking his drunken head.
Here we see some of the first steps into the world of animation in filmmaking. While some other films at the time were being made with clay animation (for example, Edison’s A Sculptor’s Welsh Rarebit Nightmare of 1908 ), they have been swallowed into obscurity. Possibly due in part to Billy Bitzer’s overall success in the world of innovative filmmaking, and otherwise due to its charm, The Sculptor’s Nightmare has survived and is available for viewing even today.
In Bitzer’s film, we are able to see the political machinations that drove not only the country, but his personal interests throughout much of his filmmaking. One of Bitzer’s earliest films was, in fact, the first presidential film to be made: that of William McKinley receiving notification of his nomination to the presidency. In this later political work of The Sculptor’s Nightmare, we see the theme which drove both Bitzer and Griffith to work in film—a purpose to the art (a theme which resurfaces yet again in their collaborative work The Birth of a Nation).
Outside of this political theme, however, the work presents the dynamic, aesthetically pleasing visuals for which Bitzer was known. There is almost constantly some small movement which draws the eye across the screen in some way or another, and in no place is this truer than in the portions of clay animation.
The statues form themselves in thick, fluid motions, building up and reforming slowly but progressively until finally the true bust surfaces. The four busts move lips and cheeks in speech, and, as mentioned earlier, one bust truly jumps into reality as he smokes his pipe. Perhaps most delightful of all is Theodore Roosevelt’s symbol, the little bear. It appeals to the audience in its motions, more complex than those of the heads as it moves nearly the entirety of its body. The cub charms in its appearance and enchants in its liveliness.
While Bitzer never returned to clay animation in any dedicated sort of way, the success of the effect is evident even today, as the art of clay animation is still prolific. Billy Bitzer, the man well known as a pioneer in the world of light and filming, took some of the first steps into that potential world of clay animation within this short picture and proved its potential.
Bitzer, G.W. Billy Bitzer: His Story. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, Ltd., 1973. Print. xi.
ibid, 82.
ibid, 247.
ibid, 67.
ibid, 85.
ibid, 10
ibid, 84.
ibid, 84.
The Sculptor's Nightmare / American Mutoscope and Biograph Company; Director, Wallace McCutcheon; Camera, G.W. Bitzer. 1908. 18 Sept 2009. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mbrsmi/trmp.4144.>
Lemay, Brian. "History of Animation 1900-1910." The Animated Cartoon Factory. 30 Jul 2009. Web. 18 Sept 2009.
The Sculptor’s Nightmare.
Bitzer, G.W., 11.
ibid, 106.
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