Talk:Multiplane camera

Japanese Multiplane Camera

I just finished a research paper on the premiere of 'Snow White' and the invention of the Multiplanar Camera, and I had assumed that it was purely an American idea. But check out this video on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyGvGMa2RFg

Amazing, isn't it? A Japanese cartoon with a 3D background! That was 1933, the same time that Ub Iwerks was apparently using his nifty camera. Does anyone know any background about this? It would be neat to add an international element to the article, even just to show that not all cartoons of the time were Fleischer, Disney, or Schlesinger. I feel the information might be imbedded in Japanese language websites, which I can't venture into.

Response? It would be sad if this were overlooked, especially with such knowledgeable people out there. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 137.22.100.185 (talk) 23:37, 27 March 2007 (UTC).

@Janke @Toughpigs

See just below my responses here, to 2007 responses by Janke and Lee M. Japanese multiplanar technique in the 1930's was reported by Thomas Lamarre of McGill in Canada, in 2006 (around the time of the above exchange), article at:

- http://www.lamarre-mediaken.com/Site/Film_279_0_files/Lamarre_Multiplanar_Image.pdf

- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236697521_The_Multiplanar_Image

I already list it down below, in our 2024 exchange. What is noteworthy is that this demonstrates that even in 2007, this article was already Disney-centric and must not have even mentioned Lotte Reiniger at all, because he is thinking that 1933 was the start of the invention. Note he's a film and animation technology researcher.

Lamarre, Thomas (2006). "The Multiplanar Image." Mechademia Second Arc 1(1):120-143. DOI: 10.1353/mec.0.0067

Zelchenko (talk) 07:09, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

@Toughpigs And now, you can see here that @Janke was singing this same song way back beginning almost 18 years ago. That's pretty annoying to roost on misconceptions for so long. Janke relies only on a single glance at a blurry image to draw his already long-preconditioned conclusion that his idol, Walt Disney, invented the multiplanar camera. One look at the camera on p. 126 in the Lamarre article shows quite clearly the earmarks of a Lotte Reiniger-style multiplane camera by the Japanese animator Ōfuji Noburō, with ample space between layers to produce depth. This is also quite apparent in photographs of Reiniger's own devices. If you've never been to a Chinese shadow puppet show -- the well-known inspiration for Reiniger's invention -- then you haven't seen how important is the depth between layers. And yet you've likely stood on a typical theater stage. As with most stage theater and early TV productions, as well as all multiplanar animation, and even on Hollywood's big sets, due to the dearth of space, an illusion of depth is typically maintained despite the artificially shallow distance between planes. But if there's even an inch between planes creating a small effect, then by definition it's a multiplanar camera.

I've done related work in various shops over the decades with large and small process cameras, museum projectors, photo enlargers, and rubylith cutting for flat multilayer art. Technically speaking, even a cel stack *could* also be argued to be "multiplanar," but it seems an accepted definition would involve some deliberate physical space between the layers. It's not clear to me yet from photos exactly how deep the layers were on Reiniger's camera, and it's more clear on Ōfuji Noburō, although it's quite apparent from the films that there must have been enough space due to some illusion of depth. And yet the space has other, more technical, purposes: to allow the animator some room to nudge the work from the side, and also to prevent loose work to be sucked up to higher layers by the Bernoulli effect, as would no doubt happen with Reiniger's paper cuts. Recall, however, her media was inspired by Chinese paper cuts and shadow puppetry. This depth in puppet theater of all sorts is necessary just to be able to move the figures and props around backstage. But this is important: even if space were only made to facilitate the technical shoot and if there was some negligible visual depth that was unintended, the mere fact of any space coupled with the vertical nature of the cameras should qualify a device as a multiplanar camera. Instead of calling Reiniger's a "precursor," it is much more reasonable to call the numerous later bells and whistles beginning in the 1930s (even with the Japanese!) "motion and parallax enhancements."

What's becoming clear is that cel plane animation, being much cheaper and easier to work than glass, was by the 1930's in the end found incapable of creating depth. Reiniger had already discovered the solution, her frame idea likely inspired the Japanese, and it must not have been difficult at all for an investigation by Disney animators to turn up Reiniger's process. And yet no matter who may have re-invented it out of whole cloth (always possible, though I'd have to see evidence of a clean room), and regardless of who has the naming rights, Reiniger's invention is still the earliest multiplane camera.

Biases in Janke's view clearly has caused a minor historical crime against Lotte Reiniger, lasting 18 years. The damage is already all over the Internet. Congratulations. Now you want to "dial it back" based on further arrogant impulses? Toughpigs, please don't touch it unless you're doing something to help. Certainly don't do a rollback, unless you want to really ignite my ire.

Zelchenko (talk) 08:00, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

All that said, the 1933 movie on Youtube (UGOKIE-KO-RI-NO-TATEHIKI) ("Fox and Asian racoon cheat each other"?) by Ikuo Oishi is possibly *not* multiplanar camera work. Notice in the walking through the forest scene (0:36 to 0:46), the artifacts at the right are probably caused by unwanted light hitting the (dimensionally unstable) surface of the several cel layers necessary for the depth effect. This was probably flat work, not multiplanar. Zelchenko (talk) 08:32, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I had a look - it doesn't look like a multiplane shot, rather just cel overlays, where parts of the forest are panned at a different speed. To be true multiplane, the cels need to be spatially separated, and I couldn't see that (in the admittedly blurry video). --Janke | Talk 18:09, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed (very belatedly!) - this is multiple planes of artwork overlaid on a flat surface with the animation cels sandwiched between. Still pretty ambitious and technically complex for its day, but not true 3d. Lee M (talk) 03:15, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

stereoscopic

Multiplane cameras do produce a stereoscopic image, but -- as Norma Desmond might say -- it's the camera that's not stereoscopic. This sentence needs to be rephrased, but I can't think of how to do it at the moment. WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 21:03, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

• Unless you use a 3-D camera, the result is not stereoscopic; for that, you need separate, different images for left & right eye. --Janke | Talk 06:09, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Complexity

The article does not address the technical complexity of the multiplane camera. Not only does the motion of every single plane need to be calculated for each shot, but in most cases one or two of the planes also has animation cels overlaid on top which must be inserted, located in place and subsequently removed without jiggling any of the planes out of alignment. In order to maintain the maximum depth of field (not a consideration with flat animation boards) the camera aperture would have needed to be stopped down, necessitating longer exposure times which could cause the cels to warp under the hot lights. This would have been exacerbated by the successive-exposure technique, by which each frame would have been shot three times, once each through red, green and blue filters, for Technicolor.

There is, for example, a shot in the Fantasia outtake Claire de Lune which lasts approximately 80 seconds, or over 1,900 frames. It includes cel animation, on approximately the third plane from the camera, of a walking and flying crane, complete with ripple and reflection effects in the early part of the shot. The multiplane effects encompass complex 3-dimensional camera movement with changing speeds and angles as the camera tracks the bird's movement. I don't know how long it took to achieve that one shot, but I wouldn't be surprised if it took weeks. Lee M (talk) 03:28, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

• Lee, you could yourself add a bit more concise version of the above text in the first paragraph to the page! Best regards, --Janke | Talk 06:36, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Who "invented" the multiplane?

I reverted a couple of edits, Reiniger's camera was not a proper multiplane with individual control of the levels, just glass layers, which were not movable. This method had been used before, e.g. by Norman Dawn, and even earlier... --Janke | Talk 11:52, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Why is the movability of the layers necessary to qualify? Just because the Disney studio's and later cameras had this feature doesn't necessarily make it a defining characteristic. Unless there's some sort of authoritative definition, it seems like any camera using images on multiple planes ought to qualify as a "multiplane camera". Magic9Ball (talk) 01:53, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

The problem is that it is impossible to know who first used two or more sheets of glass in front of (or below) a camera. Iwerks and Fleischer built controllable planes, while the Disney studio camera was the first that was actually named "Multiplane". --Janke | Talk 05:22, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Both of your statements sidestep the point. @Magic9Ball is right, the definition of a "multiplane camera" lies in the name. It's well known that Disney did not invent the "multiplane camera," he only made it appear so by marketing and by giving it a name (which to my knowledge he did not trademark, and the trade has never capitalized the name).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V9fxYqoLwY

But I'd ask @Janke, what's going on around 11:00 and elsewhere in the 1926 Lotte Reiniger film? Looks like at least three planes are at work here. Given her well-known rig design in photographs from that time, and the common knowledge that she used sheets of glass below the camera, and the fact that there were several places for shelves on her cameras, why does this not fit the definition of multiplane camera? Even if you add controllable planes, these sure look controlled to me. Have you even looked closly at Reiniger's work before making the pronouncement that it's not multiplane camerawork? I just spent five minutes looking at her stuff and it's rather painfully evident that (1) she was using glass panes; (2) layers of glass must have been be placed at various levels; (3) these layers were movable ("controllable") by hand. Do you have any other explanation for the effect you see at 11:00 and elsewhere? If not, then @Toughpigs the 2024 edits need to remain. Perhaps we need time to find reliable sources, but you can add some brace queries here and there if you're so concerned about a lack of evidence. If evidence is sparse, well that's how the people who don't have self-promotional money get forgotten by history. You're going to have to allow for a little of that by giving time before overturning what from even a very cursory look appears like a fairly clear case. What are you, the U.S. Supreme Court? Zelchenko (talk) 09:10, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to retract the question: It's apparent from a German documentary about Reiniger that the cloud effect here may well have been done flat. A clear view of similar work, albeit done around 1970: "The Art of Lotte Reiniger" 1970 prod. Louis Hagen, dir. John Isaacs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXQPZqOqe58

Accomopanying text at @9:05-9:35 "One of the most important tools of the technique are the scissors, and it is in the construction of the backgrounds that the scissors play one of the most vital roles, constructing the different layers and thicknesses of transparent paper. Over all these layers is placed a single sheet of paper, to give the figure freedom to move, and for the clouds and water, a second glass plate is used, so that these can appear slightly out of focus."

So, it's easily possible that the three or four layers of clouds seen in the 1926 Achmed around 9:00 were done flat like this, although I think it would have been tifficult. This part is not certain. In any event, there is more clear evidence in the photo at File:Lotte Reiniger, Carl Koch, Walter Türck, Alexander Kardan.jpg. It's difficult to claim that the two layers being worked on do not represent multiplane work, and evidence of additional shelves is clear. This photo was taken probably between 1923 and 1925 when Achmed was in production, and the best hypothesis of how the shelves were used would probably be to create the unusual background layer effects. I haven't taken a close enough look at the movie to decide where it's most likely, but the focal plane is clearly getting some adjustment at certain strategic points. Zelchenko (talk) 10:18, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Featured picture scheduled for POTD

Hello! This is to let editors know that File:MultiplaneDemo.webm, a featured picture used in this article, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD) for September 10, 2022. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at Template:POTD/2022-09-10. For the greater benefit of readers, any potential improvements or maintenance that could benefit the quality of this article should be done before its scheduled appearance on the Main Page. If you have any concerns, please place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you! Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 12:24, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

A demonstration of the effect of a multiplane camera, a motion-picture camera that was used in the traditional animation process that moves a number of pieces of artwork past the camera at various speeds and at various distances from one another. This creates a sense of parallax or depth.

Various parts of the artwork layers are left transparent to allow other layers to be seen behind them. The movements are calculated and photographed frame by frame, with the result being an illusion of depth by having several layers of artwork moving at different speeds: the further away from the camera, the slower the speed. The multiplane effect is sometimes referred to as a parallax process.

Video credit: Janke

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Lotte Reininger coverage

Today, Zelchenko made several edits intentionally "demoting" Disney in order to give credit to Lotte Reininger for creating the first multiplane camera. The edit summary for Zelchenko's first edit says:

"In an industry well-known for treating women as second-class citizens, the language of the original description took a great deal of credit away from Reininger, by calling the later advancements the true definition of multiplane technology. The crucial advancement was -- by definition! -- her multiplanar design. By insinuating that her camera was not true multiplane, it put Reininger outside the "men's world" of advancements and denied her the right which to she is fully entitled."

I understand the point that Zelchenko is making about giving deserved credit to female animators. However, Zelchenko didn't add any sources to back up these assertions, and the motivation seems to be to Right Great Wrongs.

The one reference that was already on the page is from the BFI (now on Internet Archive) which says, "Lotte also designed an early form of the 'multi-plane' camera, which separates foregrounds and backgrounds into layers to give a 3D effect." This matches the text that was in the article: "An early form of the multiplane camera was used by Lotte Reiniger for her animated feature..." Zelchenko changed the phrase "an early form" in the article to "The earliest multiplane camera used in animation was used by Lotte Reiniger".

Zelchenko, do you have any sources besides that BFI page to back up your changes to the page? Toughpigs (talk) 17:39, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

User Zelchenko has changed the emphasis of the article considerably. Lotte R's camera was very rudimentary, just a method of stacking several (often only 2 or 3) glass plates on top of each other, while Disney's camera had up to 6 planes (often at least 3 or 4), that were all adjustable in height as well as pan/tilt, and each had two movable peg bars to hold the animation cels. Also, Iwerks' and Fleischer's cameras were much simpler than Disney's, more like tabletop-setups. I find the mention of parts from a Chevrolet totally inconsequential - what parts, what were they used for? Also "In the 1930s, began improving..." - who? The article needs a thorough going-over to improve style and better concentrate on what's important. --Janke | Talk 07:48, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Nevertheless, if her invention satisfies the strict definition of multiplane camera, then the edits should stand. Do you have a definition? And "rudimentary" is your editorial opinion from exactly 100 years into the future. At the time, her invention was unprecedented and created great fanfare. That it was elaborated on later by designers with more funding is an additional testament to its importance. Zelchenko (talk) 07:55, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree about the Chevrolet point, but I didn't make that edit, I just worked it around the new edits. Actually, the previous insertions about Iwerks and that book were puffy Disney historiography. You're arguing about advancements on the technology, which on its face invalidates any claim that what Lotte R. developed was not the precursor. Whether it is "rudimentary" is irrelevant. Whether Iwerks had ever known about her technique is irrelevant (but he must have seen the film). Whether Disney built a later souped-up version is irrelevant to who invented the first one. Was a rock tied to a stick not the earliest invention of the hammer? But in fact you insult her: her technique was quite novel for the day, widely applauded by the aesthetic and technical critics.

Maybe we stop arguing and find some more reliable sources. Zelchenko (talk) 08:01, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I do tend to right great wrongs through journalism that is more objective than what it is contesting. I'm glad you mention it. I'm not specifically a feminist, and I'm not some huge fan of Lotte Reiniger (I only learned about her last night). I right wrongs for the good of history, and I've been doing it probably since before you were born.

But it would be a mistake to equate this with big-letter Wikipedia Righting Great Wrongs or so-called "tendentious editing." You make a mockery of my energies by suggesting it. Your claim that there is no evidence to back up the statement is unrealistic on its surface. Just for starts, I would say that it stands on its own both by definition and by the statement in BFI. This Wiki page has already been cited over the years by numerous sources erroneously claming variously that Ub Iwerks or Walt Disney "invented" the very first multiplane camera, when Iwerks actually started working on one a long time after Reiniger had already won international praise for her films. That Disney has actually earned credit and even awards for it may in fact be due specifically to the promotion of his legacy on this page and elsewhere. As is well known (I hope you don't ask me for sources), Disney laid claim to a good number of things and in the process took credit from others (Osamu Tezuka and "Lion King"?), and his historians have permitted these issues to go unanswered for decades. It would in fact be a "great wrong" (big, t, little, t, I don't care) if Wikipedia continued to be a tool for this kind of activity.

As I said, unless Lotte Reiniger's 1923 camera is not a multiplane camera by the very definition, then the edits need to stand; it would then be your burden to show how it is not a multiplane camera, not mine to scavenge for more sources. If you want to help me find some sources, that would be great. If I need to do that work for the community on your demand, I can try to find time. But I'm not the one rewriting history. If you're really bent on going to battle on this, then you should look back at who it was who promoted Disney, when, and why. Perhaps they were attempting to Wrong Great Rights? Or were they just such great big fans of Walt Disney? Zelchenko (talk) 07:52, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Ah, now I see why Janke's jumped in. This is an old hobby horse of his going back to 2018:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Multiplane_camera#Who_invented_the_multiplane

Zelchenko (talk) 08:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

And it makes zero difference who gave it the name "multiplane," as @Janke asserts among his justifications in the 2018 reverts. What's the definition? Is Janke busy rewriting definitions for the historical record? Zelchenko (talk) 08:07, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm not belittling others' uses of two or more planes, nor interested in any edit warring, but as you well know, the term "Multiplane" was coined at the Disney studio in 1937, and is in fact, trademarked by them. --Janke | Talk 09:50, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Nobody's particularly interested in who invented a name. You can start a separate stub or even a section downstory about the _naming_ of the multiplane camera. Edward Tufte invented the name "sparkline." Not particularly newsworthy all by itself, because it depended on something I had invented several years before. Same issue. Tufte had nothing to do with the invention -- in fact, he's well aware I invented it, because he led the charge against Microsoft's patent claims and the discovery of my prior art is actually archived on his own website. He won against Microsoft, thanks to me. Yet he's never publicly acknowledged my contribution and refuses to teach it in his classes to his thousands of students.

In the same vein, Disney himself had nothing to do with the fact that Lotte Reiniger _invented_ the device and reduced it to practice way before anyone at or anywhere near Disney Studios had even begun thinking about the technique. It was a niche concept in 1923 used for a highly unique and innovative animation concept, and so it took years for conventional animators to realize its potential for cartoons (and the first to realize it wasn't Disney, who frankly had relatively little inventive talent of his own).

Frankly, it seems that as a true artist rather an a tireless self-promoter like Disney, Reiniger was busy creating, not creating names with which to adorn herself. Zelchenko (talk) 06:13, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Zelchenko, what I'm hearing from your response is that you don't have any reliable sources to support your claims. You say that "her invention was unprecedented and created great fanfare", and that it was "widely applauded by the aesthetic and technical critics", so I would assume that some of that fanfare and applause was written down somewhere. Information doesn't "stand on its own", it has to be recorded and transmitted. So I'll ask: how did that information reach you? Toughpigs (talk) 15:38, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

You've got a keyboard. Go, be useful. Start looking it up. It's everywhere. Go ahead and do a search. Zelchenko (talk) 06:14, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Okay, no sources. I'm going to dial some of that back, then. Toughpigs (talk) 06:23, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Don't touch it, because I'm not in the mood. Look below and chip in a bit, pal. Zelchenko (talk) 06:31, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Here, I'll do part of the work:

- https://www.museumofmakebelieve.org/diary/that-silhouette-girl-trick-studio

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gm9kZLP0uE

- https://www.instagram.com/direct/t/104132784313503/ (Anna Humphreys, maker of the above BBC animation)

- https://www.studiopanda.uk/meet-the-team/ (Humphreys' studio)

Here's something on YCombinator that shows the damage already done:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771497

And there's plenty in the scholarly realm, since the popular media seems to have been thoroughly polluted by Disney's lovers. Here's some evidence of the deliberate use of depth planes by Reiniger (in case it isn't obvious by looking at her device and the astonishingly evocative scenes):

- https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jcms/images/14_61.1gadassik.pdf

"Rather than relying on glass or celluloid, whose primary feature is facilitating transparency, some multiplane animators welcomed the opacity of different materials instead. Lotte Reiniger’s multiplane stand, which is the earliest documented iteration, embraced paper as textured screen material. Inspired by Chinese shadow puppetry and landscape painting (particularly its layered perspective), Reiniger combined backlit silhouette animation with layered paper to establish atmospheric depth."

Zelchenko (talk) 06:25, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

More from Alla Gadassik's paper above (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jcms/images/14_61.1gadassik.pdf). (Fair comment opinion: Disney Studios was filled with creeps.)

Appreciating the diversity of the multiplane highlights the political stakes of confusing any specific iteration of an apparatus (a single genetic variant) for an entire species. Such confusion profoundly affected the multiplane, which became synonymous with the Walt Disney Studios and cel animation throughout the twentieth century. This was the result of deliberate efforts by the studio to promote its towering multiplane rig (engineered by William Garity after an earlier design by Ub Iwerks) as a symbol of sophisticated cinematographic naturalism and a mascot for the studio’s technological prowess. The studio deliberately used the patent application for Garity’s structure and heavy promotional material connecting it to the studio’s animation style to disingenuously lay claim to the entire concept of layered animation and its potential effects.12

12. Garity’s patent makes no mention of antecedents and lays claim to the entire concept of multilayered animation. See William Garity, control device for animation, US Patent 2,198,006, filed November 16, 1938, and issued April 23, 1940.

Alla Gadassik, “Tracing the Multiplane: Toward a Genealogy of Animation Apparatuses,” JCMS 61, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 160–165. Zelchenko (talk) 06:30, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Here's a researcher who, in part thanks to Disney's rewriting history, apparently has no idea about Reiniger:

- http://www.lamarre-mediaken.com/Site/Film_279_0_files/Lamarre_Multiplanar_Image.pdf

Here's some good ones:

Blog titled Lies Disney Told, the multiplane camera (database seems down, Archive.org not responding either), but may have some value:

- http://blog.bcdb.com/lies-disney-told/walt-disney-invented-multi-plane-camera/

(!! This blog is down, and a search on various engines for the terms "blogs.bcdb.com lies disney told walt disney invented multi plane camera" shows only how "Disney invented the multiplane camera." Here's fascinating evidence all by itself, of how promotion and SEO can rewrite history -- especially with some valuable help from Wikipedia editors like Janke, who six years ago reverted all edits promoting Lotte Reiniger's importance.)

A 2017 book by Whitney Grace, Lotte Reiniger: Pioneer of Film Animation. Also alludes to the detrimental rewriting of history.

- https://www.amazon.com/Lotte-Reiniger-Pioneer-Film-Animation/dp/1476662061 Zelchenko (talk) 06:53, 31 August 2024 (UTC)