Here's Georges Méliès abusing his own head again. He places a clone of it on a bench, then pumps it up to monstrous proportions with giant comedy bellows, while the head itself looks increasingly disturbed. Delighted with the result, he invites an assistant to pump too, but the assistant goes too far. The head explodes in a puff of smoke, wrecking the equipment, and the assistant is booted from the frame in time honoured slapstick fashion.
The action is presented as a single all-encompassing camera setup, though of course the inflating head is another shot that's been layered in, and there's a jump cut to create the explosion. The reference frame is still theatrical – there's even an obviously painted backdrop, though this time no direct acknowledgement to the audience (in several of his films, Méliès bows to the camera on the conclusion of a trick).
But this is another illusion impossible on stage, as it directly exploits the fact that the moving image was (and predominantly still is) a two dimensional one, so the brain has to rely on cues from perspective to interpret relative sizes of objects. Méliès dollies in and out on his own head (actually using a fixed camera and a wheeled chair on rails) so it grows and shrinks in relation to the frame, and then grafts the result optically into a different image with clear fixed perspective, so the head itself seems to change size. Space and time have become malleable within the boundaries of the frame.
Given its age, the effect is impressively well achieved, but as often Méliès' own performance really sells it. Here, he's one of cinema's first mad scientists, constantly on the move and literally dancing with delight at the results of his bizarre experiment. No doubt in real life he was equally delighted with the visual results. And his dual role as the head enables us to see those silly, gurning features in more detail than usual, as the fully inflated head is effectively a closeup. Mind expanding in more ways than one.
The action is presented as a single all-encompassing camera setup, though of course the inflating head is another shot that's been layered in, and there's a jump cut to create the explosion. The reference frame is still theatrical – there's even an obviously painted backdrop, though this time no direct acknowledgement to the audience (in several of his films, Méliès bows to the camera on the conclusion of a trick).
But this is another illusion impossible on stage, as it directly exploits the fact that the moving image was (and predominantly still is) a two dimensional one, so the brain has to rely on cues from perspective to interpret relative sizes of objects. Méliès dollies in and out on his own head (actually using a fixed camera and a wheeled chair on rails) so it grows and shrinks in relation to the frame, and then grafts the result optically into a different image with clear fixed perspective, so the head itself seems to change size. Space and time have become malleable within the boundaries of the frame.
Given its age, the effect is impressively well achieved, but as often Méliès' own performance really sells it. Here, he's one of cinema's first mad scientists, constantly on the move and literally dancing with delight at the results of his bizarre experiment. No doubt in real life he was equally delighted with the visual results. And his dual role as the head enables us to see those silly, gurning features in more detail than usual, as the fully inflated head is effectively a closeup. Mind expanding in more ways than one.