Film Studies: Making a Zoetrope

Okay. A little context before I start: I'm currently about a quarter of the way through teaching a two-year Film Studies course. This is a board-endorsed course that I'm currently running at my school as a Stage 5 English elective, and this term the class is looking at Special Effects. More specifically, students look at how key innovations have enabled new representations and shifts in meaning within the context of film narratives. 

The activity below could quite easily be adapted as a fun, practical exploration of film for any junior English class.

The Zoetrope

The zoetrope is an early innovation in film technology that helped to establish the fundamental premise for turning photography into a moving image. Variations of this invention had been around for quite some time by the 19th century and were used to show simple looped animations. It wasn't until 1878, however, that the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge invented a way to take a rapid sequence of photographs to depict a horse running. He combined this system (which utilised 24 separate cameras and a series of tripwires) with the existing technologies of the zoetrope and the praxinoscope (which was like a zoetrope with mirrors) to create what is arguably the first film, The Horse in Motion. I've recreated this above in the zoetrope example.

Muybridge suffered a irreparable brain injury in a horse-carriage crash, which led to erratic and eccentric behaviour, and it was after this point that he came up with his impressive innovations in photography. It's believed that his accident damaged his orbitofrontal cortex, leading to an erasure of social inhibitions that allowed for increased creativity in his mind.

Some students will be interested in hearing this stuff, but all of my class were able to remember the content much more comprehensively after they themselves have had a go at making their own zoetropes.

My first prototype was more complicated then it needed to be - there are a couple of things in the picture above that I ended up not needing.

Preparation

There are lots of instructions online that give an idea of how the zoetrope and similar devices can be made in the classroom but I wanted to ensure that I was able to create one myself before I put it into the hands of the kids. This was invaluable because I quickly learned that some aspects of the process could be streamlined or were best avoided altogether. Click here for teacher creation-instructions, which were written after I'd fine-tuned the process.

Initially I set out to use a wire and wire cutters to set up a frame from which the device could spin but my wife Nicole pointed out that it was much easier to simply hold the string by hand and spin it that way. 

 

Additionally, the cutting of the cardboard strip also requires a fine blade and the idea of handing Stanley knives out to my Year 9 class made me break out into a cold sweat. So I pre-prepared the cardboard strips they would use in order to take this element out.

Here's what you'll need before handing over to the students:

• Black cardboard (enough for the whole class)
• Paper (to measure the cardboard strips)
• A scalpel or Stanley knife 
• A cutting board
• Plastic picnic plates (make sure they have a raised rim - this will allow for the cardboard strip to be held in place)
• A single-hole punch
• String, or thick thread
• Scissors
• Ruler
• Sticky tape

Use the paper to create a 'master' strip - this is what you'll use to measure and cut each of the black cardboard strips you'll be giving your students. The best measurements (that work with a standard-sized plastic plate) are as follow:

• 10 frames in length - 60mm per frame.
• Entire strip to be 100mm in height.
• The frames will sit in the bottom 40mm.
• Above the frames are 10 slits approx. 2mm wide and 40mm long. These sit above and between each frame. 

As you can imagine, 2mm is quite finnicky so you'll need that fine blade. Measure it all out on white paper and overlay the paper on the black cardboard to cut the black strips out. Use sticky tape to place the white paper in place and do it all on top of a cutting board. I made about 14 black strips and got my students to work in pairs (that way I had some spares in case the kids accidentally wrecked them on their first go).

In Class

I'd already covered the concept of the zoetrope in class a few times before so the students had a rough idea of what they were making. I also brought in my one to show them what a finished product should look like. This helped to really motivate the students because they could see what they were working towards. 

I gave students a series of different animations to pick from (this gives them some ownership over the final product) or the option to create their own animation (this is more time-consuming but there are a few students who appreciate getting to exercise their creativity in this way). 

Students (or student groups) are then provided with:

• 1 pre-made black cardboard strips.
• 1 plastic plate.
• A ruler to measure their own animations and to space the string-holes evenly on the plate. 
• Access to a single-hole punch to create the string-holes.
• String to cut (I let them measure and cut this themselves).
• Choice of animation or option to create their own animation.
• Access to sticky tape to fix their animation into the black cardboard barrel. 
• Instructions on how to make it. 

Some of the student zoetropes - great job guys!

The most time-consuming part of the whole process is creating the black cardboard strip but, as I'd already done this for the students ahead of time, this meant it only took approximately 1 hour for students to put the whole thing together. The instructions above are a simplified version of the teacher instructions and are easily followed by Year 9 students.