Anyone hip to Hermanson

[spadeneal]

There is this remarkable Danish actuality film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iWWTShPoMI

made in 1904 by Thomas S. Hermanson. I'm not at all fluent with Danish, but I've figured out that a "Sporvei" is a tramway, and that Hermanson was a photographer based in Aarhus who began making films there right around 1904 and continued into at least the 'teens as a director, producer and cinematographer. He was born in 1867 and died in 1930, and made feature length narrative films as well.

imdb, oddly, has almost nothing on the man. Does anyone here have anything more substantive on Mr. Hermanson? This clip is in every way extraordinary for 1904.

spadeneal

[urbanora]

A nicely done piece of filmmaking (albeit shown at too fast a speed), but not that unusual for 1904. Aside from 'phantom ride' films taken from the front of trains, which were common in the 1897-1900 period, there were many films taken in towns, usually from the tops of trams like this. Take a look at this example from 1901 made by the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company of a tram journey through Ealing, west London:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/creativearchive/t ... 44196.html

Thomas S. Hermansen [sic] was one of the first filmmakers in Denmark. His film company was Dansk Kino-Foto-Film Industri, and he made actualities in and around Aarhus, Jutland. According to Ron Mottram's The Danish Cinema before Dreyer, he learned about filmmaking during a trip to America in 1900, opened a cinema in 1906, and then was one of the partners in a production company, Fotorama, formed 1908, which made a number of fiction films. One of these, Den hvide Slavehandel (White Slave Trade) (1910) was a big hit, but the title became more famous when the Nordisk company madeits own version the same year, with August Blom as director. Another company he worked for (as cinematographer it seems) was Dansk Filmfabrik, which was making fiction films in 1913.

[Richard M Roberts]

[quote="urbanora"]A nicely done piece of filmmaking (albeit shown at too fast a speed), but not that unusual for 1904.

You think this is run too fast? Gad, you guys are really into slide presentations. The people are actually moving just slightly faster than normal speed. It looks like whatever the camera was riding on could have moved a bit slower.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[spadeneal]

[quote="urbanora"]A nicely done piece of filmmaking (albeit shown at too fast a speed), but not that unusual for 1904. Aside from 'phantom ride' films taken from the front of trains, which were common in the 1897-1900 period, there were many films taken in towns, usually from the tops of trams like this. Take a look at this example from 1901 made by the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company of a tram journey through Ealing, west London:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/creativearchive/t ... 44196.html
[/quote]

Thank you for the information, and reference, on Hermansen and the clip from British Biograph. I have seen other phantom ride films and even re-edited one for a film project of my own; I will amend my statement to "unusual in most ways." In it's 94 seconds it contains no less than 14 different edits, many to most of which simply removed frames taken when the tram stopped, and the film lurches forward in a crudely assembled but rather dynamic way. The kid in the film may have been paid by Hermansen to run ahead of the tram to add a unifying element and additional action, though others in this teeming crowd seem at least aware of the camera; a gentleman to the left seems to tip his hat to it, although it is unclear if he is tipping the hat at the camera or to someone else in the street.

By comparison the Biograph subject -- which is quite beautifully framed and is shot at a much higher vantage point than the Hermansen -- contains only one subtle edit, and it is a very peaceful day in West London compared to the congestion in Aarhus. Also, Hermansen's camera seems to have a bit more flexibility than the Biograph, as it appears to swing both the left and the right in different shots, though this partly is due to the movement of the tram that he's on. I wonder if he was using a Lumiere type camera.

Here is a link to an essay about a later Hermansen film, The Little Trumpeter (1909):
[url]http://www.uni-koeln.de/~sschroed/publi ... story.html [/url]

It appears from what you gathered for me and the little else I have been able to find that Hermansen -- like many other cinema pioneers -- moved from being in control of his own destiny to the status of an employee once the commercial aspect of motion pictures began to reach maturity.

spadeneal

[urbanora]

I hadn't considered the jump-cuts, but looking again there are rather more than you would get in a standard film of that type, which makes it quite interesting formally speaking. And yes the boy does seem to be in on the act, judging the raising of his cap to the camera at the end of the film. Well spotted.

The Biograph was a bulky 70mm camera and a good deal less flexible than whatever Hermansen was using. Biograph travelling shot films tend only to have 'edits' when they were filming a journey that took longer to cover than a rool of 70mm film.

I only know about Hermansen from the Mottram book. It does seem odd that he should be cinematographer when he had been manager of his own film company. It may have been just a small film company.