Cooper's Supposedly Most Important Achievements
Although Cooper is almost forgotten today, he supposedly created several "firsts" in the film history:
- animation movies since 1899
- the interpolated close-up in 1900
- parallel action shots in 1904
- cinemas with raked floor, expensive seats at the back, uniformed staff, and an isolated projection booth, in 1908 and 1909.
However these claims are based a) on the assumption that films which are widely acknowledged as having been made by George Albert Smith (inventor) were in fact shot by Melbourne-Cooper as well as b) the dubious dating of his animation film Matches: An Appeal. These claims are strongly disputed by many film historians and Barry Salt describes in his book Moving Into Pictures how Melbourne-Cooper's daughter tried to convince people at the BFI through tireless lobbying, claiming that a vast part of the early British films were made by her father and being taken seriously by nobody. Therefore some of the following descriptions are at least debatable especially since this article was written by an author who supported the theories of Melbourne-Cooper's daughter and unsurprisingly never mentions here any of the criticism his theories have faced.
Read more about this topic: Arthur Melbourne-Cooper
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