A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Alias:
Percy Smith
Birthplace:
London, England
Born:
January 12, 1880
Died:
March 24, 1945
A distinguished pioneer of scientific filmmaking, Percy Smith was born in London in 1880. Working as a clerk at the Board of Education, Percy began to photograph the natural world around him, nursing a lifelong fascination with all manner of plant and animal life. His close-up photograph of a bluebottle's tongue caught the attention of film entrepreneur Charles Urban, who quickly began to exhibit Percy's work in London theatres. After the considerable success of sequences such as The Balancing Bluebottle, where he recorded flies juggling, Percy finally joined Urban as a full-time filmmaker in 1910. Before the outbreak of the First World War, Percy completed over fifty nature films for the Urban Sciences series including, in 1910, the famous piece, The Birth of a Flower. An early example of stop-motion photography, the film was hugely popular. Meticulously researching his subjects, Percy devised ingenious ways to film slow-growing plant life - modifying his equipment with gramophone needles, candle wicks and other assorted objects, allowing him to continue filming plant movement even as he slept. In 1911 his study, The Strength and Agility of Insects sparked a huge press debate - detailing a range of insects as they lift tiny dumbbells, twirl matchsticks and juggle objects much heavier than themselves he had to dispel rumours of trickery and cruelty by revealing his innovative filming techniques. Percy went on to serve as a naval photographer during the War and, upon his return, began work for British Instructional Films (BIF). Contributing to the company's widely acclaimed Secrets of Nature series he worked on numerous films, including An Aquarium in a Wineglass (1926), The Home Wrecker (1929) and Magic Myxies (1931). He continued to work on the project in the 1930s when it became known as Secrets of Life and in 1939 published Secrets of Nature, a review of the filming techniques used throughout the series. (via wildfilmhistory.org)
Animation:
1915 Fight for the Dardanelles
Cinematography:
1915 Fight for the Dardanelles
2016 Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy Smith
Director:
1908 Story of the Silk Moth
1909 To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly
1910 The Acrobatic Fly
1910 The Birth of a Flower
1911 The Strength and Agility of Insects
1911 Varieties of Sweet Peas
1915 Fight for the Dardanelles
1921 Nature's Handiwork
1925 Bertie's Cave
1925 Tale of a Tendril
1926 The Battle of the Plants
1926 The Phantom
1927 Floral Co-operative Societies
1927 The Plants of the Pantry
1929 Scarlet Runner & Co
1929 The Frog
1930 Down Under
1930 Peas and Cues
1930 The Strangler
1931 Magic Myxies
1931 The World in a Wine-Glass
1932 Romance in a Pond
1933 Brewster's Magic
1933 Gathering Moss
2016 Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy Smith
Director of Photography:
1908 Story of the Silk Moth
1909 To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly
1910 The Acrobatic Fly
1910 The Birth of a Flower
1911 The Strength and Agility of Insects
1911 Varieties of Sweet Peas
1913 The Wonders of Harmonic Designing
1915 Fight for the Dardanelles
1921 Nature's Handiwork
1925 Bertie's Cave
1925 Tale of a Tendril
1926 Seed Time
1926 The Battle of the Plants
1926 The Phantom
1927 Floral Co-operative Societies
1927 Plant Magic
1927 The Plants of the Pantry
1927 The Story of a Glass of Water
1929 Scarlet Runner & Co
1929 The Frog
1930 Down Under
1930 Peas and Cues
1930 The Strangler
1931 Magic Myxies
1931 The World in a Wine-Glass
1932 Nature's Double Lifters
1932 Romance in a Pond
1933 Amazing Maize
1933 Brewster's Magic
1933 Gathering Moss
1936 He Would a-Wooing Go
1936 Lupins
1936 Safety First
1938 The Tough 'un
1942 Overlooked
1942 Singing While They Work
1942 The Life Cycle of the Maize
1942 The Life Cycle of the Newt
1943 The Life Cycle of the Pin Mould
1943 The Life History of the Onion
1944 Memories
1945 Fresh As a Daisy
2016 Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy Smith
Story:
1908 Story of the Silk Moth
1909 To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly
1910 The Acrobatic Fly
1910 The Birth of a Flower
1911 The Strength and Agility of Insects
1911 Varieties of Sweet Peas
1913 The Wonders of Harmonic Designing
1915 Fight for the Dardanelles
1921 Nature's Handiwork
1925 Bertie's Cave
1925 Tale of a Tendril
1926 Seed Time
1926 The Battle of the Plants
1926 The Phantom
1927 Floral Co-operative Societies
1927 Plant Magic
1927 The Plants of the Pantry
1927 The Story of a Glass of Water
1929 Scarlet Runner & Co
1929 The Frog
1930 Down Under
1930 Peas and Cues
1930 The Strangler
1931 Magic Myxies
1931 The World in a Wine-Glass
1932 Nature's Double Lifters
1932 Romance in a Pond
1933 Amazing Maize
1933 Brewster's Magic
1933 Gathering Moss
1936 He Would a-Wooing Go
1936 Lupins
1936 Safety First
1938 The Tough 'un
1942 Overlooked
1942 Singing While They Work
1942 The Life Cycle of the Maize
1942 The Life Cycle of the Newt
1943 The Life Cycle of the Pin Mould
1943 The Life History of the Onion
1944 Memories
1945 Fresh As a Daisy
2016 Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy Smith
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.