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F. Percy Smith

F. Percy Smith

Director · Born 1880-01-12 · London, England

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Biography

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 d…

Directed

  1. The Birth of a Flower (1910) — Director
  2. The Acrobatic Fly (1910) — Director
  3. To Demonstrate How Spiders Fly (1909) — Director
  4. The Strength and Agility of Insects (1911) — Director
  5. Peas and Cues (1930) — Director
  6. The Strangler (1930) — Director
  7. Nature's Handiwork (1921) — Director
  8. Wisdom of the Wild (1940) — Director
  9. The Plants of the Pantry (1927) — Director
  10. Magic Myxies (1931) — Director
  11. The World in a Wine-Glass (1931) — Director
  12. Story of the Silk Moth (1908) — Director
  13. Romance in a Pond (1932) — Director
  14. Brewster's Magic (1933) — Director
  15. The Battle of the Plants (1926) — Director
  16. Floral Co-operative Societies (1927) — Director
  17. Scarlet Runner & Co (1929) — Director
  18. Gathering Moss (1933) — Director
  19. Tale of a Tendril (1925) — Director
  20. Fight for the Dardanelles (1915) — Director
  21. The Frog (1929) — Director
  22. The Phantom (1926) — Director
  23. Down Under (1930) — Director
  24. Varieties of Sweet Peas (1911) — Director
  25. Bertie's Cave (1925) — Director
  26. Etude de fleurs (1910) — Director