John Randolph Bray
John Randolph Bray ( August 25, 1879 in Addison, Michigan, † October 10, 1978 in Bridgeport, Connecticut ) was an American producer, director and screenwriter of cartoons. Bray is regarded as one of the pioneers of the genre. Bray's company J. R. Bray Studios presented 1913-1937 over 500 films to raise most animations, including the first animated film in color, The Debut of Thomas Katt (1920), and documentary short films about exotic places and animals.
Life
The cartoonist
Bray grew up in a small town approach the son of a pastor. He started in 1895 to study, but it broke already after one year. He began writing for various magazines and worked from 1901 as a reporter for the Detroit Evening News. In 1903 he moved to New York and became a cartoonist when Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The ambitious Bray soon began thus to sell his drawings and other magazines. His breakthrough came in 1906, when the magazine Judge his comic Little Johnny and His Teddy Bears reprinted three years. Also in Life and Harper 's Bazaar Bray could accommodate his cartoons.
Bray was now financially secure, he could afford a farm in Highland Falls to buy, lived on from now on. Early 1910s, however, the success of his comics began to gradually subside, whatever it was that Bray spent more and more time working on the new medium of animation. His experiments with animation made it clear that the methods had to be improved for the production of animated films, this type of film should be not only amusing but also lucrative.
The character animator
1913 Bray created his first animated film ( The Artist's Dream) for Pathé. His contract called for six more films in six months from him what seemed impossible, but Bray had already been used for the production of his first film for half a year. The solution for the time-consuming task to draw the background of each scene over and over again, Bray found in the use of printed backgrounds with blank spaces for acting and moving characters. It minimized the time and the number of personnel for the preparation of film drastically. Bray could be this new method patented (U.S. Patent No. 1,107,193 ).
To prepare the films for Pathé, Bray was a draftsman team work all week in Highland Falls, but the team needed another six months for the next film Colonel Heeza Liar's African Hunt ( 1914). This first film came out in January, the next in March, then the next films in the months of April, May and August. Now the success of the new method showed. At the same time Bray rationalized the work by no longer any employees all production steps (making backgrounds, drawing, coloring, etc.) completed, but specialized employees each devoted to a single step and zuarbeiteten as each other. The company could now make movies every week.
The film producer
End of 1914, Bray founded the company J. R. Bray Studios, based in New York. Crucial to Bray's success was next to the new methods also that he had an eye for talented filmmaker and artist. How Walt Disney after him he tied almost all promising directors, authors and illustrators of his day in itself. For Bray finally worked, among others, Wallace A. Carlson, Roland Crandall, Thomas A. Dorgan, Dave Fleischer, Max Fleischer, Clyde Geronimi, David Hand, George Herriman, Earl Hurd, Gregory La Cava, Walter Lantz, Ashley Miller, Frank Moser, Joe Rock, Pat Sullivan, Paul Terry and Vernon Stallings. The company introduced her not only funny cartoons, but secured lucrative contracts with the Ministry of Defence for the production of training films for soldiers.
Another innovation brought the final breakthrough for Bray: His artist Earl Hurd received in 1914 the patent for the use of transparent celluloid films, the acting characters were drawn and were placed on the left unchanged background. To take advantage of Hurd's invention and to get him a potential competitor, Bray Hurd made to his partner. They founded the Bray- Hurd Processing Company and so established a virtual monopoly on the production of animated films: Anyone who wanted to make animated films cost, either had to work for Bray or pay him royalties for the use of the foil method ( Bray continued his rights with a legal battle through ). The patent existed until 1932, then became the common property method only.
In order to prevail in the cartoon industry, Bray did not shrink even before dubious methods. So he visited Winsor McCay during the formation of Gertie the Dinosaur (1914 ). He claimed that he was a journalist who wrote an article about Cartoons, and could be explained McCay's methods, only to these patents be declared under his own name and Gertie the Dinosaur nachzudrehen 1915. When McCay resisted Bray sued him. In subsequent litigation, however, won McCay and received royalties from Bray.
Bray's waning power
In 1920, Bray had lost some of his power, Samuel Goldwyn, the majority of shares in the JR Bray Studios secured. At the same time it became clear over the years that Bray was less artist than businessman. He had to place undue reliance on the creativity of its employees, by and by, striving for independence and new artistic inspiration, his company left, often to work for Disney. " He did not have Disney's innate sense of storytelling [ ... ] and just did not know what really brought success." An example of Bray's adverse business decisions was that Bray the idea to use color film for animated films than not rejected lucrative.
1927 Bray finished his studios and pulled back completely from the Animation Industry. A year later, the film industry should develop with the onset of the sound film era in new directions that had Bray not seen before. Brays of remaining influence waned completely when, in 1932 his patents expired. However, he remained active in the film industry, with its focus nurmehr focused on animal documentaries. It was not until 1963 Bray resigned as president of his company, but remained chairman of the board. He died in October 1978, just a few months before his 100th birthday.