Old Snuff Video, infact the oldest earliest surviving motion pictures…

What am I talking about? Well, I was doing a search on the term snuff and found a link to Fred Ott’s Sneeze, which in reality is the earlist surviving snuff video, as well as being the earlist surviving motion picture!

Fred Ott was an employee of Thomas Edison’s laboratory in the 1890s. His likeness appears in two of the earliest surviving motion pictures – Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (a.k.a. Fred Ott’s Sneeze) and Fred Ott Holding a Bird – both from 1894.

In Fred Ott’s Sneeze, we see Fred dressed smartly in suit and tie, standing, moustashioed and holding a snuff bottle and handkerchief in his right hand.

He brings his left hand to his nostril and takes a pinch of snuff, he then violently sneezes and the snuff video ends.

Of course it’s silent, but if there had have been sound, you could easily imagine that the snuff induced sneeze was a real hum-dinger!

Anyway, the snuff video is clipped below.

The film was produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company, which had begun making films in 1890 under the direction of Dickson, one of the earliest film pioneers. It was filmed within the Black Maria studio at West Orange, New Jersey, in the USA, which is widely referred to as “America’s First Movie Studio”. It was filmed between January 2, 1894 and January 7, 1894 and was displayed, at the time, through the means of a Kinetoscope.

Visit the above links if you want to find out anything further on the earliest surviving motion picture of Fred Ott’s Sneeze, and now you can amaze your friends down the pub by telling them that it actually is a snuff video!

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