Frank D. Williams Trailers
His Prehistoric Past TrailerKid Auto Races at Venice Trailer
Frank D. Williams (March 21, 1893 – October 15, 1961) was a pioneering cinematographer who was active in the early days of the motion picture industry. He developed and patented the traveling matte shot.
Frank D. Williams was born March 21, 1893, as Frank Douglas Williams, to James and Lucinda Williams in the small community of Nashville, Missouri.
In 1912, Williams became a cameraman at Keystone Studios. There, in 1914, he was the photographer for many of Charlie Chaplin's first-year pictures, including Kid Auto Races at Venice which was the first film released in which The Tramp appeared. Williams is credited as appearing in Kid Auto Races at Venice, playing a cameraman, but his appearance is in doubt. For a time he was chief cinematographer at Keystone, and a large number of the studio's 1914 films are credited to him as photographer. He defected to work for the short-lived Sterling Motion Pictures, but returned to Keystone when Sterling closed in 1915. He also worked a camera for Henry Lehrman's L-Ko Kompany, Reliance-Majestic Studios, and Bluebird Photoplays.
When Roscoe Arbuckle formed a new motion picture company, Comique, in 1917, he hired Williams to be his cameraman. At Comique, Williams also shot Buster Keaton's first film appearance, The Butcher Boy (1917). His tenure there was also short; he shot three films for Arbuckle (Butcher Boy, A Reckless Romeo, and The Rough House) before departing to start his own lab. His business did not get off the ground quickly, and he supplemented his income by continuing to work as a cameraman. He was director of photography at Sessue Hayakawa's Haworth Pictures Corporation and is credited with 15 pictures that came out of that studio between 1919 and 1921.
While he was working as a cameraman at various studios, Williams worked on his idea for a traveling matte in which the actions of actors would be combined with a filmed moving background. Available technology prevented him from achieving the effect he envisioned until he built a printer himself to his own specification. He filed for a patent in May 1916, and it was granted in July 1918. The process was first used in a motion picture in 1922's Wild Honey.
Most Popular Frank D. Williams Trailers
Total trailers found: 52
22 May 1921
Japanese architect Yoda is hired as groundskeeper for retired criminal Benson Burleigh.
07 October 1918
In this detective picture, Janet marries Raoul Newell but leaves him when she finds out he is a thief.
10 October 1914
Charlie and a rival vie for the favor of their landlady.
23 April 1917
Customers and clerks frolic in a general store. Roscoe walks out of the freezer wearing a fur coat, then does some clever cleaver tossing.
07 September 1914
Two drunks fight with their wives and then go out and get even drunker.
25 January 1920
A humble fisherman's girlfriend is kidnapped by an egotistical prince tricked into believing he has powers.
31 October 1933
After experimenting on himself and becoming invisible, scientist Jack Griffin, now aggressive due to the drug's effects, seeks a way to reverse the experiment at any cost.
04 November 1927
A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.
21 May 1917
Roscoe flirts with a girl in the park. Later he takes his wife and mother-in-law to the movies only to see his flirtation showing on the screen.
09 March 1914
In a dance hall, two members of the orchestra and a tipsy dancer fight over the hat check girl.
04 June 1914
A comedy made by Keystone Studios starring Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand, both of whom co-directed the movie.
11 June 1914
To show his girl how brave he is, Pug challenges the champion to a fight. Charlie referees, trying to avoid contact with the two monsters.
05 July 1919
The renown Hindu scientist, Dr. Chindi Ashutor, who has conquered plague in India, visits Scotland and falls in love with Kate Erskine, whose sister Mary is engaged to Ashutor's college friend, James Bassett.
20 June 1914
Mabel goes home after being humiliated by a masher whom her husband won't fight. The husband goes off to a bar and gets drunk.
27 August 1914
Charlie plays an actor who bungles several scenes and is kicked out. He returns convincingly dressed as a lady and charms the director, but Charlie never makes it into the film.
21 December 1914
A womanizing city man meets Tillie in the country. When he sees that her father has a very large bankroll for his workers, he persuades her to elope with him.
25 May 1919
Goro Mariyama uses the profits from his ethically run gambling house to help the poor. Gambler Blair Whitcomb accuses Goro of cheating, then shoots him after losing a $10,000 bet.
10 July 1916
A tramp tries to earn money by playing the violin, but he’s soon facing off against the jealous competition.
11 April 1920
When a famed matador is forced to become an outlaw, he seeks to get revenge on the dancing girl who betrayed him.
02 February 1914
A swindler scams a newspaper reporter-photographer and then, not realizing where the man is employed, applies for a job at his newspaper.
02 November 1919
The Japanese Prince Maiyo is in London to avenge the death of his father who years earlier committed hara-kiri because he had been financially ruined by an English swindler.
09 February 1914
A tramp gets drunk in a hotel lobby and, upstairs, causes some misunderstandings between Mabel, two hotel guests across the hall from her room, and Mabel's visiting sweetheart.
25 June 1917
Living under the same roof with his newly-wed wife and his mother-in-law, a careless Mr Rough sets the nuptial bedroom on fire, as the residence's cook tries to woo the maid who only has eyes for the charming delivery boy.
07 May 1914
A jealous wife is chasing her unfaithful husband during a parade, after he starts to flirt with a pretty woman.
14 September 1914
The hero, a janitor played by Chaplin, is fired from work for accidentally knocking his bucket of water out the window and onto his boss the chief banker (Tandy).
26 October 1914
Pierre and Jacques are working as waiters at a restaurant where the cooks go on strike. When the two are forced to work as bakers, the striking cooks put dynamite in the dough, with explosive results.
07 February 1914
The Tramp interferes with the celebration of several kid auto races in Venice, California (Junior Vanderbilt Cup Race, January 10 and 11, 1914), standing himself in the way of the cameraman who is filming the event.
15 May 1916
An impecunious customer creates chaos in a department store while the manager and his assistant plot to steal the money kept in the establishment's safe.
09 November 1914
On his way to a restaurant, Ambrose, a happily married man, obliges to mail a letter for a woman in the apartment lobby.
10 August 1914
A painter turned tramp (Chaplin), devastated by losing the woman he was courting as a wealthy man, finds himself drunk and getting drunker by the minute with some sailors at a bar until he's literally falling down.
28 February 1914
Mr. Snookie steals an umbrella and then, while trying to help a woman to cross a puddle, the Tramp appears and intervenes.
07 November 1914
Charlie and his partner are to deliver a piano to 666 Prospect St. and repossess one from 999 Prospect St.
14 December 1919
An opium smuggler is marked for murder in this story of the Chinese Mafia.
05 December 1914
Charlie and his wife are in the park when he encounters Ambrose and his wife. Each man is attracted to and shows unwanted attention to the other man's wife.
01 August 1914
Charlie is in charge of stage props and has trouble with actors' luggage and conflicts over who gets the star's dressing room.
28 September 1919
A wild man and genius becomes a master painter's disciple, but loses his divine gift when he finds love.
29 October 1914
Mabel and her beau go to an auto race and are joined by Charlie and his friend. As Charlie's friend is attempting to enter the raceway through a hole, the friend gets stuck and a policeman shows up.
07 December 1914
Set mostly in the Stone Age, a prehistoric king, with a harem of wives, rules a beach. Charlie arrives and falls for the king's favorite wife.
31 August 1914
Charlie takes care of a man in a wheelchair.
01 June 1914
Three men compete for the attentions of a pretty girl. One of them, a little tramp, plays dirty.
13 June 1914
Mabel tries to sell hot dogs at a car race, but isn't doing a very good job at it. She sets down the box of hot dogs and leaves them for a moment.
02 March 1914
The Tramp, a film Johnnie (someone who loiters near theaters or studios to meet stars or get a job), attempts to meet his favorite movie actress at the Keystone Studio, but does not win friends there.
04 May 1914
When a married couple become separated in the park, a tramp sits with the lady and is beat up when her husband rejoins her.
30 October 1921
Mary and her son Buster live in a single room in the slums of the city, having been deserted by their husband and father, wealthy Spencer Wellington.
27 April 1914
Charlie is a clumsy waiter in a cheap cabaret, suffering the strict orders from his boss. He meets a pretty girl in the park and tries to impress her by pretending to be an ambassador.
16 March 1914
A very plastered fella follows a pretty woman home, and proceeds to make a nuisance of himself.
09 July 1914
Although only a dental assistant, Charlie pretends to be the dentist. After receiving too much anesthesia, a patient can't stop laughing, so Charlie knocks him out with a club.
14 February 1916
Lydia Jansen is happily married to a young customs inspector, but she harbors a dark secret. She is addicted to smoking opium or in slang parlance “hop.
13 August 1914
Charlie begins to woo a woman on a bench, only to have her seaman boyfriend object. After a brick fight between the two men that eventually involves two police officers, all five people end up in the local pond to cool off.
01 September 1918
Annette Kellerman, the Australian swimming star of the early 1900s, made a number of films, most of them in the 1910s, which displayed her athletic skills.
04 September 1921
The Chinese prince T'Su Wong Shih loves Quan Yin, the daughter of a gardener, but his uncle wants him to marry a girl of his own class.
02 May 1920
A Persian novelist living in New York throws aside the woman who loves him, and she gets an American woman to help get him back.
