Frederick S. Armitage

Even a basic understanding of Frederick S. Armitage's contribution to film didn't get underway until the 1980s, with the work of Charles Musser, and a lot remains to be known about what he did and who he was. Nevertheless, interest has steadily grown since then; in 2002 Demolishing and Building Up The Star Theater was named to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, and several of Armitage's films were included on a collection of pre-1943 American experimental films, Unseen Cinema, curated by Bruce Posner of the Anthology Film Archives.

His last known works are from 1916-1917. Afterwords he vanished from the cinematographic record completely.

Armitage later returned to American Mutoscope & Biograph in 1907, but stayed with the Edison Manufacturing Company until 1910.

Armitage finished his career as a cinematographer at American Mutoscope & Biograph with Wallace McCutcheon's "The Nihilists" and "Wanted: A Dog" both from 1905.

Among other interesting films that Armitage shot or directed during his AM&B period were some early martial arts films, films of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, actress Anna Held and a silent film of Sousa's Band, short chapters of attempted "story films" on the popular plays Ten Nights in a Bar-Room (1901) and The Wages of Sin (1901), a number of subjects of American landmarks for the U.S. Department of the Interior and films of Native American life for the agency then called the U.S. Indian Department.

From 1900 Armitage began making a number of films that mainly used special trick effects such as the aforementioned Time-lapse experiments, such as his "A Terrible Night" and "The Prince of Darkness" which both use reversing the film as a main effect. To create "Nymph of the Waves" Armitage combined prints to show a woman dressed as a nymph dancing on the falls.

In 1899 he directed 188 actualities, sometimes subjects having to do with the Spanish-American War. Armitage was also one of three Biograph cameramen to film Tom Sharkey and Jim Jeffries' s championship bout.

Often called F. S. Armitage, Frederick S. Armitage was an early motion picture cinematographer/director who began his career with short subjects for American Mutoscope & Biograph at a time when the film company was still using hand-cranked machines to display their work. Armitage was important for his work with time-lapse photography, as can be observed in his "Building Up and Demolishing the Star Theater" which uses this technique to show the Star Theater being built up and then destroyed. Armitage, born in Seneca Falls, in New York, has little information known about his personal life. His oldest credits date in 1898.

Frederick S. Armitage (June 19, 1874 in Seneca Falls, NY – January 3, 1933 in Ecorse, MI) was an early American motion picture cinematographer and director, working primarily for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Often identified as "F.S. Armitage" in AM&B paperwork, Armitage had a hand in creating more than 400 often very short subjects for AM&B in the days where its films were made as much for the hand-crank operated Mutoscope device as for projection. Several of Armitage's subjects stand out from the company's regular routine of actualities and comic skits in their innovative use of camerawork, superimpositions, time-lapse photography and other effects then new to the art of film-making.