Sources and methodology

The source hierarchy

Not all evidence is equal, and a record that treats it as though it were is not much use. Sources are weighted in the following order, and an entry is only published when at least two independent sources support it.

1. Primary documents and archival holdings. Patents, contemporary trade press, production paperwork, surviving prints and the catalog records of the institutions that hold them.
2. Institutional research. Published work by national libraries, film archives, museums and universities, including collection essays, exhibition scholarship and preservation notes.
3. Edited reference works. Encyclopaedias and standard histories with named editorial oversight and a correction process.
4. Peer-reviewed scholarship. Academic work in film and media history, used particularly where a question is contested.

Open wikis, fan compilations, unsourced articles and aggregated content are not treated as authorities. They are occasionally useful for finding a document, which is then verified directly against the institution that holds it.

How a date is established

Film history contains an unusual number of different dates for the same event, because there are genuinely several dates to choose from. A premiere, a general release, a trade screening, a patent filing and a patent grant are distinct events, and this record names which one it is reporting.

Where documentation supports an exact day, an exact day is given. Where it supports only a month or a year, only a month or a year appears. Approximation is stated rather than disguised as precision.

The problem with firsts

Claims of the form “the first animated film” are almost always underspecified. First projected to a paying audience? First photographed on standard motion picture film? First composed entirely of sequential drawings, with no live-action framing? These describe three different films in three different countries, and all three claims are true under their own definition.

This record therefore qualifies every such claim. Where a widely repeated first is inaccurate, the entry corrects it and explains what the accurate version is.

Surviving works and documented works

A significant portion of animation made before 1930 no longer exists. The first animated feature, made in Argentina in 1917, survives only in documentation. Most of the hand-painted bands projected in Paris in the 1890s were destroyed by the man who made them. Several early Japanese films were lost to fire and war.

Events supported only by documentation are included when the documentation is strong, and the absence of the work is stated in the entry. A record that admitted only surviving prints would misrepresent the history badly, particularly outside Western Europe and the United States.

What we do not do

• We do not reproduce film frames, character designs, posters or promotional artwork. Every illustration on this site was made for it.
• We do not present box-office figures, budgets or drawing counts as exact when the underlying sources round or estimate them.
• We do not repeat a widely circulated anecdote because it is well known. If it cannot be traced to a source, it does not appear.
• We do not quietly adjust entries. Substantive changes are logged under the corrections policy.

Known limits of this record

Three limitations are worth stating plainly. First, the record is weighted towards the United States, Western Europe and Japan, because that is where the institutional documentation is most complete in English — not because animation elsewhere was less significant. Animation histories in Eastern Europe, Latin America, South Asia, Africa and China are under-represented here and we are working to improve that.

Second, technical and industrial events are easier to date than artistic developments. A patent has a filing date; a change in how animators think about weight does not. The timeline structure quietly favors the former, and the decade essays exist partly to compensate.

Third, recent events are the hardest to assess. Significance is a judgment about consequences, and consequences take years to become visible. Entries from the last decade are the ones most likely to be revised.

Institutions and reference works cited

The following organizations are cited across this record. Links go to the collections, catalogs and reference works consulted; where an institution has reorganised its holdings, the link points to the collection landing page rather than to a document that may have moved.

Institutions and reference works cited

Encyclopaedia Britannica	Cited in 86 records
Library of Congress	Cited in 63 records
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences	Cited in 38 records
ACM SIGGRAPH	Cited in 26 records
British Film Institute	Cited in 22 records
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures	Cited in 22 records
National Film Archive of Japan	Cited in 13 records
Cinémathèque française	Cited in 8 records
Computer History Museum	Cited in 8 records
Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, University of Exeter	Cited in 4 records
National Film Board of Canada	Cited in 3 records
The Museum of Modern Art	Cited in 2 records
Deutsche Kinemathek	Cited in 2 records
The Walt Disney Family Museum	Cited in 2 records
The Royal Society	Cited in 1 record
The Getty Museum	Cited in 1 record
George Eastman Museum	Cited in 1 record
Smithsonian Institution	Cited in 1 record
Smithsonian Magazine	Cited in 1 record
University of Exeter	Cited in 1 record
Filmoteca de Catalunya, via Encyclopaedia Britannica	Cited in 1 record