The One Man Band

The One Man Band French LHommeOrchestre is a 1900 French short silent film directed by Georges Mlis. It was released by Mliss Star Film Company and is numbered 262263 in its catalogs.

To create the illusion of seven identical musicians, the film required seven simultaneous multiple exposures only one other known Mlis film, The Melomaniac, uses so many exposures at once. In addition, the effect required careful coordination in timing and body position between exposures. First, Mlis walked down a line, arranging the seven chairs in a row and sitting in the last one then, the film was rewound in the camera six times to allow Mlis to play the part of each musician. While filming each musicians part, all other chairs were masked from the lens to prevent them from being exposed. The process was repeated until the entire band had been filmed, all on a single strip of film. In 1906, Mlis commented on the difficulty of multiple exposure you go into a rage when after three quarters of an hour of work and attention, a sprocket rips forcing you to start all over again, repair being impossible.The other effects in the film were created with stage machinery, pyrotechnics, and the substitution splice. A similar effect had previously been created by Mlis in his 1898 film The Triple Lady, in which two copies of a woman emerge from her body and sit beside her. The theme of multiplying chairs returned in Mliss later film The Black Imp, although that film uses no multiple exposures. ........

Source: Wikipedia