Arthur Melbourne Cooper's animation showing a boy's dream of his toys coming
to life uses a live action framing device for the dream sequence which uses stop
motion techniques to animate a child's toys. Evidently he shot this on an
outdoor stage, as the careful viewer might notice from the strange movement of
the shadows as he reposition the dolls. This device, book-ending the animation
with a live action story, had been used the previous year by W.R. Booth in his
film Dreamland Adventures, which showed two children travelling to the North Pole
with their toys grown to life size. Melbourne-Cooper made several other films
using this form.
Complete film (7:12)
