The Phonotrope is the term coined by animation director Jim Le Fevre[1] to describe the technique of creating animation in a 'live' environment using the confluence of the frame rate of a live action camera and the revolutions of a constantly rotating disc, predominantly (but not exclusively) using a record player.
It is a contemporary reworking of the phenakistiscope, one of several pre-film animation devices that produce the illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of pictures showing progressive phases of that motion.
The crucial difference between the technique that the Phonotrope uses and the one a phenakistiscope uses is that the Phonotrope is specifically an in-camera technique using the frame-rate of a live-action camera set to a high shutter speed in confluence with a constantly rotating disc to create the illusion of movement. In a phenakistiscope it is the vertical slits in the circumference of the disc that create the stroboscopic interruptions needed for animation. As such the Phonotrope can only be seen through either the camera's viewfinder, a connected monitor or projector or viewed as footage after the event. Timed flashes of a strobe light can also animate the imagery.
From its inception the most commonly used methods of rotating the disc have been using a record-player. However, Le Fevre has also used a pottery wheel to spin a glazed pot to create animation[2] as well as a bespoke motor to animate hundreds of cut-out card images on a two-meter-high (6.6 ft) wooden tiered structure for the title sequence for the BBC television comedy film Holy Flying Circus.[3]