To make this film, Cohl placed each drawing on an illuminated glass plate and then traced the next drawing-with variations-on top of it until he had some 700 drawings. In 1908, chalkboard caricaturists were common vaudeville attractions, and the characters in the film look as though they've been drawn on a chalkboard, but it's an illusion. By filming black lines on paper and then printing in negative, Cohl makes his animations appear to be chalk drawings.
The title is a reference to the "fantasmograph", a mid-19th century variant of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images onto surrounding walls.
The first ever cartoon.
Gaumont Catalogue no. 2032