Biography

Frank Mottershaw (1850–1932) (often confused with his second son, Frank Storm Mottershaw) was an early English cinema director based in Sheffield, Yorkshire. His films, A Daring Daylight Burglary and The Robbery of the Mail Coach (featuring a protagonist based on Jack Sheppard, the infamous 18th-century English highwayman), made in April and September 1903, are regarded as highly influential on the development of Edwin Porter’s paradigmatic "chase film" The Great Train Robbery of December 1903, and often claimed as the prototype of the action film. The uniqueness of Mottershaw's A Daring Daylight Burglary is seen in the way it tracks a single action through changing locations. Henry Jasper Redfern and Mottershaw made the first motion pictures filmed outdoors in Sheffield.

In 1900 Mottershaw formed the Sheffield Photo Company, which by 1905 was one of the leading film companies in the country.Mottershaw also made documentary films, an early example being The Coronation of King Peter I of Serbia in Belgrade, made in 1904, with Arnold Muir Wilson.