From Melies' Source Works

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George Melies was highly influenced by his background making theatrical and magic shows. Some of the characters and concepts in A Trip to the Moon have connections with these productions. In them Melies had already used the alchemist Alcofribas, the unfortunate Barbenfouillis was decapitated and Nostradamus was featured. (In this last one, his future wife Jehanne d'Alcy appeared in a scene to be duplicated in the film.) -

Melies not only acted in and produced his films; he wrote them too. Some of his original manuscripts still exist including the outline for A Trip to the Moon -

The multi-talented George Melies also was an experienced artist. He created his own "storyboards" of sort for each of the scenes before filming them. These show us a bit of the creative process that went into A Trip to the Moon. Some show us that a few of the film's tableaux were not quite as ambitious as Melies' original concepts (the size of the space gun, the Selenite's palace, etc.). Others demonstrate changes that Melies made along the way. For instance, originally Melies seemingly intended for the Selenites to be blasted to pieces when struck. (In the film, he settled on their more magical explosion in a puff of smoke.) Still other drawings mirror the film sets so closely it is easy to confuse them with the film itself -

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