|
Ray Harryhausen
As a boy growing up in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s, Harryhausen was fascinated with museum exhibits of gigantic prehistoric fossils. In 1933, he saw the movie King Kong, and left the theater transformed. Movies offered a way to make his visions of lost, fantastic worlds come alive. Harryhausen immersed himself in every aspect of the art of illusion by taking classes in film direction and editing as well as studying anatomy and puppet-making.
In 1947, early special-effects master Willis O’Brien spotted the promising artist, and hired him to do most of the animation on the giant-ape epic Mighty Joe Young. But Harryhausen wanted more creative control than Hollywood productions would give him, so he developed a unique approach with the help of businessman Charles Scheer. Harryhausen began to create and run his own independent film projects. In films such as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Harryhausen employed a director and actors to shoot live-action footage, while he concentrated on creating the bizarre creatures and phantasmagoric effects that left audiences gasping in amazement.
Like George Melies and Willis O’Brien before him, Harryhausen created his illusions by using stop motion photography and miniature models. Harryhausen elevated those techniques to a new level, drawing inspiration from Gustave Dore, the 19th century Romantic artist whose illustrations for Dante’s Inferno created a dreamlike world of grotesque images and dark emotion.
One of Harryhausen’s most famous sequences the skeletal swordsman who fights the protagonist in the 1958 film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad began like his other work as a series of meticulously detailed sketches. Next, Harryhausen’s director, Nathan Juran, shot a live action sequence of actor Jack Driscoll and a fencer, and then re-recorded each shot with Driscoll alone. Harryhausen then shot footage of his animated skeleton model and painstakingly integrated it into the scene, which required 30 cuts from start to finish. The result was so visually breathtaking that Harryhausen felt compelled to top it by having his protagonist fight six skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, the 1963 quasi-mythological opus widely regarded as his best film.
Links
Filmography
The statue of Talos, treasure keeper for the gods, is brought to life by the theft of a brooch from the treasure chamber. From, "Jason and the Argonauts"
 One of Jason's crew fights off a cadre of "re-animated" skeletons. The sequence is brought to life through stop-motion animation and a combination of rear-screen projection and composite shots. This beautifully choreographed fight sequence holds its own against even today's digital effects, and is widely considered to be one of Harryhausen's finest moments.
 Harryhausen supervised the direction and filming of live action sequences that were to be composited with his stop-motion animations. He is seen here on location for the filming of "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger." The cardboard cutout in background will be used for the placement of the animated "Troglodyte" when the live action and stop-motion footage is combined.Continue on to Douglas TrumballBack to History of SFX
|
|