April 5, 2001 I had the privilege of meeting Ray Harryhausen, master of stop-motion animation, at the Vancouver Effects & Animation Festival. I told him I was a stop-motion animator and instructor, and he remarked, "Ah, you're still young, you haven't pulled all your hair out yet!" He is an incredibly friendly and amazing person.
Some of Ray's creations: Skeleton soldier from Jason and the Argonauts, Medusa from Clash of the Titans, and Bowhead Statue from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.
After viewing a reel of some of Ray Harryhausen's work, there was a Q&A session. Here are some notes I scribbled down from Ray's answers, just little bits of history and info...
-met Charles Schneer after Beast of 20,000 Fathoms
-Frank Capra was his commanding officer in the army; Dr. Seuss was there too as a cartoonist; worked on propaganda films for World War II.
-most animated scenes were done with rear-projection and mattes; plates of glass and white or black cards were set up for various elements of the scene; film took several runs through the camera to marry elements together.
-Byron Crabb was a matte painter hired to create painted trees for Mighty Joe Young; avoided the problem of animators bumping into real trees and causing them to wiggle on screen. Also had an interesting problem once using real plants on a stop-motion set; over the span of animating, the plants and flowers slowly bloomed, resulting in a "time-lapse" effect that really shouldn't have been there.
-while working on his Hansel & Gretel film, a fly landed on the set and appeared dancing around on camera!
-Unfinished or never-realized projects: Baron Munchasen, Beowulf, Dante's Inferno (very influenced by black-and-white sketches of Gustave Dore; intrigued by the idea of animating tortured souls in hell.) Willis O'Brien (Ray's mentor) planned to create films War Eagles and Gwangi; called off because of WWII.
-worked with George Pal for awhile on the Puppetoon films, where dialogue and motion was synced with music and carefully "pre-planned" with replacement parts; was never very happy working in that technique. Ray's philosophy of animation is "one pose leads to another." Much of the detail was improvised on the set, and he ended up putting in alot more than he had originally imagined.
One of the things I repeatedly emphasize about Ray Harryhausen's work when doing the history portion of my stop-motion animation class (at VanArts) is the pace and composition of his scenes. It is a quality that was suggested by the technical director of Phil Tippett's studio, who did a presentation in Vancouver a couple years ago.
Tippett Studio did the CG effects for The Haunting remake, and what he said was he'd been watching this particular scene where an actor was reacting to a ghost or something, and was trying to figure out why the scene didn't work very well. The scene consisted of a tight medium shot of the actor, followed by a cut to the ghost effect shot, then back to the actor's reaction. It wasn't very effective. Ray Harryhausen had visited the studio, and after watching some of the Sinbad films, the Tippett director realized why those old films harbored a better emotional reaction in the viewer. There were always long shots, where you saw the creature and the actors sharing the screen, intercut with a few close-ups here and there. Sitting back away from the action a bit, not only can the audience actually see what's going on, but the size ratio of the monsters against puny humans is more evident and more dramatic. Upon thinking about this, I've noticed that it is a striking difference between old adventure films and modern ones. Many of today's films are mostly about close-ups, medium shots, and super-fast editing, with maybe an occasional long shot or establishing shot. In my opinion, it's almost always very sloppy and impossible to tell what's going on; things happen so fast and so close-up you get so caught up just trying to keep up and follow the action, rather than becoming emotionally involved with it. I felt this particularly through the fight scenes in Gladiator; I saw lots of blurred action and bloody close-ups and shaky camera-work, but I don't think I could tell you exactly what happened, therefore I was confused more than riveted.
In Harryhausen's action scenes, you can always follow the action because it's staged more like cinematic theater. Long shots and skillful editing keep the pace of the films moving and let you actually see what's happening, with enough background space to let the shot breathe. You are never confused as to what the focal point of the shot should be. This is why these old films, as cheesy and crude as they may sometimes look now, are so important to study and watch. They aren't driven by money, celebrities, or Happy Meals, they are carefully crafted pieces of entertainment and in many cases, works of art. The budgets were small which allowed for great creativity in using what these filmmakers had to work with. The films of Ray Harryhausen are rich with his philosophy of simply creating a two-hour escape into a world of pure fantasy. He has been quoted in saying that today's filmmakers need to "look to the stars instead of the garbage" when seeking inspiration for their films. His own animated scenes should be looked at too, again and again, in order to see what makes movies work well.
