The next Film Club evening at the Robert Burns Centre Film
Theatre is showing the 2012 documentary Ray
Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan which covers the life and influence of
this 92 year old, in what is known as stop motion. So to give us an example of the great mans
work it was decided to show what he regards as his best film, Jason
and the Argonauts (1963). A UK/USA co-production that originally had a
working title of Jason and the Golden Fleece. Basically it’s Greek mythology,
King Aristo was murdered by Pelias and had his lands taken. His son Jason, soon
to become a legendary Greek hero, puts a ‘crew’ together with the sole intent
of avenging his father and reclaiming his lands. But to do this, well it is
Greek mythology, he has to go to the far end of the earth to get the Golden
Fleece which will apparently give him the boost needed to take back what he
deems is his birth right, and rule the people.
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| Harryhausen's famous fighting skeleton's |
The Hastings born director Don Chaffey directed this fantasy
feature film. His claim to fame was directing this type of adventure movie as
well as working for the Children’s Film Foundation in the late 1940’s and on American
TV in the 1980’s directing such series as Stingray, T J Hooker and Charlie’s
Angels. He also worked with Harryhausen on
One
million Years BC (1966).
Todd
Armstrong in his best-known role is Jason and another American Nancy Kovack
played Medea. British actor Gary Raymond
(Look
Back in Anger 1958) is Acastus, the son of King Aristo. Bond girl and
Avenger Honor Blackman plays the female God Hera.
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| Honer Blackman |
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| Nancy Kovack. |
Our well-informed host for the evening, a plasticine model
of Film Club regular Mr Steven Pickering, told us that instead of focusing on
the normal details involved with the film he would instead look at the special
effects, a process known as ‘stop-motion’. He went on to say that after being
suitably impressed by the state of art CGI used in
Life of Pi
(2012) it would be interesting to compare Harryhausen’s equally ground breaking
work 50 years previous.
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| More of the wonderful special effects. |
George Melies, who used it to animate static objects in his
1899 film Cinderella, first developed
the technique of stop motion (also sometimes called stop-action) almost
accidentally. However, the use of stop motion to animate puppets first started
to appear in such films as The Battle of
the Stag Beetles (1910) and the stunning 1930 film The Tale of the Fox both by Russian stop-motion animator Ladilaw
Starelaw.
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| Fay Wray. |
Typically a small-scale model is made with articulated
parts. In filming, it is posed as desired, and a frame or two is shot. Then the
figure is adjusted slightly and another frame or two is exposed, and so on. The
result on screen is a continuous, somewhat jerky movement. To create one second
of finished film, however, requires 24 or 25 individual frames.
The technique was picked up by Hollywood and used to great
effect by another motion picture special effects and stop motion pioneer the
Irish American Willis O’Brien; he transformed an eighteen-inch high rubber
gorilla into the scream-inducing King
Kong in the 1933 version that starred the wonderful Fay Wray. It’s hard to
imagine the producers initially considered using trained gorillas or a man in a
rubber suit! (Andy Sirkis wasn’t around then) Ray Harryhausen got to work with
his mentor O’Brien on Mighty Joe Young
(1949) for which O’Brien won the 1950 Academy Award for Best Visual
Effects.
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| A Gustave Dore Illustration. |
Harryhausen perfected the technique of merging the animated
figures with previously, carefully choreographed, live footage, which is what
you see in Jason and the Argonauts. He
has stated that his main inspiration has been the haunting illustrations of the
French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor Gustave Dore.
The stop motion technique worked well, particularly with
solid lumbering subjects, and was used in the special effects industry right
through to the original Star Wars trilogy
(1977-1983). It was eventually replaced in the 1980’s by the newly developed,
smoother, more fluid computer generated alternatives.
Steve concluded by informing us that today it is rarely if
ever used in mainstream cinema; however, as an art form it is more than alive
and kicking. It has been embraced by a whole new generation of filmmakers,
inspired by the likes of Harryhausen and his creations. The special effect
techniques used by mainstream cinema have moved on, but the quality and
diversity of stop motion animation continues unabated.
As part of his introduction Steve showed us a short clip
from the Canadian film
Madame Tutli Putli
(2007), which won much acclaim and awards on its release in 2007. Link as
follows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkKyq6gBDjg
All but one audience member returned for the ‘after film’
discussion which really took the form of learning more about this very
interesting cinematic art form, wetting our appetite’s for next weeks
documentary.
