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Ray Harryhausen - the master of special effects
[Fri 15/08/2008 02:34:21]
By Rodney Appleyard
The fact that Ray Harryhausen still claims the title as the most influential and respected special effects artist in the history of cinema by technicians from every discipline is a true credit to his genius.
Artists at the top of their field around the world, such as Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor and Rick Baker, consider Harryhausen to be their greatest inspiration and the main reason why they started making effects in the first place. Smoke & Mirrors was granted the special privilege of being able to speak to the legend himself about his life and career just before he opened an exhibition in England: Myths And Visions: The art of Ray Harryhausen.
The exhibition, which was on show at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford, England, was also a fitting compliment to Harryhausen’s book: The Art of Ray Harryhausen. It displayed some of his most valuable artefacts featured in this publication. The book is packed full of the conceptual art, sketches and storyboards he created as the basis for making his infamous stop-motion animation creatures.
Now at the age of 88, Harryhausen is still an extremely vibrant, humorous and fascinating man to talk to, with very strong opinions about modern day cinema. For me, it was an absolute pleasure to talk directly to the man whose films were the highlight of my Christmas holidays throughout my childhood.
I still treasure the memory of watching these movies with an immense feeling of wonder as I was whipped out of my real life existence. Whenever I watch his movies these days, such as Jason and the Argonauts, The Voyage of Sinbad, Clash of the Titans,First Men on the Moon, 20 Million Miles from Earth and It Came From Beneath the Sea, they still have the magic ability to transport me into a world that I am reluctant to leave (even though many of those journeys were a bit too dangerous for my liking). I still want to be one of the heroes, fighting off angry beasts, and winning.
The fantasy worlds created by Harryhausen are still irreplaceable in the memories of many people, and one of the main reasons why Harryhausen is still so greatly admired today is because his purpose was simple - to create cinematic playgrounds for our imaginations to run havoc.
“I think original films were meant to entertain and not to preach, otherwise they would become propaganda films. When I was filmmaking, I was more interested in making people feel good, whereas these days, so many filmmakers seem more interested in making everything seem ugly and downbeat.
"We tried to make the stories uplifting instead. Hollywood used to be condemned for having happy endings you know, but why not? You want to come out of the theatre feeling happy after paying the entrance fee,” says Harryhausen.
It is his simple desire to entertain that made Harryhausen determined to invent such imaginative creatures, but he does not really have a favourite one. “I can’t like one more than the other because they will get jealous. I’m fond of little bits and pieces in each one. To be honest, I guess I prefer the more complicated ones best, such as the skeletons and Medusa.”
He made the 8-inch high skeletons for Jason and the Argonauts with his Dad, which involved using his father’s machine to make the ball and socket metal joints first and then he used cotton wool dipped in latex rubber to build up the bones right on the metal armatures.
There was no greater reward for him than seeing his stop-motion animation creatures come to life on the big screen. He was first inspired to pursue his career in special effects after watching King Kong in 1933 at the age of 14.
“I haven’t been the same since. It shows how much a film can impress you. My work started off as a hobby, but once I got the bug I was hooked. There were not any books around in those days to teach you about how to make all those creations, and it was more or less kept a secret about how those effects were made.
"However, I used to spend a lot of time inventing things myself, and experimenting with filming with a 16mm camera in my garage on some of my first films, such as Evolution of the World and How to Build a Bridge Guadalcanal.”
He learnt how to build miniature sets for these movies during his amateur days after being inspired by the work of Willis O’Brien the chief technician on King Kong. O’Brien was one of Harryhausen’s biggest heroes before they met and they eventually became very close friends. During the making of Kong, O’Brien cut palm trees, complete with branches and leaves, out of metal so that they would not move when he was animating the models within his sets.
So Harryhausen decided to follow his example for his early experiments by using scissors to cut his palm leaves out of very thin copper sheets and he then attached them to trunks made out of papier mache or plaster. He re-used the miniature trees many times because they were very well detailed. So Harryhausen invented his own little miniature props department inside the confines of his Dad’s garage.
But despite having such a variety of different skills and talents, even he is not sure what the secret to his success has been. “I don’t know what it is. All I wanted to do was get certain things on the screen that I thought were missing when I was growing up. Films like Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, and some of the other films of that nature, use to inspire me because they would talk about mythological creatures and legends, but you never actually saw them on the screen. So I wanted to do something from the point of view of these creatures, rather than making mundane cops and robbers and baggy pants movies.”
And so he did, which led to him creating Medusa for Clash of the Titans. This is still considered to be one of the most memorable creatures ever made in world cinema. I for one will certainly never forget the creepy feeling I had when I first saw Medusa’s sinister snaky hair floating around in the air, thanks to Harryhausen intricate design work.
“I did a lot of research on Medusa. Due to the story we were telling, I decided to make her very ugly because in all the research I carried out, she was just a woman with a pretty face with snakes in her hair. But that wasn’t suitable for the type of story we were telling.
"We wanted to make her a real villain. I gave her a snake’s body, so I didn’t have to animate the clothing; as well as a bow and arrow and a rattlesnake’s tail. She ended up being a completely new creation to the original concept of Medusa.”
As for a re-make of Clash of the Titans, he’s not so sure if this would be a good idea. “Why would they want to re-make it? They will never get a cast like we had, with great actors such as Laurence Olivier. They don’t breed people like that anymore. They tried to do a re-make of Jason but they took 4 hours to tell the same story, whereas we told it in an hour and a half.
"But everybody has a different way of looking at things and I’m grateful for the way we looked at things when we made them, especially since they were so popular. But I think today they are even more appreciated than they were then.”
Harryhausen is still very much a fan of the old school way of making special effects. “I prefer traditional make-up techniques, miniatures and making stuff with your hands because I think it makes a difference, especially with fantasy. The magic of the original King Kong was that you knew it wasn’t real but you couldn’t figure out how it was done. But that’s just a different point of view of course.
"It makes me laugh now that it takes 200 people to do what I did with my hands all those years ago. But it was just a different technique. I don’t condemn modern day technology, but I think with fantasy there are many different techniques you can use. For instance, Kermit the Frog brought back the hand puppets and Thunderbirds brought back string puppets. It depends on the story you are telling when it comes down which technique you want to use. If you can amuse people with a yo-yo, why not do it.”
Harryhausen is grateful that the exhibition gave him a chance to educate people about the techniques he used to make his legendary creations and he hopes it encouraged more people to become special effects artists too.
“I’m very grateful that people are interested in the background. When I made this book, Tony Dalton and I dug up pictures that I had forgotten about. I brought the archives over from America when I moved to England, and Dalton decided to put them in the book. Some of them I didn’t care to have published, but he insisted, and I’m grateful that he did because it shows the development of each project. The book and the exhibition included early sketches which I considered too crude and I don’t know why I kept them, but he found them somewhere among my paraphernalia.”
Although Harryhausen’s movies were very low budget “B” pictures at the time, it is a true credit to him that they have managed to outlast the so-called “A” pictures of that period. Now seems like the perfect time to pay tribute to the original grandmaster of special effects through this exhibition, especially considering we are forging ahead so quickly with new techniques and technologies for visual effects. Sometimes it is essential to take a step back and reflect on how it all began, and in particular admire Harryhausen as the titan who spearheaded many of the modern day ideas.
Ray Harryhausen tributes:
Here are some of the tributes to Ray Harryhausen from some of the leading special effects artists in the world.
Peter Jackson:
“In 1996, whilst I was building up a computer visual effects facility in Wellington, I still wanted more than anything to make a movie just like the films that inspired me throughout my life. I wanted to make my ‘Jason’, or my ‘Sinbad.’ My partner Fran Walsh and I toiled for a while on original fantasy story ideas, before settling on the idea of adapting The Lord of The Rings instead. The Lord of the Rings is my ‘Ray Harryhausen movie.’ Without that life-long love of his wondrous images and storytelling it would never have been made – not by me at least.”
“In fact, sitting right in the middle of the first of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, is my ‘Harryhausen scene’ – the fight with the cave troll in Balin’s tomb. I wanted the monster fight to contain all the gags and moment I enjoyed in Ray’s films: people dodging the monster, throwing rocks and spears at it, the climactic moment when the hero jumps on its back, it’s all there in that scene. I was finally fulfilling a childhood dream.”
Phil Tippett:
The 1958 release of Columbia’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad changed my life as well as many others and perhaps, along with Jason and the Argonauts, may have transformed the history of popular cinema as well. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, among others, were all zapped at precisely the right age in exactly the right state of mind; needing to see the fantastic, the miraculous and the spectacular – storing that need, that feeling away until it could find it’s expression in many of the so called Blockbusters we see today.
Where else could one witness men being crushed by a Cyclops, who is later blinded and lead to its death, falling into a rocky ravine? A swordfight with a skeleton? A fire breathing dragon?... and more! The possibilities in those days for the kind of imagery we lusted after were few and far between and Ray’s pictures were the one guiding light that, thankfully, we could all depend on.
The history of visual effects, particularly those with fantastic beings, the manifestations of the unconscious mind made visible, would not be what it is today with out Ray.
What more can I say?
Rick Baker:
“You wouldn’t think that a grown man alone in a dark room pushing puppets around one frame at a time would have such an influence on the state of the art of filmmaking today, but it’s true. Ray Harryhausen, and his work, has inspired so many of us working in films today. He was a one-man visual effects factory. He created effects for an entire film by himself for less than what one shot would cost today from a big effects house. Ray could do the impossible and make it real.
“As anyone who has ever attempted stop motion animation, as I have, can tell you it is impossible to get a brilliant performance one frame at time and Ray would do that each and every time. He would instil these rubber and metal puppets not only with life but a soul. He truly deserves the respect and admiration that he has gotten from the current filmmakers, as well as the respect and admiration that he will get from the filmmakers of the future. I can tell you that he sure has my respect. I idolised him as a child as I idolise him today.-”
Richard Taylor:
“Ray is unquestionably one of histories greatest filmmakers. Also, one of the industries greatest innovators and artists, but he is also a wonderful human and a gentleman towards anyone that he meets.
“Ray and Diana are an inspirational couple – their warmth, kindness and strength of spirit is a delight to be around and I count myself very lucky that I have been fortunate enough to get to know them.”
Dave Elsey:
“There's not a single FX guy out there today who doesn't owe an enormous debt to Ray for making all these films, and inspiring filmmakers to pursue the fantastic on screen. With FX houses full to the brim with artists and digital technology, there still hasn't been anything to match the thrill of what he did, all by himself, one frame at a time. There will never, ever, be another Ray Harryhausen.”
John Cox:
“My story is similar to that of many people who are involved in visual effects today. They all cite one or another of Ray’s films as being the reason for them getting into this industry. Ray has been instrumental in leading a wealth of talent to the visual effects arena.
“His job description on each of his films was to be designer, creator, director, cameraman, technical consultant and often the initial writer, .... and this was before he even began animating and creating all the characters and other visual effects for his films. During his career Ray has brought to life many mythical characters in many ground-breaking films that have themselves become legendary.”
Gordon Smith:
“Ray Harryhaussen helped revolutionise the imagination of an entire industry and his work still does today. He took the scope of our imagination off the written page and put it on screen. Every movie-going kid with any mechanical ability wanted to follow in his footsteps because he proved the impossible was possible and took their imaginations to the brink. His advancements in live 3D animation stimulated the growth of an all new mechanical effects generation and now an all new digital generation. The power his work had on his generation parallels that of Jurassic Park on ours. The only difference being, his work was given the recognition it deserved and is still given that recognition.
“Ray's theatrical and fine art education gave him his respect for anatomy and movement. His love of photography gave him the respect for its magic and the knowledge that what you do not see does not exist. My industry may have been very different without his input. My hat is off to Ray Harryhausen.”
