Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan Page #2

is amazing.

And the way he moves,

he does move like a gorilla.

Whereas King Kong

doesn't move like a gorilla at all.

(Narrator) 'See the most fantastic

relationship between beast and beauty,

'a mere girl

mastering a primitive giant.'

(Ray) I thought I'd get in the mood

by eating celery and carrots

for my tea breaks

so that I felt like a gorilla. (Laughs)

The studio sent a cameraman

to the Chicago Zoo to photograph a gorilla.

All the gorilla did seem to do was

walk across the screen and pick his nose,

so we couldn't use that

to any great degree as a copy,

but it gave an idea

of how a gorilla moves.

(Narrator) Mighty Joe Young, whose

sensational exploits will startle you.'

(Ray) After Mighty Joe Young,

I did The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.

(I Dramatic orchestral music)

(Roaring)

(Explosions)

(Screaming)

(Beast roars)

I didn't wanna duplicate

the Lost World concept

of having a real known dinosaur,

so we devised this dinosaur

between the writers

and the producers and myself

and called it the Rhedosaurus,

a different type of animal

that has never been seen before.

(Narrator) 'The beast

would come back,

'back to the caverns

of the deepest Atlantic

'where it was spawned.

'An armored giant...'

(Bradbury) Ray Harryhausen and I

showed up at the same time.

He said, "Well, maybe some day

you'll write a screenplay for me

"and I'll do dinosaurs for you."

I said, "I'm gonna pray to God for that."

His budget for that was $5,000

to put all special effects together,

build the models, miniatures, everything.

(Ray) When we were making

Mighty Joe Young

we had 27 people on the stage.

The budget went up so high.

So I tried to reduce

the whole process

to a simple way

of combining the live action

with the animated model.

(Man) He'd shoot the live action first

then he would project it

on a rear projection screen back there.

Screen's here, projector's back there,

project one frame at a time.

In front of that, he would put a camera.

Then he'd put his animation table

and then he would take a puppet.

He'd then matte out the animation stage

the puppet was sitting on with paint.

So it was live action,

still frame, puppet, still,

black below.

Advance the projector,

pose the puppet,

take a frame of film,

et cetera, et cetera.

So what he'd do is he'd undo the

animation stage, lower it out of the screen,

he would then put a counter matte

which was painted

to block out the area that

had previously been exposed.

And so then he would put

the projector on frame one,

take a frame on the camera,

put the projector

on frame two,

take a frame on the camera,

et cetera, et cetera.

Now he had all of the live action

and the animation together in one go.

(Ray) You could intricately interweave

the animated model with live actors.

It looked like they were photographed

at the same time.

I tried to do a lot of research.

When I did The Bees;

I studied lizards.

So you have an influence

of these creatures

that are similar to

what may have happened in the past.

(Tony) The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms

being the first monster rampage movie

after King Kong, really,

and from The Bees; of course,

the Japanese made Godzilla.

Who was a man in a suit

stomping around on miniature sets.

(John Landis) Gojira is a direct result

of Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, exactly.

Toho said, "We'll make one of those!"

Ray's creatures,

the way they move

essentially is the way

we think of dinosaurs,

how they move.

I mean, even to this day.

I mean, when you see a movie

like Jurassic Park..

(Dinosaur growls)

- (Man screams)

- (Bones crunch)

It was, it was like

Ray did that kind of stuff all the time,

which is cool,

you wanna see people being eaten alive.

You know,

that's what it's about.

That's movie-making!

And Steven Spielberg,

when Ray was in town,

got him over to the editorial suite

for Jurassic Park

He showed me some of his beginning

of the CGI process

of the dinosaur

knocking the car off the bridge.

Ray was blown away by it. He thought

it was just really an amazing process.

I couldn't say anything negative

because it was most impressive!

I just wanna acknowledge the fact

that we wouldn't be here today

making these movies,

like Jurassic Park and like Avatar;

without Ray,

the father of all we do today

in the business of science fiction,

fantasy and adventure.

(James Cameron) I'd see

a Ray Harryhausen film,

and for the next five weeks,

I was drawing comic books,

my own comic books of that story.

But not just a clone of the story

but my own version of it.

So I was doing this for a long time.

So Avatar really represented

an opportunity for me

to do all those things

I had always dreamed about.

I think Ray would have loved to have

had access to the tools that we have now

for computer-generated

animated characters

because, you know, for him,

the stop motion puppetry

was a way for him to get the images

that were in his head up on film.

And that was the only way to do it

at that time.

(Ray) We had to compromise on scenes

that you'd wanna do differently

because of the technical limitations.

But we didn't know there would be

anything different at the time.

So just as O'Brien, when he started

The Lost World and King Kong,

they used the facilities

that they had at that time

and you didn't anticipate

the new types of electronics

that can do

the most amazing things.

If Ray were working right now, he'd be

using the tools that we're using right now.

He wouldn't cling to the puppetry.

His imagination would require

that he used the best,

most fantastic techniques available.

(Ray) Well, I don't know,

it's hard to say.

It's just another way of making films.

I think I would prefer to make films

with the model animation

rather than CGI, today even.

(I Dramatic orchestral music)

(Tony) Charles H. Schneer

was a young producer working at Columbia

and he saw

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms

and wanted to meet Ray.

Charles said, "Well, I wanna make a movie

about a giant octopus

"that attacks San Francisco."

(Screaming)

They did

this film together

and they had terrible problems

with the San Francisco bridge.

We were obliged to submit the script of

It Came From Beneath The Sea

to the city fathers for approval

so we could get

the cooperation of the police.

When they read the script,

they turned it down

because they said

it would make the public lose confidence

that a creature can pull down

the Golden Gate Bridge.

So we had to do things

through devious means.

We put a camera

in the back of a bakery truck

and went back and forth on the bridge

to get projection plates secretly.

I mean, it's a fantasy film

and I'm sure that no-one lost confidence

in the Golden Gate Bridge

because a giant octopus

pulled it down. (Laughs)

(Screaming)

The octopus in It Came From Beneath

The Sea only had six legs.

That was because of the budget

restrictions, Ray had to save money,

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