Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan Page #3

(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.

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