One of the biggest misconceptions that people outside the film industry have is that moviemaking is incredibly glamorous and exciting. Focusing more on the red carpet treatments and swanky post-Oscar parties they see discussed in People magazine than on the shot lists and call sheets, the majority of people never quite grasp how mundane and tedious life on the film set can actually be.
Surprisingly, there is a corner of Hollywood that is hundreds, if not thousands, of times more focused and detail-oriented than the norm: the world of stop-motion animation.
Where hand-drawn animation is created by drawing each frame of a movie and playing them in order (at a rate of 24 frames per second), stop-motion animation requires an actual set, usually made of miniatures and the occasional puppet. A stop-motion animator will set up the shot, light it, take a photo of it, move the characters / puppets slightly, adjust their mouths and feet if they are talking or walking, take another photo and so on until the film or necessary parts are complete.
Ray Harryhausen is the world’s most revered stop-motion animator (and special effects pioneer), having worked on such classic films as The Valley of Gwangi, Clash of the Titans and, most notably, Jason and the Argonauts.
Jason and the Argonauts is a remarkable cinematic achievement for two very different reasons. While Harryhausen’s previous films utilized his four-legged stop-motion creatures — "Our type of picture tries to convince you that the [stop-motion] dinosaur is on the live set while we are shooting the movie," Harryhausen explains — Jason and the Argonauts featured the first truly believable stop-motion humanoid characters that interacted with the live-action actors. In the final scene of Jason and the Argonauts, actor Todd Armstrong battles a legion of walking, battling skeletons brought to life entirely by Harryhausen.
The film also made waves in the entertainment world when word got out that it had taken Harryhausen nearly half a year to complete the three minutes of skeleton effects.
Locked in a dark room, arranging and rearranging the models and lights on his sets, getting a second’s worth of film on his best days, Harryhausen is the first to admit that it takes a special kind of crazy to be a stop-motion animator.
"Oh, it’s not everybody’s cup of tea," the now 83-year old Harryhausen laughs. "Some people find it quite tedious, but that’s peculiar to different people. I’ve never found it boring in the least. You just concentrate on the action and your next move and the next pose," he says simply. "One pose suggests another pose."
It’s the rush of creating that Harryhausen finds particularly enjoyable. "It’s the thought of trying to bring something, an inanimate object, to life," Harryhausen states. Chuckling, he says, "Maybe I have a Frankenstein complex or a Zeus complex, I don’t know." Turning more serious, Harryhausen continues, "The fascination is if you can capture on film what you have in your mind, well, you’re animating. That’s half the charm; waiting for the rushes the next day to see if you did capture it."
Working alone on the stop-motion for the most part ("I’d shoot my [own effects] sequences because I know roughly in my mind what the animated character will do," Harryhausen says. "The director wouldn’t know that."), Harryhausen genuinely enjoyed the fact that his fingerprints, sometimes literally, were on every facet of the scene.
He scoffs at group nature of some of the computer-generated imagery available today. "So much of the CGI is done by different people. Somebody puts in the skin, somebody else does the basic skeleton. Another person will put the detail in on the eyes. It’s almost like a committee working rather than an individual."
Though Harryhausen does envy the computer’s ability to quickly and efficiently whisk away wires and the like from the film ("I had to paint out the wires in each frame of film," he grumbles good-naturedly about post-production on his film, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. "You’d have to paint the wires the same color as the background in each frame of film. It all takes a great deal of time."), he is skeptical of directors who rely totally on computer-generated special effects to sell their movies.
"In a 30-second commercial you see the most amazing images," Harryhausen says by way of explanation. "The amazing image is no longer spectacular. It’s become mundane because it’s overused. The computer seems to be able to do anything." Except create plots and situations that the audience cares about. "It’s a tool," Harryhausen says of the computer. "I feel it’s a really useful tool."
In the end, though, the results are in the hands of the movie-going public. "As long as it looks good on the screen, I don’t think the audience gives a damn what technique you use," Harryhausen states emphatically.
