13 Frames a day
Do you have what it takes? What it takes is patience.
The San Diego Natural History Museum invited Ray Harryhausen to make a presentation during his trip here for the San Diego Comic-Con. They have an exhibit running called Dinosaurs : Reel and Robotic so it kind of fits with their theme. Ray was there with a long time friend who shared the stage with him and kind of MC'd for the evening.
The event was held in the museums' theatre where Ray showed his Tortoise and the Hare film. A short he started in the 50's and finished in 2002 with the help of Seamus Walsh and Mark Caballero. Ray talked a little about how the whole stop motion animation process works and shared some stories from his career. He then showed a highlight reel from his films and took questions from the audience.
The most surprising thing I learned was the extreme amount of patience Ray has. He mentioned that animating the skeleton fight sequence alone from Jason and the Argonauts took 4 months to film. Some days he only shot 13 frames of film. Yes that's right not even ONE second of animation for a whole days work. He didn't say but I am guessing that was a 10 hour day too. That scene still holds up today and is one of my favorite bits from his movies. This was all back in the days before frame grabbers, video assist etc., pretty amazing work.
Ray brought with him a skeleton from Jason and the small dino from Gwangi which still looked great and both puppets are still quite pose-able after all this time.
All in all it was a nice evening, Ray seemed to really enjoy the fans.
posted by mefull at 9:02 PM
4 Comments:
Congrats on meeting the master, and thanks for the writeup...Any discussions about the future? (his new deal)
I heard at comic con there was a larger than life Medusa recreation by his booth >:( wouldve loved to see that...
No I don't remember any mention of his new ventures. I could have asked him about a dozen questions, but there was a pretty good croud of mostly general public asking questions like which was your favorite movie. I never got called on to ask a question.
I didn't make it to comic-con this year, I wish I had gone I heard there was some good stuff I missed - seeing a large Medusa would have been one of them.
Now that's what I'm talking about! Great new post! What did you make of the Tortoise and Hare film? I'd love to see it one day.
Well Shelley it was about time huh?
I liked the T & H film, it was well done-a cute kids film. He originally intended them to be sold to schools I think.
They did a pretty seamless job of adding the new animation to the stuff done 40+ years earlier.
It's out on DVD if you want to rent it.
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