Ray Harryhausen, the God-King of stop-motion special effects photography and Unconquerable Jedi Master to all pre-CGI and pre-Optical effects technicians, has died at the age of 92.
Harryhausen became a legend in his own time by training himself to practice the same stop-motion photography effects as those used by Willis O'Brien for The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933) as a teenager and applying those skills to the creature features of the 1950s like The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). Ever-determined to improve and perfect his trade, Harryhausen branched out into optical effects, developing front and rear-screen projection techniques, split focus lensing, and other tricks that became industry standards for decades under the nickname "Dynamation," courtesy of Charles H. Schneer.
His greatest accomplishments, however, are undoubtedly the sword-and-sorcery epics of the 1960s, where he brought fantastical classical beings to life in classics such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Mysterious Island, and The Valley of Gwangi (1966). He specialized in complex models with multiple moving parts, such as the sword-wielding Kali Statue from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974).
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But of all Harryhausen's accomplishments, none stand taller or greater than his unparalleled cornucopia of creations that is Jason and the Argonauts (1963). A monument of genre work that forged the the platinum standard for hand-crafted stop-motion effects, Argonauts brought out the total lifetime of Harryhausen's talent, aptitude, skill, and innovation and channeled it into a single masterpiece that did more for effects work in one film than most other artists had done in their entire careers. Argonauts was The Matrix of its day, establishing a myriad of setpieces that dialed the "Holy Shit" Meter to 11 and blew the eyes of millions of impressionable children careening out the back of their skulls. The most famous, and still-referenced of these being the Army of Skeletons sequence that blended live-action and animation together so convincingly and seamlessly, setting the bar so high for the medium that it remains unchallenged to this day.
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The 70s were not kind to Harryhausen, as the national tastes discarded the fantastical for the realistic, and the emergence of Star Wars in 1977 made his work feel passe and obsolete. Nevertheless, he returned to work for his final project in a film that re-established him in the hearts and minds of a new generation of rabid TV watchers with MGM's Clash of the Titans (1981). Deliberately harkening back to the feel of films made 20 years before, Titans showed Harryhausen at his best, and even most polished, with additional mythological creatures that were practically invented to be rendered in his clay: The Kraken, Pegasus, Calibos (which was invented for him), and a horde of scorpions, all rendered in gorgeous practical, tactile stop-motion glory in spite of and even in defiance of the newly minted motion-control model effects. But his true treasure in Titans was the magnificently rendered figure of Medusa, who never betrayed her form with static movements as Harryhausen maintained individual movement for every single snake resting atop her head. A lesser man would have used motorized wires to lighten his work load. Harryhausen was not this man.
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Harryhausen retired from his work in 1984, while Titans and other mythological fantasy works of his became mainstays on basic cable in the 1980s, and the children of the 60s became some of the leading fantasists of the film industry--Joe Dante, Tim Burton, John Landis, etc.--who took every opportunity to let their geek flag fly by revisiting and referencing Harryhausen's work and his films in their own. When Clash of the Titans was remade in 2010, geeks and fans in legion mocked it as a soulless cash-in and shook their heads in befuddlement at how anyone could have thought an army of state-of-the-art VFX comptuers could do better than an old man with a clay model. As geek culture became increasingly visible in the late 80s and throughout the 90s, Harryhausen's status as the "Man Without Whom There Would Be No Awesome" only grew with each passing year and each new website devoted to retro love. Today, no effects artist worth his salt or his CPU places him or herself in their trade without acknowledging the legend that made their trades possible.
Harryhausen passed away Tuesday night at the age of 92, leaving behind a legacy that never was and now never will be matched. Many celebrities leave us every year, and many of them leave a deep wound to what remains of the inner child left in me. But this one cuts deeper than most, and I for one, take it upon myself to memorialize this man in the fashion I can. Considering everything he did for me and people like me at a time when nobody else cared to do more than glue horns on iguanas in a diorama, it's far, far, far too little too late.
Farewell Mr. Harryhausen. You will be missed.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/a-longer-look-at-the-life-and-career-of-the-late-r,97435/
http://www.thewrap.com/movies/column-post/ray-harryhausen-special-effects-master-dies-92-89791
http://www.empireonline.com/news/feed.asp?NID=37403
http://www.eonline.com/news/415840/..._medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=imdb_topstories
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/05/07/ray-harryhausen-dead/
Harryhausen became a legend in his own time by training himself to practice the same stop-motion photography effects as those used by Willis O'Brien for The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933) as a teenager and applying those skills to the creature features of the 1950s like The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). Ever-determined to improve and perfect his trade, Harryhausen branched out into optical effects, developing front and rear-screen projection techniques, split focus lensing, and other tricks that became industry standards for decades under the nickname "Dynamation," courtesy of Charles H. Schneer.
His greatest accomplishments, however, are undoubtedly the sword-and-sorcery epics of the 1960s, where he brought fantastical classical beings to life in classics such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Mysterious Island, and The Valley of Gwangi (1966). He specialized in complex models with multiple moving parts, such as the sword-wielding Kali Statue from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974).
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But of all Harryhausen's accomplishments, none stand taller or greater than his unparalleled cornucopia of creations that is Jason and the Argonauts (1963). A monument of genre work that forged the the platinum standard for hand-crafted stop-motion effects, Argonauts brought out the total lifetime of Harryhausen's talent, aptitude, skill, and innovation and channeled it into a single masterpiece that did more for effects work in one film than most other artists had done in their entire careers. Argonauts was The Matrix of its day, establishing a myriad of setpieces that dialed the "Holy Shit" Meter to 11 and blew the eyes of millions of impressionable children careening out the back of their skulls. The most famous, and still-referenced of these being the Army of Skeletons sequence that blended live-action and animation together so convincingly and seamlessly, setting the bar so high for the medium that it remains unchallenged to this day.
<object width="560" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/IXmRuJByoVs?version=3&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/IXmRuJByoVs?version=3&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>
The 70s were not kind to Harryhausen, as the national tastes discarded the fantastical for the realistic, and the emergence of Star Wars in 1977 made his work feel passe and obsolete. Nevertheless, he returned to work for his final project in a film that re-established him in the hearts and minds of a new generation of rabid TV watchers with MGM's Clash of the Titans (1981). Deliberately harkening back to the feel of films made 20 years before, Titans showed Harryhausen at his best, and even most polished, with additional mythological creatures that were practically invented to be rendered in his clay: The Kraken, Pegasus, Calibos (which was invented for him), and a horde of scorpions, all rendered in gorgeous practical, tactile stop-motion glory in spite of and even in defiance of the newly minted motion-control model effects. But his true treasure in Titans was the magnificently rendered figure of Medusa, who never betrayed her form with static movements as Harryhausen maintained individual movement for every single snake resting atop her head. A lesser man would have used motorized wires to lighten his work load. Harryhausen was not this man.
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Harryhausen retired from his work in 1984, while Titans and other mythological fantasy works of his became mainstays on basic cable in the 1980s, and the children of the 60s became some of the leading fantasists of the film industry--Joe Dante, Tim Burton, John Landis, etc.--who took every opportunity to let their geek flag fly by revisiting and referencing Harryhausen's work and his films in their own. When Clash of the Titans was remade in 2010, geeks and fans in legion mocked it as a soulless cash-in and shook their heads in befuddlement at how anyone could have thought an army of state-of-the-art VFX comptuers could do better than an old man with a clay model. As geek culture became increasingly visible in the late 80s and throughout the 90s, Harryhausen's status as the "Man Without Whom There Would Be No Awesome" only grew with each passing year and each new website devoted to retro love. Today, no effects artist worth his salt or his CPU places him or herself in their trade without acknowledging the legend that made their trades possible.
Harryhausen passed away Tuesday night at the age of 92, leaving behind a legacy that never was and now never will be matched. Many celebrities leave us every year, and many of them leave a deep wound to what remains of the inner child left in me. But this one cuts deeper than most, and I for one, take it upon myself to memorialize this man in the fashion I can. Considering everything he did for me and people like me at a time when nobody else cared to do more than glue horns on iguanas in a diorama, it's far, far, far too little too late.
Farewell Mr. Harryhausen. You will be missed.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/a-longer-look-at-the-life-and-career-of-the-late-r,97435/
http://www.thewrap.com/movies/column-post/ray-harryhausen-special-effects-master-dies-92-89791
http://www.empireonline.com/news/feed.asp?NID=37403
http://www.eonline.com/news/415840/..._medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=imdb_topstories
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/05/07/ray-harryhausen-dead/
