A Chat With Ray Harryhausen
(continued from page 3)
The challenge of making these fantasy elements
into stars in their own right, within the context of a live-action
feature, seems to be what drove Ray in his use of stop-motion.
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Some
of Harryhausen's work in the Sinbad series gave him
practice for the more complex movements in The Clash of
the Titans.
© Animation Art Gallery London.
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Ray: Medusa was fascinating to work
with because I gave her a snake's body so that she could pull herself
with her hands which gave her a very creepy aura. I didn't want
to animate cosmic gowns. Most Medusas you see in the classics have
flowing robes which would be mad to even try to animate. I see the
Russians do a lot of windswept gowns but then it's a puppet film
and you accept it, but it doesn't look convincing. It's a stylized
form of expression. But I'm amazed they even attempt it.
Ruth Whiter: Do you think it can be distracting?
Ray: It can be, but then you accept it because it's a puppet
film. If you did that on Medusa it wouldn't be acceptable, it would
just look like bad animation.
The Business Of Animating
Ray
talked about a trip he had made a few years ago, when he'd visited
Will Vinton's studios in Portland, Oregon, and also met with two
paleontologists who had originally been inspired by his dinosaur
films. He talked about joining them for a dig and the amount of
patience needed for that type of work, which led us to talking about
the commonly held view that animators need an unusual amount of
patience.
Ray: A lot of people thought my work was very tedious, and
it can be if you look at it from that point of view, but I never
looked upon it as tedious.
Ruth: People come into the studio and the first thing they
always say is, "Oh, you must be so patient," and I think,
there are so many jobs in this world where you're working on a tiny
part of a whole, animation is just one of them, and what they really
mean is, "I couldn't be bothered to do it myself."
Ray: They don't know the joy of seeing the film come back
and what you had in your mind is on film.
Ruth: The only thing I find tedious is something with no
character, like making a plane fly around in the air, but otherwise
it would never occur to me that it was.
Ray: No, that's the same for me. I did find parts tedious,
when I had to do things because they had to bridge something. I
was very limited in what I could do with flying saucers, because
they're just a metal disc. I had to try and put character in as
if they were intelligently guided. Did you ever see that, Earth
vs. The Flying Saucers? We destroyed Washington DC. That's not
the reason I fled to Europe.
