How Ray Harryhausen United Dwell Motion and Cease-Movement Animation

By Meg Shields · Revealed on July sixteenth, 2022

Welcome to The Queue — your day by day distraction of curated video content material sourced from throughout the net. In the present day, we’re watching a video essay that unpacks Ray Harryhausen’s use of the method generally known as “dynamation,” a.ok.a. the mixing of stop-motion components with live-action footage in the identical shot.

As of late, stop-motion animation — the observe of incrementally puppeteering a topic body by body to offer it the impression of motion — is not used to convey realism. When modern-day live-action movies do combine stop-motion characters (see, the latest Marcel the Shell with Sneakers On), they aren’t designed with photorealism in thoughts. Henry Selick’s round-edged sea creatures in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, aren’t attempting to “idiot” anybody. However that’s additionally not their function. In the present day, the aim of built-in stop-motion has extra in frequent with the likes of Who Framed Roger Rabbit or Cool World than anything. If you wish to add a “real-looking” monster/character impact in your movie, CGI (theoretically) has you coated.

However consider it or not, there was a time when built-in stop-motion was the go-to for creature results. (Assuming that the tried and true “man in a go well with” technique was off the desk). In consequence, it fell to the artforms pioneers to resolve the issue of how you can mix stop-motion with live-action footage. You may solely cross-cut between a mayhem-causing monster and the shrieking lots so many occasions earlier than it will get a bit cornball.

Enter: dynamation, the method pioneered by legendary Twentieth-century animator Ray Harryhausen. The method entails a sandwhiched composite of rear-projected footage, various horizon traces, and matte glass layers. However in reality, it’s simpler to see the method in motion. The next video essay does simply that, unpacking how dynamation works, what its limitations are, and the artistic options Harryhausen got here up with to permit stop-motion beasties to sword struggle, decide up, and in any other case spar with live-action heroes.

Watch “How Ray Harryhausen Mixed Cease-Movement and Dwell Motion”:

Who made this?

This video on how Ray Harryhausen built-in stop-motion characters into live-action footage is by Andrew Saladino, who runs the Texas-based Royal Ocean Movie Society. You may browse their again catalog of movies on their Vimeo account right here. If Vimeo isn’t your velocity, you may give them a comply with on YouTube right here.

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Meg Shields is the standard farm boy of your desires and a senior contributor at Movie College Rejects. She presently runs three columns at FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She can be a curator for One Good Shot and a contract author for rent. Meg could be discovered screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter right here: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).