In the minds of many, Ray Harryhausen is synonymous with movie special effects. Much of his earlier life can be found online but his work in special effects began after viewing the 1933 film, King Kong. This viewing and an arranged meeting with King Kong‘s model animator, Willis O’Brien, prompted Harryhausen to begin taking classes in art direction, photography, and editing to turn his new-found passion into something more. These classes from the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California made it possible for him to begin a friendship with Ray Bradbury and Forrest J. Ackerman, who would go on to become science-fiction writers.
During his service in World War II, Harryhausen made military films with the U.S. Army’s Special Services Division. After his service, he used remaining stock footage to make The Mother Goose Stories, based on popular fairy tales. He assembled the models and animated every frame of the film by hand. He worked on The Story of Little Red Riding Hood in 1949, The Story of Hansel and Gretell and The Story of Rapunzel in 1951, and The Story of King Midas in 1953. Charlotte Knight, a Los Angeles City College drama teacher, adapted the stories Harryhausen used. She would later write 20 Million Miles to Earth in 1957.
Upon finishing his studies, Harryhausen began a project called The Evolution of the World. George Pal, a director and animator, gave Harryhausen his first job as a commercial model-animator on Puppetoons based on the unfinished demo reel. Puppetoons were a series of puppet shorts produced in Europe and the United States during the 1930s and 40s. They were made using replacement animation by way of hand-carved wooden puppets. In 1947, Harryhausen was hired as an assistant animator on Mighty Joe Young, his first major film.
In 1953, the film, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (based on a short story by Ray Bradbury) became the first film in which Harryhausen would be in charge of technical effects.
On this film, he used a technique he created called “Dynamation.” The background and foreground of pre-shot live action are split into separate images. Animated models are inserted alongside live-action events and actors. Dynamation utilized matte-painting and photography, as well. To make this look as smooth as possible, Harryhausen often controlled the lighting of both the set and the projector. He utilized an optical printer, which used one or more film projectors linked to a movie camera so the strips of film could be re-photographed. Harryhausen also used diffused glass to soften sharp lighting.
Harryhausen explains this process as “sandwiching” in an interview available on YouTube. https://youtu.be/ftve5PT1sYI
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was the first live-action film to feature a giant monster brought to the surface by atomic bombardment. It came before the first Godzilla film by at least a year. The budget for the film was low and to save money, Harryhausen worked on its effects, himself.
“I found that working by myself, where I have no distraction of anybody, is the best policy to use for concentration. That’s why every film I did, every inch of it is my animation,” Harryhausen says in the same YouTube video.
The success of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms made other creature-films not only possible but lucrative for their studios. Impressed by the special effects, producer, Charles Schneer hired Harryhausen to oversee the creation and animation of the monster for It Came From Beneath the Sea in 1955. This film’s screenplay, by George Worthing Yates was written with Harryhausen’s work in mind. Even so, budget constraints would require two of the eight tentacles from the film’s monstrous octopus to be eliminated. Harryhausen worked with just six animated limbs. For close-up shots where just one tentacle is seen, a larger model was used instead of the smaller stop-motion models. Miniatures, matte-paintings, and these larger models accomplished what shooting on the actual Golden Gate Bridge could not. Schneer was denied access to the Bridge for his film.
To accomplish the effects for the film, Harryhausen rented a long store in Culver City, California. Using his own projector, he filmed the stop-animation aspects while Schneer worked on the live-action in Hollywood. Many of the stop-motion motors for the film came from his previous film, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which cannibalized parts from Mighty Joe Young. Filming the stop-animation for It Came Beneath the Sea took 7-8 months. Dailies for the film were sent to Hollywood via courier.
One of the more difficult effects to create was the speed at which the creature moved. Because octopi move at such slow rates, recreating the movement meant having to shoot two shots of one movement (or double-framing). Each movement of the model had to be controlled or the finished product would be too “jerky.” The frames required millimeters of movement.
The stationary model of the monster sat on a table, not beneath the water. Distortion glass, also called ripple glass, was placed between the projection and the model. Between takes, the glass would also be moved and photographed. This gave the shot the illusion of having been shot underwater. Harryhausen said, of the shot, “I usually had a matting glass in the foreground, and I would matte out certain sections of the live-action projection…and then substitute a miniature for that section.” Done right, the join between the two should be invisible.
In order to give the film a realistic feel, other effects were necessary. One of the most crucial was the destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge. Camera angles for the bridge had to be duplicated in miniature so the Dynamation technique would be seamless. Projection plates of the bridge were often used in order to maintain scale with the octopus model. Water around the base of the bridge and around the monster’s tentacles had to be matted into the frame.
The miniature for the bridge was made of lead and stood two and a half feet high. Each frame saw the lead structure crushed, sometimes as little as one millimeter at a time. Although time-consuming, the effect made its destruction look all the more real. As the octopus crushes the bridge, pieces of it fall apart. These pieces were suspended from wires so they could be moved millimeters at a time, as well.
Timing of the shot, texture of the different elements, and the spacing of all of these things are the different considerations for how to execute a successful special effects scene for a film like this. Harryhausen understood each of these elements in a unique way.
It is rumored, Peter Jackson owns the original model of the Golden Gate Bridge used in this film.
Another detail about It Came From Beneath the Sea makes it much more impressive. “Practically everything you see in the film was the first take.” ( – Harryhausen in a YouTube interview)
Although critics called the film, “…cool, clipped, (and) realistic,” reception for the film made more monster-type movies to be made. Harryhausen’s reputation as a special effects technician continued to grow. His collaboration on It Came From Beneath the Sea with Schneer led to his work on Earth vs. the Flying Saucers in 1956.
It became a staple of his work for Harryhausen to be involved in other elements of a film. The pre-production conceptualizing, art-direction, storyboards, and sometimes, the tone of a film were things he participated in. Because of Director’s Guild of America’s guidelines, Harryhausen often took smaller credits in films than those he would be afforded today.
The different models used for the pictures contained “motors,” or metal armatures, allowing the overall model to move. The majority of these structures were machined by Harryhausen’s father. His mother helped with making some of the costumes. Willis Cook built many of the miniature sets. Aside from these people, and a few others, Harryhausen worked alone.
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, in 1956, utilized flying saucer models of different sizes, all made from wood and aluminum. The largest of these models measured twelve inches across. Saucers of different sizes were used in the same shot to create forced perspective. These saucers were machined by Harryhausen’s father. The inspiration for their design came from eyewitness accounts recorded by Major Donald Keyhoe in his book, Flying Saucers From Outer Space.
Harryhausen used wires to hold up his saucers and to move them through the frames of the film. Stock footage from other films, such as War of the Worlds, was used to keep budget costs down. Very often, the footage had to be examined frame by frame to eliminate the wires and to clean up the scene. One example is the explosion of city hall where the saucers destroy the same building the invading aliens of War of the Worlds did.
The death-rays for the aliens were created by shooting footage of Roman Candles and sparklers against black, then super-imposed upon the film. A similar effect was used for War of the Worlds. Sound effects for the saucers came from recording sewage moving through the pipes of the Hyperion Treatment Plant near Redondo Beach.
The challenge, according to Harryhausen, was, “…to give an inanimate object, such as these saucers, a character; that there was intelligent life inside the machine.”
Variety magazine and the Los Angeles Times gave the movie good reviews while an article in the New York Times stated the film was “utter nonsense.” Still many agreed, the effects were the real stars of the movie and had little to say about them.
20 Million Miles to Earth began production in 1956. Based on a concept by Harryhausen, this film would see him reunited with producer and director, Charles Schneer. They would direct the Italian sequences of the film while Nathan Juran would direct only the American sequences. As with It Came From Beneath the Sea, this screenplay was written to showcase Harryhausen’s work.
Ymir, a creature from Venus, is the feature of this movie. It begins very small and triples in size in less than a night. Throughout, it continues to grow until it is the size of a full-grown elephant. Just as he did for the flying saucers, Harryhausen wanted to make Ymir feel as though it was an actual character, not just a monster.
“He wasn’t really aggressive until the dog and the farmer became aggressive to him,” Harryhausen said during an interview for The Ray Harryhausen Chronicles in 1998. “And, he really became quite vicious because he was tortured and tormented by man. The poor boy was just a helpless soul out of his environment.”
The budget for the movie was small, meaning it would not be shot in color. Instead, the black and white filming made the Dynamation process all the better looking. The process used in King Kong and Mighty Joe Young imposed live-action onto a miniature set. Harryhausen’s process took miniature, animated creatures and imposed them into live-action. By the time 20 Million Miles to Earth started production, the process was almost as good at it would get.
When the creature is first seen, it comes out of a gelatinous blob and rubs its eyes. This first hint of confusion is a true testament to Harryhausen, as it gives the creature a sympathetic feel, just as intended. In other films, the focus had been on the different ways recognizable landmarks could be destroyed. The focus, here, was on the creature and making it relatable.
Unlike the rubber suits used in 1954’s Godzilla, the miniature models allowed for facial expressions and different, articulated movements. Filming in daylight meant many of Ymir’s movements could be seen and appreciated in a way films like 1957’s The Giant Claw did not achieve.
Sounds for Ymir were made by speeding up the trumpeting sounds of elephants. Similarities can be heard during the ending sequence where Ymir battles, and kills, a startled elephant.
Many critics of the film called the acting, “cardboard,” and the script, “dotty.” However, they all agreed with Radio Times who said the movie was “one of animation master, Ray Harryhausen’s best fantasy films…the snake-tailed Ymir creature was also one of Harryhausen’s finest creations. It has a well-defined personality and manages to evoke sympathy for its bewildered plight.”
No one scene evokes this personality like the ending of 20 Million Miles to Earth.
The creature ends the movie standing on the Colosseum, in Rome, while soldiers fire on it in an attempt to bring it down. Harryhausen said, “Of course, that was influenced by Kong on top of the Empire State Building. I thought it would be a rather dramatic way of ending the film. Man, of course, destroys what he doesn’t understand.”
In 1958, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad was a film conceptualized by Harryhausen and released in Technicolor. It was billed with the additional tagline of “Dynamation,” the process invented by Harryhausen. Many other films involving the title character had not done well. To pitch his idea, Harryhausen did a number of large drawings depicting the proposed actions in the film and brought them to different studios for consideration. They were all rejected. Long-time collaborator, Charles Schneer decided to produce the film with Columbia Pictures.
Because the film was announced in 1957, Harryhausen had almost an entire year to produce the stop-motion effects for the film.
For his design of the cyclops, Harryhausen based his idea on the Greek god, Pan. The creature for the film had goat legs, cloven hooves, and a horn. As a basis for its movement, he used the same style as he did for Ymir in 20 Million Miles to Earth. To build the cyclops, he used the same armature from Ymir, as well. He added humanoid features to the creature so the audience could relate to the expressions and body motion.
The concept for the dragon came about through Harryhausen’s own imagination. In an interview about the effects for the film, he talked about previous work on The Mother Goose Stories. “I tried to be clever and go around to all the schools and see what they wanted (for the dragon) in the film. I got so many different answers, I just decided, at that time…I would make something I liked.” What is seen in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is Harryhausen’s personal concept of a traditional dragon.
The breathing feature of the dragon was achieved by inserting an Orsat device into the foundational model. An Orsat devise is used to analyze gas samples but in this instance, the bulb and tube apparatus made the stop-motion dragon appear to breathe. The bulb would need to be squeeze to inflate the bag, then a single frame of film would be taken. The Orsat bag would deflate and another frame would be taken. This would continue until the model appeared to inhale and exhale.
“Sometimes, it takes twenty-four frames to make him inhale,” Harryhausen said. “And, maybe twelve or fifteen frames to make him exhaust it.”
Flames for the fire-breathing Taro dragon came from several shots of a flamethrower shot against black at night. These frames would be added in and finished with the matte process.
A cobra-woman was also created. The elaborate sequence came from Harryhausen’s sketches, which the director chose to incorporate into the film. The four arms of the creature were built with a snake in mind, so their movements would be fluid, not hard like the other creatures. A miniature model was built for the sequence and animated by hand.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad also featured a fictional bird called a roc. To prevent the audience from seeing this as just another bird, the creature was given two heads. The egg from which the bird hatched was built to scale of the model. For the animation, the roc had several wires attached to various parts of its body. In order to hide the wires, Harryhausen photographed the model in specific ways. For those shots where this proved impossible, he went in and painted them out of each frame.
The skeletons would be jointed in the same way a real skeleton was. Harryhausen’s father built the metal armature with ball-and-socket joints, which were then covered with cotton and latex. This was done so the animation sequences would be smoother and look more natural. The facial features were altered to give the skeleton a kind of character. The skeleton fighting the title character in the film was an animated version. The one dropped from the top of the stairs was a real one dropped onto actual rocks. Six of these skeletons would later be used for Jason and the Argonauts in 1963.
Producing the scene with the shrunken princess, Harryhausen used a process he refers to as “traveling matte.” It involved filming parts of the live-action against a blue backing, then putting it together with other footage. The scenes with the actress required the building of a forty-foot pillow, which would be used as a background. It would be matted into the final shot. Other shots of the actress interacting with other objects relied on camera angles and the same matting process.
This film would spawn The Golden Voyage of Sinbad in 1973 and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger in 1977, both of which were the product of Harryhausen’s conceptualization. They, too, would feature the stop-motion animation technique of Dynamation.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad was selected for preservation in the United States National film Registry in 2008.