Review: Ray Harryhausen - Titan of Cinema
Fig. 1 – Opening titles to section films of the exhibit. Ray Harryhausen Titan of Cinema – The Early Years (Becky Manson, 2021).
When it comes to the subject of the relationship between fantasy and animation, few bodies of work are as pertinent to the conversation as the special effects of Ray Harryhausen.
The Ray Harryhausen: Titan of Cinema exhibit was set to open in Edinburgh in the summer of 2020 at the National Galleries of Scotland (Fig. 1). The exhibit is part of the Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation’s ongoing ‘#Harryhausen100 program’, a celebration of the acclaimed stop-motion special effects animator’s centenary. Within a film featured in the exhibit’s section on Harryhausen and his early influences, Barry Purves praises the apparent artifice of stop-motion, suggesting that its strength lies not in simulating the real, but dealing instead with fables and adventure. And it is fables and adventure that is on full display in the exhibit, which paints a comprehensive picture of Ray Harryhausen’s lifelong passion and talent for fantasy storytelling through animation. The exhibit boasts an impressive collection of concept art, sketches, film posters, and, most eye-catching of all, an extensive collection of Ray Harryhausen’s original animation models. One must imagine how seeing these iconic figures in person would emphasise all the tangible detail and texture for which stop-motion is so often appreciated.
Unfortunately, we really have had to just imagine it for the time being, as the Coronavirus Pandemic has prevented many from being able to see this treasure trove of Harryhausen artefacts. Thankfully, the exhibit will be open to visitors until February 2022, giving those with the means to travel to Edinburgh a hope of seeing Talos, Gwangi, and Harryhausen’s other famous creations for themselves when they feel safe to do so.
Fig. 2 – Assorted models on display. Ray Harryhausen Titan of Cinema – Creatures of Legend (Becky Manson, 2021).
In the meantime, a virtual exhibit has been constructed to offer a recreation of the experience one would hope to have at the National Galleries. The virtual exhibit is divided into five main sections, each containing a specially created film that acts as an introduction and short reflection on the topic of that section. The narration to these films comes from interviews with a number of contributors with a wide range of connections to Ray Harryhausen and his legacy. Apart from these films, the bulk of each section is made up of paragraphs on the respective area of Harryhausen’s life and career, as well as selections of images that depict various storyboards, concept art, film posters, and many more pieces (Fig. 2). These artefacts feature descriptive text that expands on their significance, simulating the experience of walking up to an item on display in a museum and reading its description. These sections can be experienced in any sequence, but the virtual exhibit lays them out in an approximate chronological order.
Fig. 3 – An example of previously unseen Ray Harryhausen animation made available through the virtual exhibit. Ray Harryhausen The War of the Worlds test footage, © The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation.
It begins with ‘King Kong and the Early Years’, an examination of Harryhausen’s first experiments in filmmaking, and the key influences he drew upon from a young age. Next, ‘Bringing Imagination to Life’ looks at Harryhausen’s process from concept sketch to finished animation, and how this developed from his early days working with George Pal, all the way to his final work on Clash of the Titans. ‘Dynamation: Making Movie Miracles’ walks us through the process of ‘Dynamation’, the term used to describe Harryhausen’s technique of combining stop-motion footage with live-action through blending model sets with rear-projected footage and matted out foregrounds, and the section explores how it was applied to a number of Harryhausen’s sci-fi and dinosaur films. ‘Creatures of Legend’ features a tour of the work that Harryhausen is arguably most well known for, Jason and the Argonauts, his Sinbad trilogy, and Clash of the Titans, all heavily steeped in the fantasy genre (Fig. 3). The final section, ‘A Life in Objects’, sees Vanessa Harryhausen reflect on the timeline of her father’s life, as well as some objects that held significance to him, both creatively and outside of his work.
Fig. 4 – The multiple planes of the Dynamation process visualised in a physical space. Ray Harryhausen Titan of Cinema – Dynamation: Making Movie Miracles (Becky Manson, 2021).
The virtual exhibit captures that feeling of walking through a physical space filled with history, as if you are navigating a hallway of a person’s life and the culture they participated in and affected. Selecting my personal highlight is immensely difficult, but I would nevertheless say I especially enjoyed the ‘Dynamation: Making Movie Miracles’ section and its film. There are many accounts out there that detail Harryhausen’s method, but the detail and visualisation of his process found in this section makes his ingenuity and the work involved that much clearer. When I have a chance to walk around the physical exhibit, I look forward to seeing the set ups they demonstrated in the film that show the different planes of projection and filming involved in Dynamation (Fig. 4). It is an inspired way to communicate the physical spaces that Ray would have navigated for countless hours on a day-to-day basis.
The exhibit celebrates Harryhausen’s work, but repeatedly takes deliberate steps to address negative trends of racism, sexism, Orientalism, and other regressive depictions and practices found in media that provided aesthetic influence towards Harryhausen’s creative works. The specific plot developments in Harryhausen’s films that participate in these negative trends are also pointed out as examples of this. As such, the exhibit takes the responsible approach of balancing its veneration of the technical creativity of Harryhausen as an animator and storyteller with an explicit acknowledgement of harmful depictions that were present at the time and are still an issue to this day.
The connection between fantasy and animation is central to Harryhausen’s work. The virtual exhibit features many examples of his experiments with stop-motion, such as short sequences that preceded his professional career, or test footage for film ideas that would never come to be, such as his take on HG Wells’ War of the Worlds. His stop-motion animation was an expression of his own fantasies, a creative outlet he arrived at after being set on the path by Willis O’Brien’s animation in King Kong, which had a profound effect on him and the trajectory of his life. Harryhausen’s animation not only represents the result of his own fantasies, but they serve a functional role as the embodiment of fantasy within the films that feature his special effects (Fig. 5). The contrast between his stop-motion creatures and automatons against the live-action actors and settings highlights the distinction between the two types of film media. If animation and fantasy share a proximity to the point of being almost inextricable from one another, then Harryhausen’s animation is presented as a direct embodiment of it throughout this exhibit.
Fig. 5 – The iconic skeleton models spotlighted. Ray Harryhausen Titan of Cinema – Creatures of Legend (Becky Manson, 2021).
The virtual exhibit illustrates the processes involved in fantasy as a creative endeavour. On an individual level, the exhibit examines and revels in the steps Harryhausen would take from start to finish in realising his fantasies on screen. The countless pieces of concept artwork that offer a glimpse into the early development of each of Harryhausen’s iconic creatures are framed as being just as worthy of examination and admiration as the finished model. And on a wider social scale, the exhibit tells a story of fantasy as a process of a chain of shared and evolving influences among artists and storytellers. In addition to Willis O’Brien, the exhibit provides numerous examples of the work of 19th century French artist Gustave Doré and his stylistic use of light drawing focus to the centre of his illustrations, and how this would influence not only Harryhausen’s concept art, but the final composition of his shots that would feature his animation. Harryhausen’s influence on multiple areas of cinema are repeatedly emphasised, both in and out of the exhibit, from stop-motion animators like Aardman and Laika, to live-action filmmakers associated with fantasy, such as Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro. The exhibit situates Harryhausen in an ongoing tradition of fantasy filmmaking. It remarks on and applauds his processes of expressing his fantasies, while also acknowledging what came before and after.
The Titan of Cinema virtual exhibition left me feeling a renewed appreciation for the processes associated with Harryhausen’s Dynamation, whether it is the sequence of methods and steps involved in its construction, or the ongoing chain of influences in the field of fantasy filmmaking that he drew from and contributed towards. This feeling the exhibit instils is best encapsulated by one of its additional bonus material segments outside of the main sections: a series of digital animations of some of Harryhausen’s creatures that use 3D scans of the models as a basis. Much like how these modern animations use Harryhausen’s original models as a foundation for reinterpretations of some of his creations and to bring these inanimate objects to life, the wealth of fantasies Ray Harryhausen constructed through his signature Dynamation are still very much alive and thriving in the minds of his viewers that persists to this day, cultivating new fantasies from the artists among his audience.
And make no mistake – there will always be an eager audience for Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects.
**Article published: June 11, 2021**
Biography
Toby Jungius is currently doing a PhD in Film Studies at the University of Surrey with Dr. Bella Honess Roe as his supervisor. His research focuses on the characteristics of US stop-motion animation and how the uncanny qualities often associated with the medium have been softened and refuted over the course of US stop-motion history.
He can be found on Twitter (https://twitter.com/TJungius ), as well as co-hosting the podcast ‘Through the Wind Door’, in which he discusses the genre & world-hopping fantasy series New Century by Alex Shaw (https://throughthewinddoor.podbean.com/ ).