Not One Of Mine!

Not that I have any Oscars but this one was awarded to Ray Harryhausen in 1991 for technological contributions and presented by Tom Hanks who said that “Jason and the Argonauts is the greatest film ever made”.

I had been to the Ray Harryhausen ‘Titan of Cinema’ exhibition at the Dean Gallery back in May last year but as the exhibition is closing at the end of the week I booked a slot for this morning just to remind myself of how interesting the experience was, and to take some photos which I failed to do last time. I think what impressed me was the marriage of art and the engineering required to realise the effects as seen on the screen.

The first extra shows the internal linkages and armatures that makes up a horse, possibly a winged horse. Those joints and supports were all designed by Harryhausen himself. The second and third extras are of characters from ‘Clash of the Titans’ and it should be noted that the silhouettes behind the 30cm high models are in motion and not just their shadows.

A number of well known animators and science fiction film makers all acknowledged the influence that Harryhausen and his film technique was a reason that they got into the business and it was only the technological developments that superseded stop action film making that meant that he retired from film making.