● Notes from meeting 1:

○ Have research/watching done by tuesday at latest

○ Have general structure of presentation (what themes/ideas we’ll go over) ready
by tuesday

From Reading:
● https://www.academia.edu/31895230/Vaguely_Disreputable_Ray_Harryhausen_and_th
e_Kidult_Film
○ “They thought these genres – sci-fi, fantasy – were vaguely disreputable” -
Harryhausen on his relationship with the hollywood production studios he worked
with.
○ Conventional Hollywood typically frowned upon his works - thinking them to be
somewhat “disreputable” (22).
○ This is because his films were denoted as ‘kidult’ - a subset of films which pulls in
a target audience of both children and adults. When this occurs, however, the
type of adults that the movie seems catered to are viewed as childish or
“teenish”.
○ In the voyages of sinbad, Harryhausen coined essentially invented the ‘kidult’
film. This the, can be said to be a cinematic precursor to other films under the
genre of ‘kidult’, such as: Superman(1978), Star Wars (1977), Indiana Jones
(1988 - 2008), and even Transformers (2011)
○ While Harryhausen captained the ‘kidult’ movement, some of the most popular
‘kidult’ figures in cinema to date are George Lucas and Steven Spielberg -
individuals with whom all are likely familiar.
○ While the principle of kidulthood is undoubtedly import to the film industry today,
a reason that most have never heard of it is likely its connotations: critics claim
that it is
■ “ “denial of ageing” and “a comfort blanket hunger for lost innocence”
(24)” “(25)
■ “ “this kidulthood is a way of avoiding reality rather than of understanding
it” “ (25)
■ ““Kidulthood wishes to escape the world rather than to engage with it” (5)”
(25)
○ Kidult entertainment can be seen as the diametric opposition to ‘family films’. This
is because a kidult film seeks to find the areas in which adult interests and
childrens interest coincide, whereas so-called family films seek to appeal to
children in one way and adults in another, essentially created to parallel sources
of entertainment which never intersect.
■ In this type of film, adults will be given various ‘adult jokes’ that will be lost
on the children, and children will be amused by spectacles or slapstick
which the adults won't appreciate.
■ In kidult films, everyone is meant to enjoy everything, together.
 OEUVRE & SYMBOLISM:
https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/11747/Monaghan_umd_0117N_12227.pdf?seq
uence=1&isAllowed=y
● Harryhausen, the prolific stop-motion guru behind many a sword-and-sandal epic, whom
was active from the late 1940s up until 1980, is a noted critic of special effects that are
overly realistic. (Roger 4) For Harryhausen, the drawback to hyper-realistic animation is
a loss of the dream-like effect of watching something unreal, or constructed, such as
clay, foam and wire, and even crude digital models, mimic reality.
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8PPm-qt_YLkC&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=sy
mbolism+of+ray+harryhausen+films&ots=sBJToaitha&sig=F8Y1VMyi4NzZyig81t54W7kd9
zc#v=snippet&q=ray%20&f=false
● While the creatures that Harryhausen creates are wild and far fetched for most - they
remain, in large, anthropomorphic.
● The effect of this is undoubtedly to keep the audience attached to the film - if, for
example, all the characters in a film were so alien that they couldn’t be related to
humanity, then the audience would have a much more difficult time empathizing
● For most, the effectiveness of the film and the degree to which the audience is
captivated is a result of how intense a sense of empathy or connection the audience
feels with to the film
● This can be talked about with his oeuvre, as it is something that’s clear and
representative throughout his whole body of works

“​The cinema was made for fantasy, rather than normal types of stories, mundane
stories. It gives you a feeling of wonder, for one thing, it gives you stimulation of the
imagination, and I think adults like fantasy as well as children. Most people feel it's
rather childish to have an imagination. I don't agree with that. I think you should go
through life and imagine the very best.” - Ray Harryhausen
● http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/82065%7C127790/Ray-Harryhausen/biography.html
○ Bio of Ray Harryhausen
● https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=le9QoR0JyEYC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=ha
rryhausen+dynamation&ots=HmwhfLmt6g&sig=0Mi6yHQPcmRG0f9665vziJoB6mM#v=o
nepage&q=technique&f=false
○ Information on Harryhausen’s film techniques, including “dynamation”
■ Working on ​The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms,​ Harryhausen developed
the technique of static matte rear-projection composites, which allowed
models to be placed in an environment with separately shot live-action
film
■ Harryhausen’s technique works as follows:
● Pre-recorded live action film is shot and then back-projected onto
a screen, in front of which the “animated” models are placed
 ● The models are advanced frame-by-frame in sync with the live
action film to create the animation effect (basically stop-motion)
● A glass pane is placed between the models and the camera; on
the first pass of filming, a black cover is placed on the glass below
the apparent location of the model’s feet in order to obscure the
“foreground” of the shot.
○ This prevents the bottom half of the film from developing
● In the second pass the covered and uncovered parts of the glass
are switched, allowing for undeveloped part of the film to capture
the foreground shot and make it look like the animated models are
fully immersed in the live-action scene
■ Harryhausen’s technique was coined “dynamation” and went on to be
used in numerous feature films like ​The 7th Voyage of Sinbad​ and ​Jason
and the Argonauts
■ Dynamation reduced the need for carefully-crafted artistic miniature
models, reducing the time and budget needed to produce a stop-motion
film
■ This method could be mixed with real life 3-D models as well, as it was
many times in Harryhausen’s films
■ Dynamation is similar to rotoscoping in the way it uses live-action film
interlaced with animated components to create more realistic effects
■ The modern-day green screen is a similar technique that further develops
the idea of intermixing pre-shot footage with a scene being recorded by
camera
● https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1voGbBwpB9sC&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=h
arryhausen+dynamation&ots=kH4lYOG5XO&sig=OfhXAo0oJulchhnC7mRXvLqA46w#v
=onepage&q=harryhausen%20dynamation&f=false​ (pgs 278-)
○ More in-depth information on ​The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (​ 1958), Harryhausen’s
major breakthrough film
■ This was the first film to heavily use the term “dynamation” to market to
audiences
● “A moviemaking process so real it can almost reach out​ and touch
you!”
■ Dynamation brought to life scenes involving fantastical monsters made
from highly detailed models
■ Included the famous “sword-fighting skeleton” that was a turning point for
stop motion animation
■ Broke profit records and inspired future films that utilized similar effects
e.g. the less successful ​Jack the Giant Killer​ (1961)

Ray Harryhausen Bio notes

● Born June 29, 1920 in L.A.
● Famous for making creature features
● Fascinated with sci fi since he was a kid
● First got into filmmaking after watching king kong, which used stop motion
○ He loved the idea and began experimenting on his own, taking motion picture
photography classes at USC at night in his teens
● In 1940 he embarked on “Evolution” a full length feature film composed entirely of stop
motion animals
○ He was overwhelmed and gave up
● He showed some of his work to director George Pal, who hired him to work on the
“Puppetoons” shorts
● After serving in WWII, he came home and worked in his home studio on some projects,
including “The Story of Little Red Riding Hood” (1949) “Hansel and Gretel” (1951) and
“The Story of King Midas” (1953)
● After the war he came home and contacted his hero Willis O’Brien, who had produced
the special effects for “King Kong” (1933) and O’Brien and Harryhausen worked together
on the special effects for “Mighty Joe Young” (1949)
● He met producer Charles Schneer and they began a relationship that would last
decades, first beginning with “the beast from 20,000 fathoms”
● Re-release of “Kong” in 1952 sparked a monster movie craze, and Harryhausen did his
first major work as a solo animator on “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” (1953)
● This led to much more sci- fi monster movie work for Harryhausen, and he worked on “I
Came from beneath the Sea” (1955) which is about an octopus that terrorized san
fransisco, “earth vs. the flying saucers” (1956) which features a really well animated
scene where they bring down the Washington momument and “20 million miles to earth”
where a lizard like alien from venus goes to rome and they fight it in the coliseum
● “The animal world” (1956) was a feature length film with the first 8 minnutes animated by
Harryhausen and O’Brien, which became the highlight of the film
● At this point everything had been in black and white but Schneer convinced him to use
color for the next work, “The 7th voyage of sinbad” (1958)
● Sinbad earned him a 4 year contract from Columbia to make more epic fantasies, which
included “The Three Worlds of Gulliver” (1960) and “The Mysterious Island” (1961)
● His next work “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963) is widely regarded as his magnum
opus, however, featuring his most complex and challenging work to date
● The seven skeleton fight lasts almost 5 minutes and is widely regarded as some of the
most complex animation of the time
● It took Harryhausen 4 months to animate the skeleton scene on his own, and a feat like
this has never been attempted since
● Neither jason nor his next work “The first men in the moon” (1964) were box office
successes, so he freelanced for the rest of the 1960s
● He was hired by England Hammer films to produce dinosaurs for “One Million Years
B.C.” (1966)
● He came back to America to work on “The Valley of Gwangi” (1969), which he
storyboarded himself, but it was buried by Warner Bros and never had the chance to be
a success
 ● He and Schneer came back in the 1970s, however, convincing Columbia to produce a
sequel to Sinbad and then he produced another sinbad movie in 1977
○ “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” (1973)
○ “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” (1977)
● Artists inspired by Harryhausen began to enter the scene and he slowly became
obsolete, as there was less emphasis on using a single animator for effects-driven
movies
● Harryhausen launched a new film “Clash of the Titans” (1981) that MGM poured money
into
○ This was successful, but it convinced studios that stop-motion was expensive
and time-consuminng process, especially when compared to other effects-driven
movies like Star Wars which was released in 1977
○ Clash was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Special Effects
● After Clash he wrote books about his work, and was honored with a 1992 Lifetime
Achievement Oscar
● In 2002, several filmmakers collaborated to help him finish “The Story of the Tortoise and
the Hare” begun in 1952, the fifth and last of his fairy tales
● It won a 2003 Annie award
● He continued to work in his 80s on short movies about edgar allen poe works which he
began in 2005
● He died at the age of 92 in 2013

George Lucas, Peter Jackson, Steven Speilberg, and James Cameron all hail Harryhausen’s
work as foundations for their own
Japanese animation used suitmation to animate their monsters like in Godzilla, which
Harryhausen found unconvincing and cheap
Suitmation is effectively wearing costumes and stomping around miniature sets to appear larger
than life
Harryhausen was awarded a star on the hollywood walk of fame on june 10, 2003
He was inducted into the science fiction and fantasy hall of fame in 2005
Harryhausen lived in London from 1960 until death, which he believes is one of the main
reasons none of his films were nominated for special effects oscars
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0366063/bio

Personal quotes:
“​The thing that finally persuaded me to quit was that I saw that the nature of the hero was
changing. When I was growing up we had heroes such as ​Cary Grant​, ​Ronald Colman​ and
David Niven​, real gentlemen on the screen. Now, all you have is ​Arnold Schwarzenegger​,
Sylvester Stallone​ and all those people who solve problems with their fists. It's a different
world and I sometimes feel I'm not part of it. Say what you like about Hollywood in my
time, but they were in the business of happy endings, of escapism. Now, you have to sit
through two hours of people dying, you know. Today, everything's so graphic it's rather
unnerving.”
“I had to do everything because I couldn't find another kindred soul. Now you see 80 people
listed doing the same things I was doing by myself.”

● https://silverscenesblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/ray-harryhausen-and-creation-of.html
○ A visual of the dynamation process

○ Comprised of a depth field with three aspects

■ A front glass pane to act as a forefront
■ A middle area in which the model on its animation stand would be placed
■ A rear screen onto which the background was projected
■ Thus, he could make the animation appear to have any level of depth
despite only interacting with two dimensional images
○ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arq6fTGkC6E​ - can show this in class before
we talk about dynamation proccess
“​There's a strange quality in stop-motion photography, like in ​King Kong​ (1933), that
adds to the fantasy. If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the
mundane.” - Ray Harryhausen
His animation was a family affair: his father did the machining and constructing of the
armatures for the models and his mother worked on their miniature costumes
https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Ray_Har
ryhausen.html
Another associate, Willis Cook, produced some of the sets for his films

PowerPoint Ordering:
1. Childhood/how he got into film
2. Beast from 20,000 fathoms
a. Show a clip
b. Historical context with japanese suitmation
3. Dynamation
4. Sci-fi themes of his work
a. Discuss lack of realism in his work
i. Dreamlike aspects of it have almost no connection to current events
b. Earth vs the flying saucers
c. 20 million miles to earth
d. It came from beneath the sea
5. Sinbad (color): cultural breakthrough
6. Contract from columbia and late 50s work
7. Jason and the Argonauts
a. Show skeleton scene
8. Analysis of Work
a. Things that tie the oeuvre together
b. Who his films are geared towards… (why?)
9. Parcinematic Context
a. Rides, toys, success outside cinema
b. Eventual demise as people stopped enjoying his CGI
10. Legacy

Handout
1. Origin of Dynamation, why Harryhausen used it
2. How it works
3. Examples of its usage
4. Quote(s) that provide(s) insight to Harryhausen’s animation philosophy
5. Awards