Stop Motion Photography

     The most famous Stop Motion feature has to be King Kong. Master film maker, Willis O'Brien pioneered it and Ray Harryhausen made a living with the technology. It's the one film everyone talks about when you mention stop motion. But there are many great classics that used the technology. The Black Scorpion (pictured above), King Kong, Might Joe Young, the Monster From 20,000 Fathoms, King Kong vs Godzilla, Jason and the Argonauts and more.

     Stop motion is time consuming and almost a lost art thanks to technology advancements with computer and software. Several minutes worth of footage can take months to complete.  The stop motion process is done by exposing a single frame of  film one at a time. It takes 24 frames to create just one second of film. The movements to say... King Kong or a dinosaur are minute and the work tedious. The movements of each frame are so slight and several parts of the subject are moved for each frame shot. 
     It is one of the first special effects techniques created. This is a form of animation on lifeless objects that allow them move and change bringing them to life. Each picture is exactly the same except for the action taking place in the scene. When these frames are flashed at at rate of about ten per second the human brain can see them as a single picture with moving elements. The effect is known as Persistence of Vision.  So playing the frames back at normal speed causes lifeless objects to move and come to life. The time consuming results though are incredible. The motions of the object are fluid and the movements realistic. 

     Even today the tedious work of stop motion photography is cost effective, and that's good news for studios and executives. If the studios have the time, costs are minimal compared with doing the same thing with computers. But in today's society time is of the essence and consumers always pick up the bill. 

     Willis O'Brien is the pioneer of stop motion technology. In 1925 he used them in "the Lost World" and followed up that with 1933's legendary feature "King Kong". That work inspired the likes of Ray Harryhausen, who used stop motion in everything from dinosaurs and dragons to sword fighting skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts. He was the best of his day. 

     Harryhausen and O'Brien worked together to do the effects for the 1949 feature Mighty Joe Young. It was the best stop motion effects I have ever seen in a classic film. Just watching you almost believed the oversize ape was the real deal. The bristling effect you see on Mighty Joe Young fur during the film is an adverse effect of the technicians having to touch the fur while moving the model. It showed up on film and the studio execs were very upset. Finally one of the executives said Young looked like he was bristling mad. 

     Stop Motion creatures/characters are constructed of full motion steel skeletons (see picture of Kong to the right). These puppets are designed specifically for this function. The purpose of using steel is to be sure they stay in the position its posed. The special effects guys then put the overlay on the construction that makes the creature look real.

     Dynamation is a process Harryhausen came up with, as well as named, that allows for a split-screen process. This process allowed stop motion scenes to be integrated with real scenes of buildings and people. It lowered the cost of productions while making the scenes more realistic. 

     Unfortunately computer animation has replaced almost every aspect of stop motion photography today. In CGI the stop motion is created inside the computers memory, thus allowing the model to be more versatile and detailed. The computer can also create a blurred effect allowing the subject to imitate fast motion which Stop Motion could not do. 

     Stop Motion is almost gone, but we have the classic feature to make sure we never forget where special effects come from. 

scifi

BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE