Ray Harryhausen

[lupercal]

Would Ray Harryhausen movies count? He's the guy who did the stop-amimated monsters and dinsaurs, mixed into live action SF movies. They're mainly remembered for the animation nowadays, rather than anything else. There are a few others who fall into this sort of category (stop motion/live, as opposed to 2D/live). George Pal, for instance. In fact, we already have several Svankmajer's (The Flat, Faust, Alice, Picnic with Weissmann etc).

Not that I have any Harryhausen movies, but it would give me an excuse to get some if they're around dirt cheap somewhere. If we're not giving 2D priority over stop-motion, then they would have to be in, wouldn't they?

The only case I can think of against this, is that the animation was 'realistic' in the sense that it's not supposed to be seen as animation - but this runs into at least this problem:

Was it meant to be seen this way in the first place? For as long as I can remember (which is back to the 70's) Harryhausen was always regarded as a master of stop animation. But is this what people would say about Jurassic Park in another 10 years? To me the material looks so obviously unrealistic that it passes this test, but you could argue it was supposed to look realistic, I suppose. Fact is though, if you say 'Harryhausen' to a film buff now, they'll think 'stop motion animation'.

Where does that leave it?

Loop

[starlac]

I think it’s left in a problem grey area…

I think that in the case of fantasy/mythology dramas (as opposed to Svankmajer's pure fantasies), that the film makers did the best that they could do with the technology that was around at the time.

Although do I think of Jason, Titan, etc today as animation, I tend to have very strong suspension of disbelief when watching them; they certainly have more going for them than putting a sail frill on an iguana and pretending it was a dimetrodon.

Of course he (Harryhausen) is created in those film as Visual effects creator, a title associated these days with CGI effects rather than animation, though I known a few films were the CGI looked less realistic than his puppets.

It’s interesting to me that you mentioned Jurassic Park if only because of that film’s production history. Because at the start of pre-production Spielberg intended to use stop-motion techniques for the dinosaurs, like those used in Harryhausen's films, simply because no-one had used CGI for organic breathing creatures before (you have to remember that Terminator 2 and The Abyss were the top of film CGI by that point).

ILM asked if he considered using CGI for the dinosaurs and Spielberg set them a challenge, it they could convince him that these creatures were real and more importantly a viable replacement for stop-motion, then he would consider using them. The final film of course used a mixture of CGI effects, with full scale animatronics for close ups and brought about CGI as the standard for film visual effects from then on. It stands as the transition film, you could say, from the old to the new tech

I suppose the most predominate example of this progress is the three King Kong films, all of which used the most advanced technology that was available at the time. In the original that was stop motion, the Seventies remake used both costumes and animatronics; Peter Jackson’s version CGI.

Products of their time, you could say. Maybe we will be talking about JP like that in the next decade.

[lupercal]

Any thoughts on my 'Polar Express' review, re. this ?

Loop

[athena]

You bring up some fairly scary possibilities... animated live-action films... *shudder* ... I would argue though that if we bumped out Polar Express we'd have to bump Final Fantasy as well... plus there's the whole issue as to whether mocap is even animation... I've had instructors who would regularly jump up and down screaming "NOOOOO!!!" when asked that question.


I can't believe I'm even suggesting this, but should we open the door to visual effects animation? Most animation sites talk about both animation/vfx in the same breath... I've always tried to keep it out as a somewhat futile act of self-preservation... try to keep the database under control.

I'm just wondering if, considering the way the industry is going, we're going to give ourselves more of a headache trying to keep it out than we would if we let it in...

[starlac]

I’m going to have to watch the film to have a look for myself (wonder if the library’s got a copy). Still you make strong points...

For one thing Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly are effectively live-action films, animated over; though I understand that that is not what Lupercal meant, but I have my reasons for bringing them up.

I’ve always looked at mocap as the modern-day equivalent of rotoscoping. I mean for years rotoscoping has been called tracing by the animation industry at large, but I can't see a massive difference between the two: both are designed to capture actual motion and transfer/transform it onto another media.

One of the more interesting things I read, was advice for would be animation script-writers. It was along the lines that the worst thing someone could say about anything you write would be ‘This could be a live-action script’. The reason given was that a script that could be made in live-action might as well be done in live-action: the possibility of being able to do the script in reality negating animation’s most intriguing ability, to do the impossible. Of course the book was written before CGI became so powerful a tool that allowed live-action to do the impossible along with the implausible.

Of course the biggest difficultly facing CGI animation is also that which faced 2D animation: representing humans. 2D animation is dependent on the draughtsmanship of the artist, making a rendering like that of the other draw/painted/etc arts. So far what I’ve seen of CGI, humans have either: resembled Jim Henson puppets (the Incredibles), are too far away for any details to be apparent, or highly realistic yet lifeless drones (computer games, the Final Fantasy films). Saying that before the renaissance, paintings weren’t all that good, then suddenly the artists learnt all the old and some new tricks to make their painting eerily real.

CGI will, it seems, follow suit. Certainly the industries that use the technology are heading down the greater realism track as if it was some sort of holy grail or the elixir of life. It’s true that one day the technology will get to a point were its impossible to tell what’s real and what’s not; for certain things one might say we are already there and it’s really just the insane costs involved holding it back.

…should we open the door to visual effects animation?

That’s a question of where do you draw the line. At present we have our reality rule (as Loop puts it succinctly) keeping our ‘door’ firmly closed, keeping out ‘visual effects that imitate reality’ while letting in ‘animation for its own sake.’

I suppose you could ask if the film is using the special effects as the main, or a major, selling point; even over the acting and/or story. Certainly in the case of some special effect epics the last thing that seems to be considered is the story and acting. Maybe leaving out the films that use it for simple cosmetic touches and general composite purposes out, since they could fall under elaborate matte painting (think on the film Titanic where the camera looks down over the stern at the computer generated sea below [and quite a bit of CGI ship]).

Interestingly Servewithchips requested Return of the King on that first list of requests he did (I recently looked through it), though everyone seemed to miss that and comment on if Tron qualified; as no-one mentioned it at the time, he could be forgiven for thinking that we’ve put it on our list of profiles to add rather than the fact that we simply didn’t notice it being there.

Cause Lord of the Rings was a trilogy that used every method of modern visual film making at its disposal: animatronics (Treebeard), CGI for both characters (Golum, Nazgul, trolls, etc) and composites, scale models (of props and buildings) up to and including full size, prosthetics and forced perspective tricks. It also a trilogy that gained a lot of attention for the animation of Golum.

I'm not advocating letting it in, just that there is a line now and there should be one in the future, even if it's a line that allows for some (if not all) vfx. Thing is, you go too far toward the live-action world and you could risk Keyframe’s integrity as a animation site.

[lupercal]

For one thing Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly are effectively live-action films, animated over; though I understand that that is not what Lupercal meant, but I have my reasons for bringing them up.

I see what you mean, but in a respect, 'Waking Life' (I haven't seen SD. Don;t even know if it's out) tries to do the opposite to 'Polar Express'. It takes live action footage and tries to make it look UNrealistic. Everything is drawn over with painterly squiggles, distortions and things which make it disguise or obscure its live action origins.


I’ve always looked at mocap as the modern-day equivalent of rotoscoping. I mean for years rotoscoping has been called tracing by the animation industry at large, but I can't see a massive difference between the two: both are designed to capture actual motion and transfer/transform it onto another media.


Completely agree.


I'm not advocating letting it in, just that there is a line now and there should be one in the future, even if it's a line that allows for some (if not all) vfx. Thing is, you go too far toward the live-action world and you could risk Keyframe’s integrity as a animation site.

I suppose one answer is to follow a pragmatic approach and let it what is popularly donceived to be animation. But I think we need a criteria we can apply ourselves without referring to public perception.

The problem is, I think animation and 'reality' are going to increasingly blur together rather than remain distinct.

I did find one moment in Polar Express, BTW, which I don't think could logically have been done with live photography. It's near the end, where the giant reindeer are pawing the the air, with their feet off the ground. But like I said, anyone wanting to do that in a film would just use cgi anyway.

Loop

[lupercal]

I can't believe I'm even suggesting this, but should we open the door to visual effects animation? Most animation sites talk about both animation/vfx in the same breath... I've always tried to keep it out as a somewhat futile act of self-preservation... try to keep the database under control.

I'm just wondering if, considering the way the industry is going, we're going to give ourselves more of a headache trying to keep it out than we would if we let it in...


I think the issue of whether we allow vfx in (if I understand the concept correctly) is a somewhat separate question from 'should we keep our reality rule'?

For example, three situations:

'Polar Express', uses vfx AND arguably breaks our reality rule.

'Waking Life' is based in live photography but arguably DOESN'T break our reality rule, as it goes out of its way to appear unrealistic.

Ray Harryhausen's films use technology (stop-motion) which falls comfortably within our boundaries, but arguably DOES break the reality rule by trying to appear realistic (though this varies. I'm not sure just how realistic you could say a 200' tall cyclops can possibly be)


'Polar Express' might well have used motion capture, but it might have used the technology to make characters who looked like something out of Shrek, and the cgi could have depicted an obviously unrealistic world.

I think if my prognostications come true ("One day someone will make an animated film and not tell anyone it's animated") then we have to re-think everything, but though this might happen, it hasn't happened yet, so I think we would be jumping the gun.

If it were to happen I think our most solid footing is still the reality rule. Technically I think Polar Express breaks it for nearly all of the movie, but at least people still think of it as an animated film. On that basis though I'd argue that you could call Harryhausen's films 'part live action', if our criteria is what people nowadays think of them as being.

So I think the question is, do we rule out a certain technology purely on the basis of how it's made, because it isn't animation - or do we do it on the basis of the reality rule, or both? I mean, I can think of a few live action films which are less realistic than some animated ones. e.g. 'Eraserhead' seems far less realistic to me than 'Polar Express', and if you wanted to be fussy and talk about the internal logic of the movie, it's less realistic than The Lion King.

Loop

[MonkeyFunk]

semi-OT: could we add Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

[Inkwolf]

Interestingly Servewithchips requested Return of the King on that first list of requests he did

Hullo!

I missed the main conversation, but just wanted to say: are you sure he didn't mean the animated version of it? Because the same people who animated The Hobbit also did The Return of the King after Bakshi's film only covered Fellowship and Towers...


Maybe, rather than adding them to the database, we could have a Special Effecs Hall of Fame feature, where we just briefly showcased films/people that were considered landmarks of effect animation, rather than going whole-hog with reviews and details and so on.

[athena]

semi-OT: could we add Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

I've never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, (yes, I know I should), could you describe the animation component?

[athena]

I missed the main conversation, but just wanted to say: are you sure he didn't mean the animated version of it?

That's a good point. I've tried to track down a copy of that but too many of the local rental places have dumped their old VHS tapes.

Don't suppose you'd have better luck with the library network...?


Maybe, rather than adding them to the database, we could have a Special Effecs Hall of Fame feature, where we just briefly showcased films/people that were considered landmarks of effect animation, rather than going whole-hog with reviews and details and so on.

I certainly have no problem putting something like this up if someone is willing to write it. I'm still kinda up to my neck in freelance work and the backlog of requested changes for Keyframe.

[starlac]

That hall of fame idea sounds neat...

I have no objections to writing info on various films that have set new standards in effects animation (in whatever form).

Of cause some viewers/member might decide to ask why they aren't able to review them, so we may have to tread carefully about how we undertake and present such a project.

On the other hand I would like to get Harryhausen's films into Keyframe, as Loop says, these days are viewed/remembered more for the animation.

I missed the main conversation, but just wanted to say: are you sure he didn't mean the animated version of it?

Fair enough. I wasn't aware that there was one, before now.

could you describe the animation component?

Crude, yet iconic and fun 2D stop-motion animation used for comic narrative and rendering fantasy elements. The film and Monty Python's Flying Circus (which also has animated segments, as link breaks) was a huge inspiration on the guys from South Park.

[Inkwolf]

That's a good point. I've tried to track down a copy of that but too many of the local rental places have dumped their old VHS tapes.

Don't suppose you'd have better luck with the library network...?.

I expect I can probably dig it up...

[athena]

I expect I can probably dig it up...

you're a saint, m'dear. :D

[Inkwolf]

Saint Inkwolf has checked, and it is indeed in the library system. Hallelujia! :angel:

[lupercal]

As an aside: I watched a 45 minute interview with Ray Harryhausen the other night, in which he said that he liked stop-motion because it didn't seem real - that in his opinion it was important to present fantasy in such a way that it was obviously not real (for much the same reasons that people argue against photorealistic cgi today). So if he can be believed, he wasn't trying to be 'realistic'.

Also had a very young Tom Hanks at Oscars, saying that 'Jason and the Argonauts' was better than 'Citizen Kane'. Ray Bradbury was on stage too, as he insisted on presented RH's oscar.

Loop

[MonkeyFunk]

There're some examples of MPatHG's animation here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=q4tWBILtrSU
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z-K-LyEdbh0 (7 minutes in)

[athena]

There're some examples of MPatHG's animation here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=q4tWBILtrSU
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z-K-LyEdbh0 (7 minutes in)


Hmm... so God and some title sequences?
Does it go much further than that... because otherwise I don't know...

[athena]

As an aside: I watched a 45 minute interview with Ray Harryhausen the other night, in which he said that he liked stop-motion because it didn't seem real - that in his opinion it was important to present fantasy in such a way that it was obviously not real (for much the same reasons that people argue against photorealistic cgi today). So if he can be believed, he wasn't trying to be 'realistic'.
Okay, I would say on these grounds I'll accept "Jason and the Argonauts" into Part-Live Action.

If nothing else, the man is a stop-motion legend and that deserves some recognition.

[Inkwolf]

Hmm... so God and some title sequences?
Does it go much further than that... because otherwise I don't know...

There are several transitional animations and short scenes, plus an animation where they are chased through a cave by a monster (and are saved when the animator dies of a sudden heart attack.)

I'm not sure I'd totally consider the film 'part live action' but Terry Gilliam probably deserves SOME mention on this site.

[lupercal]

Gilliam probably had a slightly higher animation to live action ratio in Monty Python the original TV series. But the problem I see with this is that people are going to be reviewing films/shows based on the live ction content, not really the animation. That's because Gilliam doesn't, so far as I can remember, have any live action during his animation. It's more like he has 100% animated segments which they slot between 100% live segments which are unrelated (though in Holy Grail that's not true. They relate to the story and they're really hilarious, but they just don't occupy a lot of time in total.

Actially there is one bit which is sort of a mix of live and animated. Where they meet God talking to them from a cloud. But even that scene is more like cuts from the live actors to the nimated God and back again.

I'm a little lukewarm on adding it, but OTOH his animation was brilliant, unique and certainly worth mentioning, if we have a section for 'things that are worth mentioning'.

I could go either way on this one. My only reservation is that if it suddenly shoots to #2 in part live action, it'll be because of people who loved the live action parts and aren't really considering the animation.

BTW HGilliam also did the animated intros to 'Life of Brian' and 'The Meaning of Life' - not that I'm suggesting we add those, but if you haven't seen Holy Grail (which to me is almost unbelievable, but then I was a Python nut when they were still doing TV) you might have seen those.

Loop

[MonkeyFunk]

If I remember correctly (it's been a while before I've seen either of them) Holy Grail has more animation than Stay Tuned.

But yeah, my main reason for suggesting it is so that we can cover Terry Gilliam. I supose if nothing else I could add him in the "of interest..." to the South Park movie, since he included it in his top 10 cartoons.

[starlac]

According to my TV Christmas guide both Jason and Titan are airing in the holiday lineup, so I should be able to add the two films without too much trouble.