The next movie I am going to talk about is Jason and the Argonauts.
This movie was created much later on than King Kong, so the effects in use in
it are more technologically advanced. This film truly revolutionised stop
motion by having stop motion characters fight against actors. The animator used
a technique called “Dynamation” which is where he filmed the stop motion scenes
and the live action scenes separately and then combined them into one scene.
The scene which famously used this was the fight between Jason and the
skeletons. Jason was a real person, whereas the skeletons were stop motion
characters.
Other than the skeleton scene, there were other great scenes
that took advantage of the stop motion technique. For example there was the bronze
giant, Talos which chased the actors while towering over them. Jason and the
Argonauts was a great movie, because it showed interaction between actors and
stop motion models like no other film had ever done before.
The animator behind the stop motion scenes was Ray
Harryhausen, who is also considered a legend in the world of stop motion, much
like Willis O’Brien. In fact, the two have worked together, they were both
involved in the stop motion animation used in Mighty Joe Young. Many even
consider Harryhausen to be the successor to O'Brien's legacy.
One of the reasons Harryhausen is so respected in the world
of stop motion is because after O’Brien died, he continued to evolve the style
of stop motion that O’Brien utilised in his films, keeping the animation
realistic looking as opposed to focusing on the more cartoony looking
“Claymation” style.
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