Computers create almost every explosion, fantasy character and supernatural event in today's movies. But what's really impressive? People who did that before the age of the Mac.
The skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts, 1963
The four-minute skeleton fight, orchestrated by special effects genius Ray Harryhausen, took over four and a half months to shoot via stop-motion animation. Harryhausen also rear-projected footage of the actual actors (who, when filming, were basically battling air behind the animation) and then combined the shots to make a realistic (and scary) skeleton-argonaut battle.
The parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments, 1956
How do you PART A SEA before the era of CGI (and with the lack of divine assistance)? Cecil B. DeMille filmed two large "dump tanks" being flooded with water, then spun the film in reverse. The two frothing walls of water were created by water dumped constantly into "catch basin areas"; the churning water images were then flipped sideways to make the walls of water. A gelatin substance was also added to the water in the tanks to give it more of a seawater consistency.
Fun fact: A portion of the tank still exists today on the Paramount lot. It can still be flooded for water scenes, but when not being used in a production, it is an extension of a parking lot.
The ape in King Kong, 1933
Kong was actually an 18 inch high, poseable model, covered with rabbit hair, that was filmed one frame at a time by stop-motion photography artist Willis O'Brien and his crew. The producers filmed Kong and Fay Wray, who played the ape's victim, Ann Darrow, separately. They then projected the two films together to create the effect of Fay Wray right there with Kong.
The werewolf transformation in American Werewolf in London, 1981
Rick Baker's legendary transformation scene is created entirely through a combination of prosthetics and robotics. For the section where the long wolf hair seems to be crawling out of his skin, the process was actually filmed in reverse. A fake patch of skin was made, and the hairs drawn into it. For the full body shots where he is seemingly stretching out over the carpet, David Naughton, the actor, is mostly under a false floor; a dummy wolf body makes up the rest of him from the torso down. His facial transformation included two robotic skulls.
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