I was just about to go home when I heard the news via Twitter that special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen died today. Ray Harryhausen was most famous for creating a form of stop-motion animation called Dynamation. Although some of the effects he created appear very dated compared to modern techniques involving computer graphics, some of his creations have stood the test of time so well that they have become classics of the art. The film Jason and the Argonauts features a swordfight involving seven animated skeletons, which is rightly held up as a shining example of his technical mastery, but my favourite sequence from that film is the following excerpt, in which the stop-motion technique works superbly well at conveying the colossal scale and supernatural presence of the giant Talos. It certainly had me on the edge of my seat when I first saw it.
This clip is rendered even more evocative by the fact that the sound the metallic scraping sound the Talos makes is exactly the same as that generated by the turntable in my microwave oven when it goes round…
Follow @telescoper
In the Dark 