The Dinosaur Films of Ray Harryhausen.The Dinosaur Films Of Ray Harryhausen Roy P. Webber McFarland & Company PO Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com 0786416661 $45.00 1-800-253-2187 Ray Harryhausen was a pioneer of the cinema. He was the man whose expanded and advanced the utilization of "stop-motion" animation. This was the labor intensive Labor Intensive A process or industry that requires large amounts of human effort to produce goods. Notes: A good example is the hospitality industry (hotels, restaurants, etc), they are considered to be very people-oriented. See also: Capital Intensive, Trading Dollars and painstaking pains·tak·ing adj. Marked by or requiring great pains; very careful and diligent. See Synonyms at meticulous. n. Extremely careful and diligent work or effort. practice of making models and puppets seem to come alive through moving slightly moving them and taking a photograph of each movement, then positionthem again, taking another photograph,repeating the process again and again. Running those still photographs through a film projector gave the fascinating illusion of movement that was a popular breakthrough in "special effects special effects, in motion pictures, cinematographic techniques that create illusions in the audience's minds as well as the illusions created using these techniques. " for early fantasy movies featuring all manner of monsters and dinosaurs. In particular, Harryhausen was essential to bringing to life the dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures that were integral to his four classic Hollywood films: "One Million Years B.C.", "The Beasts from 20,000 Fathoms", "The Animal World", and "The Valley of Gwangi". Harryhausen developed stop-motion animation The original technique used to create an animated sequence. Each frame is created and photographed (or digitized) independently. Contrast with computer animation. See claymation. techniques that were to influence subsequent generations of film makers and special effects professionals down to this very day. In The Dinosaur Films Of Ray Harryhausen: Features, Early 16mm Experiments And Unrealized Projects, Roy P. Webber provides a complete history of Harryhausen's cinematic work that rises to the level of archetypal ar·che·type n. 1. An original model or type after which other similar things are patterned; a prototype: "'Frankenstein' . . . 'Dracula' . . . 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' . . . scholarship, including an informative perspective on the paleontological pa·le·on·tol·o·gy n. The study of the forms of life existing in prehistoric or geologic times, as represented by the fossils of plants, animals, and other organisms. accuracy of the saurians from a contemporary perspective given the advances of paleontology paleontology (pā'lēəntŏl`əjē) [Gr.,= study of early beings], science of the life of past geologic periods based on fossil remains. over the past few decades. Of special note is the exhaustive appendix regarding dinosaur-related films that Harryhausen had a hand in. Nicely illustrated throughout with vintage photos and a "must" read for all Ray Harryhausen fans, The Dinosaur Films Of Ray Harryhausen is a core addition to professional and academic library Cinematic Studies and Film History reference collections. |
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