From the Ray Harryhausen official website:

The Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of the definitive Harryhausen documentary to be called RAY HARRYHAUSEN: SPECIAL EFFECTS TITAN which will be produced by Frenetic Arts, based in France, and the Foundation. This English language production is scheduled for completion in late 2011/early 2012.

Aside from interviews with the great man himself, shot over five years, there are also interviews and tributes from Vanessa Harryhausen, Tony Dalton, Randy Cook, Peter Jackson, Nick Park, Phil Tippet, Peter Lord, Terry Gilliam, Dennis Muren, Rick Baker, John Landis, Ken Ralston, Guillermo Del Toro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, James Cameron and many more.

For the first time Ray and the Foundation have provided unprecedented access to film all aspects of the collection including models, artwork and miniatures as well as Ray’s private study, where he designed most of his creations, and his workshop where he built them. In addition the documentary will use unseen footage of tests and experiments found during the clearance of the LA garage. Never before has so much visual material been used in any previous documentary about Ray.

Summer 2012 holds some promise for animated films. One of these is ParaNorman, a stop-motion animation film from those who produced Coraline. The official website includes little, but the Wikipedia page includes the following synopsis.

In this comedy thriller, a small town comes under siege by the undead. Only a misunderstood local boy Norman, who has the ability to speak with the dead, is able to prevent the destruction of his town from a centuries-old curse. he’ll also have to take on ghosts, witches, zombies and worst of all, the moronic grown-ups. But this young ghoul whisperer may find his paranormal activities pushed to their otherworldly limits.

Here’s to hoping that it is good enough to find a place next to The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride.

That group of horror bloggers, the League of Tana Tea Drinkers (LOTTD), of which I am a part, has come up with the theme for their latest roundtable group of posts. By early April those participants will have posted on their favorite villainess. It’s been a while since I’ve done something on the lighter side, so I am throwing my at in the ring with my choice in the form of Medusa from Clash of the Titans (1981). In my view, overall the film is not one of the best efforts that involved the special effects stop-motion animation genius of Ray Harryhausen as his team’s preferences for fantasy did not evolve in dark enough fashion with a changing culture. Nevertheless, the film includes one of Harryhausen’s best stop-motion sequences with the Medusa who can turn men to stone with a mere gaze. The scene includes a number of great elements, including key lighting, sound effects, creature design, and of course, Harryhausen’s animation. In my view this segment ranks among the top of his animation efforts over the years, right up there with the skeleton battle sequence from Jason and the Argonauts (1963).

In Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life (Billboard Books, 2004), with his co-author Tony Dalton, Harryhausen describes the process he went through in coming up with the look and design for this creature. For her face and head he consulted art, literature, and film. He describes how this process influenced the design of her torso:

In most renditions of Medusa [the torso] is unseen, but when shown (as in the Hammer film The Gorgon, 1964), she is usually wearing a diaphanous gown which would have been impossible to animate. I decided to give her a non-human body and expose as much of it as dignity would allow. In fact the drawing of Medusa was the earliest I completed for Clash (dating back to 1977), and it shows her wearing a discreet boob tube. However, when it came to designing the model, I experimented with her wearing a bra-like garment, but it looked vulgar, so in the end everyone agreed that the offending garment should be removed (I suppose one could say she was the first lady to burn her bra) and Medusa’s potentially offending nipples were painted to blend in with the rest of her torso.

Harryhausen goes on to describe how the Medusa scene was received on the screen:

The Medusa sequence is perhaps the one I am most proud of. Everything in it — the model, the actions, the pace, the lighting — works so perfectly….When director Desmond Davis saw the completed sequence, he kindly called to congratulate me.

I don’t know who my fellow LOTTD members will be highlighting in their favorite villainess posts, but I’d be willing to put my money on Medusa in a horror celebrity villainess death match any day, perhaps as they fight to the death to the tune of Electric Light Orchestra’s tune “I turn to stone.”

Check the LOTTD page, as well as those of its members, for posts on this topic as they are assembled.

Foreword by Caroline Munro
Preface by Guillermo del Toro

From his Preface to Volume 3 —

“There is no way to overstate the importance of these books. [This book] is, simply, the most perfect book about Harryhausen ever made. This is the book that you dreamt of having as a child and the only gateway, I guarantee you, to regain that long-gone thrill you had when you where eight years old and you cracked open the pages of the latest issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland. Perhaps more importantly, this book performs one truly magic trick- one that we don’t experience often enough: it makes you want to go out, immediately, and rewatch every single one of the the chronicled films and, if at all possible, go and shoot a film yourself. In summation: It makes you fall in love with cinema all over again.”

— Guillermo del Toro, Director of Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth

Written and produced over the past 10 years with Ray Harryhausen’s cooperation and support, the complete 3-volume definitive 295,000-word career/biography features interviews with Ray and his colleagues and is profusely illustrated with several hundred rare photographs, artwork, and illustrations (many of which have never been previously published).

Chapters in Volume 3 extensively cover:
The Three Worlds of Gulliver, Mysterious Island, Jason and the Argonauts, First Men “In” the Moon, One Million Years B.C., The Valley of Gwangi, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, and Clash of the Titans.

Interview subjects/contributors to Volume 3 include numerous actors, directors, and technicians: producer Charles H. Schneer, John Phillip Law, Caroline Munro, Andrew Faulds, Martha Hyer, Sam Wanamaker, Gordon Hessler, Patrick Wayne, Taryn Power, Jane Seymour, Gila Golan (star of Valley of Gwangi, and her first interview in over 40 years), Colin Arthur, Lionel Jeffries, Ian Scoones, Gary Raymond, voiceover artist Nikki van der Zyl (who revoiced Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.), Martine Beswick, Forrest J Ackerman, Wilkie Cooper, Enzo Musumeci-Greco, Jason and the Argonauts title artist James Wines (his first interview about his work on Jason), Richard Green, Nathan Juran, Kerwin Mathews, Neil Pettigrew, and many others, some of whom have since passed away.

Stills and other material provided by numerous private collections, including considerable material that has never been seen in print before (including in Ray Harryhausen’s own books).

PLUS—

* A selection of photos of Ray’s models in 3D! (one pair of glasses provided with each copy)
* Reproductions of advertising art & posters from different countries
* Compilation of reviews and story synopses
* Filmographies of key cast and crew
* The music for the films in this volume, including a page from Laurence Rosenthal’s original manuscript for his score of the Medusa scene from Clash of the Titans
* A selection of Harryhausen collectibles pertaining to the films in this volume
* 640 pages, 125,000 word text (chapters, filmographies, reviews, and more)
* Approximately 3,600 images—photos, artwork, posters, technical diagrams and other illustrations, in Spectacular Color and “Glorious Black-and-White”
* Hardcover: dark brown imitation leather with title stamped in gold foil

Sample layouts for this volume can be viewed here.

Full color dust jacket
Heavy 70 pound semi-gloss paper stock
Overall dimensions 9″ x 11-1/2″ (22.86cm x 29.21cm)
Weight: 6 pounds (2.75kg)

The first volume released in this series, Volume 2, can be ordered through the TheoFantastique Store. Also see TheoFantastique’s previous interview with author Mike Hankin here.

Regular price is $84.95
Special pre-order discount: $74.95 through Archive Editions.
Offer good only from now through Sunday, October 3.

Yet even with my strong emotional connection to Harryhausen and the stop-motion animation he perfected this doesn’t mean that I believe that every film he was involved with was of equal caliber. One film that I feel didn’t match the wonder of Seventh Voyage of Sinbad or Jason and the Argonauts was Harryhausen’s final film, Clash of the Titans (1981). There are several reasons why this film did not due well with audiences, not the least of which was the declining appeal of the classic mythology that Harryhausen had based so many of his movies on.

Because of my great admiration for Harryhausen’s stop-motion creatures, combined with my lack of appreciation for Clash of the Titans, I find I have mixed feelings about the remake of the film set for release on April 2. It remains to be seen whether audiences will embrace a revamped and action-packed Greek mythology, but I am pleased that Warner Bros. has retained the creatures found in the original, even if they are computer-generated. How will the new technology render these creatures compared with the artistry of previous decades? The trailer at the link above gives some indication, but at least in the case of Medusa, I think my money will stay with Harryhausen’s rendition. The new version is pictured above, and the scene from the 1981 film is found below. In my view Medusa is one of Harryhausen’s greatest creature animations, moving him very close in this context from fantasy and science fiction special effects technician to the creator of a dark, mythological, horror monster.

A few aspects of this tribute are worth noting. First, the coverage includes articles on two recent books on stop-motion that are essential for fans of the art form and Harrhausen’s work. These include Mike Hankin’s Ray Harryhausen: Master of the Majicks vol. 2, and Ray Harryhausen and Tony Dalton’s A Century of Stop-Motion Animation: From Melies to Aardman.

Second, the tribute includes curious references to Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. In an article on stop-motion by Jason Pichonsky, he concludes by mentioning the ongoing legacy of stop-motion through contemporary works such as The Pit and the Pendulum, and Coraline, and mention is also made of Burton’s The Corpse Bride, but curiously Pichonsky does not mention Nightmare, a film of grander scale and with considerably more complexity and ongoing cultural influence than Corpse. And in the interview with Harryhausen the legendary animator seems almost at pains to distinguish between Burton’s stop-motion works as “puppet films” in contrast with his own work that put “characters that were believable in a real context.” This is curious for two reasons. One, Harryhausen’s early work was in George Pal’s “Puppetoons” which then opened the door for his work with more realistic creatures as special effects. Two, it was due to Harryhausen’s influence on Burton that the director has helped keep the legacy of stop-motion going by producing some of the few studio films that feature the art form.

The final piece of Rue Morgue‘s tribute worth drawing attention to is a matter of accuracy in details. The normally very accurate folks at Rue Morgue missed a photo caption, mistakenly labeling Harryhausen’s pre-production artwork of the Ymir in 20 Million Miles to Earth and associating it with concept art for the Kracken in Clash of the Titans.

With this latest issue Rue Morgue continues to demonstrate that it is one of the top notch magazines addressing, as its subtitlte states, “horror in culture and entertainment.” This tribute to Harryhausen is less extensive and moving than their tribute to Forrest J. Ackerman just before his death, but their feature on this legendary animator and special effects technician demonstrates that they recognize his place in fantastic cinema history.

I begin with two classics that became part of annual television viewing in October for many years. I refer to It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown (1966). I literally grew up with this program and looked forward to it each year. It still airs from time to time, but for whatever reason it appears to be more difficult to find as an annual program.

Another cartoon is less known, but it too became a cartoon that I needed to see each Halloween season. Garfield’s Halloween Adventure debuted in 1985, and each year we had the opportunity to watch that loveable feline dress as a pirate for his Halloween adventure with his sidekick Odie.

Looney Tunes provided several contributions to my Halloween cartoon habits. These include Scaredy Cat (1948)

Bewitched Bunny (1954),

Hyde and Hare (1955),

Broom-Stick Bunny (1956),

and the especially enjoyable Transylvania 6-5000 (1963).

Walt Disney Studios must also be acknowledged as incorporating a wide body of material that is horror and Halloween related. Several observers have credited Disney cartoons with making a significant impact upon popular culture related to the celebration of Halloween (as exemplified in these sample clips). Some of these cartoons include Lonesome Ghosts (1937),

Fantasia‘s (1940) “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”

and “Night on Bald Mountain”,

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949),

Trick or Treat (1954), which was made part of a very successful Halloween album for children that was part of A Spooky Night in Disney’s Haunted Mansion dramatization feature the voice talents of a young Ron Howard,

For many seasons now The Simpsons have produced a “must see” collection of “Treehouse of Horror” episodes. The only drawback is that these episodes do not air until the Sunday after Halloween, but at least this helps draw out the enjoyment of the season for another week.

Finally, my Halloween animation collection would not be complete without the addition of two stop-motion animation gems, both from Tim Burton, The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

and Corpse Bride (2005).

I hope you find these animated Halloween treats as enjoyable as I do, and I’d like to hear what else you might include on your list.

TheoFantastique: Mike, thanks for your willingness to discuss this book. You bring not only an appreciation for Ray’s work as a fan to this new book project, but also a long friendship. Can you sketch for us when you first caught the “Harryhausen bug,” how you and Ray came to be acquainted, and how your relationship coalesced into Ray Harryhausen – Master of the Majicks?
 
Mike Hankin: The first Harryhausen film I saw was Mysterious Island, released in the UK in the summer of 1962. I had seen the upcoming trailers and was so keen to see the film that I was at the cinema for the very first showing at 1 p.m., and didn’t come out until the last showing finished at 11 p.m. I was only thirteen years old and, as you can imagine, by the time I got home my parents were going mad with worry. Despite a severe telling off, I went back to see the film the following day and saw it at least twice each day until the end of its run. It is still my favourite Harryhausen film.

I first met Ray at a film convention in London, where he was giving a lecture. I wanted to interview him for a project I was working on, and through a friend got introduced, then invited to his home in London. I discovered we had so many interests in common, including film music and Laurel and Hardy. I arranged for Ray to become an honorary member of the the Sons of the Desert (the Laurel and Hardy Appreciation Society), and we exchanged film soundtracks.

From then on I became a regular visitor to Ray’s home, and got involved with several projects connected to his work. In casual chats I was learning so much about his films, much more than he had mentioned in any interviews. I constantly tried to persuade him to write a full autobiography, but he always said he had other things he would rather do. Eventually, I plucked up the courage to ask if he would let me write a biography. He just said “Go ahead.”

Shortly after I spent two days at his home, just looking through the bound scrapbooks he keeps on each of his films. These contain the script, storyboards, pre-production and production stills, reviews, clippings and much more. I was in seventh heaven. That was in 1986.

So many people have remarked, how can you spent so long on one project. All I can say is that I was having so much fun. I have travelled thousands of miles, written hundreds of letters, made numerous phone calls and traded countless emails, meeting so many wonderful people along the way. First and foremost I am a fan of Ray Harryhausen. I admire his many skills, how his mind works, I wanted to find out every minor detail about his career, and Ernie is the same. The whole enterprise has been so rewarding. During the time I was putting this all together I have chaired a lecture with Ray at a film festival; I have sat with him during a so-called sweat-box session for a new film project at an animation studio in England; I sat between Ray and Ray Bradbury at the pre-Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame dinner, and had Ray Bradbury say to me, “It’s good to sit next to a fellow author”. Can you imagine what that was like for a Harryhausen fan! Yes, I would be in cloud cuckoo land to believe for one moment what the great Ray Bradbury said to me, but it not only sent a shiver down my spine, but I also had a smile on my face continuously for the rest of the trip.

TheoFantastique: I remember as a young Harryhausen fan in the 1970s how difficult it was to find books on Ray and his films, and many times sci fi and monster magazine articles and interviews had to suffice. Now we have several good works that are available. What makes this new work stand out as a unique contribution to works that discuss Ray’s work and legacy?
 
Mike Hankin: Without doubt it is the interviews I conducted with so many people. I had great chats with Diana and Vanessa Harryhausen, when Ray was sent out of the room. Ray put me in contact with many people, such as Ray Bradbury, Wilkie Cooper and Beverley Cross. Other people took a little more tracking down, such as Michael Craig in Australia, John Cairney in New Zealand, Enzo Musumeci-Greco and Ferinando Poggi in Italy, as well as people such as model builder Arthur Hayward, film editor Jenny Holt, who were no longer involved in the film industry and Roy Field, who finally answered so many questions I had on the fate of the superior Sodium Light Travelling Matte system. Actor Tim Pigott Smith told me what it was like to be directed by Ray during the scorpion fight in Clash of the Titans (he was actually telling me the story in a busy restaurant, which suddenly became quiet as everyone listened). Each person, actors, directors, writers, cinematographers, technicians, friends, each had a story to tell, many who had never been asked before, and sadly many are no longer with us, which makes this record all the more important. Another important point is that time plays havoc with your memory, so we always checked, then checked again whatever we were told. We never took stories we heard about Ray as fact, we questioned everything.

TheoFantastique: Master of the Majicks will be released in three volumes with the first release, Volume 2, coming out on Sunday, September 14. Why three volumes, and why is the second volume going to be released first?
 
Mike Hankin: The book was very different when it was originally going to be published by another company in the early 1990s. Since Ernie Farino became involved, the book has expanded so much that it would have meant drastic cutting to get everything into a single volume, which neither Ernie or myself wanted to do. We decided to split the book into three volumes, covering the early years; Ray’s first venture in feature films to his last film made in America; then finally the films he made when he moved to England and beyond. There were many people who read through the manuscript and learnt so much in the early chapters, but couldn’t wait to get to the feature films. These are the films that they grew up with and wanted to read about. So, we thought start with the big story, then go back to the beginning. Well, Star Wars did it, so why not us.
 
TheoFantastique: What are some of the facets of this three-volume series that in your view will make it an important contribution to the library of Harryhausen fans, as well as fans of fantasy films and special effects wizards?

Mike Hankin: I believe it is the coverage of everything Harryhausen, his whole creative process, his influence on others in the industry and also other fields, which is really quite amazing. It will also compliment Ray’s own book, by adding details to stories that he may have only briefly mentioned, such as the fate of the models and equipment he used. Whenever a film process is mentioned, we have gone to great pains to explain how and why it works. It will also be a source of information for the collector, with numerous images of posters, magazine covers, lobby stills from around the world, plus all other materials connected to the films. We haven’t forgotten things such as contemporary reviews, budgets, music, promotions and scores of other items that are sometimes neglected. 

TheoFantastique: I understand that your book will include new photos and other visual materials. Can you comment on what we might anticipate? Mike Hankin: Ray gave me many stills before he began writing his own book when, for obvious reasons, that particular source came to an end. Many of the people I interviewed loaned me stills from their private collections. Then Ernie got to work, contacting many collectors and archives, finding the material that few people had seen before. Many of these images would often throw up new questions that we set about answering. For instance, in volume two there images from an outtake reel featuring unused animation cuts from The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and It Came From Beneath the Sea. Ray explains why these weren’t used. 

TheoFantastique: How did you come to be associated with Archive Editions as the publisher for this book series? 

Mike Hankin: When I was with my original publisher I contacted Ernie Farino and Sam Calvin for information about the creation of the Harryhausen fanzine FXRH. Ernie kindly loaned me a stack of stills covering Ray’s early experiments. When my publisher went out of business I wrote to Ernie asking if I could hang on to the stills while I searched for another publisher. Ernie had just set up Archive Editions and was planning to do a Best of FXRH as his first project, but came in with an offer to do my book instead. I knew straight away that Ernie would bring to the project much more than any other publisher, and I haven’t been proved wrong. He laid down his plans, targeted the areas he thought could be improved and set me a whole lot of extra work, but it has been worth it. It has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride over the last few years, just financing this huge enterprise, yet here it is, the best possible way of expressing our gratitude for Ray’s choice of career.

TheoFantastique: Ernie, let’s get your perspective on this project as the publisher through your Archive Editions. Let me ask you a question similar to one I asked Mike. I remember many years ago that it was difficult to find books on Ray, but I managed to go through rare and used book dealers to find copies of From the Land Beyond Beyond, and later Film Fantasy Scrapbook. Now we have several good books out, including a few contributed to by Ray himself. What was it about this book project that made you want to get involved in seeing it published?

Ernest Farino: As Mike mentioned, I was the co-creator of the Ray Harryhausen fanzine FXRH, four issues of which were published from 1971 to 1974. Like many people, Ray’s work inspired my interest in animation and visual effects and the magazine was a great way to combine that interest with my interest in graphic design. Later, my work in animation escalated into a professional career and I worked on numerous films and television projects, some involving stop motion.In 1994 I was in Prague as Visual Effects Supervisor on a film called Snow White in the Black Forest starring Sigourney Weaver, and I first started to contemplate getting back into publishing. Ever-improving computer technology was clearly starting to make this idea a viable possibility in terms of page layout software, photo treatment, and so on.

I began to consider ideas for projects, but it wasn’t until 1997 that Mike Hankin contacted me (ironically, I was once again out of the country working on a mini-series in Australia). The original publisher for Master of the Majicks had dropped out and Mike was letting me know that material I had previously contributed from my own collection was still safe and sound. That jump-started my thinking that this might be the perfect project to embark on this new enterprise, and Mike and I soon made a deal to do the book.What followed was an involved process that saw the evolution and development of the book itself running parallel to my setting up my business, acquiring hardware and software, and many other details.

Having said all that, the subject matter really made the difference, of course. I don’t think I would have had as much drive and interest along these lines had the book been about something else. But here, the perfect subject came together at the right time.

TheoFantastique: Given your long association with Ray and familiarity with his work, was there anything in this book series that took you by pleasant surprise?

Ernest Farino: There’s no single event or discovery that stands out, but, rather, an ongoing series of discoveries and revelations in terms of photographic material and the kind of information that only comes from focused research. It was great to have the platform for pursuing historical and technical details related to Ray’s films and in some cases, other films from the period that relate to Ray’s work. Mike has been able to contact any number of people who worked on Ray’s films, such as all three “Sinbad” directors: Nathan Juran (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) and Gordon Hessler (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad) and Sam Wanamaker (Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger), actors like Kerwin Mathews (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) and Paul Christian (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms), and various technicians who worked on the miniatures and opticals on Ray’s films. Many stories and details have come to light that I don’t believe have ever been explored in the past.

One interesting example came from another bit of serendipity or coincidence. In the early 1990s I directed a one-act play in Los Angeles, a very funny comedy called Dub. The play was written by Henry Slesar, who lived on the east coast, and I had occasion to speak to Slesar a couple of times about the play. His name sounded familiar to me, but I thought it was just from some TV shows he’d written, such as classic episodes of The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. It wasn’t until a few years later when working on the Harryhausen book that I finally made the connection: Henry Slesar had written the Amazing Stories “novelization” of Harryhausen’s film 20 Million Miles to Earth, which was later serialized in Famous Monster of Filmland magazine. I immediately got back in touch with him; Slesar remembered me from the play and kindly wrote a nice recollection of his experience writing the novelization of 20 Million back in 1957. This story is new and exclusive to the book and, since Slesar passed away a couple of years after that, something I’m all the more pleased to include “for the record.”

TheoFantastique: How do you see this new book as a “must have” for serious Harryhausen fans?

Ernest Farino: One thing I realized right from the start was that, unlike Ray’s own books, including Film Fantasy Scrapbook from the 1970s, we were going to be able to provide a much broader perspective to the making of these films. Ray’s books are memoirs from his own perspective, which is perfectly valid, but we’ve been able to enhance and elaborate on many of the details of the history and techniques behind the films. So I think this 3-volume set is not only a legitimate companion to Ray’s books but a research source that goes much farther as a comprehensive overview.

We’ve also structured the chapters much like the actual making of the films themselves. Each chapter starts with the initial concept or idea behind the film, then the development of the script and pre-production, then filming of the movie, the post production animation and visual effects, and finally wrapping up with the advertising, publicity and release of the completed film. So one can get a feeling for the natural, chronological process that went into making the films.

TheoFantastique: Mike and Ernie, thanks again for sharing about this book. I hope it will become a cherished part of the collection of Harryhausen fans around the world. Readers can click here for more information, a preview, and to place orders.

TheoFantastique: Marc, thanks again for your willingness to talk with us about this project. While stop-motion animation was once one of the major forms of special effects for bringing the fantastic elements of stories to the screen, with the advent of computer generated animation and effects it has largely gone the way of the dinosaurs that Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen used to animate in their early days, with the exception, of course, of its use in commercials, children’s programs, or the all too infrequent animated treat by Tim Burton. I experimented with my own stop-motion animation as a teenager in the 1970s, even as the technology was being developed that would eventually replace it, and sadly, I gave up this dream for a career path. Thankfully, you pressed on. To begin, how did you get interested and involved in stop-motion, and what kind of influence was Ray Harryhausen in this process?

Marc Lougee: I grew up watching Creature Double Features. I was a huge fan of creature and special effects-oriented films from the 50′s to the 70′s. King Kong, War of the Worlds, Forbidden Planet, were all favorites. Everything with Ray Harryhausen’s name on it was a must-see, regardless of killer bees, my older brother or nuclear attack. Watching those films really gripped me, and while I sat there with my eyes glued to the tube, with no idea there was a bunch of folks making a living doing this.

It wasn’t until I got into high school that I found I could even function as an animator. That was a real revelation, to know enough about the process to see how little one needs to start with the very basics. Encouraged, and knowing just enough to make me dangerous around cameras, I started to experiment for my first filmmaking class. I figured even even Ray Harryhausen had to have started somewhere, so I got to work making short animated films on Super-8 using GI Joes, Micronaut figures and clay creature as puppets. The first few attempts went pretty well, considering I really little idea of what I was doing, but I plowed on and had fun. Soon enough the other kids in the class were more interested in what I was up to than their own stuff. I wound up shooting some shorts for other kids in the class, the equivalent of writing book reports for people, only I was making short films. I had found my calling. I especially enjoyed the total hands-on approach of stop-motion. It was a really immersive experience to build everything, work out the camera placement and movement, and tell a story (the few times I bothered with a story in those days).

TheoFantastique: How did Ray’s name come to be associated with this project?

Marc Lougee: In early 2005 Ray’s producer, Arnold Kunert got in touch to see about firing up The Fall of the House of Usher as a stop-motion short film, which Ray would helm as Executive Producer. Susan Ma, producer on The Pit and the Pendulum and I were just floored this opportunity had presented itself, so we got to work on checking the viability of the project within a time frame we could manage. We were both contracted to start shows inside of two months, but really wanted to do a film with Ray and Arnold. We concluded we couldn’t do the story justice with the resources we had available, which was a bit of a disappointment all around. Knowing Ray had his heart set on Fall of the House of Usher, and Susan and I being eager to keep the embers glowing meant we needed to find another story everyone would be happy with, so we pitched another perennial favorite, The Pit and the Pendulum in place of Fall of the House of Usher. Ray and Arnold were receptive to the idea and the reasoning behind our decision. The Pit and the Pendulum was then slated as the first film produced under the Ray Harryhausen Presents banner. Needless to say, were excited, enthusiastic, and really thrilled to see this amazing turn of events.

TheoFantastique: Poe’s work, particularly in The Pit and the Pendulum, has been the focus of various cinematic treatments before. What made you decide to approach this material again, and in such a fresh way?

Marc Lougee: The story sort of found me, actually. After reading the The Pit and the Pendulum, I saw this as a story of judgment, condemnation, despair, hope and a man’s faith in a power greater than himself. It’s classic; this guy, a prisoner, is brought to the lowest place in his life, totally powerless to save himself. It’s there he concludes he’s run out of options, and seeing he can’t save himself, realizes salvation is ultimately going to come from a power greater than he.

I felt our short film would be touching on one of the bigger questions of humanity: Is there anyone there to save us after we’ve done all we can do? Is it possible to maintain hope, or even faith in something, when all seems lost? These questions really resonated with me, and I wanted to get this across in the story. This prisoner is suffering horribly at the hands of self-righteous fiends, and in the end, who does he have to turn to? He’s at the very bottom of his capabilities, with two choices; dive into the pit, and succumb to the Inquisitor’s whims, or stay alive, in hope he’ll be saved. I feel it’s in those moments we find what we’re made of, what we really believe. The film has proven an interesting starting point to open up dialogue concerning the questions raised in the story itself. The aspects we sought to steer clear of was to “re-imagine” Poe’s tale, as I felt with the proper handling, it would still be powerful. It didn’t need to be altered to horrify, it’s already there.

TheoFantastique: Why did you choose to tell this story using stop-motion, and how do you combine this with computer graphics and other effects?

Marc Lougee: Stop-motion animation is like watching a continuous magic trick, an illusion. The illusion is life. Like sculpture or photography, animation depicts moments in time, only incrementally. I just love the idea, that with incremental positioning of a puppet one can create this illusion. The magic trick is the life-like qualities the animator can lend to the performance, the subtleties, expressions, mannerisms. Like acting in slow motion. I feel it’s a wonderful way to transport an audience to a fantastic place, where folks can leave expectations of realism at the door. By virtue of the fact an audience is watching puppets “acting,” it frames a story in a completely different way than say, live action. It’s a wonderful story-telling device, setting folks up to use their imagination freely. In the case of The Pit and the Pendulum, I felt the material could be really horrifying, and maybe too heavy for a wide audience. I wanted kids to have access to the story, so they could see a visual interpretation of Poe’s literature without being freaked out, or horrified. Stop-motion ,being this fun, whacky technique associated with a youthful audience, was a perfect medium for us to present the story, as it could still be creepy and scary, while keeping the integrity of the tale intact without being too heavy.

Switch VFX Visual Effects Supervisor Jon Campfens, VFX artists Gudren Heinze and Dave Alexander were responsible for all the CG-based visual effects. Dave and Gudren did a masterful job of modelling, texturing, painting and assembling all the disparate elements from the shoot, matching the set, miniatures and CG stuff seamlessly. One shot of note was of the bird struggling to escape through the barred window. Switch produced this as a totally 3D-CG shot. We didn’t have a window constructed, nor a bird, so Dave modeled the wall, window and bird, and lit the shot to match the rest of the film perfectly. Gudren handled the composite & rotoscope work, set extensions, and atmospheric effects, while Yowza Digital dealt with the bird animation. Just wonderful work. Susan and I were totally pleased.

TheoFantastique: What has been the reaction to this film, on the part of the general public, film critics, and the horror and animation subcultures?

Marc Lougee: The response has been just fantastic! Susan and I have attended a few festivals as our schedules allow. I was recently in New York attending our screening at the Museum of the Moving Picture, preceding Lance Weiler’s HEAD TRAUMA ARG show (The Pit and the Pendulum is currently touring with Lance’s show across North America and Europe). The crowd burst into applause a couple of times. That was pretty cool. We also got to the Williamstown Film Festival, and met up with Brad Silberling ( Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events). He had heard of the film though the festival programmer and asked for a copy to bring back with him to LA! He was very cool and very interested in seeing our film. That made our weekend.

TheoFantastique: Do you have any future productions in the planning stages?

Marc Lougee: We’re currently working on a couple other projects in the outline stage. One of the stories is a classic Washington Irving tale, another is a short story by Mark Twain. There are several other Victorian stories I’m interested in pursuing, as well. The atmosphere, textures, furniture and clothing of the period lend themselves beautifully to stop-motion. I would love to get the Edgar Allan Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher into production to fully explore what we could do with the aesthetic.

TheoFantastique: Marc, thanks again for sharing with us, and for telling us a great old story in new ways that thrills young and old alike.