Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

Hi All,

A looooooong time ago there was this movie. I remember it as a young lad because of a fight that involved skeletons. Now this was special because, back in the day, there was nothing like CGI. Special effects were a combination of puppeteering, minatures, clever camera angles or cutting, and something called stop motion capture.

Essentially you’d have a clay figure, take a frame or two in one pose, move the model slightly (say an arm waving a sword) and take another couple of frames. Massively, massively labor intensive, but it produced something quite magical for us back them. Clunky and obvious by today’s standards (though Aardman Studios has made a real art of it in recent times), but basically when you consider the Sasquatch movie back then was a guy running around in a fur suit…. well, we were happy to suspend disbelief.

One of the leading lights of stop motion photography was a gentleman named Ray Harryhausen who passed away yesterday. Thank you Ray. For giving us some of those magical moments that cinema sometimes provides.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Harryhausen

H