LAND OF THE LOST (TV 1970´s) stop motion effects

the gumby davey goliath thing that was a television show and then after gummy dave and goliath i got the job at the gene warren's excelsior in hollywood as an animator and well yeah i think the first thing that i did there was a commercial it was a mcdonald's commercial with dancing french fries and hamburger patties and soda cups and uh and then shortly after that you know we did the first movie for me that i have worked on which was you know legend hill billy john with the ugly bird and uh and then you know we did land the lost and we did commercials and tv specials so it was kind of like a mixture of all those different things at the same time you know it really wasn't just you know going through like commercials and then progressing to features so it was all happening at the same time different things you know we did have a disaster once i think with um online the loss with torchy when we were just uh got the model made and then we were like experimenting with um the front flame breathing device which was uh basically you know a tube ran from his mouth and he was bodying out the bottom of his belly and then we used um it was wd-40 and we just squirted wd-40 through this tube and lit it and then we went to live action mode you know and i like the first time that we did this that um his whole face like sort of caught on fire because the the the um the liquid and stuff somehow you know sprayed all inside of his mouth you know and not straight out like it was supposed to you know and just everything got wet and just caught on fire so that was uh kind of a weird thing but then we fixed it and got it to work right of course dennis calls me up when i was at excelsiors like 1976 said hey harry you want to come work on this uh movie called star wars this at the time this is where ilm started in van nuys yeah the valley and uh he said you know it might only be about two or three months work then then you might be finished and that's it you know and i said why and i said well dennis you know i'm not gonna leave my job at excelsior that i've been at for like six years to go work on some science fiction movie that i never heard about i never heard i don't know who the director is you know and and then i'll be out of work in three months so i said no and then the um and of course i would you think i would have known better on empire because of course i know what i what was going on by then but empire i had to turn that down because um bill stromberg and i just started a studio in san clemente which is crazy so we had that going plus our first daughter was just uh was just born and and and charles schneer was interviewing me about working on clash of the titans you know with ray and so i had all the stuff going on so i had so that's why i turned it down at that time too you know so um they chose stephen archer yeah yeah got stephen yeah i should have um i should have like lowered my price or something you know i should've done it for free just to work with ray on his last movie when you're doing stop-motion animation it's hands-on it's like um it's more what's the word it's more improv improvisation sort of i mean you plan out the shot too and you think about it you think the performance and you visualize and you do it and sometimes you have most times you do have very specific things to do but along the way of going from a to b you know anything can happen and sometimes because the humans not very perfect you know it's just like all these sometimes little happy accents little things happen you know between you know frame 10 and frame 20 that just make it special make it different that you don't get when you're doing cg because cg you just tend to make it perfect from a to b or frame 10 to 20 to make you tend to make all that movement perfect you know and uh and it and that that's to me that's kind of the difference you know little imperfections versus being so perfect you know it's to me it's got a little more of a charm and a nice quality you know the stop-motion way you know for so you know does i love low-budget films um just usually for the simple fact that um because it's low budget usually you know you get to do more things because you you don't as opposed to like at ilm usually a big place like that it's usually you just do like one thing you know either animating or you're a cameraman or you're an optical compositor or whatever and everything's more separated and compartmentalized and so in low budget stuff because of the nature not having the money you know you they rely on you doing several things at once and that's usually what you do you know you you can you're animating you're building the creature you're making the model miniature you're you know going out shooting the plates doing the composites and you kind of almost do everything on a low budget thing and and it's kind of a smaller crew and and you have to be much more creative to figure out how to do stuff on a smaller budget and have it look you know like it's um several million dollar budget or shot you know so that's um i love that um that kind of a challenge with low budget movies and i like the high budget movies are great too you know i mean you get paid more um and they're usually they're a higher profile movie you know and and um but yeah i would probably um overall maybe kind of tend to tend to favor the lower budget medium budget movies just just usually have more fun on something like that you know there's actually more miniature stuff that i was involved and i had forgotten about i didn't really build i mean i worked on some miniature sets i didn't really build like models or ships or anything myself but i worked on a lot of like terrains miniature terrains forced perspective shots hanging linear shots miniature shots and stuff working on at my father's place in the 70s land of the lost and it was the third year so 7479 it was so a 76 and we're we've added a set to the to the marsh set for this two-headed sea monster that's a new character for the third year lulu and when that lulu comes out of the water it's a hand puppet thing and then it's stop motion but the hand puppet thing is is a hand puppet but it has to come up out of the water so i built this little tank this deep and in front of the set tied it into the so you get the whole marsh behind it and have sealed in a rubber kitchen glove that goes to about here and it's all sealed in okay so that we can put your hand up inside that and hold and and puppet this this character up and shoot that part high speed and then you go to stop motion for the lulu stuff so i'm filling the set up this is the first time and it's almost up the water and i'm turning to look at something and i then i turn back around and it's almost empty it's like it's leaking what i and then it dawns on me oh my god i turn around and look under and that glove has gone on reverse the glove is about this big it looks like a cow water it's about this big growing and it's like oh pull the plugs on the pot boom it goes off and it just flooded the whole stage is exploding so yeah things like that happen that's a funny one

Channel: piercefilm productions

Views: 19,178

Keywords: stop motion, miniature model, dinosaurs, puppet, special effects, visual effects, making of, behind the scenes, Sid Marty Krofft

Id: 7bxddQL9aMk

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021