A CINEMA RETRO EXCLUSIVE:
DIRECTOR JOHN STEVENSON (""KUNG FU PANDA", "SHERLOCK GNOMES") PAYS TRIBUTE TO A SPECIAL EFFECTS GENIUS
Stop motion animation is still the most magical of special
effects techniques to me, because instinctively you know that real light is
falling on a real object that is seemingly moving of its own volition. Computer
Generated Imagery may be able to create more complex and fluid motion, but we
instinctively know that what we are looking at does not exist in our world.
There is still an arcane power in watching something you know you can touch
move on its own. So films featuring stop motion animation were my great passion
as a child.
Stop motion animation was the Rolls Royce of special effects
techniques in the 1960s and early 1970s. If you were a young fantasy addict a new
Ray Harryhausen film at the local ABC cinema was the equivalent of a new MCU
film dropping today. Because Ray Harryhausen lived in London he sometimes
appeared on British television with his models ( programmes such as “Screen
Test†with Michael Rodd in 1970) where he would explain the principals of stop
motion animation, which gave me a basic understanding of the technique at a
young age. Stop motion animation could also be found in children’s television
shows like “The Pogles†and “The Magic Roundaboutâ€, commercials and even on
“The Old Grey Whistle Test†where clips from Ladislas Starevitch’s films would
sometimes accompany music tracks (courtesy of Phillip Jenkinson). It was a golden age if you were a fan of the
technique, and Ray Harryhausen became my idol, representing everything that was
magical about the movies for me. But I had yet to discover Karel Zeman.
I first encountered Karel Zeman’s work on a British
children’s T.V show about movie special effects that showed extracts from a
15-minute Czech film called “The Magic World Of Karel Zeman†made in 1962. At
the time I had no idea what I was looking at. The only part I remember clearly
was a scene that showed some children climbing on the back of a dead
Stegosaurus, then the camera tracked around to reveal that the Stegosaurus was
a painting on a sheet of board close to the camera while the children stood on
a wooden frame a long way in the distance. This was supposedly how they shot
the scene from “Journey To The Beginning Of Time†(Many years later when I
finally got to see the film I was amazed to discover that the film employed a life
size prop, not a painting. I wondered if Karel Zeman was playing a joke by
deliberately misleading the audience?) As a child I was fascinated by this
short clip of film and wanted to know more about the movie and the person who
made it, but Karel Zeman was elusive and it was difficult to find any
information on him in the pre-internet 1960’s. It would be another thirty years
before I was able to see his film.
Karel
Zeman was Czech and began his film career in advertising and first worked in
animation making an advertisement for soap. In 1943 he accepted a job offer at
Zlin animation studio and in 1945 became director of the stop motion animation
production group and made his first short film “A Christmas Dream†(“Vanocni
Senâ€) which combined animated puppets and live action. Zeman then created a
series of puppet shorts featuring a character called Mr. Prokouk, which were
very popular. In 1948 he made the beautiful short film “Inspirationâ€(“Inspiraceâ€)
using animated glass figures, and two years later directed the half hour film
“King Lavra†(“Kra Lavraâ€) which went on to win a National Award. Karel Zeman’s
first feature film “The Treasure Of Bird Island†(“Poklad Ptaciho Ostrovaâ€) was
completed in 1952 and used innovative techniques to evoke Persian art. Then in
1955 he made the first of his six feature films to use his unique combination
of live action and animation techniques that would secure his place in movie
history, the remarkable “Cesta Do Pravekuâ€, or “Journey To the Beginning Of
Timeâ€.
JTTBOT
tells the story of four children who venture back in time to discover the origins
of life on Earth. On the way they encounter creatures from the Quaternary, the
Tertiary, the Mezazoic, and Paleozoic eras. Uniquely and charmingly, no time is
spent on a logical explanation for their trip. There are no fantastical devices
here-no time machines, no boring into the center of the Earth, no discovery of
lost plateaus or uncharted, mist shrouded islands. The boys want to go, so they
go. They take a small boat and enter a mysterious cave tunnel and emerge in
prehistory travelling further back in time as they follow the river to its
source.
Apart
from Karel Zeman’s most obvious accomplishments in creating myriad special
effects sequences, his skill as a director is evident in his handling of the
child actors, most of whom were not professionals. He elicits natural, unforced
performances from his cast with none of the sentimentality or grating archness
found in many American and British films featuring child actors from the same
period. Zeman’s use of the camera is also very effective with many tracking
shots taken on location or on studio sets closely following the children before
an encounter with a prehistoric creature. These shots with the camera following
just behind the children’s shoulders or tracking back in front of their faces
puts the audience directly inside their experience and makes the build up to
the reveal of the various creatures much more powerful. Compare these
pre-effects sequences with similar scenes in American dinosaur films from the
same period such as “Unknown Island†(1948) or “The Lost Continent†(1951) to
see that Zeman’s direction is much more effective. Perhaps his least
appreciated talent is as a writer. Apart from a few places where the film
becomes too studiedly educational, most of the dialogue between the children
flows naturally and believably. His abilities as a scriptwriter would become
more apparent in his later works.
But
the main reason anybody sees a film like this is to see the recreation of
prehistoric life and it is here that Karel Zeman differentiates himself from
Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen. These movie giants concentrated on one
technique, stop motion animation combined with live action via miniature rear
projection or travelling mattes, to create their illusions. They occasionally used
giant props (King Kong’s hand or the Pteranodon’s feet from “1,000,000 Years
B.C.â€) to interact with the human actors, but all the creatures were primarily
brought to life by stop motion animation (sometimes augmented by a mechanical
head for close up’s like the King Kong bust, or the Ceratosaurs from “The
Animal Worldâ€).
Karel
Zeman is different from every other movie magician by fearlessly utilizing
every FX and animation technique available to him at the time and often switching
technique multiple times within a single scene. Examples are the mammoth, which
is sometimes a stop motion creation and sometimes a mechanical puppet shot in
camera on location with the children. The Phorusrhacos is a stop motion puppet,
a hand puppet for close ups, and a paper cut-out for the running shots. The Brontosaurus
is a combination of a mechanical head atop a painted flat body for the shots on
land, and a hand puppet for the shots in water. The Uintatherium is combination
of stop motion and close up’s using a mechanical head. Zeman is also fearless
about using completely different techniques not commonly used in visual effects
films, such as creating a herd of bounding antelope, giraffes and a Smilodon
purely through paper cut out animation. An Edmontosaurus (called a Trachodon in
the film) and an amphibian (possibly an Eryops) are brought to life as hand
puppets. This willingness to use any technique to create the creatures means
that the menagerie in “Journey To The Beginning Of Time†is much larger than in
Willis O’Brien’s “King Kong†(9 stop motion creatures, King Kong, Brontosaurus,
Stegosaurus, two legged lizard, Tyrannosaurus (probably), Elasmosaurus,
Pteranodon, prehistoric vulture (possibly Merriam’s Teratorn), various birds)
or Ray Harryhausen’s “1,000,000 Years B.C. (13 creatures including a photographically
enlarged iguana, tarantula, and grasshopper, Allosaurus, Archelon,
Brontosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Pteranodon and its two chicks, Rhamphorhynchus,
Triceratops, and a live warthog). In “Journey To The Beginning Of Time†we see
30 creatures (Mammuthus primigenius, Coelodonta, Deinotherium, Honanotherium,
Smilodon, Moropus, Uintatherium, Phorusrhacos, Helladotherium, Pteranodons,
Styracosaurus, Stegosaurus, Brontosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Ceratosaurus,
Meganeura, Eryops, Trilobite, plus a giant boa constrictor, a swimming
amphibian, a sea snake, flamingoes, antelopes, giraffes, crocodiles, a leopard,
vultures, turtles, various animated birds and a large, real carp). Zeman also
outdoes Harryhausen and O’Brien by having multiples of the same animal in shot
instead of the one representative of each species that show up for their one
sequence in “King Kongâ€, “Son Of Kongâ€, “I,000,000 Years B.C.†or “The Valley
Of Gwangiâ€, usually to menace the heroes or get into a fight. JTTBOT has a flock of flamingoes, a flock of
Pteranodons, herds of antelope, gazelle and giraffe, a congregation of
crocodiles, two grazing Helladotherium and two battling Coelodonta. These brief
scenes of herds of wildlife eating or galloping add immeasurably to the believability of
Zeman’s prehistoric world and make it seem like life continues once the camera
has moved on, rather than the line of solitary creatures waiting for their turn
to be menacing in the O’Brien or Harryhausen films.