If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane.
There’s a strange quality in stop-motion photography, like in King Kong, that adds to the fantasy. If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane.
The whole point of making a film is to tell a story. That seems to be forgotten. Many films today just rely on special effects and they have an explosion every five minutes. Who needs it? It's rather repetitious.
Medusa was fascinating to work with because I gave her a snake's body so that she could pull herself with her hands which gave her a very creepy aura. I didn't want to animate cosmic gowns. Most Medusas you see in the classics have flowing robes which would be mad to even try to animate.
When you put a big budget into a film, it doesn't necessarily mean it will be a better picture, but it does help in creating new images on the screen.
The whole point of making a film is to tell a story.
With all the hype that computer graphics has been getting, everybody thinks there's nothing better than CGI, but I do get a lot of fan mail saying they prefer our films to anything with CGI in it. I'm grateful for that, and we made them on tight budgets, so they were considered B-pictures because of that. And, now here we are, and they've outlasted many so-called A-pictures.
You could believe that Sinbad could fight a skeleton because that's from a period in the past, a magical period. But if you had James Bond fighting a skeleton, it'd be almost comical.
Animation had been used only for things like King Kong and the destruction of cities, which was very popular in the 1950s. I got tired of destroying cities. I destroyed New York, I destroyed San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, Rome, and Washington. I was looking for a new outlet, and I came across the Sinbad legends.
Today, they make films where you have to sit for an hour and a half and watch somebody in the process of dying and, for me, that's rather depressing. Films, in the good old days of the golden age of Hollywood, used to want to inspire people and give them uplift. You're paying good money to see a film, and you don't want to leave depressed!
Animation requires a great deal of concentration, and I preferred to work alone because then I'm not deterred by somebody asking me if I want coffee, or the phone ringing or something.
Many people are under the delusion that I'm just a special-effects man, but I've worn many different hats in my day. On every film I've been involved in, I worked with the writer and producer. We really formulated those scripts. We tried to make films that were logical but still had the fantasy feel of it. I enjoy Aardman Animation's films with Wallace and Gromit, but they're obvious puppet films, whereas we tried to disguise it and make our effects characters in the films rather than obvious puppets.
One film critic back in the early days said "It's a pity Mr. Harryhausen didn't animated the actors, too."
That's why I never became a director. I never had patience with people.
I still go to the conventions, and I like to hear the point of view of people today. I'm a little afraid they're being brainwashed by this new pop-culture. I think it's not really elevating our lives like it did in the good old days of Hollywood, where you had a happy ending. They used to criticize happy endings, but really, what's the point of going to a film if you have to come out hating your fellow man?
I brought in the stories many times. I don't just do animation.
I know pretty well in the broad sense what I'm going to do, because I have to know that when we shoot the live-action, so that it'll synchronize. Then I know pretty well when I get to the animation stage, what that scene requires.
I took courses at USC in film editing and art direction and photography when I was still in high school.
