Ray Harryhausen
Frederick Raymond "Ray" Harryhausen ( born June 29, 1920 in Los Angeles, † May 7, 2013 in London) was an American trick technician, who through the use of stop-motion in 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts known been.
Life
Harryhausen created the stop-motion technique his teacher Willis O'Brien to perfection. This has long been pioneering for special effects in film. Harryhausen awakened so many mythical creatures, dinosaurs and ghosts on the screen to life. World famous were, among others, the scenes from the Sinbad movies and the fight sequences from Jason and the Argonauts.
Even director Peter Jackson relied on the special effects for his film trilogy The Lord of the Rings on the Harryhausen movies.
With the development of new animation techniques since the late 1970s - first by the Go- motion technique and, later, by the possibilities of computer animation - lost the stop-motion technique in importance and was soon superseded.
Ray Harryhausen lived until his death with his wife in London.
Awards and honors
In the course of his career, Harryhausen was nominated by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films several times for a Saturn Award and honored with several awards. In 1975 he was awarded for his work on dangerous adventures of Sinbad the Golden Scroll. In 1982 he was awarded the Life Career Award, a decade later, he was awarded the Special Award. Finally, in 2006 he was again honored for his lifetime achievement and received the George Pal Memorial Award.
At the ceremony of the Annie Award in 1991, he was awarded the Winsor McCay Award and in 2003 he won an Annie Award.
In 1992 he received an honorary Oscar, the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for his life's work. 2003 Hollywood honored him with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In Germany Harryhausen's life's work is at the center of the designed by Rolf Giesen permanent exhibition " Artificial Worlds" at the Filmmuseum Berlin.
As part of the award of the Empire Award in 2004 Harryhausen was awarded the Empire Inspiration Award for his work.
In 2006 he was awarded Honors Festival at the eDIT Filmmaker's Festival in Frankfurt am Main. In the animated film Monsters, Inc., the trendy restaurant of the city is named after him as " Harryhausen 's".
Filmography (selection)
Writings (selection )
Pictorials
- Together with Tony Dalton: The Art of Ray Harryhausen. Billboard Books, 2006, ISBN 0-8230-8400-0.
- Together with Tony Dalton: Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life. Billboard Books, 2004, ISBN 0-8230-8402-7.
Cooperation
- Ray Bradbury: dinosaur stories. ( Dinosaur Tales, 1983), Bastion - Luebbe, Bergisch Gladbach, 1985 ( Harryhausen as the author of the Preface).
- Piccolo Puppet (ed.): ... and a string tension from the heart to the mind. Bonn 2003, ( Festschrift for 20 years on the stage of the puppeteer Gerd J. Pohl with a contribution of Harryhausen ).