History of Animation

King Kong (1933)

I could start writing about the history of animation anywhere, and be vague and brief about how it came to be, however I wanted to take a different approach and start with a feature film which I think revolutionised cinema and inspired a lot of movie creators to use stop motion and special effects in cinema. This film being King Kong (1933) directed by Merian Cooper. 

King Kong was a movie which really set the standard for what special effects could do and how they could be utilised in cinema, and how stop motion could be integrated into live action. The animation in this film, was made by Willis O'Brien, the master of animation who taught Ray Harryhausen how to animate. For this, 4 separate Kong armatures were made, each having different desired effects, for example one controlled the facial expression, one was for full body movement etc. As well as miniatures, there were also large articulated models built which were life size to the 30ft tall ape. this was because Willis O'Brien wanted to actually have something in front of the screen for his desired effect, rather than editing something over the top later. There were many things in this movie which were ahead of it's time, the stop motion was better than anyone had seen before, and the sense of realism which was gained from the miniature backgrounds and sets were something which made the movie so believable, even in 1933. 

The most ground breaking effect in King Kong, were integrating the actors into the scene with stop motion creatures. And this was achieved in 2 ways, as there was no such thing as video editing, and green screens in 1933. The first way this was achieved, was exposing part of the frame, then running the same strip of film through the camera again whilst exposing the other part of the frame. The 2nd method was done by using small projections of the actors in the actual scene itself, and filming the entire scene with the projection in the background. 

King Kong really set the precedent for cinema, and revolutionised the world of special effects and stop motion animation. King Kong used invented some of these techniques which inspired many film makers to get into the movie industry, and without it, we would not have today's standard of special effects.