Beetle men
That P. Peterson beetleman test footage is great!
Does anyone know how it was done, there couldn't have been that many models, or were there?
I remember seeing a foto of , I think eleven bettlemen on a table...(there may have been more. Pete Peterson had an interesting way to "gauge" movements on characters...in his scenes in Mighty Joe Young, he had a fellow dressed in tight black clothing and a black ski cap with white gaffers tape going down the sides of the legs and arms and on the front and back of the torso....
This guy was photographed against black backing on high contrast black and white film...the result was something like a "wire frame" on computer animation. Petersen would place the developed footage in the eyepiece of an Acme animation camera and advance the frames one at a time...thereby lining the model on the table up with the "white taped skeleton" he was looking through in the camera's eyepiece.
Thus, from frame to frame, the movements were smooth like the original footage.
Harryhausen, when asked about this, said..."There were many ways of gauging movements..."
...and left it at that. Ray never really talked that much about Pete Peterson...He(Ray) might've seen him as competition.
I think the beetlemen were done this way only because the center beetlmen seem to repeat the same poses as they go over the little hill.
http://www.woodywelch.com
Pete Petersons technique seems like a early type of motion capture that has been successfully used today in such films like KING KONG (2005).
shareI liked the test footage of the baboon creature with the tentacles (bloody brilliant idea!) even more.
shareYes, we like that also. We used to have a magazine believe it was Cine-Flix, or FSX, Cine-Magic something like that which had an entire issue on Willis O'Brien. It focused on KING KONG (1933) but covered his entire career including projected projects and uncompleted concepts including tests. If we ever find it will get back to you.
share
I believe the magazine you are refering to was CineFX and it's still out there but now it mostly covers computer effects because, well, special effects are mostly run through a computer these days.
The Beetle Men was pure Pete Peterson and The Las Vegas Monster was animated on leftover sets from the Black Scorpion and done as a test for a movie idea about a Baboon who was sent into space and returned only to grow to enormous proportions (as well as being mutated) because of the radioactive contamination by the Van Allen belt (we now know a lot more about radiation from the belt around the earth, but it was a valid thing back then I suppose.)
If you notice in the Las Vegas Monster test footage, that is the same truck that the scorpion attacked during the telephone linemen sequence.
The split screen, in which the Las Vegas Monster is tossing a car, was also some unused footage from Black Scorpion. And notice how the monster, after wrecking the shack, walks over and "sniffs" at the outhouse!
It's sad, really, because Pete Peterson was a wonderful animator and I am sure (although I can't prove it) that Willis O'Brien would have used him as a chief animator on the Lost World remake had not the powers that be at Fox demanded the use of iguanas and monitor lizards.
Oh well.
http://www.woodywelch.com
Thanks obit1, will take another look at that footage. We recall also there was a good article in CineFantastique on Willis O'Brien projects including conceptual drawings of a creature that looked like a cross between a Bear and a Gila Monster. All speckled in Black and Orange. Had a very odd name also 'The Last of the Oompi or Osi-Lapa'? Unfortunetly alot of our records have been lost and cannot confirm.
shareYep, The LAST OF THE OSO SI PAPU was much more of a completed screen story (with many illustrations) and a stop motion model of one of the creatures (there were two of the same breed in the story) and at one point they beat the snot out of each other, one proving to be the victor, which went on to shake some people from a cable car much like Kong did with the sailors on the log.
There were also drawings of one of the creatures laying waste to an oil field and the derrecks that were all around.
The beasts were patterned after a polar bear in shape, with the pebbled hide of a Gila Monster and they had little webbed ears, kinda like Gorgo's. They seemed to be about the size of an African elephant.
Steven Archer's book, WILLIS O'BRIEN, Special Effects Genius (MacFarland & Company, Publishers, Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640) has this in depth as well as many other O'Brien unrealised projects.
Lots of cowboys...lots of beasts....loads of western settings.
And more....
http://www.woodywelch.com
Thanks on that tip, must read that book. Pity that the Sci-Fi channel does not take an interest in some of these O'Brien projects. They could use these ideas rather then most of the crap they make.
shareWe see that Ray HarryHausen is producer for a project based on THE WAR EAGLES.
Do you know if they will be following the original Merian C. Cooper concept. The Lost Land with Dinosaurs and a pre WWII battle over New York with Eagles and Zeppelins?