"Since biblical times, man has witnessed and recorded strange manifestations in the sky." "Hello." "This is Arnold Kunert, and I'm here with three of my friends." " I'm Ray Harryhausen." " I'm Ken Ralston." "And I'm Jeff Okun." "And we're here to discuss the recently-colorized version of one of Ray Harryhausen's classic films from the 1950s:" "Earth vs the Flying Saucers." "This is the prologue before the opening titles." "Ray, this was the second film you did with Charles Schneer." "Yes, it was." "And we tried..." "Saucers were very prominent at the time and Charles cut out a thing in the paper and said:" ""Let's make a picture about flying saucers."" "I hesitated because..." "But I thought it was a challenge to get some sort of personality in the saucers." "That there was some intelligence guiding it." "Well, you didn't waste any time showing the saucers in this movie." "No." "This was the first time." "Usually, they don't show them very often and if they do, they show them very briefly." "It was a wonderful movie getting the saucers up front even for the titles so the audience is automatically caught up in the storyline." "Who designed the saucer?" "That saucer drew me in." "I drew it, designed the saucer and my father made it on a Sears, Roebuck lathe." "The biggest one was 12 inches in diameter and then he made me three medium- sized ones for medium shots and three long shots." "The very small ones only about 3 inches in diameter." " How do you animate that?" " Well, they all had flexible things." "The top and the bottom moved, and they were all animatable." "I love that title." "Earth vs the Flying Saucers." "Now, Joan Taylor is on one of our special features." "I did an interview with Joan a few months ago in Santa Monica and she really enjoyed this film." "She loved working with Ray." "She didn't have a chance to talk much with Ray." "Bernard Gordon, whose name appears on the screenplay here was never on the screenplay until just this release." "He was blacklisted in the 1950s." "And thanks to the efforts of the Writers Guild and Sony Pictures we were able to put Bernard Gordon's name back on the titles where it belongs." "He worked with Charles Schneer on four different films, possibly five including Hellcats of the Navy with Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis." "Now, did The Day the Earth Stood Still come out prior to this?" " This was..." "Yeah." " About the same time." "No." "Five years later." "This was '56." "Day the Earth Stood Still was '51." "Which was, up to that time, the latest saucer film, one including a saucer." "This was five years after Day the Earth Stood Still." "I suppose there were some low-budget saucer movies." "I don't even know if there were." "This is the one I remember the most." "The Thing and Day the Earth Stood Still came out during the same year." "And Mrs. Dr. Marvin, without whose inspiration and criticism this report couldn't be written." "Married two hours and already she's claiming community property." "There's Joan Taylor on the right." "Hugh Marlowe on the left." "Hugh Marlowe was, in fact, in The Day the Earth Stood Still and played kind of a negative character in that." "This is Joan Taylor's first film of two films with Ray." "She did 20 Million Miles to Earth a year later." "Back projection shot about to reveal something for us." "Thanks to Ray." "So, Ray, you had to get all of your saucer projection shots done prior to shooting all these interiors." "That's correct, yes, because we were shooting on a very low budget and we had to have all the background plates ready before the actors were dismissed at the end of the film." "It is now possible to realise an ancient dream:" "The exploration of outer space." "That was the first stuff you did, right?" "It was." "Yes." "And I was busy." "That's why I didn't get on the set for quite a while because I was so busy making the background plates." "Where was your studio when you shot this?" " Wasn't this a storefront?" " Yeah, it was in a store." "It was an old market that had been evacuated and I used it." "I needed a distance for projection because the whole process is based on miniature rear projection." "They will report to us by radio the primary information needed..." "I love these old rocket shots." "Trying to be, like..." "Getting ready for man into space." "Now, I gotta ask you about these foil meteorites." " They were stock shots." " What's up with that?" " Stock shots." " Oh, come on." "We were talking about this earlier." "This film is littered with stock shots but it's not the kind of situation where you're distracted by them." "They actually enhance the film." "It's a wonderful collection of explosions and various scenes." "It's an amazing, clever use of stock footage." "Never been done before or since and you get a lot to learn from looking at this." "Anybody going into editing could learn from this film without going to film school." "This was a brilliant use of taking pre-existing material and then incorporating it with new footage." "No, it's really terrific." "It adds another level of production value, which..." "What was the budget for Earth vs...?" "The budget was not very much but that's why we had to resort to stock shots for so many scenes." "I have a feeling the price of the whole movie is what maybe one shot would cost these days in certain movies." "I think so." "Today it's a different situation." "I think so." "Today it's a different situation." "None that I've ever done, of course." "But, Jeff..." "Well, this must have been somewhere below 300,000 range." " Oh, yeah." " Between 2 and 300." "Because it was made under the auspices..." "Well, it was Morningside's." "No, it was made under the auspices of Sam Katzman." "Sam Katzman was still holding the strings." "The following year, Charles created his own company, Morningside and you did 20 Million, but at this time, you were still working..." "For Columbia and Katzman." "So how long did it take you to do this stuff?" " Oh, my gosh." "I don't remember." " Were you on it for three years?" " No, no." "Less than a year, I think." " That's amazing." "All the location photography, all the primary footage we had two or three weeks, wasn't it?" "Oh, yes." "One week in Washington D.C. and then..." " Well, I didn't..." " You didn't go there." "I went to Washington first and we couldn't afford a regular cameraman at that time so I took all the pictures with my little camera and then I made a storyboard out with the actual photographs and then gave them to another photographer who was able to go there by himself and photograph the monuments." "Now, is this just, like, an oil refinery?" "Do you have any idea what this location is?" "I think this was a Redondo sewer plant." "I hesitate using the word sewer." "That must've been a lovely shooting experience." "Well, Charles heard all this muck going through these cylinders and he said, "Let's record that."" "So we spent about 15 minutes trying to get recordings." "So we used it for the flying saucers." "So, what you're telling me is this?" "There are vast amounts of effluvia flying through pipes and that's what the sound of the saucers is?" "That mixed with something else." "That's what we're hearing right now." "Now I'm getting ill." "And we're not gonna ask what that something else is, I hope." " God." " That's hilarious." "Well, it's better people shouldn't know at the time." "When you only have $200,000 to work with you go to a sewage treatment plant." "Well, I was gonna ask anyway." " We went on location hunting up to..." " Vandenberg?" " Yeah." "On the coast, is it?" " Yeah." "Point Magoo." "We looked at it and there was nothing very attractive to photograph so that's why we chose the Redondo sewer plant." "That's so funny because I've always loved the sound of these saucers." "I mean, I could never..." "I was wondering, "What is that?"" "And now I know." "And now that you know, what are you gonna do with that information, Ken?" "I'm not gonna tell a soul." "Make it fast, I'm in a hurry." "Nobody allowed in." "There's a rocket taking off now." "That's what I want to stop." "Let me speak to Dr. Russell Marvin." "West Gate to Bunker Number 2." " There's Morris Ankrum." " Yes, there he is." "He was in many, many..." "I hate to use the term "B movies" but he was, like, always a staple character in these things." " He was a reliable actor." " He was very good." "He was also in The Fountainhead briefly." "I think he was Shakespearian trained." "I think he had done a lot of stage work." "I know he played an Indian in a movie at one point..." " ...which was really a stretch." " He was very talented." "Can you possibly put it off?" "Now, when they were doing this movie, Hugh Marlowe and everybody else I know this happens with a lot of films were they aware of your work?" "Did they know what to expect?" "Or did they have any idea what was happening until the premiere?" "Well, basically, I make a lot of sketches and I did them on a photograph for this picture and they were published in the script, so they knew pretty well what..." "So they'd give the right reaction when they saw just a pole." "But did they have any idea of the quality of your work?" "I don't think..." "I don't know." "I have no idea." "I was so busy making background plates I didn't get involved in this early part of the production." "At some point, you got to go on set, stand next to the director and tell them they're reacting wrong because it's over here..." " ...and it's twice as big." " No." "We had that all laid out." "That's why..." "We didn't want a lot of footage on the cutting room floor." "We couldn't afford it." "So we used stock footage and we had to lay it out very carefully." "So we used stock footage and we had to lay it out very carefully." "In case something happened we had a close-up, we could put a close-up there." "So, what you're telling me is this:" "You were disciplined and organised and set the movie up correctly and did it the right way and saved money?" "That was the whole point was to save money." "We should talk to the studios about that." " We could explain something to them." " But that's a lost art." "Oh, it's a lost art for sure." "It's never been an art, really." "It's just lost." " Well, I think you could call it an art." " If you wanted to." "...of Number 7." "I made sure of that myself." " What?" " And Intelligence has reports now that 1 and 3 fell over Africa Number 5 around the North Pole, and 9 and 10 along the Andes." "So, Ray, this director did not try to get you fired because you were in his way?" " Oh, absolutely not." " Well, who did that?" " Well, there was someone..." " Let's not name him." "We won't name names, but there was a director who worked with Ray thinking that Ray was getting in the way of his shots and asked Charles to have him fired because, after all what does this young man who's moving the monster stick around know about-J?" "Imagine somebody having the nerve to go to Charles Schneer and saying, "That Ray Harryhausen keeps coming into my shots and directing my actors." "I'd like him off this film."" ""Ray's trying to tell me how to do Ray's movie."" "No, wait a minute." "These are all Ray's films." " And Charles's response..." " Oh, I was a boy in the back room." "Oh, yes." "Charles took the director aside and said:" ""You understand this is a Harryhausen film?" "And we can get more directors with one phone call." "We don't need you."" "I don't need to tell you, both of you, how pleased I am." "Well, I'm glad of that." "I wouldn't like it very much if you weren't." "I worked very closely with Curt Siodmak when we laid out the story before the screenplay was written." "And we talked about foo lights and all those things because I actually went down to meet George Adamski at that time, who claimed that he met people from a flying saucer." "And I was curious so I went down there one Saturday afternoon and I met him and he was very convincing that he had met these people coming out of a saucer and talked to them and..." "The first time." "And the second time I went, he was a little less convincing." "He said he went up in the spaceship, in one of the saucers to Jupiter and that they were playing chess or something while they were taking the trip, and it just got a little too bizarre." "I totally believe in creatures from another world." "They run movie studios now." "Yes, but there must be something out there with so many millions of stars out there and planetary..." "But I don't know if they play chess, Ray." "I think that might've been..." "I don't think they know of chess." "No." "They may have heard the term, but I don't think they play it." "They must have another game that we don't know of." "Probably." "Your friend may have been able to play that game with them..." " ...but we don't know for sure." " I think the game includes us and we're like part of the game they're playing." "We're the most dangerous game." " It's interesting..." " There are the foo lights." "When I was a kid, the first thing I read about flying saucers were foo fighters." "That's what the jet pilots supposedly called them when they were flying around and started to see these weird objects." "Now, how did you do that?" "That was a drill press with a light in it on a stick against black velvet." "I love it." "Was that a Sears, Roebuck product?" "We're doing a lot of product placement." "Probably." "Yes." "Sears, Roebuck is gonna sponsor this film..." "Well, they've separated now." " Now, the meteor falls..." " That was stock shot." " Stock shot?" " That was stock shots." "Yeah." "Nice." "Beautiful use." "We dug that up later." "Who did all this research for the stock shots?" "Do you know?" "Well, the film editor did a lot of research on it." "Now, the screenwriter Curt, what else did he...?" " Well, he did the story." " He did the story." "Bernard Gordon took over a screenplay that apparently was not working." "Bernard Gordon took over a screenplay that apparently was not working." "Charles was unhappy with the way it was going." "There were parts of it that were not practical." "But Bernard Gordon is responsible for the great line:" " "The Infinitely Indexed Memory Bank."" " I love that." "That's Bernard Gordon's, one of his contributions." "But, you know, he was unaware of anything particularly in the science fiction world." "He was unaware of it." "I'm responsible for another thing." ""Solidified electricity."" ""Solidified electricity" is Ray Harryhausen's contribution." "I told that to Curt and, you know, he's very technically minded and he said, "Let's put it in the script."" " That's funny." " "Solidified electricity."" ""Those kids watching this aren't gonna know."" "So, what else has Curt written?" "Oh, many, many films." "Well, I think The Wolfman was one of his great contributions." "Oh, so many." "He's done so many." "He was very clever and he was interested in this kind of story, I think." "Oh, yes." "Very much so." "We got along well." "He has a brother, you know." "Oh, Robert Siodmak was a wonderful director." "The Killers and many other films." "The pipes there just suited our purpose." "And that was in a sewage treatment plant?" "Is that what you were saying?" "As far as I can remember, yes, it was." "Now this is all..." "Even that's stock footage of the rocket there, I believe." " This is stock footage." " This is stock footage." "Yeah." " High-tech." " It saved so much money then." "And you have to take a crew out there and photograph things." "It's a wonderful use of set design and stock footage combined." "Now this is a set in the studio probably." "Well, this whole thing as it came about, how was it initiated?" "What was the first move towards doing a movie about flying saucers?" " Was that from you?" " No." "Charles was looking through the papers and he cut it out and said:" ""Let's make a picture about flying saucers."" "What was that?" "Okay." "And that was when they were very prevalent in the sightings." "Wasn't that his thing?" "Didn't he always go through papers and cut stuff out and go, "This might be a good idea later."" "Oh, yeah." "That's what they usually do." "He did that on several pictures." "I think he learned that from Sam Katzman." "That was what Sam Katzman would do for his movies." "He'd find something in the newspaper that was topical and then they'd make a film in two weeks." " About it." "Yeah." " It was just part of that era." "Here's a question, Ray." "So Ken and I, we're supervisors." "You're essentially the supervisor." "So Ken and I, we're supervisors." "You're essentially the supervisor." "When you were doing it, nobody knew how you did it." "We do it, they read about it directors are telling us there are buttons you push it says, "Make it a spaceship." Hit it, they get a spaceship." "What was it like to actually be in control of your destiny on a movie?" "I never questioned it." "I never tried to analyse it." "I just-This is the way we worked." "You know?" "And it seemed to work out very well." "I always finished the picture, and..." "It just worked out." "You had a schedule and you kept it and you knew that Charles was there to back you." "His job was to control the cost of the production and my job was to control the cost of the special effect work." "Now we're about to see the death ray." "You wanted this death ray not to be the stereotypical, cliched red death ray." "You wanted something more out of the world." "Yes." "That looked too mundane." "So we end up seeing something in a greenish blue or bluish green." "Because we wanted to give it the impression that it was a completely different world that they were from." "Now how was that manipulated?" "That centre post that comes out of the bottom." " Stop motion." " I know it was stop motion, Ray." "How did you get your hands in there?" "What was the thing you...?" " How did you actually manipulate it?" " I don't remember." "It was so long ago." "But I animated it down." "I probably put wax on the back." "I love it." "And is that the 12-inch model of the saucer?" " This is the 12-inch model." " That's the biggest one." " With a distortion glass in the section..." " The ripple effect." "A ripple effect which was a shield." "The shield to prevent gunfire from..." "That's not a very smart alien." "He walked right out of that shield." " I know." "The idiot." " "Hey, I can't..."" "His friends are calling him back and it's too late." "Don't question that." " That'll teach him." " See?" "It doesn't penetrate." "That's so cool." "It's like a glass on a shower door or something." "That rippled glass you were animating?" "It was a specially made glass that had ripples on it." "And then each frame, I would animate it up maybe a millimetre or a centimetre." " Now there we go." " How are you doing the ray effects?" "The ray effect was a sparkler mixed with some sort of..." "What do you call it?" "Rocket thing that you..." " Like a Roman candle?" " Roman candle." "Something like that." "And all this stuff you had mattes?" "I double-printed a piece of cotton on a wire to give it a little power." " Well, that's what Ken would've done." " Yeah." "Except I'd charge a million bucks for it." "Or someone would've charged a million bucks, but you would've used cotton because that's the only way to do this." "You know, I gotta tell you too, what I love about this stuff, Ray and how ingenious you are in taking the minimal amount of materials and being so creative with it these are all lessons I'm constantly..." "Jeff must be doing the same thing." "These new kids on the block, they don't even have a clue about being clever about the materials and how to achieve great-looking work with very little." "So there's a lack of a certain type of discipline in a lot of people anyway and they just wanna go for broke right out the gate." "And it shows" I think there's such an education in all your films for anything like this and that kind of clever thinking." "Well, take for example, the goo that came out Tales' heel in Jason and the Argonauts." "That was just cellophane on a wheel with a red light on it." " That's so cool." " And it looks like liquid." "The whole point was to make it look like liquid." "Who designed these alien suits?" "Well, I basically made it and then the Art Department modified it." "When I was a kid watching this film, those really bugged me." "Really scared me." " They're impractical." " No, I like them." "I thought it was such a cool design with that giant helmet." "Yeah." "It was made out of solidified electricity." " Oh, was that what it was?" " You have to make it out of that..." "Because it's impenetrable and you can hear and see through it and all that sort of thing." "Solidified air doesn't work as well as solidified electricity." "No, you've gotta have solidified electricity." "You can see..." "Now, that's a great use of a stock shot right there." "That was a great stock shot and I put the saucer in front of it." "Now all this stuff..." "A lot of people watching this..." "And the wires, you know, were a big problem at that time because we were so close to make the saucers look big." "Because the models were pretty small." "They were pretty small." "The largest one was a foot in diameter." " How many wires on the foot long?" " Three wires to keep it balanced." "And I had it suspended on a little puppet control up above." "But each frame of film, I had to touch out..." "Paint the wire." "It was very thin piano wire." "Now, this set, the wide shot inside the saucer is that all a set or is there, like, some sort of a miniature blended in?" "No, I think there was a matte painting blended in." "Yes." "That they made outside." "Now, this I always thought looked like a rose." "Like a flower." "A flower turning." "You know?" "Well, that's why it's green." "Because we didn't want it to look like a rose." " We didn't want it to..." " Yes, I was wondering." "We were wondering why it was green." "Weren't you?" "The colour green looks much more interesting that way." "The colour in this thing really brings a new dimension." "You guys did a great job." "Ray liked the silver of the saucer." " That's one of the things you wanted..." " To be sure that it was silver." "It was anodised silver to begin with." "It's an icon, that spaceship, I gotta tell you." "I would love to have one today." "I'm working on a movie right now that has spaceships in it..." " ...and they don't get it." " Oh, my." "They don't understand." "No, they don't." "It's a crime." "Well, it's funny is how much that's influenced others, like in Mars Attacks!" "These are the saucers flying around because Tim Burton loves this film and stuck it in there." "I knocked over the Washington Monument before he did." "Well, and that's what's so cool about this film." "I don't know how many films really kind of went into that world prior to this." "You know, taking these icons like you did." "Like the Golden Gate Bridge..." "You know, taking these icons like you did." "Like the Golden Gate Bridge Washington D.C. and wreaking havoc at these places." "And it's very cool." "I just thought it was so neat the last part of the movie where he's blowing the hell up out of the Capitol building, all that stuff." " That's not why I left for Europe." " Yeah, I was wondering." " I wasn't kicked out of..." " No, you weren't asked to leave." " How did you do the brain scan?" " The brain scan?" " On Morris Ankrum." " That was a double print." " Double print?" " Yeah." "I made a small brain with convolutions in it and photographed it on black and then double-printed it over his head." "Made a small brain." " It was only..." " What a straight line." " Forry had it for a while." " That's interesting." "How does one make a small brain?" "You shrink it." " Many people have small brains." " Many, yes, unfortunately." "As Ken and Jeff would recognise." "Meeting yesterday with a few..." "I had a meeting yesterday with a small brain." "It was made out of plaster of Paris, of course." "Actually, when you go higher up into the movie echelon..." " ...then it's the no-brain group." " Mr. No-Brainer." "But the small brains are the ones that lead you to that." "It's the hierarchy from the bottom up." "Maybe I'll be moving to England soon." "I don't know." "Well, whoever listens to the commentary, won't know who it is." "This is when you're a little boy like me in the theatre watching, it's like:" ""Where's the saucers?"" "That's why we tried to keep a minimum the normal action and dialogue." "That's why we needed a wonderful musical score." "That's why we've always..." "I learned that from King Kong how important music is to a pantomime picture." "This is more dialogue than we usually have." "Now, this one scene, Ray..." "Excuse me for interrupting you." "...where we are learning what the aliens are supposedly saying this was something that Bernard Gordon created for the script." "He thought it would be a cool idea." "So this whole idea of having the slowing of the tape recorder was his way of getting the message out." " I love that idea." " Isn't that a great idea?" "And they did spend months slowing everything down." "Everything had to be slowed down." "And when you slow it down enough, it turns into Paul Frees." " That's right." " Who did the voice." "Paul Frees was the voice." "Later Boris Badenov on..." "And just up the street where I used to work at Cascade he was the Pillsbury Doughboy and countless others." " He must've had a flexible voice." " Oh, he was very flexible." "What had taken hundreds of lives and levelled an installation worth millions?" " Whose voice is that?" " I don't know." " It sounds like..." " I like that voice." "It sounds like Citizen Kane." "It sounds like William Alland." " They get a professional to do that." " They do, but it's remarkable." " Hey, they're back in the same plane." " Yes." "Well, we gotta save money." "Can't have another plane." " Stock shot." " All planes look alike, basically." " Now, where is this?" " That's the real Pentagon." " Now, where is this?" " That's the real Pentagon." "This is probably Columbia Pictures right here." "I don't know what this hall is." "I thought you meant it was the real Pentagon." "I'm thinking, "They let them in there for this?"" "Internal Security, yes." "Well, before we get..." "As we head towards this fabulous finish to the film later on did you have..." "I know what the answer probably is." "...clearance to shoot the White House and all this stuff and the Capitol building and blow it up?" "Did you have to tell Washington D.C. what you were doing?" "Or did you just shoot it on the sly?" "No, we just shot it." "Not that I know of." "Maybe they got some permission." " I doubt it." " I don't think anybody would say..." "We had the problem with our other picture, the Golden Gate Bridge we had to send the script to the city fathers and they frowned on it and wouldn't give any cooperation." "They said, "We don't want people to lose their confidence in the structure of the bridge."" " Especially if a giant octopus attacks." " Yes, quite." "So we had to do that on the side too." "We put things in bakery trucks and..." " I love that." " Cameras in..." "Well, there's the one shot in this where it's Hugh Marlowe and..." " What's the actress's name again?" " Joan Taylor." "And they're in front of the real White House, in front of the fence." "I was just wondering." "That just looks like something you guys grabbed." "I thought, "Just get over there and do this scene and get out before the security sees us."" "And just so you know, Ken, when we were in Washington on Wednesday they said we had to do something with the reflection pool and they go, "No." "Nobody goes in the reflection pool..." " ...since Forrest Gump."" " What did we do?" "I don't know, but whatever you did, it wasn't good." "Oh, maybe..." "Well, never mind." "Well, it wasn't what Ken did." "It was those millions of other people that he composited into the reflection pool." " I'll tell Bob Zemeckis that." " Yes, and he'll be heartbroken." "Joan Taylor said that she enjoyed being on this very brief, one-week shoot in Washington because they actually did shoot in front of the Monument and the Pentagon." "But it was very quick." " Oh, yes." " In and out." " One day." " Well, it was a very..." " We didn't have the budget." " Oh, no." "No." "No." "We would've shot it in colour, but we didn't have the budget." " But now it's in colour as we can see." " And it looks beautiful." "And you didn't have the cooperation of the Army or the Armed Forces at all?" "Well, they probably did get cooperation." " Certain things..." " Well, I think the Army..." "That's out of my department, so I don't pay attention." "Charles probably took care of that." "The Air Force would certainly be happy to support this film because the Air Force defeats the saucers." "...because the Air Force defeats the saucers." "They aren't defeated by the saucers, so it's a positive ending for everybody." " Except the aliens." " And their solidified electricity." "Well, we've gotta make them look dangerous." "I love these old cars." " Old now." " Old now." " New then." " New then." " This was shot at USC or at U.S.A..." " UCLA?" "UCLA." "I'm not sure." "Know the building." "And the wardrobe on this was very inexpensive." "I know Joan Taylor said she had her own clothing." "And this is probably one of Hugh's suits from Robert Hall or one of the off-the-rack places." "But no budget whatsoever for wardrobe on this." "And every single note of music is from another Columbia movie." "Snippets from Max Steiner's." "Snippets from David Raksin." "Snippets from George Duning." "The music conductor on this, Mischa Bakaleinikoff was at Columbia for 20 or 30 years and he was a master as the editor on this film is, he was the master at taking music from other sources that were all under Columbia's ownership and inserting them in different places so no one can really tell that he's done this but it's a brilliant use of music." "20 Million Miles to Earth probably has the most original music of all three of Ray's black and white..." "Sometimes it was modified to connect one to the other." "And Bakaleinikoff even took a couple of pieces of music and slowed them down for one of Ray's films to make the drama a little bit more intense but they were still Columbia films so there was no problem with using it." " There's Paul Frees." " There's Paul Frees talking." "I was so glad when they finally got a composer like Bernard Herrmann to actually write music that would fit." "My favourite scores are in your films." "I love those." "So, Ray, what isn't in the film that you wanted to put in here?" "Nothing." "I think..." "I mean, this is..." "It worked out beautifully." "It's like a whole alien way to make films to us." "We had our own way of making films, and some people resented it." "A lot of critics said that it was too simplistic." " Well, what do they know?" " I know." " And they're gone and you're still here." " They don't pay to see the film." "We're watching the movie and no one's reading their reviews." " There's no monument built to critics." " Thank goodness." "When a critic says, "Ray, what have you done?"" "You turn to them and you say, "No." "You first."" " That's the only way to get out of that." " I'll remember that." "I think Ray was very lucky because he had Charles Schneer on these three black and white films from Columbia now colorized but Charles was a tough producer." "He had worked under Sam Katzman so he knew how to get every single penny out of every single dollar." "And you had a short shooting schedule or at least the main photography was a short schedule." "But you had four or five months to do your animation generally, didn't you?" "But you had four or five months to do your animation generally, didn't you?" "Oh, yeah." "More than that." "Probably nine months." "And then these three movies were designed as summer releases..." " ...all through '55, '56, '57 and so..." " We had no interference." "No interference from anybody because you were in the B unit." "We were on the B, yeah." "And when more money..." "They send in a group to criticise what has been done." "Ken just fell off his chair." "No interference?" "I'm sorry." "I don't understand the "no interference" part of moviemaking." "I thought that was how movies are made." "Day one, everyone's trying to annihilate you." "And the film's an accidental by-product of the process." "Yeah." "In fact, how they get done, I don't even understand." "There's so much else happening politically." " It's all very exciting." " It is." "That's what's so hilarious, too, is how much this movie must've cost which was nothing and we've just had a summer where..." "I mean, these films literally cost $200 million or more to make, some of them." "That is an insanity that's..." "It is an insanity because they don't quite know." "They have to try this and try that and then tons of film on the cutting room floor." "Well, and they're not very disciplined." "You watch some of them and it's pretty sloppy work." "Ken, you're gonna have to stop being diplomatic." ""Not very disciplined"?" "That's too polite." "Hey, at least I'm not mentioning the names of these movies yet." "Hang in till the end of the movie and I'll tell everybody what they are." "You spend three hours in a film and you could've seen everything you needed to see in an hour and a half." "Let's see." "Three hours?" "That narrows it down, doesn't it?" " Anyway..." " Well, almost narrows it down." "Not lately." "The last couple of years, that doesn't narrow anything down." "It brings up a concept of visual effects in service to story as opposed to story in service to visual effects." "Oh, man." "Now, what's this actor's name?" " This one?" " Donald Curtis." "Donald Curtis." "Yeah." "He had been in It Came From Beneath the Sea a year earlier, right?" "He had a bigger role in It Came From Beneath the Sea." " This looks like Malibu." " It is." "Just below where my lot is." "We had the camera on my lot so that we didn't have to pay." " Oh, my goodness, Ray." " Oh, Ray, talk about being cheap." "I mean, really." "And we photographed the beach down there in order to put the flying saucer on it." " This was a shot from up on the cliff." " This is Zuma Beach?" "Zuma." "It's a special Zuma Beach." "Now here." "What's that a shadow of, Ray?" "When I watched it last night and then you cutback and there's like a big..." "This beach and he's standing there." "What was that a shadow of?" "Anyway, I like to pick out these little things." "That's only after you see it two or three times." "Ken was slowing it down and putting it frame by frame there for a while." "Yeah." "See this?" "This was that 1-foot diameter saucer." "These shots on the beach inspired a friend of mine to make a whole film exactly the same angles, replace the saucer with hotdogs and it's about a guy looking for some mustard." "Neeny's Wienies are down there somewhere." "These shots are great because they're very moody and very cool looking and just very mysterious at this point." "I know it made me uneasy as a kid watching this stuff." " And it just looks really cool." " I had to put the shadow in of the saucers to make it look like it was actually on the beach." "You did that a lot in this." "There's stuff where the saucer's coming down and on your projection plate, you've got an animated shadow." " How did you do that?" " Well, I put the animated shadow on a piece of grey and..." "You know, neutral density..." "A piece of neutral density cut out in the shape of the shadow and slid it in frame by frame." "Was it on just like a piece of wood with increments sort of marked on it on tape?" "Well, I just did it by..." " I should've known." "You did it by..." " That expert professionalism again." " I hate that." " Yeah, me too." "I want things numbered out." "How many frames a minute did you shoot?" "Oh, I never asked or counted." "So you just hit the zone and suddenly it was time to go home?" "Sometimes it goes very quickly and sometimes it..." "This was rear projection." "So you just sat down, ordered a pizza and worked through the night?" " No." "I ordered carrots and celery." " Carrots and celery." "Ah, yes." " A little more nutritious." " Doesn't leave grease on the model." " No, it's true." " Who built these miniatures?" "They were built by..." " Cook?" " Was it Willis Cook on this?" "Willis..." "No, he had a separate company that did it." " But he subcontracted for...?" " He subcontracted." "Now, there's another stock shot of us leaving the solar system." "Now, there's another stock shot of us leaving the solar system." "Love that green flowery thing..." " Isn't that beautiful?" " ...that reads your mind." " Though it's not a rose." " We built that flower thing." "George Lofgren built it for me." "He was on the picture." "He built it for me..." " These creatures are from Ireland." " ...and I designed it." "That could be." "They could be leprechauns." "In solidified electricity suits they're wearing." " Solidified." " Solidified electricity, yeah." "It's the only kind to have." "Here's Paul Frees again." "What a wonderful..." "This is the principle by which we move through space." "We have adjusted the magnetic field to compensate..." "Infinitely Indexed Memory Bank, I think it was called." "That's what I need." "Feel your pulse." "Something else Bernard Gordon brought to the film was how the aliens learned about us so they would be able to deal with the human beings." "He was very instrumental in the overall..." " Trying to make it logical." " Yes, by bringing some logic to it." "And that's what you have to do." "Today some of these creatures go so extreme that they're not logical." "We always tried to make them a little logical." "Even as a phoney logic." " Something..." " As long as it looks logical." "That's right." "And once you establish a logic, follow it through the whole film." "There's another lesson out there we need to learn." "Well, times have changed, though." "People are more critical." "The audience is more critical today due to the fact that everything is revealed before the picture is out." "Actually, I think we've gone past the audiences are more educated now." "I think we're beyond that." "They've stopped." "Those people don't go to movies anymore." "And the next group is the videogame players that want everything fast and furious for hours." "The story's an incidental by-product." "If it happens to make some sense, you're fine, but just keep going with it." "That's just my opinion." "I still think it needs a strong story with a beginning, middle and an end." "That's a great" All these shots are really cool with the..." "It's wonderful." "Just background plates with the saucers in the foreground." "Yes." "That's right." " I had a question." " Frame by frame." " I know." " Jeff has a question." " No." "Ken..." " You first." "I don't have a question." "My question is you matched the lighting on these things so that they fell into the scene so well." "Yeah, and we were able to make hand tests because it was shot in black and white." "We had a little darkroom on the stage and we could develop quickly to see if the foreground matches the background." "Because sometimes your eye is deceptive." " This is great." " More stock footage." " More stock footage." " There goes a..." "And I had to wait till the boat got out of the scene before..." "There were 300 men on that ship." "Not anymore." "What I was gonna ask is, watching this also the other night and thinking about if you were doing this film today there's shots where the three..." "I think it's mostly the three-saucer shots and they're flying side to side did you, on any of those shots, trying to save time did you just shoot three saucers against sort of a generic background and put them behind some of the shots?" "Same shot over and over?" "Or is every single shot, because of your technique, always from scratch where you're animating the saucers for each individual...?" "Each scene has its own shot." "Yes." " Amazing." " So much work." "It's so great." "Because you can recognise things that are repeated too often." "Well, that's why Ray's films, during the same period, stand out." "And others who were doing stop motion look like somebody from elementary school had done them." "They don't have the style." "They don't have the precision." " You took time." "You cared." " Well, that comes from experience." "But I think it was patience and caring." "You really cared about what you..." " You didn't wanna embarrass yourself." " No, I didn't." "But I found that the fairy tales were my sort of teething ring." "I always called them my teething ring." "I learned more from making those 10-minute fairy tales and that overhang that came into practise when I got into the professional feature films." "When you worked with Obie on Mighty Joe Young you were under your mentors so you wanted to make sure you pleased your mentors." "But on top of that, you were the artist in charge at the same time..." " ...so you were working..." " But, see, so much..." "This is the beauty about O'Brien's technique over George Pal's where you have individual figures that you have to repeat." "On the set is the most creative part because one pose leads to another and you may get it into a pose that suggests another pose." "So there's a lot of creativity on the set." "Rather than all planned out in the beginning." "You can't go wrong when someone shoots a gun inside of a giant saucer run by this futuristic group." " He's not a smart guy." " Here comes the small brain again." " Small brain." " That's a small brain, yeah." "And Jeff or Ken, does this small brain look familiar to you?" "I was lucky he had black hair because it double-printed well." "Have you seen this small brain anywhere?" " Had a meeting with it yesterday." " The same guy." "Okay." " Must've gone well." " It was great." "Jeff keeps bringing it up, so I don't know." " I think we better not go any further." " No." "I'll tell at the end of this, too, who I met with." " Maybe we'll all." " It'll be subtitled and in colour." " Yes." " Like everything else." "I used the distortion glass on these shots too." "How many actual suits were built?" "I don't know." "I think about four or five." "Did you oversee the building of the suits?" "Or did you basically just hand off your designs-J?" "I just gave it to the Art Department and they modified it a bit and they built it in the Prop Department." "Your design was a little bit more elaborate." "They came back with something a little simpler, didn't they?" " I don't remember so well." " It was so long ago." "But I know, basically, I made a sketch." "It was a suggestion of what it should look like then it went out of my hands." "So when it shows up on set, were you happy with it?" "Oh, yes." "The only thing I wasn't happy with was in Golden Voyage because that was shot in Spain and the statue that they built there for the stiff one didn't match the one I sent them pictures." "It just didn't match the face." "Now that the damage is done, and assuming your story is verified..." "What happened?" "Well, we used it anyway." "I don't think the average person notices." " Well, now we will." " Now they do because they'll start looking and running it back and forth saying, "Oh, I can see the pliers." "I can see the seams."" "Well, that's what all of us will do." "I don't know about the people listening to this, but we'll go home tonight..." "The movement of the saucers, was there anything that as you were thinking about designing the movie what you wanted it to feel like or look like?" "Was there something that you were inspired by?" "They have personality." "They emote." "Yeah, I tried to give them because we never showed the people except that one man that... the doctor." "So I wanted to give the saucers a personality and that was all done by movement." "So the top and the bottom of the saucer move in opposite direction, right?" "To give the effect that..." "If we hadn't had something rotating on it you know, it's hard to imagine something with an invisible force." " So, what were they made out of?" " Aluminium." " Aluminium." " You've been in England too long." "Oh, yes." "And these were Craftsman lathes bought from Sears." "From Sears, Roebuck." "And we all want a free one after this is over." "Hope somebody's listening from Sears, Roebuck." "Yeah, a model spaceship." " Forget the lathe." " That's right." "Anybody from Sears is listening, Jeff wants a spaceship." " If you can make it on your lathe." " You make it on your lathe." " You know what's really, really cool?" " Why not?" "Especially talking about coming this full circle sort of, in a way, for me." "When I first was starting to feel my way in..." "I didn't know where I was going but I ended up at Forry Ackerman's house and I had those photographs I brought in today where I first met you but at Forry's at the time, he had your miniature of the Capitol building which shows up here later with the top busted out of it..." " ...that you threw the saucer into." " Yes." "That was one of the many things in his place that I was seeing as a kid." "I loved your films then and I was like..." "I was mesmerised by seeing the actual models used." "See, it was double-printed on top of the real building." "It was a combination which is in my book." "It shows how we staggered it and put a new dome just where the saucer hit." " The rest of it was all a real building." " What's the name of your book, Ray?" "The name of the book, should I say?" "I think it's good to promote it." "Why not?" "It's called..." "There's one book, the first book, was An Animated Life." "The second book was The Art of Ray Harryhausen." "This must be an optical illusion, and maybe you don't know about it when they were shooting this but when they go to the wide shot on this gizmo that they're blasting this device, it looks like it's a different, more beat-up one." "Like, did they have it not quite done when they had to do the wide shot?" " And then they moved in tighter later?" " I don't remember." "I wasn't there." "I was making background plates." "Hey, I'm just looking around here." "And that actor on the left later ended up in Time Tunnel." " Did he really?" " There's trivia that no one cares about." "He looks like a professor." "Maybe in 10 years, five..." " He was also in 20 Million Miles." " That's right." "A year later." "Columbia had a whole stock company of actors they used in their TV shows as well as their low-budget films and we see them over and over again." "They're always reliable." "They always deliver." "Which is why they were being hired all the time." " And they look like professors." " They look like they should be in a scientific community." "Sure." "How long, again, to shoot the whole movie?" " I can't remember the exact..." " It was less than a month." "The shooting schedule." "Less than four weeks to shoot it." " You mean the live action?" " Look at how beat up that thing is." " Oh, well." "It's not just me." " We never noticed that." "Please don't focus people on that." "Somebody probably bought it off eBay recently." "It was too small." "It was just a prototype of the bigger..." "The other ones were twice as big." "This was stock shots." "I could do that, but, man, it would've cost a lot more." " This was built..." " A lot of animation." " A lot of computer graphics." " That's a six-month job right there." "That's right." "At least." "And then we gotta do a huge design phase." " And the producer has to approve." " Well, the producer and the entire studio and anybody else within earshot." " But one at a time." " One at a time." "Day by day." " At lunch." " Okay, how was that done?" "Levitation on a wire." " On a wire?" " That's not really magnetized?" " No." " Oh, dear." "Another secret revealed." "Now you designed your saucers with little nodules." "Three different points." "That was to hang the wires on." "It doesn't look like they were designed for that." "It looks like they might've belonged on the saucer." " That's why I tried to do." " Of course." "We also have to remember, kids out there these saucers were hanging off of fishing line, monofilament line something like that, and above that there's these..." " What did you make your rigs out of?" " Geared puppet controls." "Just basically little gizmos you would turn to turn..." "Basically, you're pulling the wires up, you're letting the saucer down you're doing them one at a time, one axis at a time." "Particularly when it tilts." "Now, this was just double-printing." "This is more foo light here." "It was a drill press with a thing in it." "And we turned the electricity on and moved it around and then it was double-printed on this scene." "Did you ever break any wires while doing those saucers?" "Like right in the middle of a shot?" "Suddenly:" " No." " And start over?" "I don't know." "Some of them I had used in my..." "They were music recording wires originally and then I resorted to filaments and fishing line..." " ...when they got thin enough." " It was about this time..." " ...that recording tape was introduced." " Before tape..." " Before tape was wire." " ...they had wire." "And you still had a lot of old Beethoven and Mozart." "I don't know what was on the wire, but I never played them." "But it would've been interesting to hear you playing them before you..." "Oh, here's something from Scheherazade." "I didn't realise." "The wire from Scheherazade works much better than the Beethoven stuff." "Well, the one that flies into the Capitol is probably Scheherazade." "It seems like it'd be romantic enough." " Amazing that the time period..." " I love this shot." " Really beautiful." " This was a stock shot." " Stock of the spaceship?" " That was a real one." "The spaceship was real." "The stock was in the foreground." "Another beautiful shot." "Beautiful silver." "The lighting on this is so gorgeous." "Any influences, Ray, on cinematographers for you as you got into this and how you lit your things?" " Certain movies..." " Well, in other pictures I did..." "I tried to give Medusa a Mildred Pierce look." "Here's another animated shadow effect." "If that saucer stays in firing range..." "Because if you didn't put the shadow in, it looked like it was glued on." "So I had to go to the trouble of putting this neutral density for the shadow." "So if you didn't put the shadow in, it would look like other people's work?" " Is that right?" " Yeah." "It would look less like a Ray Harryhausen special effect and more like someone else." " You could put it that way." " I have just put it that way." "Well, that really does touch on something which is, I think, why so many of us sort of..." "For any number of reasons, we're fascinated with your work as we were growing up is..." "And even more so now." "...as we were growing up is..." "And even more so now." "...is just the amount of care that you put into every single shot." "All the work." "Your creative eye." "You would spend the extra amount of time, the extra effort to take that shot that anyone else would just blow off and not care about." "And take it to a level that really surpassed all the other work being done." "And that stuff really..." "That work ethic of yours just has stuck with me forever." "Well, I had to do that because there was only one person there." "But when there's a big crew, you can't afford that." "Well, you really didn't have to do it, but you did because..." " I did it to save money." " You cared about your work." "That's what I love." "You really cared about it." " I wanted it to look convincing." " That's great." "And on low budget." " I think it's the same thing that..." " See, this is a bigger one." "But it's still dented up, as Ken pointed out." "But Disney behaved the same way." "When he was working, he was very meticulous about everything making sure that what he delivered to the public was not gonna embarrass him or any of his animators." "And it was the same attitude, which is so rare today." "This is so close." "And there's a wire going up there and that had to be painted the same colour as the background." "That's the 12-inch saucer, I would imagine." "That's the 12-inch, but there had to be a wire attached to that ball." "Russ, let's go, please." "Before it's too late." "Boy, the sound of that crap flying through those pipes really is great." " That's one way of putting it, Ken." " It's so poetic." " Redondo Beach is the recipient." " Yes, of course." "I love this." "The stress it's going through trying to get away." "And this kind of take." "Nothing like an alien with no face for a take, huh?" " What the heck?" " Excuse me." "Solidified electricity does it all." "Now he's lost." "He's E.T. out in the forest." "I tried to make this suit with aluminium foil." "Very frustrating." " You really did?" " I really did." " Was that last week?" " Yes." " Reynolds Wrap, I assume." " It was." " Oh, no." " Oh, look at that." "Look at the green beam hitting this guy." " And then it kind of goes red." " A little bit of red." "Little bit of green." " Well, he got hot." " He got very warm." "It's very alien looking." "But it doesn't look like anything done before by anybody else." "Now, here we go." "We're tracking the alien." "Thank goodness these guns kill these things." "Oh, he's just a pile of rubble." " What a shame." " Terrible." " All his knowledge gone with him." " Except his cane." " A free cane out of the deal." " His cane is there." "What was it made out of?" "More blue ray." " Blue ray." " Blue ray." "There's something that Sony will enjoy." "We're publicising Blu-ray." "It's actually blue-green ray in this case." "He shot him." "Now, here comes another thing I loved in this film." "Was the..." "I'm not kidding." "I mean it." "No." "I love the design of the head of the alien." "Did you do that?" " No." " I thought it was a cool-looking thing." "It was made in the Prop Department." " But you know what it reminds me of?" " We wanted to make it look ancient." "It reminds me of..." "I wonder if this is where this guy whoever made this head...?" "It looks like the head that comes up..." "It looks like the head that comes up at the end of The Time Machine out of the building when the air raid sort of sound is going on." "Rises up as this big alien sort of head that looks very similar to that." "Well, this was made before The Time Machine." "It was a tribute." ""Atrophied flesh and muscles." "We wanted to make them look different than any human or any conceived concept." "Hugh doesn't seem terribly surprised that the alien just dissolved." "But now, Ken, that you mention that, the face of the alien does resemble that Time Machine." "Not just the helmet shape..." " ...but the face of the alien itself." " That was a small saucer." "I don't know." "I'm always amazed at the work you do with these little..." "The small models that you worked with." "This is a bigger model, I think." "But you couldn't see the wires." "That's the 12-inch model there with the ray gun coming out of it." " Now, tell me about that gizmo." " That was a special close-up made." "Was that rubber behind that for the bend, or...?" "No." "It was just animated on a pivot." "This was a stock shot." "We had to get rid of the scratches..." " ...because it was badly scratched." " What a great use of stock footage." " I mean, great use." " That's a beautiful shot too." " More stock footage?" " Look at that fiery flame." "Now this is stock footage from miniatures from another film?" "Other films, yes." "They make libraries." "When they overshoot a lot of stuff, they give it to the stock company and they charge you so much a foot for it." "There were a number of serials still being made at this time so I think that the Lydeckers and other people at Republic and other studios might've been responsible for some of these." "I don't know, but they look like that quality." "They were high-quality stock." "This is all footage with your saucer tied to it, and it's beautiful." "Just gorgeous." "Stock." "Hard interactive lighting on that." "So what's also amazing is you've got stock footage that was shot registered and steady and worked so you could use it for your back projections behind the guys on set." "Now, what was the body?" "They were little things made out of wire falling out running down a string on a wire that you shouldn't see." " We didn't see them." " I didn't see them." "People keep asking me, "Why didn't wee see the wires?"" "I said, "I would've failed if you would see the wires."" "Now that's a back-projection shot of that fire and they're on a set." " On a bigger set." " Now, look at that." "I just love this." "This is amazing." "Beautiful." "The background was a stock shot." "But the lighting and the way you lit the saucer within that shot..." "But the lighting and the way you lit the saucer within that shot..." " ...is just extraordinary." " Did the script call for these scenes?" "Or did you bend the rules-J?" "No, it just depended on what we could see on the Moviola." "Because we had to run the things and I would go in the cutting room and say:" ""Oh, yeah, let's use that." And we'd get a couple of different..." "Just like today, Ken." "Well, yeah, let's use that." "You don't even have a Moviola today, do you?" "What is that, Ray?" "Movie what?" "Here's where they say "solidified electricity."" " You gotta have it." " That was your contribution." " That was my contribution." " Among many other things." "Mrs. Marvin, would you say something into the microphone?" "She should say what you say about the little red fox." "The quality of mercy is not strained" "It droppeth as the gentle rain From heaven" "See, that's" Repeats it." "Shakespeare wouldn't like it." "Professor Alberts said if we read the dictionary into the device..." " Better get on that." " Yes." " I don't think there's enough time." " You'd better start." "A, aardvark." "Twenty-three days left." "There is not enough time, even with the Infinitely Indexed Memory Bank." "I guess the only thing you need to say is, "We give up."" "The rest were operational routine." " I'll show you how it worked." " Over here." "Now what is...?" "I love these things, Ray." "This was one of the early computers." "I think they go to USC or UCLA." "I'm not sure." "But somewhere they had an old computer, which we photographed." "This was probably a new computer in those days." " It was a..." " Relatively recent." "But they had to be so big in those days." "Oh, sure." "They filled rooms." "You could probably get that power in something the size of my watch now." "Quite." ""Regroup and..."" " That's so funny." " I don't know." "It's writing something." ""Mercury in perihelion."" ""We can expect trouble when Mercury is in perihelion." When will that be?" "Now." "Very soon." "Regrettably." " And this guy on the left here." " Tom Browne Henry." "He's also in 20 Million..." " The following year." " Didn't he make Our Mr. Sun?" "Wasn't he the lead in that?" " It was an educational film." " No, no, no." "Wasn't that"?" "It was Dr. Frank Baxter, by the way." " At USC." " Yes, that's right." "And Dana Andrews." "Was it?" "No, it was Richard Carlson." " Like I said, Richard Carlson." " That's what I thought." " It sounds like Dana Andrews." " Why do you guys know this?" "Well, because we saw them in our school classrooms." "I was just talking about this the other night to Tamara." " Frank Capra produced those." " That's right." "He produced the whole series with Baxter." "He was very interested in science, and he..." "He was very interested in science, and he..." " And this is all about science." " And solidified electricity." "Of course." "Has anybody tried solidifying electricity?" "I don't know." "Maybe Ken and Jeff should try it." " It could alleviate gravity." " It could." "We'd never know." " He's gonna put the helmet on." " He puts it on." "That could be a mistake." " It makes me Superman, for one thing." " Yes, we know." "I have a peculiar range of vision." "That's funny." "What an odd line." ""It make me feel like..." Or whatever he says." "And the guy goes, "Yes, we know." Well, then why am I doing this?" "I can also hear a young man just outside that window discussing a problem in advanced biology." "Carol, would you see if I'm right?" "That's a cool idea, though." "He can hear into the other room." "And there's some interesting touches in this." "Outside, those guys talking." "Today, so much of this seems like it would've been a cliche..." " ...but it was all fresh then." " This was all new." "And the dialogue is something that people imitated year after year." "The Superman TV series was very big at this time." "When this was being released, the Superman TV series was going strong." "That's where they got the Mole Men helmet." "Maybe the Mole Men helmet." "You never know." "Very funny." "And there's Paul Frees again." "He did a lot of work on this film." " Yes, I guess so." " "People of Earth, attention."" "War of the Worlds, he's in that." " The Thing." " That's right." "He was very busy." "In the meantime, he would do a lot of animated characters for cartoons." " Jay Ward, definitely." " Jay Ward of course." "Quite a bit of that." "There will be eight days and nights of meteorological convulsions..." "They had to gargle his voice a bit so it sounded alien." " Do you know how they did that?" " With a gargle machine." "Well, of course." "I should've know." "I mean, what else would make you gargle?" " How else would you do it?" " That's funny." " There's only one way." " You put Listerine in your mouth." "Bring in the gargle machine." "I was expecting some high-tech answer like:" ""It was put into this device and then we did this electronic..." Anyway." "Well, Ray gave you the high-tech answer." "It was a gargle machine." "Everybody knows." "Probably strapped it around his throat and turned it on." ""Here, Paul." "Gargle into this, please."" "This is a voice speaking to you from thousands of miles beyond your planet." "It's a wonderful device." "The whole idea of him speaking that way." "We know now that it's because they've slowed down the tape." "It's very clever." "It sounds cliché now, but it wasn't then." "It's a great way to get your exposition out." "You gotta clear up some stuff before the big battle here at the end." "We know we only have eight days until the end." "I'm trying to imagine what your life was like, Ray." "So you would go into the studio and do these meticulous manipulations all day long?" "I worked by myself." "Yes." "Then you'd put on a tux and hit the Brown Derby." "No." "I would put on my coat and go home and have a late dinner." "Usually a Swanson's TV dinner, I suppose." "No." "Nothing like that." "There was always something there." "I tried to keep a..." "I didn't wanna get ill." "You'd go too far." "You could get ill if you ate some of those." "So I tried to be sensible about it." "This is before Big Macs so you couldn't go to McDonald's." "Did you work weekends?" "Saturdays?" "Sundays?" "Every day?" "Sometimes, yes." "When I had to get something done quickly, I had to..." "You had to complete scenes." "You always talked about how you had to get through a complete shot so you could set up a close-up." "So sometimes you'd be working four or five hours straight before you could come to a concluding point." "Is that right?" "...before you could come to a concluding point." "Is that right?" " Basically, that was for colour." " For colour only." "It wasn't so much of a distraction when you were doing black and white?" "Not so much as black and white because you could leave it overnight and it not show." "But in colour, it was so sensitive, the minute the temperature dropped in your studio, it would make a flash, at the time." "So we had to avoid..." "Be able to animate a scene up to a point where you could cut a close-up if it flashed too badly." " We had to anticipate this." " Anticipate it." "While you were working, slaving away on this were you making your plans for 20 Million?" "Did you already...?" "Were you taking your off-hours and starting to formulate that and your other projects?" "No." "I'd already formulated the basic of it." " Oh, before you even started this." " Yes." "I did it at the same time I did The Elementals." " I love that title." " Which was never made." "Your idea for 20 Million really preceded this film and the octopus film one year before?" " It came about right after..." " The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms." "Yup." "Well, I was trying to find a new subject and I got The Elementals idea and then I..." "On top of that, I felt..." "You know, when it fell through, I wanted a trip to France." "And when it fell through, I thought, "Well, I'll do another one."" "Originally, I had the rocket ship crash in Lake Michigan, in Chicago." "And then I thought, "Why not have it crash outside of...?"" ""Where do I wanna go?"" "So I had the chance to go and pick locations in Italy." "Now, that's the way to make a movie." "But the real reason you got to go on that trip to Rome was because these first two films that you had done with Charles had been such big hits." "They were substantial successes." " They were low-budget movies." " So they could depend on me." "And Columbia wasn't averse to saying:" ""Well, let's let Ray and Charles go to Rome."" "I didn't have an unlimited budget." "No, but you had proven yourself as bankable, as they say today..." " ...so you didn't have to worry..." " But that was all kept quiet." "No, but they trusted you and Charles to deliver." "You were gonna deliver the next summer movie for them." "These movies were Columbia Pictures' summer films." "Not the drive-in movies, but actually downtown Chicago, New York they showed." "In fact, Bernard Gordon told me..." "These were all stock shots." "This film opened at the Paramount in New York City." " On Broadway." " Did it?" "On Broadway?" "Amazing." "It was so well-liked that..." "This is what's happening today in England." "This is right." "This is in the Midlands." "My God." "Look, all this stock footage." "I mean, these films must've been pure gravy for the studio." "They cost so little and you did such a great job." "They charge for stock shots, but much less than the production if you had to hire a big crew to go out and shoot it." "This film, if you had to use real footage this would've been a several million dollar film minimum." "That big shot of the crowd we just used, it would be massive to do that." "But, see, you'd have to pick the right time and have thousands of extras and all that sort of thing." "And you just went out to Los Angeles and shot that traffic." "That was nothing." " That was easy." " It was very simple." " Very much like that now." " Except worse." "So then between films is when you went to the Brown Derby." "No, I never went to the Brown Derby." "But in that day, weren't you, like, part of the..." "Didn't you have your fan base?" "No, I wasn't part of the Hollywood crowd." " I like you even more." " I didn't have time." "I went home, had dinner and went to bed." "So your lovely wife supported you in all this?" "This was before I was married." "So you were a wild man?" "You were out of control?" " No." "I was in control of myself." " Okay." "I'm creating another myth here." "That's right." "It won't do you any good, because he's gonna keep denying it." "No Brown Derby." "No wild parties." "There must be photographs somewhere." "The table at Cairo's, yeah." "The maître d' with the "Right this way, Mr. Harryhausen." " You, out." "Out." - "Get out of that table."" "No, I never had time for that trivia." "No, I never had time for that trivia." "No, he was busy on aliens." " So..." " You're a good man." "It keeps your legend alive for all of us." "Working alone." "That's what I prefer." "Because so many people can talk you out of ideas that you have because you're not sure of them yourself." " Let's ask Ken and Jeff about that." " I think he's right." "Whatever he says." "I mean, I like working alone too." " Do you disagree?" " Not at all." "This shot here was a stock shot." "That's a wild shot." "I mean, wherever that came from." "I had to make the saucers do suitable things to get it in the same picture." "That's very smart." "That's very..." "Now, did you shoot some of these explosions specifically for this film?" "Yeah, on black." "I had squibs and a little explosive powder." "So did you create your own explosives?" "Yes, yes." "I was wondering about that." "Did you wrap it up in tape or whatever-J?" "I don't remember the details." "They were squibs, basically, and I set them off against black velvet." "Then I could put them in wherever I wanted on rear projection." "And how did you do that in Star Wars, Ken?" "The same way." "We just shot explosions and plastered them right on top of the spaceships." "Probably because I was inspired by you, Ray." "Those are the three medium-sized saucers, right?" "Yes." "Some..." "And then I used a smaller one in the background so that it looked farther away." "So from foreground to background on this how much space are we talking about for these shots?" " Oh, gosh, I don't remember." " Just like 5 feet?" "Because it looks so expansive." "I'm always shocked when I see this work how little room you were working in." "Well, you had to be careful you didn't get the lighting on the projection screen." "Those are great shots." "They're icons." "I mean, these informed a whole generation." "Now we're trying to replicate it and we can't." "Now they're making the wobble." "It crashes into the Potomac." "Sure." "Cut away a little too soon." "We had to cut away because it looked phoney." "I had a feeling." "One of those things." "We're beginning to Se your breakaway buildings where you had everything on wires so whenever the saucers are destroying a model or a miniature it's in frame by frame." "Why did you animate these buildings breaking apart?" "Because we couldn't afford high-speed photography where you need several cameras and possibly blowing up the camera." "You know what's funny?" "I was just thinking about it watching this." "You know what's funny?" "I was just thinking about it watching this." "When we're looking up at the saucers, well, you didn't shoot it looking up." "The screen's straight ahead so all the saucers are basically tilted to camera to look like we're looking up at them." "Absolutely." "They had to be tilted to match the background." " I love that." " Isn't that gorgeous?" "What did you use for the bubbling water?" "I shot some bubbling bubbles against black and double-printed them in because..." "You couldn't put..." "It would look too straight like a matte line." "There's some animated pillars and bricks and..." "Brother." "Brings back fond memories, Ray." " Carol, I thought you'd gone to..." " GHQ calling all HF units." "I was shocked as I was learning more about stop-motion some of the other movies too..." "Well, besides It Came From Beneath the Sea and Beast from 20,000 Fathoms." "Some of the..." "And especially Mighty Joe Young, which we've talked about before." "But your animated debris and the crazy intensely complicated shots you do doing that stuff." "And it looks so cool." "See?" "You won't have to tilt, as you said." "Now, that fellow who's driving the Jeep, I went to high school with." "I remember he was an extra." "This was a stock shot." "That's from War of the Worlds." "I don't know." "Maybe they used a stock shot." "That could be." "We are about to see the City Hall in Los Angeles being destroyed which was from War of the Worlds." "They actually spent quite a bit of money building that." "They may have spent several thousand." "How many people know it was the City Hall?" "At that time, very few people did." " I don't think they'd like this shot now." " No." " In front of the White House?" " In front of the White House." "Although a lot of us might like it." "Somebody take over." "Well, there's an edit right there." "I had to push the shadow in to make it look like it was landing." "More meticulousness." "And the rippled glass effect." "We tried to put a sound in that would match the ripple glass." "How did you get the colour to this, by the way?" " The what?" " The choice of colours and the colour was designed with Ray looking at frames of film first and deciding what the saucers would..." "That was the primary, first decision." "And then going to costumes." "He was working with a brilliant colourist named Rosemary Horvath down in San Diego and just by going back and forth to a computer screen and selecting the colours one scene dictates what's going to follow the next." "Frame by frame." "It's very much like stop motion where you select something from the first frame and then the next 20 or 30 frames within the same shot just imitate what you've selected." "It's seamless." "It's really beautiful and it's seamless." " It's just amazing how..." " Don't you agree, Ken?" "Absolutely." "It's almost three-dimensional." "Yes, the colorizing on this was done by a company in San Diego called Legend Films." "They've also worked with Ray called Legend Films." "They've also worked with Ray on his colorization of She, the Marian C. Cooper film and 20 Million Miles to Earth." "Which was celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2007." "There's the City Hall of Los Angeles." "That shot is from War of the Worlds." " Yeah, nobody would know." " Except us." "They may have used a stock shot." "I don't know." "No." "That was made for War of the Worlds." "How'd they get these shots with no traffic in D.C.?" "I don't know." "The fellow got up there and got them." "Most of them, though, don't show..." "Here we go." "Some really wild, designed shots." " I mean, this is so insane." " Union Station." "That was a backlot probably at Columbia." " Wasn't that the Munster's house?" " Could be the Munster's house." "You know what's great about this is just thinking back as a kid to watching this as this film is coming to its conclusion, how wild it gets." "I mean, you're just pulling all the stops out here." "Well, we had to." "Yeah." "And here's a scene that Tim Burton loved and imitated in his Mars Attacks!" " That's right." " Ray has reminded him over the years." "Here." "I knocked over the Washington Monument long before." "I love that slide on the grass there." "And the shadows." "And, you know, some people did bite it on that shot." " Kind of scary." " Oh, yeah." "The pacing on the ending, the last 10 or 15 minutes, is really incredible." " It's really fun." " And it's..." " What I'm taken by is that you're..." " This was the real Treasury building." " This is old, but it's aged very well." " It has." "I actually shot at this building on Contact." "Did you?" "Yeah, and I was surprised it was there, since you destroyed it in this movie." "We took all the pictures that were on wire and put them back." "When you were using it, it was fine." " Take two." " There's a miniature." "At least the top part." "And you've.." " Frame by frame by frame by frame." " Animated." "Amazing." "All that had to be done prior to the actors being shot." "So this was all before you even got on the stage with these guys." "For the back projection." "I usually leave the rear projection go until the end of the film." "You mean, the three or four weeks after from the start?" "Well, before the actors are out of their contract." "That's funny." "Such a short production schedule." "Such a short production schedule." "So we had to have everything prepared." "Did the short schedule seem like it was rushed?" "Well, it does seem short but a lot of times I had to rush and work day and night to get the background plates ready for the time." "Now, this was shot in Washington." "There was that shot a few shots back of the saucer sitting there and it was all dark down below." "It's almost like that second part of the projection wasn't put in." "Maybe not." "Maybe it was just shadow." " Because there I see everything." " This is too dark too." "But, you know, when you reproduce it on a real projection screen it does" The contrast increases." " Taking off." " You shot these, Ray?" " Those background plates of D.C." " No, I didn't." "A man we asked for them." "But you went there and shot with your camera and then gave those to somebody who went..." " ...and replicated your frames." " I did it with..." "Now this" See?" "The top part is a miniature." "That's just too hard, Ray." "And the miniature begins just below the dome on the Capitol." "Is that right?" " Yeah." " One level below the dome." "Now that's a miniature dome on top of the real Capitol." "They must've been storing dynamite up there." " Last of the saucers." " The skies are clear." "That's that." "All's well that ends well." "Hope no one was in the Capitol." "It's probably the weekend." "It's okay." " Safe bet on that one." " There's a great shot right there." "That is a single, beautiful moment from the whole movie." "I had to put the miniature on the top of the Capitol." "And the saucer crashed into the building." "That, to me, looks so cool." " It's a wonderful composite, isn't it?" " Yes." "Now, here we're back at Malibu." "Those nasty aliens will never come back." "Maybe." " Hugh Marlowe is hoping to rebuild." " Back then it was over." "This is where people began walking out of the theatre, in my age group." " Me too." " "Okay, it's over." "The saucers are gone." "Let's leave." "Get popcorn."" "But if we made this today, very tiny in the background, one little spaceship." "Because you never know when this could be turned into a franchise of many saucer movies." "It'll say "The End," and there will be a question mark below it so that we will continue with Earth vs the Flying Saucers:" "The Revenge or something of that sort." "Well, this has been great fun." "We're looking at the second of Ray's films with Columbia and Charles Schneer and we're finally seeing it in colour as Ray had intended it to be if he'd had the budget." "If we had the budget." "Yes." "But now you're at least able to see it as you would've envisioned it had you seen it in colour then." "Well, thank Ken Ralston and Jeff Okun and the man himself..." " ...for a wonderful time." " Thank you." " What an honour." "Thanks." " Inspiring as always, Ray."