Tuesday, January 10, 2006

First Stop-Motion Feature?

First Stop-Motion Feature?

The usual yammer how a movie is the "first" at something.

But the "First Stop-Motion Animation Feature?" C'mon guys.

I'd think the Editors Guild would know better,
and it's in their professional magazine!

Okay, it's first to use still-cameras to shoot a feature's worth
of digital frames, and it's the first digital stop-motion feature
edited with Final Cut Pro. On a Thursday.
Okay...so what?

This Article says it's the "First Stop-Motion Animation Feature,"
right over the title.

A shockingly ignorant assertion, when you know how long stop-motion's been around. "Humpty Dumpty Circus" was made in 1898, "Modelling Extraordinary" brought clay to life in 1912, George Pal and Jiri Trnka worked throughout the twentieth century, Willis O'Brien's "The Lost World" was stop-motion in 1925, and his "King Kong" was mostly stop-motion in 1933.

The great Ray Harryhausen did lots of movies with lots of stop-motion, Cosgrove/Hall's 1983 "The Wind in the Willows," Tadahito Mochinaga was in Japan animating those Rankin/Bass stop-motion Christmas specials.

There was that Pogo Possum feature from 1980 (third screen role for Pogo), Art Clokey's "Gumby and Pokey" and "Davey and Goliath," (ran for 17 years!), Nick Park's brilliant "Wallace & Gromit" and "Chicken Run" were feature-length, as was the Claymation (TM) Mark Twain 35mm feature I worked on for a year, in the early '80s.

Tim Burton did another stop-motion feature,
"The Nightmare Before Christmas,"
before this one, for cryin' out loud!

Maybe it's Tim's "First Stop-Motion Feature"
...since Tim's last stop-motion feature.

Interesting article, though.

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