Now if you are of a certain age you will remember those slightly clunky monsters which bestrode cinema epics like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts and countless other films from B movies in the 1950s right the way through to the blockbusters over the the next thirty years.
They were the work of Ray Harryhausen, and while they look amateurish and clumsy by today's standards of film animation they were magic to a nine year old sitting in the cheap seats at the ABC Regal on the Old Kent Road.
And almost a decade on could still fascinate me as a "sophisticated teenager" on the back row on a Saturday night in the Well Hall Odeon.*
All of which is a round about introduction to A Long, Long Time Ago...Unreal: The VFX Revolution on the wireless.
The first episode was broadcast earlier today, and while I missed it, I will be calling it up later.
"The story of how visual effects changed and changed cinema told from the inside by the Oscar winning Paul Franklin. In 1975, in a nondescript warehouse in Van Nuys, George Lucas and John Dykstra created a visual effects start up that would make history.
Industrial Light & Magic. A group of many talents spent well over a year in R&D to perfect the dream of motion control before X-Wings and the Millennium Falcon could soar.
Meanwhile the magic eye of Douglas Trumbull and his team was creating the light show for Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters. It was the beginning of a revolution.
With the voices of Robert Blalack, John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren & Doug Trumbull.
Producer: Mark Burman"**
Picture, the work of Ray Harryhausen, 2021, on display at The National Galleries Scotland, courtesy of Kevin Ball
*Ray Harryhausen, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Harryhausen#2000s%E2%80%932010s
**A Long, Long Time Ago...Unreal: The VFX RevolutionEpisode, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xltg
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