Ray Harryhausen Quotations

Many times I felt like I'd do better than what the director did, but some of them got a little discouraged because they didn't have full charge of making the film, and sometimes there'd be battles of egos.

I was going to Columbia Pictures and Eastman Kodak had a class going for cameramen. I signed up to be a field cameraman. I showed this film to my professor and he showed it to Frank Capra.

I always worked with the writer, and the producer, and sometimes the director wouldn't come in until the picture was ready to go. It's not a director's picture as you imagine in the European sense of the word. It has to be laid out -- otherwise we couldn't make them for the price we did. I was responsible for laying out the special effects and making the picture practical.

I was very limited in what I could do with flying saucers, because they're just a metal disc. I had to try and put character in as if they were intelligently guided.

I was never restricted. I was never told what to do.

So our films had a lot more to them than entertainment value, and I'm glad that a lot of people recognize that now. People realize now the value of them as educational.

A lot of people thought my work was very tedious, and it can be if you look at it from that point of view, but I never looked upon it as tedious.

I had to learn to do everything because I couldn't find another kindred soul. Now you see eighty people listed doing the same things I was doing by myself.

I prefer to work alone and do everything alone, even today.

I brought in the stories many times. I don't just do animation.

I took courses at USC in film editing and art direction and photography when I was still in high school.

I know pretty well in the broad sense what I'm going to do, because I have to know that when we shoot the live-action, so that it'll synchronize. Then I know pretty well when I get to the animation stage, what that scene requires.

You could believe that Sinbad could fight a skeleton because that's from a period in the past, a magical period. But if you had James Bond fighting a skeleton, it'd be almost comical.

That's why I never became a director. I never had patience with people.

Animation requires a great deal of concentration, and I preferred to work alone because then I'm not deterred by somebody asking me if I want coffee, or the phone ringing or something.

Animation had been used only for things like King Kong and the destruction of cities, which was very popular in the 1950s. I got tired of destroying cities. I destroyed New York, I destroyed San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, Rome, and Washington. I was looking for a new outlet, and I came across the Sinbad legends.

When you put a big budget into a film, it doesn't necessarily mean it will be a better picture, but it does help in creating new images on the screen.

There’s a strange quality in stop-motion photography, like in King Kong, that adds to the fantasy. If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane.

Medusa was fascinating to work with because I gave her a snake's body so that she could pull herself with her hands which gave her a very creepy aura. I didn't want to animate cosmic gowns. Most Medusas you see in the classics have flowing robes which would be mad to even try to animate.

If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane.