Ray Harryhausen
‘Titan of Cinema’
Gallery Audiovisual Installation for an Exhibition at Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art (Modern Two)
This exhibition is a NGS collaboration with the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation to celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday year. This exhibition brings his creations to life once more and celebrates the legacy of a filmmaker who changed the face of modern cinema.
About the project
The exhibition fills the entirety of Modern Two Gallery in Edinburgh and has a large AV element augmenting an unparalleled display of original Ray Harryhausen models, drawings and artifacts. Warpro were charged with taking the designs from Gibson Thornley and making them reality, installing screens from Panasonic, projectors from Panasonic, Optoma and Maxell with many custom built and programmed ancillary elements.
In Gallery Two the animation process is deconstructed by a Phonotrope where cardboard replicas of single frames of film are animated by a record player. Visitors are filmed against the 6m cloth green screen background and composited live into the scene as they appear to fight monsters live with the combined footage then projected live onto a large screen.
In Gallery Three, King Kong stares through the window from outside. In reality this is an array of three 65″ screens on a custom designed mount in the actual window with a new surround built in front. The animation by Playdead includes Kong’s breath steaming up the windows, and in an instant Gallery Three is at the top of the Empire State Building in black and white New York.
In Gallery Four, 4 drawings come to life on the tabletop and characters chase between the 4 papers before returning to be static drawings again. This is delivered by a single overhead 4K projector and some accurate lineup and animation.
In Gallery Five, Harryhausen’s trademark multilayered Dynamation process is illustrated on a semi-transparent array of three screens which deconstructs his animations into their parts and by walking round the screens you can understand how Harryhausen constructed his Blockbuster effects.
In Gallery Seven, the original Models of Talos, Harpies, Hydra and Skeletons are spot lit in turn and the resulting shadows on the wall come to life in a neverending seemingly random sequence. The reality is a hidden UST projector fed from a brightsign player with lighting controller and some clever programming produce the illusion.
Throughout the gallery the artifacts are interspersed with screens and projections showing short films illustrating Harryhausens work. As with the rest of the exhibits these are all timed and run automatically without the staffs intervention. At the time of writing the complex AV elements have “just worked” with no failures.
Contact Us
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