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The Lost World (1925)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 21, 2015 4:04 pm    Post subject: The Lost World (1925) Reply with quote



Willis O'Brien, the special effects genius behind "King Kong", crafted FX for this spectacular adventure from the book by Arthur Conan Doyle, about a legendary plateau in South America where dinosaurs still live.

Professor Challenger is the only scientist in London who believes the legends because he's been there. He leads a second expedition to the plateau to bring back proof that the dinosaurs exist. The explorers witness titanic dinosaur battles and a mass exodus from an earthquake.

The pioneer animation isn't up to the level of "King Kong" (partly due to the fact that it was filmed at eighteen frames per second), but the film is still a marvelous treat for animation buffs. Watch for such details as moving clouds in the background during dinosaur scenes; these had to be animated, too.

After the explorers survive a multitude of hair-raising adventures, Prof. Challenger selects the specimen he wants to take back to London to silence the doubting Thomas' -- a full-grown brontosaurus! But the monster gets loose and stampedes through the city. Directed by Harry Hoyt.

There's a tragic story behind the 1960 version of "The Lost World". Willis O'brien, creator of "King Kong", spent several years during the late 1950s making preparations for a big-budget remake of his 1925 version of "The Lost World".

He made his pitch to producer Irwin Allen and the big wheels at 20th Century Fox, showing them the hundreds of preproduction drawings and paintings he had done, and he persuaded them to make the film.

But 20th Century Fox refused to let O'Brien do the film's special effects, substituting the poorly embellished reptiles instead. From all reports, O'brien's version would have been the greatest lost-land adventure movie of all time. Irwin Allen's lack of vision is puzzling in view of the fact that in 1955 he produced "The Animal World" with animated dinosaurs by Ray Harryhausen and Willis O'Brien!

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Pow
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 14, 2015 11:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The stop-motion by Obie here was wonderful.

A shame that all future Hollywood productions did not employ s-m in their s-f pictures instead of employing either silly looking close ups of lizards or men in ridiculous body suits.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 30, 2015 4:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I guess I'd be in the minority if I said that The Land Unknown actually used the lizards pretty well, and to the best of my knowledge none of the footage was borrowed from somewhere else. It was done originally for The Land Unknown.

As for the man in the suit, the T-Rex had it's faults, but they labored to make it impressive, with blinking eyes and drooling teeth.

And since it seems like Harryhausen and O'Brien were the only ones who could do animation really well, I doubt if those other productions would have been much better with animation if it weren't done by Ray and Willis.
Sad
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 25, 2018 6:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Someone put together a nice trailer for this magnificent classic. Very Happy
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______________ The Lost World (1925) Trailer


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 22, 2019 2:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

IMDB has 21 trivia items for this movie. Here’s a few of the ones I found the most interesting, in the blue text. Very Happy
________________________________

~ The dinosaur miniatures were donated to the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. After many years the rubber models began to sulphurize and disintegrate. They were stored away and inadvertently sealed between the walls of the facility when a new wing was added.

Note from me: The Lost Dinosaurs from The Lost World. Weird, eh? Confused

~ While filming one of the stop-motion scenes, the cameraman spotted a pair of pliers in the picture. So as not to draw attention to them by having them suddenly disappear, he moved them a little at a time until they were out of the shot.

Note from me: I'd have to see this to believe it. A moving pair pliers would attract a lot more attention than one that appeared and disappeared in just a few frames. And even if it was in view for— say — five minutes, the fact that it suddenly started creeping along like a snail would insure that everybody would notice it!

Add to this the fact that there's a post in the King Kong section of the Classic Horror Film Board that comments on an alleged pair of pliers which were used as part of a stop motion model.

The first post in our own King Kong thread includes a few quotes from that discussion.


Bud Brewster wrote:
Found this on the Classic Horror Film Board.

skull island escapee wrote:
Nobody seems to have yet spotted those damned pliers that were 'converted' into a passing creature in the miniature jungle undergrowth!

Skeletonpete discovered this rare shot. Gee, I'm surprised I never noticed this before! Laughing



Another member added this funny reply.


CapnDunsel wrote:
Where? I don't see them. Are they near the little hammer that's climbing up the screwdriver?

CHFB member Tim Smyth replied, further down the thread, with this:

Tim Smyth wrote:
Nope, I don't see them either, maybe you're seeing a trick with lighting or something, but it's just not really there, like some kind of tool mirage.

Great image by the way.

I really don't think that tool incident ever happened, kind of a King Kong urban legend.

On a serious note, has anybody here at All Sci-Fi ever heard about a pair of pliers being converted into a Skull Island stop-motion model?


~ The scene where the dinosaurs flee the volcano was created on a tabletop that was 75 feet wide and 150 feet long.

Note from me: That's obviously much larger than the typical animation table. I've seen BTS shots of the animation table of Hoth used in The Empire Strikes Back, and the animators used trap doors to pop up and move the models of the tauntaun's for each frame.

I wonder if that was done in The Lost World as well.

Or perhaps the miniature landscape was built in long strips which were designed to hide several open lanes between each one. This would give the animators easy access to the models. The irregular landscape would hide the gaps between each strip when viewed from the angle at which the camera was positioned.

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Pow
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 29, 2019 9:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fun Facts about "The Lost World" } Sir Arthur Conan Doyle showed O'Bie's test reel for TLW at a banquet for the Society of American Magicians at the Hotel McAlpin in N.Y.

Doyle did not offer any explanation to the audience regarding what they were about to see.

The New York Times reported that either Doyle had discovered a new world or if the film was fake the scenes were "masterpieces."

The following day Doyle explained to Harry Houdini, Society president, that the film they saw was from preproduction footage for TLW.

O'Bie did all the stop~motion animation for TLW except for a dinosaur stampede.

Working for 10 hours a day produced a little over 30 seconds of animation each day.

It would take 14 months to complete the animation for TLW.


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Maurice
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 09, 2020 3:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
[...]Working for 10 hours a day produced a little over 30 seconds of animation each day.

It would take 14 months to complete the animation for TLW.
[/size]

Um if you completed 30 seconds of animation per day after 14 months of five day weeks you'd have 150 HOURS or footage. Those figures have got to be wrong.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 09, 2020 11:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Perhaps a more accurate statement would be, "Even though O'Brien worked for 10 hours a day he rarely produced more than 30 seconds of animation on a given day."

Remember, in addition to his patient efforts to carefully move the models, those 10 hours were often occupied by other tasks besides sitting at the animation table and moving the models a fraction of an inch.

Don't forget the many hours it took to create the animation tables, adjust the lighting, plan out the movements, rehearse them with his own body (in some cases), load the camera, develop the film, review the shots to determine if they came out right . . . on and on, a myriad of task which, of themselves, didn't produce a single frame of film.

And then of course there would be shots that had to be repeated because of some mishap which spoiled it.

So, Maurice, you're right that Pow's quoted statement needs some revision. As you pointed out, 30 seconds X 5 days = 2.5 minutes of animation every week. And 2.5 minutes X 56 weeks = 140 minutes of animation.

By the way, YouTube has a beautifully restored version of this movie! I was delight to see that the film's "frame rate" had been adjusted so that the action runs at a very realistic speed! Very Happy



_______ The Lost World 1925 full movie restored

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
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Maurice
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 09, 2020 8:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My point was simply that the numbers presented make no sense. And 30 seconds of animation in 10 hours would be realllllllly high in almost any circumstances!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 10, 2020 2:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Maurice wrote:
My point was simply that the numbers presented make no sense. And 30 seconds of animation in 10 hours would be realllllllly high in almost any circumstances!

Agreed! Very Happy

I thought I'd made that clear, but maybe I didn't.
Sad

Bud Brewster wrote:
Perhaps a more accurate statement would be, "Even though O'Brien worked for 10 hours a day he rarely produced more than 30 seconds of animation on a given day."

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 13, 2021 2:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Let's Create a Sequel!
________________________________

For decades I've been under the misconception that in The Lost World (1925) the volcanic eruption on the plateau wiped out all the dinosaurs! Sad

Today I watched one of the YouTube versions and learned that the volcano only caused a dino stampede, after which we see scenes of the survivors, including a wonderful shot of a several young T-Rex feeding on the carcass of a dead dino!






So, at the end of the movie the world knows about this incredible scientific discovery — a complete prehistoric ecosystem which includes many species of dinosaurs, along with primitive ancestors of mankind!

Now that the world is aware of this amazing discovery, what will the global scientific community do? Confused

Obviously they would organize an international team of scientists for an expedition to the plateau. It would be fully equipped to set up a permanent base so that scientists from all over the world could visit it and study this remarkable discovery!

This concept provides opportunities for numerous sequels!

The goal of the authorities who manage the base camp would be to insure that this prehistoric world would be carefully preserved without being damaged by the presence of humans.

And right there is the conflict we need to make this sequel (and others that follow) sufficiently dramatic and exciting! Very Happy

The most obvious threat would be the theft by poachers of baby dinosaurs and dinosaur eggs.

With that in mind, please watch the version of the movie below after you've downloaded it and played it on your TV — not on your computer! You must turn the color all the way down, the way I did on my television in my living room, shown below.






Doing this will remove the horrible color tinting of this version, which absolutely destroys any chance of enjoying the beautiful B&W photography of this classic! Shocked

Some of the other YouTube versions offer it in B&W, but they don't have the magnificent music this one does — and some of them are not even the complete version of the film! Note the differences in the running time.


The Lost World l Adventure/Fantasy/Sci-Fi (restored)


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2022 4:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Smoke and Mirrors by Mark D. Wolf.

Ralph Hammeras, the first recipient of an Oscar nomination for special effects (for his glass shots in Alexander Korda's The Private life of Helen of Troy in 1927) was unique in that he was also an expert in photographing miniatures.

Working with Willis O'Brien on The Lost World was the beginning of a life-long friendship.
Hammeras supervised the miniatures and also introduced OBie to the glass shot, which Hammeras was executing for the film. As an artist, himself, OBie immediately grasped the possibilities of the technique and would later execute and supervise mattes himself for various studios.

Sidebar: I've always admired the gorgeous glass matte paintings that were created back in this era.

I recall reading that Ray Harryhausen was forced to dispense with such mattes for his films due to the costly nature of glass shots. He would utilize rear screen projection because it was cheaper to do so and Ray's films always had tight budgets. At least until he got to Sinbad and the Eyed of the Tiger, and his final feature film, Clash of the Titans.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 18, 2022 4:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
Sidebar: I've always admired the gorgeous glass matte paintings that were created back in this era.

Ditto!

And that brings up an interesting point. Many of the great glass mattes in classic movies were quite obviously painted landscapes which made no attempt to be "photo-realistif". The artists were proud presented them as art — and that's why I love them.

The great debate between some of All Sci-Fi's members and myself concerning CGI that doesn't look "real" stems from the fact that sometimes I like a certain degree pf stylization, rather than CGI that doesn't even look like CGI because it so convincingly real.

Oh, well . . . different strokes for different life forms.
Mr. Green
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 30, 2022 11:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm puzzled by the comments of people who criticize what they call "poor CGI". Their problem with it seems to be that it doesn't look "real", but it also doesn't look like the "unreal" FX they grew up loving. I think these folks are just rejecting the "new" because their inner child can't accept the change.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Thu May 05, 2022 11:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Poor CGI does exist, just as there is slick looking CGI.

And leave us not forget that there exists wonderful model work in films and television as well as inferior model work.

In reality, every form of special/visual effect has terrific examples and terrible ones.

As for a sequel, Bud, I ask that the intrepid explorers use an awesome looking airship this time around.
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