King Kong is a landmark in the history of film. Since its release in March of 1933, it has received stellar reviews and has been often called one of the greatest horror films of all time. The ingenuity of the techniques used for the film’s effects was a stroke of genius. The scene depicted in the art project was essentially the inspiration for the film as a whole. The director, Merian C. Cooper, had conceptualized the idea of a gorilla fighting a pack of lizards and created a story around it. At first, he thought he would travel across the world to film lizards, but after seeing the work of stop-motion animator Willis O’Brien, Merian was convinced that his story would come to life with the use of models. The film’s crew used multiple strategies to convince the audience that what they saw was real and not a bunch of toys and statues. The technique I displayed in the project utilized rear projection, where a translucent screen had film projected on it to look like a background. The screen itself earned a Special Achievement Oscar, showing how inventive the crew of the film was. The fight scene between Kong and the tyrannosaurus rex had actress Fay Wray sitting in a tree for twenty-two hours due to the lengthy stop-motion process. The film also used matte paintings, rear projection onto models, large-scale models, and optical processing. Aspects of the film’s production were kept quiet, and whenever director Cooper was asked how his spectacles were accomplished, he replied, “It was all done with mirrors” (Edwards). Without Kong, there would be no enormous beast-centered blockbusters like Jurassic Park or Godzilla, which is why I decided to make this project on the original King Kong.
Bibliography
Edwards, Graham. “How King Kong Was Filmed (Or Not).” Cinefex Blog, Cinefex, 27 Oct. 2014, cinefex.com/blog/king-kong-or-not/. This article was informative because it gave both proven and unproven theories as to how the original King Kong was filmed. It looked into old articles of the time and mentioned how much of an impact the film had made. Krystek, Lee. “The King of Kong.” The UnMuseum - King Kong, 1996, www.unmuseum.org/kingkong.htm. This article dove into the specifics of how the film created its spectacular effects, and also how the film came to be from concept to screen. It had detailed accounts of the model’s specifics as well as how the film was received by audiences.