Year 3 have been on a trip to Valence House to look at an exhibit based on the movie producer Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen created a form of stop-motion model animations during the 50’s and 60’s that featured in many films at this time.
We me met a man named, Alan Friswell, who designed the monsters for some of Ray’s films. He was extremely talented and explained how he helped to make the monster models, and how they made some parts of the films in Hollywood.
The children saw some of the actual monster props used in films, such as; ‘Jason & The Argonaughts’, ‘One Million Years BC’, and The Valley of the Gwangi’. The teacher’s and adults who helped on the trip were familiar with some of these classic films, however, some of the children were less familiar, and didn’t understand how the monsters had not been ‘animated’ with special effects to the standards they are used to today!
The children did have a chance to walk around the house of Valence, and make their own sculptures using clay, with the help of Alan: the monster model creator! They really enjoyed this and showed some fantastic modelling skills. Here are pictures of our trip, and some images of our model monsters too.
