The Sci-Fi Boys

                                                                    

Last night my husband and I had gone to see the Hobbit Movie: The Battle of the Five Armies and, while I loved it my husband was not as impressed. We also got to see the trailers of upcoming films and 2015 is going to be a blockbuster year. On the ride home we talked about the special effects of today’s films as compared to when we were kids. After Dan had gone to bed, I worked on an interview which I’ll be posting later today and then settled down to watch something different on television. I came across a documentary called The Sci-Fi Boys. Hmmm? What was this about? I decided to watch and I am so happy I did.

The Documentary

This was a tribute to the men who made special effects an important part of the film industry and featured film industry giants like Peter Jackson, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, John Landis, Dennis Muren, Rick Baker, Roger Corman, Ray Harryhausen, Forrest J Ackerman, Stephen Sommers and my all-time favorite Ray Bradbury.

                                                                       

 

The focus was on the legendary Ray Harryhausen for his stop-action Claymation monsters check his bio here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0366063/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

And, also on Forrest J Ackerman for bringing to life the famous monsters of Film in his magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland. He was the editor and principal writer of this magazine as well as an actor, from the 1950s into the 1980s and was credited for coining the name Sci-Fi. Check out Ackerman’s impressive history here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_J_Ackerman

 

                                                                  

It was a delight to listen to famous directors who I admire talk about their love of movies and how they were hooked into making their own backyard horror films after seeing some of Harryhausen’s monsters and reading Ackerman’s monster magazines. We even get to see some of their earlier work on their parent’s 8mm camera.

I especially enjoyed seeing how the monsters were made to look so realistic with the earlier methods of stop motion action and learning what the directors’ feelings are concerning today’s CGI’s

You can catch this documentary On Demand or you can buy the CD. Check out the official site of The Sci-Fi Boys: http://www.webring.org/l/rd?ring=worldwideindepen;id=15;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Epauldavids%2Ecom%2Fsci_ficomp%2Ehtml

I found this on Youtube. Enjoy