{"id":46,"date":"2009-04-01T00:36:28","date_gmt":"2009-04-01T07:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/?p=46"},"modified":"2009-05-01T00:54:31","modified_gmt":"2009-05-01T07:54:31","slug":"it-began-with-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/?p=46","title":{"rendered":"It began with Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"

King Kong<\/span> and Son of Kong<\/span> were the first stop motion visual effects films I was aware of. I was about 8 or 9 yrs old at the time. I have a strong recollection of watching them on our treasured black and white television.<\/p>\n

With Son of Kong<\/span>, I was especially captivated by the images of Skull Island sinking and Carl Denham and others scrambling to the top of the rocks with “Kiko”, the young albino son of Kong.\u00a0 I was moved as\u00a0Kiko saved the life of Carl Denham at the end. (Yep, Kiko was actually his name per RKO documents of the time.<\/em>) \u00a0<\/p>\n

\"sonofkong21\"<\/p>\n

Fascinated, I knew something special had unreeled before my eyes but I did not know how it was accomplished.\u00a0 I went and asked my mother how King Kong<\/span> and Son of Kong<\/span> were done. She told me they were trained monkeys. Even at my young age, I had seen a number of trained monkeys at zoos and on TV and none of them looked or moved like Kong.\u00a0 I did not know what Kong was but I knew my mother was wrong; Kong was not a trained monkey!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A few years later when I received an allowance and had some bicycle freedom, I would prowl the news stands of downtown Long Beach, CA for comic books and treasured copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland<\/span>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"25_oct-19633\"<\/p>\n

Written by Forrest (Forry) J Ackerman, they were filled with pretty cool photos from many past “monster movies” surrounded with really bad puns and commentary. Every once in a while, Forry would insert a fairly informative article about King Kong<\/span> or Son of Kong<\/span> and mention mysterious techniques like “stop motion animation” and “visual effects.”\u00a0 He wrote about visual effects artists like Willis O’Brien and his prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Ray Harryhausen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the help of the only resource I had, Famous Monsters of Filmland<\/span>, I began my search for how King Kong<\/span> and other visual effects were created. I was only twelve years old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

King Kong and Son of Kong were the first stop motion visual effects films I was aware of. I was about 8 or 9 yrs old at the time. I have a strong recollection of watching them on our treasured black and white television. With Son of Kong, I was especially captivated by the images […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[29,25,24,26,23,28,27,30,22,78,21],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-vfx-history","tag-david-stipes","tag-famous-monsters-of-filmland","tag-forrest-j-ackerman","tag-king-kong","tag-ray-harryhausen","tag-rko","tag-son-of-kong","tag-stipes-universe","tag-stop-motion-animation","tag-visual-effects","tag-willis-obrien"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidstipes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}