Hello! …

Here’s a rare treat … an original promo to raise interest for the late ’70s stop-motion project Timegate, with input by Jim Danforth, John Morgan and Randall William Cook. They’ve accessed some film clips to emphasize that it’s ‘in production.’ Some of the best material is an animatic of storyboard art by Cook himself.

An article at a page called Fandom  describes the movie a little bit more, and offers some good artwork and photos. The film’s problems were well known to the ‘animation crowd’ at the time; the late Michael Hyatt was involved, and wrote a long letter about it to the magazine Cinefantastique.

The promo has been up just two weeks; it was posted by Matthew B. Lamont.

 

Stop-Motion Rarities:   “Timegate” 

 

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Also posted by Mr. Lamont is Hoyt Yeatman’s UCLA Film School animation project, from about 1975, not 1977.

Hoyt built his own 16mm projection setup to do Ray Harryhausen-type animation; he reworked a Texas Instruments calculator to serve as a one-button exposure and lights trigger. He made the model and did most everything technical for the show. The live-action part of the film was shot at Vasquez Rocks, all in one day.

The result got Hoyt work in TV with George Schlatter, and his stop-motion exposure setup got him a job with Douglas Trumbull helping with the  CE3K mothership setup for Dennis Muren. Two years later Hoyt was a founding partner of a new visual effects company.

It wasn’t made for money — Hoyt knew he could never clear the music — but it was one of the more successful ‘calling card’ student films I ever witnessed. Thanks to Matthew Lamont … !

 

Stop-Motion Rarities:   “Canned Performance”

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson