The Lost World (1925) - Stop Motion Shots

The Lost World from 1925, directed by Harry O. Hoyt and produced by First National Pictures, was the first feature-length film to use the groundbreaking stop motion special effects pioneered by Willis O'Brien. Originally envisioned as a more small-scale adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, producer Watterson Rothacker sought out O'Brien after the success of "The Ghost of Slumber Mountain" to bring the dinosaurs from Doyle's story to life. But the project soon grew and needed the backing of a major studio, and so a deal was finally made with First National Pictures. While perhaps not as polished as his later work, O'Brien used a number of groundbreaking techniques for the time to show the prehistoric creatures in the same shots as the actors of the film, something he had not yet attempted in his earlier work. In addition to O'Brien, several other (uncredited) animators helped him animate the large number of dinosaurs for the master shots of the plateau. And sculptor, filmmaker and stop motion animator John Leland Roop animated the sequence following the lone Allosaurus that first fights a Trachodon and then later a pack of Triceratops, being untimately wounded and scared off. The tremendous success of The Lost World would pave the way for O'Brien's later work on Creation, King Kong and Mighty Joe Young.