eiji tsuburaya master of monsters review

Eiji tsuburaya master of monsters review movie#
Eiji tsuburaya master of monsters review professional#

After some creative wrangling, that monster became Godzilla.įor Godzilla, Tsuburaya made the bold choice to use miniatures and visual effects instead of stop-motion animation, which was a more obvious alternative.

Eiji tsuburaya master of monsters review movie#

The real story of a radiation-poisoned fishing crew inspired Tanaka to pitch a monster movie to Tsuburaya and Toho. It was in that climate that producer Tomoyuki Tanaka was artistically inspired by the fallout of a US hydrogen bomb test in the Marshall Islands. Ragone describes early battles over budget and setup, but when a new company called Toho Motion Picture Company was founded in 1936, Tsuburaya jumped on board to lead the special effects department.Īfter being drafted to work on propaganda films in World War II (and experiencing the napalm bombing of Tokyo), he returned to work at Toho after the end of US occupation in 1952, keeping a low profile because the US believed he'd committed espionage. Chronicle Booksīeing a film revolutionary wasn't easy. The post–WWII environment shaped the monsters of Japan Tsuburaya supervises The Great Monster War (1965). Then he was ready to begin creating his own legacy. As Ragone writes, 'It is no exaggeration to say that the 'eighth wonder of the world' was responsible for changing Tsuburaya’s life and the course of his career.'īy studying a copy of the film, Tsuburaya managed to reverse engineer how the effects were made. King Kong' s giant title character and phenomenal special effects opened up a new world of possibilities for Tsuburaya.

Eiji tsuburaya master of monsters review professional#

But it was 1933's King Kong that led to his greatest professional epiphany. Though there were a few diversions (including an early Imperial Army stint), he quickly rose through the ranks while inventing new filmmaking tools, including more flexible camera cranes.

Soon, he broke into film, as well, serving as a cameraman on his first movie in 1919. A prodigy from a young age, as a kid he was interviewed about his model airplanes and credited in local newspapers as a 'child craftsman.' Shortly thereafter, he was captivated by a new technology called motion pictures - and he combined his two passions by taking pictures of planes. Tsuburaya grew up about 125 miles north of Tokyo in Sukagawa, Iwase, a son of a prominent family of grocery distributors.

But when Tsuburaya was born, the film industry didn't even yet exist. 'Spanning decades of film work, when he shifted gears from cinematography to visual effects in the 1930s, not only did he capture the audience's imaginations with his work, he was peerless among his contemporaries in Japan,' Ragone told me. Chronicle BooksĪugust Ragone tells Tsuburaya's story in his picture-packed biography Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters, and he shows how Tsuburaya created definitive movie monsters that have stood the test of time. How Eiji Tsuburaya became a special effects master - with the help of King Kong Tsuburaya with a costme from 1961’s Mothra. Eiji Tsuburaya made it possible for Godzilla to stomp across the screen.Ī director, cinematographer, and producer, Tsuburaya is best known for creating the special effects behind Japanese classics like Godzilla (1954), Mothra (1961), and many other films where the giant monsters called kaiju terrorize the good people of Tokyo.Īnd his legacy extends beyond those monsters - he built a foundation for film culture in Japan and special effects worldwide.