On 3 November, 1954 the original Godzilla film opened in Japan. Nearly 9.6 million movie-goers went to watch the film on opening night eager to see the monster come to life with the films revolutionary visual effects. Japan had a population of 88 million then. But it was a specific sound effect that would become one of the most famous moments in film history, Godzilla’s emphatic roar….
Originally captured by using leather gloves and a double bass, recreating the iconic roar was one of the main challenges the sound team faced when producing the 2014 remake of Godzilla.
Godzilla’s roar is one of the most recognizable in film history. How do you update an iconic sound for a new generation? Dolby & Legendary go behind the scenes with Erik Aadahl, sound designer on ‘Godzilla’, director Gareth Edwards and producer Thomas Tull, to look at how you tackle this historic challenge.
An epic rebirth to Toho’s iconic Godzilla, this spectacular adventure, from Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures, pits the world’s most famous monster against malevolent creatures who, bolstered by humanity’s scientific arrogance, threaten our very existence.
According to London-based Moving Picture Company, which rebooted the monster, creating the living creature from concept artwork took seven months, working up his body – from the underlying bones, fat and muscle structure to the thickness and texture of his scales. The original Godzilla of 1954 was made from bamboo, cloth, paper, wire and whatever was available, this certainly shows we have really come a long way since then.
As the legend goes, Eiji Tsuburaya, who served as the special effects director on the film, initially intended to utilise stop motion animation, similar to Willis O’Brien’s work on 1933’s King Kong, to bring Godzilla to life. But time and budget constraints made that impractical. Tsuburaya then hit on ‘suitimation’, using a man in suit against a miniature set, as his solution.
Artists all over Japan were commissioned to send in designs, from which the first Godzilla suit was created using bamboo wrapped in chicken wire and covered with fabric. Liquefied latex was then applied to the almost seven-foot-tall, charcoal grey, 200-plus pound costume to complete Godzilla’s alligator-like skin, said to represent the monster’s physical scarring by an H-bomb blast. Too heavy and cumbersome at first, the suit underwent considerable modifications before it was ready for use on screen, when black belt stunt actor Haruo Nakajima, and a teen named Katsumi Tezuka, were hired to play Japan’s most famous titan of terror.
Thus kaiju eiga, or the Japanese monster movie, was born.