Visionaries
August 1, 2012 11:57 AM Subscribe
Revisiting Cinefex - a nostalgia wormhole into the golden age of model work and practical effects and the odd piece of early CG via backissues of the quarterly magazine of motion picture visual effects. The latest issues covered touches on Young Sherlock Holmes's Stained glass knight - mainstream cinema’s first fully-rendered CG character created by Industrial Light & Magic's Pixar group.
Awesome post.
Sadly, the mag has not maintained the depth of coverage that once distinguished it so highly. Climaxing, I suppose, with devoting all of issue #72 to Titanic.
When they first built the ship, they found that the uniform blankness behind the portholes made the thing look fake. "After building a set 900 feet long," they said, "we were pretty damned determined not to have it look fake." So they did their best to obtain accurate pictures of the cabin interiors, made blowups of them, curved them to provide an illusion of depth, and laminated them against seawater.
posted by Egg Shen at 12:20 PM on August 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
Sadly, the mag has not maintained the depth of coverage that once distinguished it so highly. Climaxing, I suppose, with devoting all of issue #72 to Titanic.
When they first built the ship, they found that the uniform blankness behind the portholes made the thing look fake. "After building a set 900 feet long," they said, "we were pretty damned determined not to have it look fake." So they did their best to obtain accurate pictures of the cabin interiors, made blowups of them, curved them to provide an illusion of depth, and laminated them against seawater.
posted by Egg Shen at 12:20 PM on August 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
God I love Cinefex. I had a subscription briefly, but yeah... very expensive.
posted by brundlefly at 12:22 PM on August 1, 2012
posted by brundlefly at 12:22 PM on August 1, 2012
One of my absolute favorite B&N/Borders/Whatever "Come sit in our cafe and read our stuff then put it back on the shelf" treats as a young film student. Woot.
posted by cavalier at 12:25 PM on August 1, 2012 [4 favorites]
posted by cavalier at 12:25 PM on August 1, 2012 [4 favorites]
Proud Husband Moment: The wife and I were in a B&N a few weeks ago and a young girl kept walking by where we were sitting. She had little bells or something similar attached to her shoe laces and they'd jingle with every step she took. My wife, somewhat annoyed, leaned over to me and said, "Unless she's a member of the fucking Rame Tep, those goddamn bells need to go."
posted by Brackish at 12:52 PM on August 1, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by Brackish at 12:52 PM on August 1, 2012 [2 favorites]
Issue #53 had a great piece about the early-style optical effects used in Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. Such a cool film visually that it almost compensates for Keanu Reeves' turd of a performance.
posted by usonian at 12:53 PM on August 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by usonian at 12:53 PM on August 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
Have a stack of these in my basement. Expensive yes, but well worth it. My Blade Runner issue is in pieces. And it's true, It's gotten thinner on content since the total CGI days, practical effects are becoming a dying art.
posted by djrock3k at 1:58 PM on August 1, 2012
posted by djrock3k at 1:58 PM on August 1, 2012
I have the 2001(the movie) issue of Cinefex and it is the most amazing thing ever. I don't know if there is any other print source that explains how they did essentially all of the effects shot for that movie.
posted by Dmenet at 3:18 PM on August 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by Dmenet at 3:18 PM on August 1, 2012 [1 favorite]
I was more of a CineMagic man, myself.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:25 PM on August 1, 2012
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:25 PM on August 1, 2012
Artw, they do have a viable site - a friend of mine has actually put in a good deal of work building it.
posted by lapolla at 5:34 PM on August 1, 2012
posted by lapolla at 5:34 PM on August 1, 2012
Yup, that's one of the links - I didn't see the archive described in the previously though.
posted by Artw at 6:17 PM on August 1, 2012
posted by Artw at 6:17 PM on August 1, 2012
Stumbling across the fabled #8 issue of Cinefex (the Tron issue) in a very provincial UK SF comic shop is still a cherished memory, not least as it had been rumoured to be banned by Disney at the time, presumably for spilling the beans on the film's nascent CG technology. To this day, I have no idea if that was actually true.
posted by specialbrew at 2:56 PM on August 2, 2012
posted by specialbrew at 2:56 PM on August 2, 2012
It's too bad magazines are so heavy. It makes it very expensive to buy back issues of anything since the shipping costs more than the value, so they just end up going to the trash.
posted by smackfu at 7:58 AM on August 3, 2012
posted by smackfu at 7:58 AM on August 3, 2012
I didn't discover Cinefex until the late 90s, I need to start hunting down those old back issues. Cinemagic was the magazine that taught me how to make my friends look like zombies aliens or damaged terminators, build kitbashed spaceships, stop motion rigs and how to add sfx in my 8mm movies.
posted by the_artificer at 2:35 AM on August 5, 2012
posted by the_artificer at 2:35 AM on August 5, 2012
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posted by smackfu at 12:08 PM on August 1, 2012