"We'll fix it in post..."

November 4, 2024 9:53 AM

Between 1980 and 2021, Cinefex magazine was the quarterly journal of the visual effects industry covering mostly big budget movies, but also TV shows, commercials and even interactive experiences. It ended publication in 2021 due to the effect of the pandemic on film production, however the content remained available through their iOS app... until iOS 17 killed it... or did it?. Regardless, Don Shay, original editor of the periodical, has made the entire back catalogue available on archive.org

The archive seems to be the raw files used to produce the app version but with some minor html edits, as mentioned in the community comments, you can get complete, browser-readable, versions for all but six of the issues (#11-#16) including the ads, like this one recruiting for a certain Weta Digital project in 2000.

Additional links:
Eventual editor Graham Edwards' retrospectives on the first 40 issues
Spiritual successor The Illusion Almanac
A Letterboxd list of all films included in the Cinefex archive - I'm at 77% watched.

posted by Molesome (8 comments total)

Bravo! One of my favorite professional periodicals of all time. Thank you for posting.
posted by bz at 10:01 AM on November 4 [1 favorite]

Excellent! Thank you.
posted by Liquidwolf at 10:50 AM on November 4

I strongly suggest downloading and archiving for yourself if you want to have access to the catalogue content. I was happy to find the entire run of Starlog Magazine on Archive.org back in the day (previously), but now it's almost completely vanished from the site search. The recent data breach which forced the site offline for a few days sort of underlined for me that their whole operation is held together on an extremely ad-hoc basis, and that we can't put our trust in any website being truly a permanent archive anymore.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:11 AM on November 4 [2 favorites]

This pairs well with a book that I'm about halfway through, "The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982"

I hadn't realized that ET, Tron, Star Trek 2, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing, *and* The Road Warrior all came out within an 8 week period over the summer of '82. If you want a lot of back story about directors, screenwriters, special effects, and the business of movie-making, I recommend it
posted by edward_5000 at 11:58 AM on November 4 [3 favorites]

Sigh. I had an almost complete collection until bedbugs. The fact that Shay is the one who put it up bodes well for it not being taken down.
posted by Sophont at 1:39 PM on November 4

"The mind reels, the intellect stands abashed..."
posted by y2karl at 2:12 PM on November 4

"has made the entire back catalogue available on archive.org" is one of my favorite phrases ever.

Thank you so much for posting this, Molesome! I am grateful to Shay for sharing this with the world.

Also, that Letterboxd list is fantastic.
posted by kristi at 2:36 PM on November 4

saWEET!

As someone who worked in post production for years and years and years, this was always a great read.
posted by Relay at 7:24 PM on November 4