Who doesn’t love a good special effects movie? Of course, when you can’t tell that there are special effects, that’s when you know it’s a good movie.
I stumbled upon this article at AmericanHeritage.com, that describes the beginnings of Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas’ personal special effects company, makers of all cool films (especially Star Wars). This article also describes another sort of paradigm shift in the film industry.
Personally, these types of effects are my favorite. Using real things in innovative ways. I think it’s unfortunate, in a way, that so many of the stunts and effects are digital. I like the good, old fashioned effects where objects are real, made from real things, like the mother ship on “Close Encounters of The Third Kind” (the movie I haven’t seen, but the ship I have).
Anyhow, it was a good article.
And, just as a side note, I always fear losing these web articles, until now. I use Zotero which allows me to store, sort, tag and view web pages, books, and all sorts of stuff. I’ll be using it to collect data for my research projects this year. It’s also made by the good guys at the Center for History and New Media, where I work. 🙂 – Shameless plug!
