New Episode
Episode 002 | The Empire Strikes Back, Howie Weed, and Model Making
In our second episode, we chat with passionate fan Rob Rhyne about The Empire Strikes Back, interview model maker, creature creator, and digital artist Howie Weed about his career and work on The Empire Strikes Back: Special Edition, and we quickly chat with Duncan Boszko to get a perspective on Greg Jein’s physical miniature models in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, and The Hunt for Red October from someone who was born after the advent of CGI.
This episode sponsored in part by Cinefex magazine — the journal of cinematic illusions.
VFX & Special Effects
Building Empire, A Filmumentary by Jamie Benning
Entertaining and informative unofficial fan documentary by Jamie Benning, recutting The Empire Strikes Back, with commentary, trivia, and behind-the-scenes shots all edited into the film itself. A fascinating way to watch the making-of.
Behind the Magic: The Visual Effects of "Pacific Rim"
ILM’s featurette showing effects breakdowns for Pacific Rim. Man, I love that movie. Makes me feel like a 10-year-old kid again.
Around the Web
Source Code in TV and Films
A whole tumblog full of screenshots of computer code shown in movies, and descriptions of what the code really does (that is, is they can figure it out — which they do surprisingly often).
So Money: An oral history of Swingers
Alex French and Howie Kahn at Grantland write up a fascinating account of behind-the-scenes talk here, with a great amount of depth from many of the cast and crew.