Special Effects: An Oral History--Interviews with 37 Masters Spanning 100 Years

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Customer Reviews:

Game of telephone anyone? [Posted on 2006-02-19]
Most of the book is pretty good, I have a number of specialeffects books in my collection and have subscribed to CINEFEX magazine for many years. However there seem to be facts that are not checked and therefore some inaccuracies. The best example I can think of is the description of how Robby the Robot was constructed. The books describes fairly precisely the prosses know as Vacu-Form though never labels it. Which is odd because from all other accounts Robby was Fiberglass and there was only one made. If he was Vacu-Formed, a simple prosses once set up and molds made the studio doubless would have made at least three, if for no other reason that he would have be fragile. I may be nit picking. An I could be wrong

Excellent despite faults [Posted on 2007-12-18]
The book covers the subject very well, but has a number of minor errors. Sometimes they are represented as quotes by someone who would obviously know better. Example - it has stopmotion animator Phil Tippet saying you remove the surface gauge, then move the puppet, then put it back in the same place to measure the move, which I very much doubt he said. (You leave the gauge there while you move the puppet so you can see how far you moved, then remove it to take the shot.) Other technical processes are not clearly explained, and may also be wrong - I'm not expert enough to be certain with all of them.
There are occasional signs of a literal translation from the French - pate a modelier (plasticine or modelling clay) is not called "modelling paste" in English - but it presents no problems. On the up side, it includes the work of some French and other European effects artists that have been overlooked in most American books on the subject.
It goes into all the different areas of special effects in separate sections, although obviously there is a good deal of overlap between fields like makeup effects and animatronics. Despite minor flaws, I'm very glad to have bought this book - it does add a lot that is not in other books.

Book speak for itself [Posted on 2008-01-03]
That was cool journey to the world of Cinematography! All this stuff was new to me and still is. Me - I myself study, learn 3D animations, but reading this book found that in Cinematography's world there a lot more things that I found amazing. This book definitely gave me huge portion of inspiration. Now I take a totally different view to movies and animations, especially old school 2D.

Great book [Posted on 2008-08-20]
This book was worth every penny! All the greats have been intervued, and there are interesting and fun facts all over! I have had loads of smiles, laughs and serious thoughts from this book!

Not bad but hard to find particular information [Posted on 2008-10-26]
I picked this up of $4.95 on the close out racks at Border's, and it's certainly worth that money. Interesting interviews and great photos, tons of them. Sadly there is only a very vague content page and no index at all, which is a serious mistake in such a book. It's impossible to find any movie or person other than paging through the entire book.

Maybe mine was a misprint or something (hence the cheap price?) but how one can create a phonebook size work like this and not add a movie and person index is a bit baffling. A more detailed content at least would be nice to have.

A great read, but if you want to come back to something you better make notes or put flags in the book.

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