During the seven wonderful years I worked at Cinefex, that legendary and much-missed journal of cinematic illusions, I wrote over 40 long-form articles on the making of films including The Shape of Water, Black Panther and Solo: A Star Wars Story. The focus was mainly on special and visual effects, accompanied by healthy dollops of animatronics, make-up, cinematography, production design … you name it, we covered it. More often than not, we interviewed the directors, too.
A typical Cinefex article was around 8,000-10,000 words (although many were much longer) and lavishly illustrated with behind the scenes photographs, VFX breakdowns and final frames. It wasn’t unusual to conduct a dozen interviews, frequently more, all of which had to be cleared by the studio PR department in advance … often far in advance of the film’s release, thanks to the magazine’s long lead time.
For any one article, my assembled interview transcripts could easily run to over 50,000 words. Wrangling all that information into a coherent narrative was a monumental task, one which Cinefex editor-in-chief Jody Duncan likened to ‘wrestling a rhino to the ground.’ She was absolutely right but, I’ve got to tell you, once you’d put that big old beast to bed, there was no feeling quite like it.
Recently, while digging my old Cinefex files, I came up with the idea of extracting the raw text from some of my favourite articles and republishing it here on my website. My heartfelt thanks go to former Cinefex publisher Gregg Shay for granting me permission to do this. Here are my selections – just click the links to dive in!
- Spectre – “Explosive Cocktail” (2016, Cinefex 145)
- Deadpool – “Smart-Mouthed Glory” (2016, Cinefex 146)
- X-Men Apocalypse – “Apocalypse Rising” (2016, Cinefex 147)
- Star Trek Beyond – “Cosmic Deconstruction” (2016, Cinefex 148)
- Ben-Hur – “Quick the Eye, Steady the Hand” (2016, Cinefex 149)
- Arrival – “Persistence of Vision” (2016, Cinefex 150)
- Kong: Skull Island – “A Lonely God” (2017, Cinefex 152)
- Logan – “Blood Father” (2017, Cinefex 152)
- The Fate of the Furious – “Life in the Fast Lane” (2017, Cinefex 153)
- Alien: Covenant – “Dark Materials” (2017, Cinefex 153)
- Thor: Ragnarok – “Team Thor” (2017, Cinefex 156)
- The Shape of Water – “The Patron Saint of Otherness” (2017, Cinefex 156)
- Black Panther – “Afrofuture” (2018, Cinefex 158)
- Pacific Rim Uprising – “Heft and Jank” (2018, Cinefex 159)
- Solo: A Star Wars Story – “Kessel Runner” (2018, Cinefex 160)
- Welcome to Marwen – “Small Wonder” (2018, Cinefex 162)
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters – “Ancient Gods” (2019, Cinefex 165)
- Spider-Man: Far From Home – “Grand Illusions” (2019, Cinefex 166)
- Game of Thrones: Season 8 – “When Dragons Go To War” (2019, Cinefex 166)
- Terminator: Dark Fate – “No Fate But What We Make” (2019, Cinefex 168)
All the text extracts are copyright © Cinefex and are reprinted on this blog with permission.
Graham Edwards 