Throughout the course of film history, artists have used matte painting, stop-motion animation, model photography, process cinematography, in-camera effects, travelling mattes, optical printing and physical and floor effects to entertain audiences. These are the special effects artists in this book.
The biographical entries provide career synopses and movie credits, spanning the early years of cinematography through the end of the mechanical age of filmmaking, marked by Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park and its combination of conventional effects and computer-generated images. An extensive filmography, numerous stills, a glossary, a bibliography and index are presented.

Rolf Giesen, a former visiting professor of animation at the Communication University of China and president of an animation museum in Changchun, China, has compiled a special effects collection for Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin and has co-written several animation features. He is an expert on early fantasy and science fiction films.

Rolf Giesen
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 264
Bibliographic Info: 98 photos, glossary, filmography, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2014 [2008]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-9551-1
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0819-8
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vi
Preface      1
Introduction      3
Glossary      11

THE BIOGRAPHIES      19
THE FILMOGRAPHY      179

Bibliography      249
Index      251

“there is so much information in this book that if you’re into the development and history of special effects films, you’ll positively swoon”—SF Crowsnest; “Giesen has worked with such noted special effects artists as Albert Whitlock and Roland Emmerich, and now offers this biographical dictionary of cinematic pioneers in this field before the advent of computer-generated images…this book features plenty of black-and-white photographs describing the creations of these masters”—Reference & Research Book News.