ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

__________


The informative article from Starlog article from issue #8 is mostly about Ray Harryhausen and other animators from the 40s through the 60s, so I've placed it here in the 1950 - 1969 movie forum.

Many of the pictures are quite good, so I was careful to enhance them as much as possible.

I discovered a strange thing about this issue.

Page 52 is missing from the scans — and it might actually be a flaw in the magazine itself! I've checked carefully, and the Archive.org site displays the first two pages of the article, page 50 and 51, but when you turn the page, the next two pages are 53 and 54!

Furthermore, a sentence at the bottom of page 51 is not continued on the next page. That means that this isn't just a mis-numbering of the pages, an entire page of the articles was omitted!

The slightly dark areas on the inner edges of each page (caused by the scanner) along the magazine's spine indicates that pages 53 and 54 actually are facing pages. But they shouldn't be, because 52 and 53 should be the two facing pages at this point!

Strange as it sounds, it would seem that the magazine was printed incorrectly, leaving out page 52, thereby making pages 53 and 54 the third and fourth pages of the article.

I checked carefully, and from the beginning of the magazine until page 52 is omitted, the pages all have "even numbers" on the left, "odd numbers" on the right. (The first and second pages of this article are 50 and 51).

But for the rest of the issue, the odd number pages are on the left, even numbers on the right.

So, Starlog goofed.

They actually left out a complete page of text, which would have been page 52, and they put the magazine together with the individual pages numbered correctly as if page 52 were there.

Strange, eh? Oh, well . . .

https://archive.org/stream/starlog_magazine-008/008#page/n49/mode/2up

Click on each page here to see a large, easy-to-read version you can zoom in on. Click on the large version again, and then zoom in as close as you want!





















_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

________________________________

When I started reading this article I realized that the opening remarks about spiritualist and psychic mediums were a prelude to a description of a joke Sir Arthur Conan Doyle played at meeting of famous magicians, including Harry Houdini, who staunchly criticized Doyle’s belief in spiritualism.

Dolye showed the assembled group of magicians a test reel of animation scenes created for The Lost World and challenged them to explain how such images from the past had been made.

They were amazed!

The article begins to describe the arduous process needed to plan and execute an animation sequence, but the unfortunate omission of an entire page of text (page 52, as desribed above) means the description jumps from the basic explanation of the stop motion process to a discussion of preproduction artwork. I wish there was some way to retrieve that page of text, but I’m afraid it’s lost. (I’ll bet author David Hutchinson was pissed!)

The detailed descriptions of rear screen projection being used to combine live action with animation on tabletops could have used a few diagrams. I’m pretty familiar with those techniques, but anyone less familiar would find the descriptions a bit confusing.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)