Fantastic Cinema in the Years Before CGI

Author: Pierre V. Comtois

ISBN 978-1-947532-25-0 (softcover)

268 pages

For nearly 100 years, spanning the greater part of cinema history, filmmakers had to make do without the aid of digitization: computer guided cameras, editing, enhanced coloring and tone, and especially for films of the fantastic, computer generated imagery or CGI. In a relatively short time, CGI special effects have come to completely dominate fantastic films eclipsing the “hands on” FX once created by experienced craftsmen. So ubiquitous has CGI become that the process threatens to overwhelm even storytelling to become an end in itself. Fantastic Cinema in the Years Before CGI is an attempt not only to celebrate those films mostly untainted by the process, but a reaffirmation of movie makers mostly of the previous century, who strived to make their films of the fantastic about something more than FX. Because special effects were often difficult and expensive to create, producers, directors, writers, and actors had work harder at making their stories more believable, their characters more interesting, and most importantly, their ideas more compelling. Elements increasingly lacking in CGI dominated films of the modern era. So dive into this compendium of pre-computer age films, the golden age of fantastic cinema, and find out what you've been missing!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pierre V. Comtois has been the editor and publisher of "Fungi, the Magazine of Fantasy and Weird Fiction" since 1984 and has had a number of books released by numerous publishers including "Goat Mother and Others" by Chaosium Fiction in 2015, A Well Ordered Universe by Desert Breeze Publishers in 2016, and "Marvel Comics in the 1980s: An Issue by Issue Field Guide to a Pop Culture Phenomenon" by Twomorrows Pubs in 2015. Forthcoming books include "Scheduled for Extinction," a science fiction novel from Desert Breeze and "Talismanic," a horror novel from Rogue Phoenix Press. Comtois has contributed fiction to many small press magazines over the years including various Chaosium Books anthologies. The author has also written a number of other books including novels such as "Strange Company" and "Sometimes a Warm Rain Falls;" non-fiction such as "Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor;" and short story collections such as "The Way the Future Was" and "The Portable Pierre V. Comtois." Comtois has also found the time to contribute non-fiction articles to such magazines as World War II, America's Civil War, Wild West, and Military History, many of which were collected in "Hazardous History." For more information visit www.pierrevcomtois.com