Special Effects in Film and Television

Unlike a recent Barney volume flung across the room by disgusted EW critics—it sang at us—this sensible, crisply photographed production grasps that the role of young people’s lit is to explain special F/X, not spew them. Child or no, one could spend many a happy moment suspended in its plainspoken, slightly Richard Scarryesque pages, learning how a "faceful of custard" transforms an average-looking dude into a "menacing intergallactic warrior," examining rainstorm simulations, opening the stuntperson’s bag of tricks, or just considering a cross section of a Steadicam (science fiction, it turns out, isn’t everything in this busy, busy world). Coool.

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