Paul Franklin
@paul_franklin_
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filmmaker, visual effects designer, 2xOscar winner, , The Escape (banner image)
Joined November 2014
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This is also how we made Tom Hardy grow to become Venom :-)
The cheapest special effect in the episode was a moment where the baddies appear to be getting taller. The technique just involved... standing on a box. No one believed it’d work until we did this test
#DoctorWho
10/18
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The only thing more exciting than the scene in the film was watching this thing in action from the stage floor - 100 feet long, could run at up to 10rpm (though it’s closer to 5 rpm in the movie as it got a bit dangerous after that).
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Imagine that something you make with your hands will be marvelled at by someone in the year 37000. They might look at it and wonder about who you were, the life you lived, what you made you laugh, what made you cry.
This beautiful mini mammoth survived the last ice age. Just 3.7 cm long, It was crafted in woolly mammoth ivory with simple flint tools over 35,000 years ago in southern Germany
#IceAgeArt
Read about its discovery
Photograph by Hilde Jensen
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This is genius.
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Nice! Also illustrates part of a Law of Moviemaking - if you want the sensation of speed, shoot your car chase wideangle for shots looking back and forwards, long lens for shots looking across and out of the window
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This clip shows something that is easily missed by Vfx - unless it is front lit, falling snow only appears white against a background darker than it is. In almost every daylight situation snow falls from an overcast flat-lit sky, which will always appear brighter than the flakes.
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You can get some extra height by having the camera operator counter the move by dropping the camera at the same time - I think we did this with the Movi rig.
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The Lovell Telescope on A glorious June morning in infrared, photograph by Richard Tucker
@Tim_O_Brien
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NeRFs are going to democratise visual effects and blow open the doors of possibility for filmmakers,
@SirWrender
and the
@CorridorDigital
crew show you how:
Why THIS is the Future of Imagery (and Nobody Knows it Yet) via
@YouTube
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@HelenJMacdonald
There’s a sequel: years later, driving at night, I saw something in the road. “Just a carpet bird” I thought. But then I swerved, stopped & got out to look: it was a tiny, unconscious kitten, clearly thrown from a car. I picked him up, took him home and he lived 15 years with us.
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So this was unexpected - a full size steel replica of Kylo Ren’s TIE fighter in the sculpture garden of Burleigh House Lincolnshire.
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We were going to use a special fx rig to lift Tom, but it was -6c that night so we kept it simple to get it over with as fast as we could, and it looks better for it!
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I can hear the notes right now: "Shouldn't there be more smoke? Doesn't look like the volcano I saw on the Discovery Channel. The lightning is a bit much don't you think? Why is it so symmetrical?The lava appears on the sides before it falls out of the air - looks fake!"
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I should point out that the truck flip is not VFX, that’s the amazing work of Chris Corbould’s SFX team. I saw it happen for real and I still don’t quite believe it.
Revisit our work on Christopher Nolan's acclaimed
#TheDarkKnight
trilogy. Released fourteen years ago this week,
#TheDarkKnight
was our first ever
#Oscar
-nominated film — and our second collab with Nolan following
#BatmanBegins
.
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Aside from a handful of “in house” freelancers there are no “Marvel vfx artists”, we all work for third party vendors.
Marvel VFX artists when they heard that two avengers projects are coming out in the same year
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My well-read Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, purchased with pocket money from the news agent outside my school in 1979. Happy birthday Douglas Adams, who would have been 70 today.
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As well as being a brilliant scientist Stephen Hawking was a passionate campaigner for the NHS
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VFX trivia time - the image of Saturn in the BG of this shot was created in post production, but the reflection in Cooper's visor is in-camera, showing the big projection of the planet that we had in the back of the set.
INTERSTELLAR (2014)
Cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Explore more shots in our database:
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The greatest spaceship in the history of TV sci fi, perhaps any kind of filmed SF - I believe
@ProfBrianCox
is in agreement!
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In celebration of today’s black hole news, here’s how we made our black hole for Interstellar - science and art!
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@DChilv
Yes, I hadn’t thought of that. Donna is of course right - where does all the mass come from?
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Two element in-camera composite with hold-out matte. 113 years old.
The Eclipse, or the Courtship of the Sun and Moon (1907)
Directed by Georges Méliès
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This doesn't work in the UK as we don't have storm drains, instead we have a combined sewerage system which means that Pennywise is up to his neck in poo. He'd have to work pretty hard to get someone to climb down in there with him - a balloon isn't going to do it. An Xbox maybe.
What would Pennywise have to say to get someone in a sewer? Not much, as it turns out.
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Apollo Remastered contains photos derived from the grainy 16mm “moon home movies” taken by the astronauts, expertly stacked and enhanced by
@AndySaunders_1
to reveal astonishing detail. Here you can see Neil Armstrong’s face as he steps out onto the lunar surface. Amazing!
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Still the most outlandish thing I've ever worked on for a movie - how we made the Tesseract for Interstellar.
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Rooting around in my parents’ attic I have found the mother lode!
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This is the stair well that Batman drops down through in Batman Begins when the SWAT team tries to take him down. Didn't look quite like this when we were shooting there in 2004!
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It's not just the timing that makes this shot legendary, it's also James Burke's delivery - unhurried, matter-of-fact, straight to the viewer. You don't know what's going to happen until the rocket ignites.
Very probably the greatest piece of timing in Television history as JAMES BURKE introduces with glorious precision the launching of Voyager 2,
August 20, 1977.
Excellent! Memories….
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When a showrunner or filmmaker takes time out of their day to express their appreciation of the work of the VFX team it really is appreciated. Here's the awesome Craig Mazin showing the
@DNEG
Last of Us team some love.
We're so humbled by the kind words
#TheLastofUs
showrunner Craig Mazin (
@clmazin
) recently shared about our
#DNEG
team's work on
@HBO
's newest hit series. ❤️ Find out more about our
#VFX
on
@thelastofushbo
here:
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In this week of the
#Apollo50
anniversary I thought I’d tell the story of how a 1960s Saturn V Moon rocket found its way into Interstellar, an SF movie notionally set at the end of the 21st century
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30 billion solar masses... I know it's fictional, but the one we simulated for Interstellar was a mere 200 million solar masses, and even that would have an event horizon that would sit on the orbit of the Earth around the sun, with a circumference of approx 1 billion km!
UK astronomers have discovered an ultramassive black hole around 30 billion times the mass of the Sun. The research, supported by the Royal Society, has identified the cosmic colossus as one of the biggest black holes ever detected:
#Astronomy
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The absolute worst part of VFX? Anything to do with spreadsheets.
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Today is the 20th anniversary of me starting with what became
@dneg
VFX. Back then it was just a handful of us in Soho, London, now it’s over 3000 people across three continents. I am celebrating with a glass of wine in the lounge before flying to LAX
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How can this be seen as anything other than a shameful retreat from the modern world?
Today, EMA staff lowered the 28 EU flags and symbolically said goodbye to their London offices. Guido Rasi expressed his thanks to the UK for its contribution to the work of the Agency and for having been a gracious host of EMA since 1995.
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Tonight I am presenting a Stephen Hawking medal to Todd Miller, director of Apollo 11 in front of an audience that contains the actual crew of Apollo 11.
@elonmusk
is skyping in from Kanaveral where Falcon Heavy is about to launch - I have died and gone to space geek heaven.
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@xgaizkax
@lostinhist0ry
That guy will likely be part of the Special Effects crew - what we sometimes refer to as a “mandraulic rig”
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Check out this breakdown of
@dneg
's VFX work for First Man - lots of in-camera work, miniatures, practical builds and seamless digital work in the recreation of the 60s space programme
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The
@sciencemuseum
has my favourite IMAX theatre anywhere (and I've been in a few over the years) - this is a rare opportunity to see INTERSTELLAR in full 70mm IMAX, the format we made the film for
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@HelenJMacdonald
Many years ago my mum was driving when my little brother cried out: he had seen a bird flopping around with a broken wing. We pulled over and walked all the way back through heavy oncoming traffic to find... a rolled over strip of carpet. The carpet bird is a legend to this day.
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Surely all iPhones and iPads already have a "theatre mode" - it's called "off"
Turn it on! Future iPhones and iPads to have 'theatre mode' for use in cinemas
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How did we end up in a situation where people who aren’t UK citizens, who aren’t allowed to participate in a UK general election, get to have a vote - an actual vote, not just some vaguely defined influence - in deciding the UK’s next Prime Minister? We’ve collectively gone nuts.
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Lots of films influenced Inception, the key influence on the bridge scene is Cocteau’s Orphee. The shattering mirror resembles Paprika, but I’d not even heard of the film when we designed that shot and still haven’t seen it.There’s only so many ways you can get rid of a mirror…
INCEPTION (2010)
Cinematography by Wally Pfister
Directed by Christopher Nolan
How the movie relates to Paprika:
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Stunt people have a way of moving that verges on a form of dance - kinetic full-body art that’s amazingly expressive. Plus, I have never met a stunt crew that I didn’t like. This is great
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@ManMadeMoon
My brief encounter with John Lithgow left me with the impression that he really enjoys his work
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@ludoiochem
I think we actually delivered it for the trailer at the end of 2009 - I remember reviewing the near-final version off my laptop in the lunch room up on the mountain in Canada
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going to steal this and put it in a movie
NASA's Parker Solar Probe plunged deep into the Sun's corona & passed directly through streamers of solar plasma. The view out the window was...staggering.
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25 years ago this week I was to be found standing in Soho Square in search of a decent phone signal, trying to find out where the newborn
@dneg
’s first delivery of SGI workstations had gotten to.
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we revisited this technique for the shots of the sleepers rising off and then slamming into the elevator floor in Inception - but this is so much more ambitious!
THE OMEN (1976) Love this in-camera shot.
Richard Donner put the wood floor on the wall
taped the goldfish and props to the wall and
put Lee Remick on a dolly. They pushed her
toward the wall and at the last minute spun
the dolly so she could make contact.
#filmmaking
#VFX
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Ten years since the Dark Knight - strong memory of watching IMAX dailies at Navy Pier (Joker firing the RPG) and thinking “this is going to be a bit different“
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As anyone who lives in SE London knows, don't mess with Millwall
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Once upon a time SGI ruled VFX. Only remnant of my $100K workstation is this "free" screwdriver I found in a drawer.
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I do love
@TheMarySue
but, c'mon, CGI that makes "anything possible" is neither "cheap" nor is it "fast"
#MadMaxFuryRoad
was a love letter to practical effects, as this CGI-free video of footage from the movie proves:
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@rincon_p
@RogerHighfield
@sciencemuseum
And here he is in front of the prototype LK3 Lunar Lander. "That's my spaceship!" he announced to me and
@RogerHighfield
, gesturing at the LK3 as he entered the gallery - what a moment!
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@mccrabb_will
The biggest single challenge was figuring out the mechanism of the fold. Chris wanted something that felt like it might actually be happening and not look like “Harry Potter magic” (the show I’d just worked on), something that embodied Ariadne’s architectural background.
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Another extremely nickable bit of actual space footage that looks crazier than anything in a sci-fi movie
This is what the surface of a comet looks like.
This animation comprises a set of images of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, acquired by the
@ESA_Rosetta
spacecraft and processed by
@landru79
.
The things that seems to be falling in the background are the stars in space.
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Eagle Transporter. Yes, I know it’s not in Star Wars.
X-Wings and and A-Wings and Cloud Cars oh my! Not that we're overexcited about The Rise of Skywalker or anything, but what's the coolest ship in the known galaxy?
#TheRiseOfSkywalker
#starwars
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.
@70sscifiart
first proper SF I ever read, pulled in by the great Chris Foss cover (nothing to do with the text)
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Makeup is all vfx here. I’d scratched up my arm on the roses whilst gardening - served as good reference for this shot (scratches weren’t quite as nasty as this).
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (2007)
Cinematography by Sławomir Idziak
Directed by David Yates
Find more gorgeous shots from the 'Harry Potter' franchise here:
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Nice featurette about how we used models and miniatures in INTERSTELLAR.
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John Mollo, the great costume designer, has died. Star Wars, Alien - all sci-fi cinema since then owes him an immense debt.
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BBC Sounds has an excellent (seemingly) unabridged reading of The War of the Worlds - it’s so long since I read it that I’d forgotten how detailed and amazingly descriptive it is.
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The 70mm prints of Interstellar was made in the lab by optically enlarging the 35mm sections and optically reducing the IMAX sequences onto 70mm film, NOT a digital transfer :-)
Christopher Nolan's monumental journey into space, INTERSTELLAR (2014), is now showing from a breathtaking 70mm print.
Catch one of the four performances, showing until the 19th of June. Tickets available here:
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Short but good obit about Colin Cantwell, designer of the X-Wing for Star Wars, and much more. The story about the Death Star trench is perfect - exactly the kind of thing which happens as you're figuring things out.
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As a filmmaker, Spielberg is kind of astonishing on every level
Steven Spielberg is a master of the cinematic set-piece. These dozen sequences are the essence of his craft.
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Carl Sagan would have been 81 today. Here's his wonderful essay on our "Pale Blue Dot"
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Yes, of course - the computers did it themselves...
Hollywood's hottest new talent has superhuman strength, doesn't take breaks or require hair and makeup services. He also doesn't need a trailer, since he lives on a hard drive. This is the most ambitious computer-generated human ever made for a movie.
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I've just discovered that The Thief of Bagdad (1940), one of my favourite films, was edited by Charles Chrichton who, along with The Lavender Hill Mob and A Fish Called Wanda, also directed my favourite episode of Space 1999, Dragon's Domain. How did I not know this before?!
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A survey all Doctor Who viewers in our house (ages 8, 11, 13 & 50,boys & girls) produced unanimous support for
@sueperkins
as the new Doctor
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@ProfBrianCox
I graduated in 89, just as the Cold War was ending. Combined with the advent of the single market it felt a glorious sunrise was shining down on us all. Brexit feels like being pressganged aboard a big black ship leaving the shores of reason to sail off into a dark night-lit sea.
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One day Greg Jein brought a genuine 2001:A Space Odyssey space helmet into the Interstellar production office. We all had a go with it.
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This is great - the first matte painting in the original Star Wars (though if the great Harrison Ellenshaw calls it "A New Hope" I guess I will have to start doing so too)
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Lit and rendered by Jesper Kjosrud, composited by Rudi Holzapfel, animated by me, spring 1999.
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Matt Green is on fire
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You will also find that
@RealMattLucas
is very funny and fundamentally life-affirming, which is what I, for one, need right now.
I urge you to Follow and support
@RealMattLucas
. He is setting the Gold Standard for Those In The Public Eye right now. Thank you, Matty Lucas.
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Mix and titles complete, my first film THE ESCAPE is done. Massive thanks to
@Lipsynctweets
@MilkVFX
@dneg
&
@Technicolor
for everything!
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One of the nicest things to come out of our work on Interstellar was when Stephen Hawking used the black hole we made to illustrate part of his Reith Lecture at the
@Ri_Science
Royal Institution. Photograph from
@RogerHighfield
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Big congrats to my friend and
@dneg
colleague Paul Lambert for his BAFTA win tonight!
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Not quite correct: we always had two goes at the Fortress Hospital destruction budgeted and used bits of both takes. On the first the tower didn’t collapse, on the second we had too much black smoke. The teenagers in the condo next door watched with cocktails. Also 45’ not 20’ 🙂
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Lovely to introduce Interstellar at the
@sciencemuseum
IMAX cinema tonight with the awesome
@SamiraAhmedUK
. What a wonderful venue to see the film in all its 70mm glory!
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Came across these today. Shooting the miniatures for the interior of Bane's Lair in TDKR at
@NewDealStudios
back in 2012
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Ignore the haters, The Rise of Skywalker is brilliant fun - thoroughly satisfying conclusion to the saga that wraps up everything wonderfully. And it looks amazing throughout, every bit of it.
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It's true -
@Cmdr_Hadfield
's Space Oddity video was a key reference for us when we were designing Interstellar. When the video was released I ran into Chris Nolan's office with my lap top and told him "you have to watch this!"
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@mccrabb_will
@ali5on_w
@rendermaniac
@cinefexclassic
Making Inception was a lot of fun - an experimental art house film hiding inside a massive Hollywood action movie that allowed me to mine the depths of my art school pretentiousness :-)
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Doug Trumbull transcended the technical constraints of visual effects, elevating it to the level of art.
A giant - one of the cinema’s greatest artists. A true visionary.
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Steadily progressing thru 70s, 80s and 90s classic action movies with my kids. We've reached Terminator 2, eldest son (13) complaining loudly it's obvious what the story is. And then he's genuinely astonished at the outcome of the first encounter of Arnold and Robert Patrick
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This is an excellent insight into how filmmakers who really engage in the VFX process can produce outstanding results. Love this.
today's lesson: how to take on the demogorgon by the duffer brothers
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If you download the
@2000AD
app you get a download of vol 1 of The Ballad of Halo Jones for free - I havent read it for a while and, oh my goodness, it really is wonderful in every way.
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Farewell to the British Museum. Wonderful evening at the sleepover. Egypt's "Sunken Cities" exhibition is fabulous!
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