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We are an international network and community of scholars researching and teaching on the topic of visual effects. We embrace diverse, high quality scholarship (research and practice based) on any aspect of visual effects, including historical and theoretical approaches, aesthetic analyses, industry and software studies, film philosophy, reception studies, animation studies, and more. If you are producing high quality research (written, visual, programmed or otherwise) and would like to have a profile on this site feel free to contact us.
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​
We are an international network and community of scholars researching and teaching on the topic of visual effects. We embrace diverse, high quality scholarship (research and practice based) on any aspect of visual effects, including historical and theoretical approaches, aesthetic analyses, industry and software studies, film philosophy, reception studies, animation studies, and more. If you are producing high quality research (written, visual, programmed or otherwise) and would like to have a profile on this site feel free to contact us.
​
​
We are an international network and community of scholars researching and teaching on the topic of visual effects. We embrace diverse, high quality scholarship (research and practice based) on any aspect of visual effects, including historical and theoretical approaches, aesthetic analyses, industry and software studies, film philosophy, reception studies, animation studies, and more. If you are producing high quality research (written, visual, programmed or otherwise) and would like to have a profile on this site feel free to contact us.
​
​
We are an international network and community of scholars researching and teaching on the topic of visual effects. We embrace diverse, high quality scholarship (research and practice based) on any aspect of visual effects, including historical and theoretical approaches, aesthetic analyses, industry and software studies, film philosophy, reception studies, animation studies, and more. If you are producing high quality research (written, visual, programmed or otherwise) and would like to have a profile on this site feel free to contact us.
​
​
We are an international network and community of scholars researching and teaching on the topic of visual effects. We embrace diverse, high quality scholarship (research and practice based) on any aspect of visual effects, including historical and theoretical approaches, aesthetic analyses, industry and software studies, film philosophy, reception studies, animation studies, and more. If you are producing high quality research (written, visual, programmed or otherwise) and would like to have a profile on this site feel free to contact us.
​
​
We are an international network and community of scholars researching and teaching on the topic of visual effects. We embrace diverse, high quality scholarship (research and practice based) on any aspect of visual effects, including historical and theoretical approaches, aesthetic analyses, industry and software studies, film philosophy, reception studies, animation studies, and more. If you are producing high quality research (written, visual, programmed or otherwise) and would like to have a profile on this site feel free to contact us.
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Julie Turnock
About
Julie Turnock is Assistant Professor of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign, in the College of Media. She is the author of Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Technology and the Emergence of 1970s Blockbuster Aesthetics (Columbia University Press, 2015), and has published on special effects of the studio era, the 1970s, and recent digital cinema in Cinema Journal, Film History, Film Criticism, and New Review of Film and Television Studies. She his working on a new book titled, The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism (University of Texas Press, forthcoming).
Areas of Focus
I write about the history of effects from the silent era to the present, and have a particular focus on the technological aesthetics of realism in effects work.
Relevant Publications
The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light & Magic and the Rendering of Realism (in press)
Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Technology, and The Emergence of 1970s Blockbuster Aesthetics
Patient Research on the Slapstick Lots: From Trick Men to Special Effects Artists in Silent
Hollywood
The True Stars of Star Wars?’: Experimental Filmmakers the in 1970s and 1980s Special
Effects Industry
Removing the Pane of Glass: The Hobbit, 3D High Frame Rate Filmmaking, and the Rhetoric of
Cinematic Realism
The ILM Version: Recent Digital Effects and the Aesthetics of 1970s Cinematography
The Screen on the Set: The Problem of Classical Studio Rear Projection
Before Industrial Light and Magic: The Independent Hollywood Special Effects Business, 1968-1975
Gravity and the ‘Lighting Designer’ Controversy: Cinematographers, Special Visual
Effects Artists and the Rhetoric of Digital Convergence
The Auteurist Special Effects Film: Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and the ‘Single-
Generation Look
Special Effects: Auteur Renaissance, 1968-1980
Special Effects: Post-War Hollywood, 1947-1967
Designed for Everyone Who Looks Forward to Tomorrow!: Star Wars, Close Encounters of the
Third Kind and The 1970s Expanded Blockbuster
Not Just a Day Job: Experimental Filmmakers and the Special Effects Industry in the 1970s and
1980s
From Star Wars to Avatar: Contemporary Special Effects, Industrial Light and Magic, and the Legacy of the 1970s
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