Saturday 20 April 2013

EFFECTive - Conor Boyle


About time i had another one of these mini-features up here (if you're late to them, just type EFFECTive into the search bar top left to see who's stepped up to the plate already) of asking creative folk what is their favourite stand-out special effect sequence from any film or TV show. Could be their favourite from when they were little, the best ever they've seen, something that scared the crap out of them, doesn't matter - as long as its personal to them. Its back today because i've just received my commission from the insanely talented Conor Boyle, which you can see here on one of my other Blogs - http://someoneoldsomeonenew.blogspot.co.uk/ While emailing Conor about the piece, i asked him if he'd like to take part and he said yes. So, off you go Conor: "... I had a long think about your EFFECTive series - mostly long because I would've also chosen the transformation sequence in American Werewolf In London :) So I reckon the one other sequence that still has 'AWESOME' written all over it is Darth Maul lifting his cowl and breaking out the double-ended lightsaber in The Phantom Menace. Lightsabers have to be the best invention in scifi film history. Every grown man would pay happily for one, and if they deny it, they're lying. 30 something years after their introduction, boffins are still burning their houses down trying to invent real lightsabers. And then Darth Maul shows up and goes "Screw all you beardy hippies - check this out". Watch the clip - twenty armed guards, a queen and two Jedis stop in their tracks because there's some sort of ninja badass blocking the doorway. There's even a 'kick' in his arm as the second bit lights up - just a tiny detail that made it all the more awesome. Just great stuff. Yeah, the rest of the film is still dodgy. It still irks me that when Obi Wan vaults him, Darth Maul wouldn't have just sliced him into a small salad, mid-air, and Darth Vader pre-sunburn is still a bit of a weepy letdown in comparison, but there you go - you can't have everything.

1 comment:

Zzzzzz said...

I think that what we are supposed to interpolate is that DM was not expecting OWK to be armed; that DM would then be able to toy with the defenceless OWK before he kilt 'im.