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The Magic Portal
''The Magic Portal'' is a 1989 live-action/stop motion animated sci-fi adventure short film written and directed by Lindsay Fleay. Filmed with the Lego line of construction toys, the film is considered to be a significant example of early brickfilms. The film tells the story of an astronaut that finds a mysterious portal that transports him and his crew to strange and wondrous worlds. Fleay appears in a live-action role. Initially met with threats of legal action by Lego, the film was referenced in the 2014 film ''The Lego Movie''. History The film was produced in Perth, Australia from 1985 to 1989. The film was shot on a Bolex 16mm camera. Fleay, who wrote, directed, produced and narrated the film, was able to secure partial financing from the Australian Film Commission, allowing for higher production values than typically seen in brickfilms. He made his own Lego faces with ink, and used several fans to prevent the plastic from overheating under the photographic lights. Fle ...
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Lego
Lego ( , ; stylized as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of variously colored interlocking plastic bricks accompanying an array of gears, figurines called minifigures, and various other parts. Lego pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways to construct objects, including vehicles, buildings, and working robots. Anything constructed can be taken apart again, and the pieces reused to make new things. The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949. Movies, games, competitions and eight Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand. , 600 billion Lego parts had been produced. History The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called ...
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Australian Film Commission
The Australian Film Commission (AFC) was an Australian government agency was founded in 1975 with a mandate to promote the creation and distribution of films in Australia as well as to preserve the country's film history. It also had a production arm responsible for production and commissioning of films for the government. It was superseded by Screen Australia from 1 July 2008. History The Australian Film Commission was established by the Whitlam government on 7 July 1975 as the successor to the Australian Film Development Corporation set up by the Gorton government. In the first year of its existence, its budget was $6.5 million.David Stratton, ''The Last New Wave: The Australian Film Revival'', Angus & Robertson, 1980 p16 The AFC acted as a funding and development agency for the Australian film industry. With the ''Australian Film Commission Amendment Acts'' passed in 1980 and 2003, the AFC shifted focus onto funding and promoting Australian film both locally, and in intern ...
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Stop-motion Animated Short Films
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames is played back. Any kind of object can thus be animated, but puppets with movable joints (puppet animation) or plasticine figures (''clay animation'' or claymation) are most commonly used. Puppets, models or clay figures built around an armature are used in model animation. Stop motion with live actors is often referred to as pixilation. Stop motion of flat materials such as paper, fabrics or photographs is usually called cutout animation. Terminology The term "stop motion", relating to the animation technique, is often spelled with a hyphen as "stop-motion". Both orthographical variants, with and without the hyphen, are correct, but the hyphenated one has a second meaning that is unrelated to animation or cinema: "a device for automatical ...
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Australian Science Fiction Films
Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Australians, indigenous peoples of Australia as identified and defined within Australian law * Australia (continent) ** Indigenous Australians * Australian English, the dialect of the English language spoken in Australia * Australian Aboriginal languages * ''The Australian'', a newspaper * Australiana, things of Australian origins Other uses * Australian (horse), a racehorse * Australian, British Columbia, an unincorporated community in Canada See also * The Australian (other) * Australia (other) Australia is a country in the Southern Hemisphere. Australia may also refer to: Places * Name of Australia relates the history of the term, as applied to various places. Oceania *Australia (continent), or Sahul, the landmasses ...
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Lego Films
This article lists all known films and series based on Lego construction toys, usually co-produced by The Lego Group. History Brickfilms (films using Lego) have existed since the 1970s. In 2003, Lego officially made its first partnership to make films based on its toy property. They chose Bionicle as the property and they made a deal with Miramax to make a trilogy of Bionicle films. After the trilogy ended, a new trilogy based on Bionicle was planned with Universal after the Miramax film contract ended and the first film in the new trilogy would be titled '' Bionicle: The Legend Reborn''. But plans broke down between Lego and Universal, resulting in the fifth film being cancelled. However, a film was later released, entitled '' Lego: The Adventures of Clutch Powers''. The film received positive reviews from fans and critics and, after the DVD release, a sequel was set to star Clutch as the hero again. A short film based on Clutch Powers was later released but a full sequel never ...
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Australian Animated Short Films
Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Australians, indigenous peoples of Australia as identified and defined within Australian law * Australia (continent) ** Indigenous Australians * Australian English, the dialect of the English language spoken in Australia * Australian Aboriginal languages * ''The Australian'', a newspaper * Australiana, things of Australian origins Other uses * Australian (horse), a racehorse * Australian, British Columbia, an unincorporated community in Canada See also * The Australian (other) * Australia (other) * * * Austrian (other) Austrian may refer to: * Austrians, someone from Austria or of Austrian descent ** Someone who is considered an Austrian citizen, see Austrian nationality law * Austrian German dialect * Someth ...
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Plasticine
Plasticine is a putty-like modelling material made from calcium salts, petroleum jelly and aliphatic acids. Though originally a brand name for the British version of the product, it is now applied generically in English as a product category to other formulations. Plasticine is used for children's play and as a modelling medium for more formal or permanent structures. Because of its non-drying property, it is a material commonly chosen for stop-motion animation, including several Oscar-winning films by Nick Park. History Franz Kolb, owner of a pharmacy in Munich, Germany, invented an oil-based modelling clay in 1880. At the time, the city was a centre for the arts, and among Kolb's circle of friends were sculptors. They complained about how with the clay they were using for modelling, their sculptures would dry too fast and that — particularly in winter —, it was too difficult to work with. In order to commercialize his invention, he presented it to the Faber-Castel ...
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Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular culture. The magazine debuted on February 16, 1990, in New York City. Different from celebrity-focused publications such as ''Us Weekly'', ''People'' (a sister magazine to ''EW''), and ''In Touch Weekly'', ''EW'' primarily concentrates on entertainment media news and critical reviews; unlike ''Variety'' and ''The Hollywood Reporter'', which were primarily established as trade magazines aimed at industry insiders, ''EW'' targets a more general audience. History Formed as a sister magazine to ''People'', the first issue of ''Entertainment Weekly'' was published on February 16, 1990. Created by Jeff Jarvis and founded by Michael Klingensmith, who served as publisher until October 1996, the magazine's original television advertising soliciting ...
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Yale University Press
Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale University Press publishes approximately 300 new hardcover and 150 new paperback books annually and has a backlist of about 5,000 books in print. Its books have won five National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle Awards and eight Pulitzer Prizes. The press maintains offices in New Haven, Connecticut and London, England. Yale is the only American university press with a full-scale publishing operation in Europe. It was a co-founder of the distributor TriLiteral LLC with MIT Press and Harvard University Press. TriLiteral was sold to LSC Communications in 2018. Series and publishing programs Yale Series of Younger Poets Since its inception in 1919, the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition has published the first collection of ...
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Vox (website)
''Vox'' () is an American news and opinion website owned by Vox Media. The website was founded in April 2014 by Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Melissa Bell, and is noted for its concept of explanatory journalism. Vox's media presence also includes a YouTube channel, several podcasts, and a show presented on Netflix. ''Vox'' has been described as left-of-center and progressive. History Prior to founding ''Vox'', Ezra Klein worked for ''The Washington Post'' as the head of Wonkblog, a public policy blog. When Klein attempted to launch a new site using funding from the newspaper's editors, his proposal was turned down and Klein subsequently left ''The Washington Post'' for a position with Vox Media, another communications company, in January 2014. ''The New York Times'' David Carr associated Klein's exit for ''Vox'' with other "big-name journalists" leaving newspapers for digital start-ups, such as Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher (of '' Recode'', which was later acquired ...
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Bolex
Bolex International S. A. is a Swiss manufacturer of motion picture cameras based in Yverdon located in Canton of Vaud. The most notable products of which are in the 16 mm and Super 16 mm formats. Originally Bol, the company was founded by Charles Haccius and Jacques Bogopolsky (a.k.a. Bolsey or Boolsky) in 1925. Bolex is derived from Bogopolsky′s name. In 1923 he presented the Cinégraphe Bol at the Geneva fair, a reversible apparatus for taking, printing, and projecting pictures on 35 mm. film. He later designed a camera for Alpa of Ballaigues in the late 1930s. Paillard-Bolex cameras were much used by adventurers, artists, as well as nature films, documentaries, and are still favoured by many animators. Over the years, notable Bolex users and owners include: Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Andy Warhol, Peter Jackson, Jonas Mekas, Jean-Luc Godard, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, James Dean, David Lynch, Marilyn Monroe, Edmund Hillary, and Mahatma Gandhi While ...
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Live-action Animated Film
A live-action animated film is a film that combines live action filmmaking with animation. Films that are both live-action and computer-animated tend to have fictional characters or figures represented and characterized by cast members through motion capture and then animated and modeled by animators. Films that are live action and traditionally animated use hand-drawn, computer-generated imagery (CGI) or stop motion animation. History Origins of combining live-action and animation During the silent film era in 1920s and 1930s, the popular animated cartoons of Max Fleischer included a series in which his cartoon character, Koko the Clown, interacted with the live world; for example, having a boxing match with a live kitten. In a variation from this and inspired by Fleischer, Walt Disney's first directorial efforts, years before Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was born in 1927 and Mickey Mouse in 1928, were the live-action animated ''Alice Comedies'' cartoons, in which a young live-act ...
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