John Knoll of ILM recalled in an interview of reading issues of Cinefantastique with the articles covering science fiction, fantasy and horror movies during the height of Star Wars in the late 1970s. The magazine made its debut in 1967. There were other magazines like Starlog that focused on science fiction films and TV series.
There was one high-end magazine focused solely on the creation of special effects in films of all kinds, and that magazine was Cinefex. Launched in 1980 by Donald Shay, the magazine soon became the definitive magazine on the technical aspects of special effects used in films. Contributing writers with contacts in the film industry would interview special effects supervisors for the films, model makers, camera operators and oftentimes the personnel at special effects houses that helped the production company achieve what it could not do in-house.
Over the decades, Cinefex built a readership of not just film enthusiasts but of film industry professionals themselves. In fact, numerous special effects firms placed ads in the magazine to tout their own achievements in films released at the time of the issue’s publication. Knowing the details of how these effects were achieved did not spoil the enjoyment of watching the film, but instead, gave the reader an appreciation for these technical arts.
Cinefex tracked the evolution of special effects from legacy stop motion to the use of matte paintings and green screen and into the digital realm of CGI (Computer Generated Imaging). The magazine focused typically on four films per quarterly issue that were currently in theaters. Star Wars (1977) was released three years before and was not profiled, but the second film of the planned trilogy, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) was covered in Cinefex’s first issues. Future issues were planned around the release of the other films in the SW franchise.
Cinefex remained in publication for over forty years, with its last issue, No. 172, printed in 2021 when the magazine finally closed down. Many of the issues are available to read on the Internet Archive once you become a member: https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22CineFex%22&sort=date