Cinefex Cinefex is a magazine that , from the early 1990s onward , has been published bimonthly . Each issue specifically focuses in - depth on the technical aspects of the , or rather the ( VFX ) , used in motion picture productions or , less frequently , in a particular television production which has been groundbreaking in this regard . Launched in under stewardship of Don Shay , it has become the foremost periodical magazine on " special effects " , as it was known at the time , in the business , and is ( as of ) still being published . Its very first issue was equally dedicated to and the movie . was noteworthy for becoming one of the few television productions to be covered in detail in magazine issue 37 , of . The launch of was covered in , albeit far less in - depth than was customary for movie feature productions – or " The Next Generation " for that matter – , with two short two - page articles , in essence amounting to no more than glorified editorials , on the effects in . Editorial staff has , at some points in time , included Mark Cotta Vaz and David C . Fein . Though there is a certain overlap in the subject matter with the contemporary magazines " American Cinematographer " and " Cinefantastique " , " Cinefex " s focus lies on the various aspects of creating of what is presently called " visual effects " , whereas " American Cinematographer " is focused on the actual filming techniques and " Cinefantastique " , together with another contemporary publication , " " , covered a lesser in - depth but wider range of behind - the - scenes aspects . As such , the magazines can be considered complimentary . A trademark feature of the magazine has traditionally been the absence of text imprints on its cover , save for the title and price information in small print . However , in the late 1980s , barcodes were introduced in the magazine world and they started to become prominently featured on the front cover , somewhat " defacing " the cover art and aggravated for " Cinefex " two decades later when more prominent text imprints , pertaining to a magazine issue´s contents , were also added . Yet , as a courtesy to subscribers / collectors , " Cinefex " continued the old , " clean " format for its first print run , while using the new , " defacing " format for reprints and retail dissemination . Having become a leading publication on the subject matter of visual effects , the magazine has seen several international variants in translation , released by local publishers ; in Japan , the magazine has had by far the longest run , and was intermittently published from mid - 1983 onward by several publishers , though the contents were not in sync with their American counterparts at first . The first publication run lasted for only twelve issues and ended in . The magazine was relaunched in , with a restarted numbering as reference book s ( being endowed with ISBN - numbers ) in a vertically orientated format , as opposed to the standard American lying format . In 2003 , Cinefex LLC . pulled the license of the relaunch publisher Toys Press Inc . for copyright violations , after it was discovered that they had released unsanctioned side publications based on licensed " Cinefex " copy , among others a 1997 " Star Wars " book . The first relaunch run had lasted for thirty - nine issues . From onward , the magazine was relaunched , synchronized for the American version contents with a one issue lag , for a second time by Born Digital , Inc . , with again a restarted numbering in the format its immediate predecessor had employed , at first adopting their " clean " cover approach before abandoning the format themselves in the early 2010s . Less successful and far shorter - lived efforts were undertaken in France ( five issues plus one single issue , stemming from a failed relaunch attempt ) , Italy ( seven edited issues , renamed " CineVfx " for the last three issues ) and Russia ( which lasted somewhat longer , as at least twenty - nine issues were known to exist by ) . As if to underscore the growing importance that Chinese digital effects companies play in the motion picture industry , publisher Don Shay launched a Chinese - language version of the magazine on , in a ceremony at the Chinese Dexter Studios , Beijing . Its publishing company had released the first , vertically orientated issue four days previously , synchronized with issue 142 of the American source publication . Noteworthy is that has not received any coverage in " Cinefex " . On the other hand , while its contemporaries shied away from it due to its bad reception at the time , " Cinefex " became the only specialized magazine to report in detail on the VFX of . Notable issues . Of particular relevance to " Star Trek " are the following issues :