Post by jurassicparker on Jun 20, 2020 1:12:42 GMT
So this is a long time coming, as I've remembered bits an pieces of an animation from my childhood for years, but I have no idea what it is or what it is from. Recently, places like this have helped find a lot of obscure pieces of unidentified media, and I'd love it if someone here happened to see or remember this. I'm not holding out too much hope, but worth a good ole college try, right?
A bit of background first. I have lived in Florida, USA (specifically Jacksonville) for most of my life, so that's definitely where I saw this. I lived in Tennessee for a short time in 1993 with my parents, but after the '93 superstorm we moved back to Jacksonville in 1994. I'm certain I saw this piece of animation between 1994-1997, as I remember seeing it on an old dial TV my parents had at the time. That would have made me between 5-8 years old. We didn't grow up with cable, so I'm fairly certain I saw this while cycling through broadcast channels trying to find something to watch. I sadly don't know which public channel it was on. I caught this piece of animation which scared me a lot as a kid. I don't remember all the details very well, but I'm going to do my best. This was about 25 years ago, so the details could be very wrong. But here goes.
The short, to my recollection, was a mixture of live-action and animation techniques I'm not sure about. But I do remember that where I caught it from (since i was channel surfing and I don't have any context for what came before or after), there was a large room, either a child's bedroom or maybe a storeroom filled with playthings (rocking horse, etc.). In the back of the room is a chest, like a magic box magicians use. I remember this part being live action, but I could be wrong. The camera zooms in on the box, which is sitting against a wooden wall. Then, I remember a voiceover, but i can't recall anything said. There are no human actors in this short...whatever it is. but after the voiceover, a pair of disembodied hands wearing magician's gloves comes into frame from off to the side. I remember this effect as being the most jarring- i had never seen disembodied body parts acting on their own accord before. i also didn't understand green-screen. I'm fairly certain that's how the effect was done, as I remember them being actual hands without a body. the magician's hands head over to the magic box, and open it.
Then the segment becomes animated, as inside the box is a whole world of magical items, floating around in a blue-ish background. The effect is kind of like the classic Twilight Zone opening, where the door and the eye and all that are floating around. But these were magic items, like a hat, a wand, a rabbit, etc. I can't remember if the hands went into the box with the items, or if the items flew out of the box into the real world. I do remember that the voiceover was still present, and I remember it seeming like the intro or outro to a TV show, but I don't remember any credits. I changed the channel after only a minute or two, though...because I was frightened. It was trippy and creepy to a small child who had no exposure to green-screen effects, disembodied limbs, or magic being real.
I once tried to find this piece of lost media on the old IMDb forums when they still existed, probably between 2007-2009, on a sub-forum about finding unidentified media. I cannot remember the name of that particular sub-forum, but I do remember that nobody found it. I don't know if those old forums are accessible via the wayback machine or any other internet archives, but it was a lot more vivid in my memory even in the late 2000s and still nothing came of it.
So that's all I can remember at the time. I always refer to this as "The Magic Box," but that's not what it's actually called. I've checked under that admittedly generic title and I couldn't find anything. any help would be much appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this!
A bit of background first. I have lived in Florida, USA (specifically Jacksonville) for most of my life, so that's definitely where I saw this. I lived in Tennessee for a short time in 1993 with my parents, but after the '93 superstorm we moved back to Jacksonville in 1994. I'm certain I saw this piece of animation between 1994-1997, as I remember seeing it on an old dial TV my parents had at the time. That would have made me between 5-8 years old. We didn't grow up with cable, so I'm fairly certain I saw this while cycling through broadcast channels trying to find something to watch. I sadly don't know which public channel it was on. I caught this piece of animation which scared me a lot as a kid. I don't remember all the details very well, but I'm going to do my best. This was about 25 years ago, so the details could be very wrong. But here goes.
The short, to my recollection, was a mixture of live-action and animation techniques I'm not sure about. But I do remember that where I caught it from (since i was channel surfing and I don't have any context for what came before or after), there was a large room, either a child's bedroom or maybe a storeroom filled with playthings (rocking horse, etc.). In the back of the room is a chest, like a magic box magicians use. I remember this part being live action, but I could be wrong. The camera zooms in on the box, which is sitting against a wooden wall. Then, I remember a voiceover, but i can't recall anything said. There are no human actors in this short...whatever it is. but after the voiceover, a pair of disembodied hands wearing magician's gloves comes into frame from off to the side. I remember this effect as being the most jarring- i had never seen disembodied body parts acting on their own accord before. i also didn't understand green-screen. I'm fairly certain that's how the effect was done, as I remember them being actual hands without a body. the magician's hands head over to the magic box, and open it.
Then the segment becomes animated, as inside the box is a whole world of magical items, floating around in a blue-ish background. The effect is kind of like the classic Twilight Zone opening, where the door and the eye and all that are floating around. But these were magic items, like a hat, a wand, a rabbit, etc. I can't remember if the hands went into the box with the items, or if the items flew out of the box into the real world. I do remember that the voiceover was still present, and I remember it seeming like the intro or outro to a TV show, but I don't remember any credits. I changed the channel after only a minute or two, though...because I was frightened. It was trippy and creepy to a small child who had no exposure to green-screen effects, disembodied limbs, or magic being real.
I once tried to find this piece of lost media on the old IMDb forums when they still existed, probably between 2007-2009, on a sub-forum about finding unidentified media. I cannot remember the name of that particular sub-forum, but I do remember that nobody found it. I don't know if those old forums are accessible via the wayback machine or any other internet archives, but it was a lot more vivid in my memory even in the late 2000s and still nothing came of it.
So that's all I can remember at the time. I always refer to this as "The Magic Box," but that's not what it's actually called. I've checked under that admittedly generic title and I couldn't find anything. any help would be much appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this!
