Modern film effects are amazing, but ....

axisus

As a kid I absolutely loved the Ray harryhausen stop motion stuff. There was something raw and exciting about it. Two of my favourite childhood films were Jason and the Argonauts and the golden voyage of sinbad, and I still love both films and could watch them any time. I would Hate to see an attempt at remaking either. Ray harryhausen - genius of cinema!

dafuzz

Wis right there.

Also I liked Thunderbirds the way it was, and am very disappointed they've gone the CGI route with the remake.

randomhandclaps

Completely agree. The Sinbad stuff was old hat even by the time I was a kid but there is just something about the Harryhausen animations that adds something extra and is quite creepy especially when you're a child. 

 My uncle works in special effects and has done for a long time. A film series we often talk about being an example of how the physically of actual props sometimes wins over CGI is American Werewolf In... In London the puppet is pretty crap looking by standards since but adds a real presence in the film. Plus I think the change scene is still one of the best ever. In American Werewolf In Paris everything was CGIed and looks stuck on, adds no terror and just looks fake.

dafuzz

Also just remembered: Blade Runner. No CGI at all and I defy anybody to criticise the fx for not holding up after 30+ years

breakstuff

The eighties version of The Thing had brilliant effects with absolutely no CGI.Still scares the crap out of me today.

breakstuff

My son was asking me about how they made the original Star Wars the other day and didn't believe me when I told him it was all done with models and sets.To me,how they made the three original films was a much more impressive technological feat than the CGI drenched abominations that followed.

WezV

The new star wars will be mostly physical effects too.

Jj has said it should be possible to watch it without the effects.

They are learning

ICBM

CGI just looks shit after you get over the initial wow factor.

You only have to watch the reworked original Star Wars trilogy to see how poor it is - the CGI additions (even though few) really jump out at you, and not in a good way.

Drew_TNBD

Yeah I love stop motion. I think tool helped me rediscover it, but I loved Argonauts as a kid

sinbaadi

The stop motion stuff is charming, but never looked real. I think CGI has reached a point now where it's capable of representing anything in an authentic way which doesn't just stand out as CGI.  Ten or so years ago production companies seemed to be under the impression that we were already at that point, but as the fight sequences with rubber-Neo in Matrix Reloaderutions prove, we were not there.

ICBM

sinbaadi said:

The stop motion stuff is charming, but never looked real. I think CGI has reached a point now where it's capable of representing anything in an authentic way which doesn't just stand out as CGI.  Ten or so years ago production companies seemed to be under the impression that we were already at that point, but as the fight sequences with rubber-Neo in Matrix Reloaderutions prove, we were not there.

I agree that the Harryhausen stuff never looked real, but neither does even current CGI, even though it doesn't look as laughably bad as it did ten years ago. It doesn't always spoil the film, but you can always tell it's CGI and it still never looks as good as large-scale models. At least in anything I've seen...

Sassafras

Jason and the Argonauts was excellent. So what if the monsters didn't look real, as a cinema goer, you should know they're not real. In fact I thought they were a bit more convincing than a lot CGI stuff I've seen. The Thing was also bloody good for its time. The effects were far better than of lot of modern films. Last effects laden film I saw was The Day the Earth Stood Still (Keanu Reeves), I thought it was shit, as are most of his films. The original with Michael Rennie was a good thought provoking film.

Drew_TNBD

Go back and watch The Matrix. The CGI in that movie looks TERRIBLE now, and it was basically THE benchmark when it came out.

Sambostar

randomhandclaps said:

Completely agree. The Sinbad stuff was old hat even by the time I was a kid but there is just something about the Harryhausen animations that adds something extra and is quite creepy especially when you're a child. 

OMG.  You old bastard.  Can you actually remember the original releases?  They were made in 1913 or something.

When they start CGI'ing '69 chargers doing 20' jumps then I'II start tuning out, but until then it's all good.

RaymondLin

They are only better in your mind because you saw them as a child, the magic was it made an impression as a child. Not because they were great SFX.

ICBM said:

CGI just looks shit after you get over the initial wow factor.

You only have to watch the reworked original Star Wars trilogy to see how poor it is - the CGI additions (even though few) really jump out at you, and not in a good way.

No, crap CGI is crap but good CGI as an visual effect is amazing. The George Lucas CGI looks very cartoon but the T-Rex in Jurassic Park still holds up today after 20 years. The tiger in The Life of Pi was also fake. The aim of CGI should not be a wow factor, the point is to fool you that it never was CGI.

Sambostar

Yeah but the literalists have gotten in on the game.  Starwars was never literal.

sinbaadi

ICBM said:

sinbaadi said:

The stop motion stuff is charming, but never looked real. I think CGI has reached a point now where it's capable of representing anything in an authentic way which doesn't just stand out as CGI.  Ten or so years ago production companies seemed to be under the impression that we were already at that point, but as the fight sequences with rubber-Neo in Matrix Reloaderutions prove, we were not there.

I agree that the Harryhausen stuff never looked real, but neither does even current CGI, even though it doesn't look as laughably bad as it did ten years ago. It doesn't always spoil the film, but you can always tell it's CGI and it still never looks as good as large-scale models. At least in anything I've seen...

I think it's easy to be slightly skewed, though.  I might be totally aware that something is CGI because I'm not a complete idiot and I know CGI is the only way effect X is possible, but that doesn't mean it doesn't look real.  I hate Michael Bay films, but Industrial Light and Magic did (some) parts of the original Transformers film exceptionally well, and that was in 2007, plenty of progress since then.

Do they still use scale models?  Life-size things which actors can see/interact with will always have an advantage over CGI+ tennis ball on stick, but if you're using a green screen anyway I don't really see the point of a scale model.

randomhandclaps

Drew_fx said:

Go back and watch The Matrix. The CGI in that movie looks TERRIBLE now, and it was basically THE benchmark when it came out.

In defence of the Matrix series they were probably too busy fudging the story to envision the effects would date really quickly.

RaymondLin

One great example of great SFX that you don't notice is Gary Sinise's Lt Dan character when his legs got amputated. It is very well done, objects passes through it and you forget in real life he still have legs.

chrispy108

RaymondLin said:

No, crap CGI is crap but good CGI as an visual effect is amazing. The George Lucas CGI looks very cartoon but the T-Rex in Jurassic Park still holds up today after 20 years. The tiger in The Life of Pi was also fake. The aim of CGI should not be a wow factor, the point is to fool you that it never was CGI.

That'd be because most of Jurassic Park was models and puppets by Stan Winston, not CGI. 

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-cgi-works-in-jurassic-park-2014-7?IR=T This says of the 14 mins of dinosaurs 4 were CGI, and from other stuff I've seen that was mostly the big/long shots, not the closeups.

They used four real tigers in Life of Pi: http://www.nextmovie.com/blog/life-of-pi-tiger-cgi-or-real/

The key to good CGI is to plan shots and work out what can be done best using what technique, with the CGI integrated from the start, rather than filming any old shit and throwing it at some guys with a computer and going "put me a robot in this bit...". It's why Spielberg and Cameron films have CGI way beyond their time for the technology.

RaymondLin

They used a real tiger....except.... From your own link

"Putting a teenage boy and an adult Bengal tiger together in an enclosed space, such as the 20-foot lifeboat that is one of the few settings of "Life of Pi," is a dangerous proposition. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that 17-year-old star Suraj Sharma, who played Pi, was never actually in the boat with a live tiger." 

A lot of it was CGI.