Modern film effects are amazing, but ....

Chalky

I watched the featurette about the use of real tigers on Life of Pi and my understanding from it was that almost none of the live footage made it into the picture - you could kind of count the frames that included a real tiger. Especially the tiger in the water scene where the young tiger was exhausted and barely got out on to the pontoon.

RaymondLin

chrispy108 said:

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.

I am home now and read more into your link...and I wonder, did you actually read it?

"Williams also animated all of the shots in a famous T. rex Jeep-chase sequence. He says each frame in the entire sequence took an estimated 12 hours to render. 

The point where the T. rex breaks through the log is 75 frames long. 

Steve Williams

"I animated all those shots where the T. rex is chasing the jeep. It took me four months to animate it, just to get the running to work properly," says Williams.

As far as I understand it...rendering is done in a computer, and we all know what CGI is short for. 

Yes, they made a physical model but the physical model wasn't shot with the camera.  The jeep wasn't chased by a puppet but empty space. 

FelineGuitars

Sadly the improvement in CGI has tended to result in an overuse that is at risk of actually taking away from the tension or atmosphere rather than adding to it.

They tend to cut and paste things into scenes so there is actually too much going on and the viewer has a hard time following .

I first noticed this on the newer 3 Star Wars films - especially Attack of the Clones and also on the Lord of The Rings movies.

At any one time there seemed to be like 100000 people engaged in a fight and really you don't know where to look.

Compare that to the earlier Star wars films where you might have 6 stormtroopers firing on Han Solo and company trying to escape Mos Eisley - I feel that the narrative was easier to follow without losing any of the drama or tension.

Some of the most tense movies I watched involve 2 guys trying to get each other with just a revolver each. it was the cleverness of the script and the director that made it seem tense or scary.

The first Alien movie remains a scary film - the effects guys did a great job there.

Sadly I feel the same problem exists with things like ProTools in music. 

Nobody is willing to leave spaces and silences it seems.

Just because you have 72 or 96 tracks doesn't mean you should use them or indeed use all of them all the time.

But it's not the tool - it's just using it tastefully or artfully.

menamestom

@felineguitars has hit the nail on the head, CGI gives you too much. It leaves no room for your imagination to create the extension of what you have seen in you mind. When you watched Star Wars you could imagine how massive the Death Star and Star destroyers were. It gave you just enough for your mind to create the full picture. CGI lays it on a plate, I think in a way you lose connection with the material. Your mind has to create part of the world to fully believe it. Special effects used to be expensive and used sparingly, but now CGI is cheaper that normal shooting, which contributes to its over use.

Grumpyrocker

There is so much CGI today that most folks don't even notice. You'll be watching some rom com but half the city and traffic in the background is CGI. Whole sets, streets, backgrounds, people are placed in non actions/sci-fi movies and the audiences - you and me included - never spot it.

Yes there are moments of CGI but there's so much you never notice and don't even realise isn't real. You might say Captain American didn't look like he was real in that street shot, but not notice the street was completely composited too.

The thing that gives away poor effects work to me is unrealistic camera movement. Swooping cameras around in ways that isn't possible is always a dead giveaway and your brain goes into "none of this is real" mode.

Good directors (ie not Michael Bay) will film special effects sequences the same why they'd shoot live action, putting cameras in places they really could. It really sells the shot. Ridley Scott is very good at this - there's no silly swoopy camera nonsense in Kingdom of Heaven and so the battles look pretty convincing. Whereas Peter Jackson (late period Jackson at least) would fly the camera between CGI soldiers legs and spoil the whole effect. 

guitargeek62

CGI is like any other VFX (or Relics, for that matter), it's just another tool in a studio's arsenal.

Anyone can pick up a paintbrush, not everyone can paint a masterpiece.

Sassafras

How long before actors become redundant?

frankieMART

There's something about modern cinema that I just can't click with - everything is greenscreened now and CGI, and it's blindingly obvious, and almost painful to watch. You can see straight through their acting (which most top actors are piss poor at - Transformers etc etc) and it just seems so cheap to me. Anyone else feel like this?

stickyfiddle

The thing about CGI with Star Wars is that they did actually use a lot of physical sets and models in the prequels. The problem was that the CG they did use was shit, and more importantly, they visual style was so different from the original trilogy it was jarring, and the script, direction and acting were all appalling.

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/practical-effects-in-the-prequels-sets-pictures-models-etc.50017310/

Chalky

Another key problem to look at is a how a modern film is made. The lead time for CGI means its commissioned early on. Thus the director can find themselves well down the line in production with 80% CGI complete. It becomes progressively difficult to tweak the story. You can't reshoot the CGI. You can alter the editing but then the producers are on your back to put every bit of the expensive CGI on the screen. So the result is often needlessly heavy on CGI, often to the detriment of the non-CGI shots and the overall story.

frankus

Sassafras said:

How long before actors become redundant?

You mean how long will it be before shit actors become redundant?

As far as I know Corrie and East Enders have no plans to stop ...

Benefit Cumbernauld does all the acting for Smaug in a suit with pingpong balls on it... so did the guy who was gollum. It seemed to work ok, I liked the reboot of Fern Valley too... dances with smurfs..

CGI is tech, it'll find it's appropriate place.

Early stop frame in Jason and the Arguments was great when dealing with creepy eldritch dragon tooth skeleton warriors but a bit shit for Pegasus.

ICBM

frankieMART said:

There's something about modern cinema that I just can't click with - everything is greenscreened now and CGI, and it's blindingly obvious, and almost painful to watch. You can see straight through their acting (which most top actors are piss poor at - Transformers etc etc) and it just seems so cheap to me. Anyone else feel like this?

Yes. Although that mostly applies to action/fantasy type stuff which I usually can't stand anyway. I'm not sure whether the two things are related, they probably are - and also to the 'movie annoyances' thread, ie most action movie clichés.

RaymondLin

The biggest problem in episode 1-3 is not the CGI but the casting for Annakin...Hayden Christianson?!

frankus

frankieMART said:

(which most top actors are piss poor at - Transformers etc etc)

What the f*** ?! Transformers? ... top actors ...

Grumpyrocker

RaymondLin said:

The biggest problem in episode 1-3 is not the CGI but the casting for Annakin...Hayden Christianson?!

I think with better dialogue and a director that valued actors he'd have been fine.

Rocker

I used to enjoy the 'Biff' etc. signs that flashed up when Batman and Robin were dealing with the bad guys.  Modern stuff is so well done that it is not believable or entertaining any more.

breakstuff

RaymondLin said:

The biggest problem in episode 1-3 is not the CGI but the casting for Annakin...Hayden Christianson?!

Agreed.Never seen him in anything else so I don't know if he's always that bad but in Star Wars he's woeful.

Saying that though,so is Natalie Portman but she was brilliant in Black Swan so maybe @Grumpyrocker is right.

chrispy108

RaymondLin said:

I am home now and read more into your link...and I wonder, did you actually read it?

"Williams also animated all of the shots in a famous T. rex Jeep-chase sequence. He says each frame in the entire sequence took an estimated 12 hours to render. 

The point where the T. rex breaks through the log is 75 frames long. 

Steve Williams

"I animated all those shots where the T. rex is chasing the jeep. It took me four months to animate it, just to get the running to work properly," says Williams.

As far as I understand it...rendering is done in a computer, and we all know what CGI is short for. 

Yes, they made a physical model but the physical model wasn't shot with the camera.  The jeep wasn't chased by a puppet but empty space. 

Yeah, did you read my post? Of the 14 minutes of dinosaurs, 4 minutes were CGI, and that was all the big/long shots, just like the one you've posted. Kids in the truck - big puppet, raptors in the kitchen - man in a suit. https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/blog/jurassic-park-evolution-of-a-raptor-suit#

The running T-rex is also setup to look the best, it's dark and raining, which hides any bad CGI. Bad directors don't think to do that.

As I said, the 'secret' to good CGI is choosing when to use it and planning it properly, Spielberg is a master of combining CGI and practical effects to the best overall result. Jurassic Park was a film with a huge budget directed by one of the best, with practical effects by Stan Winston, one of the best, with CGI by ILM, the pioneers, and they were very smart with how they used it, so it's no wonder it still looks good now when compared to shit $10 million summer flicks thrown out.

Sassafras

I like the animation on South Park. Anything more sophisticated is wasted on me.

Axe_meister

Let's hope they never use CGI in porn.