[HN Gopher] Over-reliance on CGI in movies
___________________________________________________________________
Over-reliance on CGI in movies
Author : hmmmmmm_
Score : 262 points
Date : 2022-02-02 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (erikhoel.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (erikhoel.substack.com)
| shimfish wrote:
| I think a large chunk of the problem is that we've been
| concentrating on improving the rendering, which is clearly now
| phenomenal, and seemingly totally ignoring the animation, which
| is still abysmal.
|
| CGI characters still move too smoothly. It's all spline curves
| and jelly physics. CGI is instantly recognisably unreal due to
| the overly fluid motions and it seems remarkable to me how little
| progress has been made on this.
|
| Animated characters still look animated, except they dive
| straight into the uncanny valley because of the incredible
| rendering. I guess mo-cap only gets you so far before you have to
| smooth out the noise of the motion signal.
|
| Anyone with actual knowledge of CGI got anything to say about
| this? It seems weird that everything else moved on while this got
| neglected.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| It's only that when they can't use cgi because it's impossible.
| But let's be clear wirework has the exact same problems.
| shimfish wrote:
| That's not it.
|
| We buy puppet Yoda as being real (or at least suspend
| disbelief) in a way we simply can't do with CGI Yoda.
| conradludgate wrote:
| Do we? Or is that just nostalgia. I'm in the younger
| generation but as a kid watching Star Wars, it didn't care.
| Now watching it I see janky models on sticks and wires and
| a puppet for yoda barely moving his arms.
|
| I think it's the suspension of disbelief. Star Wars at its
| time was phenomenal for its VFX and SFX, but CGI in movies
| nowadays is saturated, so it feels less impactful to us
| mjh2539 wrote:
| The cost of labor will continue to rise while the cost of CGI
| will continue to go down. We will see more and more CGI until the
| cost of labor decreases relative to the cost of making movies.
|
| One thing that isn't accounted for is that as far as digital
| assets go, they are, for all intents and purposes, immutable,
| immortal, and more liquid (and counted as CapEx rather than
| OpEx). A prop from Alien might still be around in basically the
| same condition as it was made; the little fake CGI gun model and
| CGI Yoda will always be there; it doesn't matter what the actors
| or prop-makers want or don't want. It gives the studios more
| leverage.
| tqi wrote:
| What weird take. For one thing, maybe an alien world like Arrakis
| shouldn't look identical to the deserts on this world. For
| another, lots of movies pre CGI looked terrible, so the idea that
| the past was some kind of practical utopia is idiotic. People
| need to stop mistaking personal taste for objective fact.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Why go to all the trouble of filming in the UAE and then just
| wash it out? In LoA, the desert is part of the story. In Dune
| 2021, it's just background for the action.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| >In Dune 2021, it's just background for the action
|
| I wonder if we even watched the same film. The harsh desert
| environment and its lack of water is the whole point
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| yeah its the point of the book, but it didn't FEEL like it
| in this movie, at least not to me. There was little grit
| and dirt.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| I have to agree. I don't know what it was, but it all
| never felt real to me. Actually the Frank's Herbert SciFi
| miniseries felt more real to me, despite it very
| obviously being filmed cheaply in a studio. Dune 2021
| looks too clean, maybe.
|
| One thing that stands out to me is the scene in Dune 2021
| where Paul is outside on Dune talking with a gardener,
| who is watering palm trees. The conversation is about how
| many people could live from the water for the trees, and
| consequently about how atrociously hot Arrakis is. Paul
| is standing there, in the full sun, in a uniform
| obviously meant for colder environments. Yet there's not
| a single indication he's feeling any inconvenience from
| the heat and the sun. Not a drop of sweet, nothing. Just
| standing there like it's nothing.
|
| Paul is used to a moderate climate, not (yet) accustomed
| at all to this grueling heat. Don't just tell us that
| Arrakis is hot. Show us that he's suffering! Show us how
| unbearably hot his new environment is!
| nicce wrote:
| Using CGI leads for so many "unrealistic" mistakes as
| your example. The devil is in the details, and soon makes
| something otherwise good quite soon unejoyable.
| tqi wrote:
| "Washed out" is an aesthetic choice that is equally possible
| with practical effects.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| washed out is probably a choice made to make adding in cgi
| easier.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| Jordan, not UAE. Both Lawrence of Arabia and Dune 2021 were
| (largely) shot in the Wadi Rum in Jordan (and likewise desert
| scenes in many other movies).
| fitzroy wrote:
| To paraphrase Tolstoy: Bad CGI is all alike; every bad practical
| effect is bad in its own way.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| So, there's a mistake the author is making here: since film
| budgets have gone up, the increased cost has to be for more VFX,
| and thus the reason why CGI ruins movies isn't so much that CGI
| is cheap but that directors are unconstrained by it. There is
| definitely a kernel of truth in there, but I want to point out
| that VFX is actually still comparably cheap.
|
| VFX artists are unusual in that they are one of the few parts of
| Hollywood that isn't unionized in any meaningful way. This is
| because of outsourcing. On paper, this is all above-board because
| the artists being hired live in lower-cost-of-living cities.
| However, in practice, this also means the artists do not have the
| option of unionizing. So the studios can browbeat their artists
| into churning out uninspired work quickly[0].
|
| The article brings up a few more technical problems; such as CGI
| characters not fitting into practical sets all that well, or not
| having all that much visual weight to them when interacting with
| practical actors. However, that's something that can be worked
| around and planned for with creative set or prop design. This
| doesn't happen because the people involved don't care, or don't
| have the time to care, if their bad guy looks like a hologram.
|
| That's really the core problem. Bad CGI work in an otherwise good
| movie can be excused, and it is possible to make good CGI that
| will hold up over time. But uninspired movies are bad whether or
| not they use special or practical effects. The problem is not so
| much that CGI is a cheap filler material for movies or that
| directors don't want to work under constraints; but that studios
| are running the show and asking for safe, uninspired work.
| Everything else is just a symptom.
|
| The traditional Hollywood business model was that creatives would
| option off novel projects to the suits. This has now changed to a
| model in which the suits ask creatives to create derivatives of
| works they already own. It's why every studio was jumping over
| themselves to create a "cinematic universe" about a decade ago.
| Why go picking through a bunch of projects that might succeed or
| fail on their own merits when you can bring out a franchise with
| a built-in audience[1][2]?
|
| [0] This is also a problem in 2d animation, specifically Japanese
| animation studios that churn out lots of light novel adaptations.
|
| [1] Yes, your minds turned to Marvel at this point; but I don't
| think we should blame the MCU for this. The trend towards
| franchise film started long before we started making true-to-the-
| comics superhero movies.
|
| [2] China is also a big factor here. If you can please the PRC
| censors, big-budget Hollywood blockbusters do very well there
| even if they get panned for being too derivative in the states.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Lately when this discussion comes up I recommend _Dave Made A
| Maze_.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4457344/
| __s wrote:
| > As you listen to that gentle creaking, or that low-tone
| burbling, what you feel at that moment is the deep satisfaction
| that comes from witnessing Being, in all its irreducible and
| incomputable eddies and swirls. Your eyes are satiated. There's
| probably a German word for it, and if not, there should be.
|
| Waldeinsamkeit
| monocasa wrote:
| I don't think people generally recognize the absolute ubiquity of
| CGI these days. You only notice when it doesn't land, but there's
| an order of magnitude more you don't notice. Judging CGI on what
| doesn't land is as much of a fallacy as judging practical solely
| on what doesn't land.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| By far the best action movie of the last decade "Mad Max: Fury
| Road" looks so great because most of special effects are
| practical, and only enhanced with CGI.
| greedo wrote:
| I think that while FR had a lot of practical effects, to call
| the CGI only enhancements does it a disservice. CGI was used in
| almost every single scene and shot.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Of course it was. But it was to enhance visuals that were
| previously filmed with real actors, cars and stuntmen -
| that's why it looks so real.
| [deleted]
| Nitramp wrote:
| > There's probably a German word for it, and if not, there should
| be.
|
| Weltlichkeit (says Heidegger).
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Some movies still have quite a lot of physical effects, like
| Interstellar did.
| [deleted]
| blendergeek wrote:
| Christopher Nolan (the director of Interstellar) has notably
| not jumped on the modern film making bandwagon. Nolan still
| shoots on film and eschews CGI whenever possible. The authors
| of this article might see Nolan as a lone wolf standing against
| the forces of CGI that have ruined film over the last few
| decades.
| greedo wrote:
| Uh no. Nolan used a ton of CGI in all the Batman movies he
| made, in Interstellar, in Dunkirk, Tenet and especially in
| Inception. Yes he likes to use practical when possible, but
| the idea that he doesn't use CGI is ridiculous. Everyone uses
| CGI. Even when it's simple compositing stuff. Everyone
| conflates CGI with doing a shot/scene entirely digital. Some
| films do that, but most don't.
| dv_dt wrote:
| The Mandalorian filming approach is an interesting new hybrid of
| the CGI use & shooting with them live in a 360 screens. This
| gives interesting lighting also allowing more use of practical
| fx.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/20/how-the-mandalorian-and-il...
| chrisan wrote:
| This season of Mando (or Boba Fett) I think will further their
| approach with some tech advances after today's episode gets
| watched
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| Why?
| nicce wrote:
| There is some character making appearance on the show.
| Let's say, deepfakes are getting real.
| taftster wrote:
| This is the way.
| giaour wrote:
| Notably, The Mandalorian used puppetry for all the aliens.
| Using CGI for backgrounds but practical effects for stuff the
| cast actually interacts with seemed to work really well.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Indeed - I love the Mandalorian but costumes/puppetry aren't
| on the highest level in my opinion.
| nicce wrote:
| The Grogu costed 5 millions[1]. I think it really is good
| one.
|
| [1]: https://nerdist.com/article/mandalorian-baby-yoda-
| puppet-cos...
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Not all, but a lot of them, but they also couch this
| specifically as a reference to... mostly Return of the Jedi,
| many shots contain puppets or stop motion animation that is
| actually shot at a lower framerate to play up the unreality.
| itisit wrote:
| The Volume is an impressive feat of cinema technology, but once
| you notice how the camera never goes long, everything is
| clearly shot within a small soundstage area. The new Star Wars
| series _The Book of Boba Fett_ suffers from this limitation
| more than its predecessor.
| paulmd wrote:
| yes, I was going to say the same thing as a general response
| to the article in the OP. Even apart from the suspension of
| disbelief thing, CGI is very constraining in terms of the
| shots you can make, it all has to fit on a soundstage. It's
| paradoxical but while you can make a fantastic setting, it is
| also very constraining on the cinematography itself.
|
| Sadly, I think most people don't really care about any of
| this, they just want to switch off for an hour and a half. I
| always feel isolated about this among my friends and family,
| I already get lots of time mindlessly staring at a screen
| reading some HN article or Reddit or clicking aimlessly
| through wikipedia, if I'm gonna watch TV or a movie then I
| want it to be something highbrow, not the latest MCU trash or
| whatever. If I'm gonna sit on the couch and scroll through my
| phone, I'd rather be scrolling on my PC instead, thanks.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I dont think that is necessarily a limitation of this at all
| - more of an aesthetic choice. They could have easily
| composited long shots.
|
| The bigger thing I notice today with these products is that
| everything is just too damn CLEAN. When you have a bunch of
| real people shooting on what is supposed to be "tatooine"
| there is real dust flying everywhere and sand getting on
| their shoes and whatnot. On a light stage unless you have
| people specifically making the outfits and whatnot dirty and
| ragged it is going to start and stay perfectly shiny and new.
| It seems ridiculously honestly.
|
| I have not actually looked up if that new Sci Fi "Foundation"
| was shot mostly on light stages but I suspect it was as the
| supposedly uber rugged colony that was supposed to be so
| limited in supplies with extremely harsh weather ends up just
| having a bunch of colonists with perfectly done hair and
| perfectly clean sci fi getups and a total lack of weather or
| clouds. It really took me out of it.
| JaceLightning wrote:
| As someone who grew up with movies with CGI, older movies look
| fake to me.
|
| Puppet Yoda from the 1980s looks extremely cheesy and fake and
| really takes me out of the movie. You can tell he's a puppet so
| he doesn't look like he fits in the real world.
|
| Similar with other practical effects. At the beginning of Star
| wars episode 1, the ship was blown up and it looks like it's made
| out of cardboard. To me that looks very fake. Metal doesn't
| explode like cardboard does.
| JaceLightning wrote:
| Here is the video I'm talking about
| https://youtu.be/3RCYs0N5Wsc
|
| If a spacecraft is made out of metal with multiple decks, you'd
| expect it to bend and warp. Not explode like cardboard, ripping
| apart.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| So much of this is just how _much_ work had to be done to get
| practical effects to work, and how practical and CGI are often
| good for different things. For an insane example of this checkout
| this video of how they did the ship landing in the original Dune
| movie (of which step 1 was "rent a stadium").
|
| https://youtu.be/OHPkdMGI6D4?t=568
|
| Also, I think there's a very selective bias against CGI where
| when it looks _real_ we just assume it's real and don't notice so
| we're only criticizing the portion where it failed to live up to
| reality.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| My conspiracy theory is that bad CGI is intended to acclimate the
| population to bad AR.
| agumonkey wrote:
| There's a global theme, just like availability of everything for
| cheap or free, lack of limits allows bad incentives and distorts
| things.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Absolutely. Creativity requires constraints even if they are
| self-chosen constraints, and necessity is the mother of
| invention.
|
| Perhaps the most interesting thing to come from the most recent
| Star Wars trilogy is that fans and an entire industry can get
| behind the idea of choosing retro creative constraints.
| agumonkey wrote:
| And I often think that good old centralized nations were a
| mostly agreed upon set of constraints, and whoever managed to
| get access to its top and produce things (books, movies,
| else) would be granted a fair amount of value, naturally
| because it required stamina and grit to keep churning across
| layers and be recognized as worthy. The problem with that
| system is that you can get gatekeeped at the bottom by lack
| of luck or perverse agents but it granted some kind of
| filter.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Yes -- and you can definitely see evidence of greater
| upward mobility in the current cinema system; more
| directors who move quickly from indie films to major movies
| etc.
| scardycat wrote:
| CGI should be a tool to tell a well crafted and well narrated
| story. Unfortunately, CGI has become the driver for how a movie
| should be made. Once it becomes the only tool for telling the
| story, everything else falters. CGI should absolutely be used to
| support making a good movie but a movie should not be defining
| the scenes and the movie.
| dmitriid wrote:
| The problem isn't CGI per se (hell, even David Lynch uses digital
| blood), but the pervasive "we'll fix it in post production". This
| makes directors and cinematographers extremely lazy
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Agreed. This is the movie equivalent of fixing bad UI/UX with
| "we'll figure out the messaging later".
| pushcx wrote:
| I think this criticism undoes itself. The thesis is that CGI
| visual effects are not convincing, not "weighty", implausible,
| unconvincing. But there's no mention of CGI being pervasively
| used outside of blockbusters! I'm not enough of a film buff to
| say for certain, but I'd guess it's a majority of non-indie
| releases. It goes unnoticed because it's seamless and convincing.
| It's enormously helpful to avoid an expensive location shoot or
| reshoot, fix an error, add setting, integrate actors and stunt
| doubles, all kinds of things. This article doesn't even know to
| complain about it because it's so dang good.
|
| For an example off the top of my head, I know Wolf of Wall Street
| had a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP2sJqoZD7g You can
| search youtube for the title of any movie and "cgi" or "visual
| effects" to turn up tons of examples. David Fincher's movies have
| some great examples.
|
| And to hop on my bar stool and opine, I think CGI is going to
| lead to a revolution in filmmaking over the next decade or two as
| it continues to get better and cheaper. There's ubiquitous
| criticisms that movies the last couple decades have been so
| expensive that studios only put money into blockbusters, or
| meddle in the creators' vision, or only fund simple action movies
| that are easily translated, etc. When low-budget indie films get
| access to this stuff they're going to to have the ability to make
| all kinds of movies rather than just contemporary character
| studies with limited sets and props. (Digital distribution will
| help, too.) CGI will be a landmark revitalizing force for movies,
| much bigger and stranger and better than the New Hollywood
| movement in the 70s.
| munificent wrote:
| The article _does_ complain about it. The author says today 's
| films have an _overall_ level of unreality. Even when the CGI
| is good enough that you don 't _actively_ notice it, every
| scene emits a subconscious level of fakeness that pervades the
| whole film.
| handoflixue wrote:
| If you asked me to name a movie that had a clear pervasive
| fakeness, I would never have thought "The Wolf of Wall
| Street". Conversely, I routinely feel like MCU movies are
| guilty of this. So it seems to be less "CGI always reads out
| as fake" and more how you're using it.
| yourabstraction wrote:
| Wow, I had no idea a movie like Wolf of Wall Street had so much
| CGI. This makes your point perfectly, that it truly is not
| noticeable and seamless in a lot of movies. CGI is just a tool,
| and it's not to blame for so many mediocre movies being made.
| This reminds me so much of the constant "JavaScript ruined the
| web" arguments I see on HN.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| And a lot of those shots (wolf of wall street) look fake-ish.
| pushcx wrote:
| Can you find any contemporary reviews or commentary
| mentioning it?
| the_af wrote:
| You have a point.
|
| I think in this kind of discussions when we say "CGI visual
| effects" we mostly implicitly also mean "...as used in
| fantasy/scifi movies". You know, the high profile, in-your-face
| effects. We don't mind the subtler effects and enhancements
| done to non fantastical movies, which go unnoticed and are
| therefore by definition suitably done :)
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Pretty much every shot that looks out a window in pretty much
| every movie since the just about forever has been an effect of
| one kind or another just because if the problems with lighting
| the scene and the time of day being 'shot for' and what time it
| actually is.
|
| Most modern prime time television uses compositing for pretty
| much any shot on a street, they aren't standing on the street
| they are standing on a green stage.
|
| This article is just so much 'the good ol' days bullshit...'
| lelandbatey wrote:
| I agree that the criticism undoes itself. The negative CGI we
| talk about is the negative CGI we notice; we don't talk about
| all the CGI that we never notice, of which there is a huge
| amount. Take for example the movie 1917[0], a WWII film that's
| extremely practical. They actually dug trenches for the actors
| to run/walk through, they actually built a bombed out town for
| a central set-piece, and they actually had huge numbers of men
| running across a battlefield.
|
| Yet it's also the case that the movie seamlessly transitions
| from filmed shots of actors to complete CGI replacements for
| multiple seconds before transitioning back to filmed shots of
| actors, without a single cut or transition, and no one would
| know that unless you watch the effects breakdown.[0]
|
| I agree that CGI is almost certainly a massive vitalizing
| force. CGI is making it possible for creators, hollywood or no,
| to build far beyond what was ever possible to those creators in
| decades past. Take this tiny short film, "Royal Dumplings"[1],
| a student made short film for no budget[2] . Made with a
| camera, green cloth backdrop, and hardware store lights. What
| we get to see on screen, even if "un-real", is so vastly more
| interesting than what we'd have gotten 30 years ago at this
| price that I don't care.
|
| [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_llajTMEXI
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRt39HkI-e8
|
| [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbBbq9M-NzA
| highwind wrote:
| Different perspective:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24
| Szel wrote:
| It's great video essay from Rocket Jump. Best quote - "You
| think CGI is bad because you only see bad CGI"
| paxys wrote:
| While I agree with his premise, the author's entire argument is:
| <amazing old film> is better than <terrible new film>, so CGI is
| bad.
|
| - Is there any reason to believe that the Lord of the Rings
| trilogy used less CGI than the Hobbit trilogy?
|
| - Same for the Matrix trilogy vs Matrix Revolutions?
|
| - The CGI in the newer Star Wars films is actually fantastic. It
| was _everything else_ that was a letdown and caused it to be an
| inferior product over the originals.
|
| What we really should be blaming is the paint-by-numbers formula
| for film production used by all big studios nowadays. There are
| no original properties, no risks taken. Using practical effects
| vs CGI isn't going to change this fact or dramatically make a bad
| movie good.
| the_af wrote:
| > _the author 's entire argument is: <amazing old film> is
| better than <terrible new film>_
|
| I think that's unfair. Villeneuve's Dune is not a terrible
| film, and in fact its visuals are pretty nice -- though I agree
| they suffer in the comparison shot with Lawrence of Arabia.
|
| The original Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson, also
| mentioned in the article (as a "good movie"), is a special
| case: its visuals are both terrible and good. They are good
| when they are practical effects, e.g. the makeup of the Orcs
| looks terrific, and they are terrible when they are CGI, e.g.
| the mines of Moria have some of the worst CGI ever, and so is
| the embarrassingly bad troll.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| YMMV. The LoTR troll was fine for its time and holds up okay
| imo, though maybe that's also because it was released the
| year as the horrid-looking troll from _Harry Potter_.
| the_af wrote:
| > _The LoTR troll was fine_
|
| Obviously this is subjective, but to me it was pretty bad
| at the time.
|
| But disregard the troll: take a look at the scenes with the
| Fellowship running through Moria. They are horrid,
| laughably bad. They are a painful to watch, and were bad
| back then as well. They were worse than videogames at the
| time!
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| One of the most damning comparisons to me are the orcs in the
| LOTR movies vs. the ones in the Hobbit movies, the former being
| practical make-up and the latter being almost entirely CGI. It's
| night and day, the LOTR orcs are a million times more believable
| and look like real organic living things, whereas the Hobbit
| movies end up looking like sterile video game cutscenes at times
| jerf wrote:
| I think some of these problems are solvable, if someone worked
| at it. The lack of gravitas of these creatures isn't in the
| pixels themselves, so to speak. They're in the fact that large
| creatures fundamentally move differently than small ones. For a
| sample version of this, compare the "walk cycle" of a small dog
| to a large one. They aren't just scaled up.
|
| The problem is, you motion capture a normal sized person then
| try to linearly project their motion up to a 10 foot tall
| behemoth, and we can't help but see the normal-sized person
| underneath. The motion needs to change.
|
| Possibly something as simple as putting some weights of the
| right size in the right place on the motion captured actor
| would do the job.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Well and bring up Lord of the Rings and you have to reckon
| with the beloved and acclaimed motion capture performance of
| Gollum by Andy Serkis.
|
| Obviously the earlier Lord of the Rings movies did have lots
| of practical effects and models, but also major use of CGI.
| It's not exactly a slam dunk for anti-CGI, as an example.
|
| The main problem with bad CGI is that it's bad, not that it's
| CGI.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Agreed. But The Hobbit was a very rushed film. Rushed CGI can
| be worse than other crafts when rushed. More time + more money
| could have achieved better results. That being said, practical
| FX will always be superior because you don't have to spend
| extra effort making lights and materials look real.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| Midway through Battle of the Five Armies, when CGI dwarf Dain
| emerges, it's difficult to not think "wow, they really wanted
| to get this movie done with - couldn't even bother to cast a
| human for this character."
| scott_s wrote:
| Agreed agreed. The problem with The Hobbit was not the visual
| effects. The problem was that it was made without a plan,
| under duress. Lindsay Ellis has a three-part video essay
| series (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTRUQ-RKfUs; yes, I
| know it says 1/2, I promise there is a 2/3) exploring this.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| LOTR had the occasional bad VFX. One that stood out to me, in
| the theaters, was when Treebeard carries Merry and Pippin
| through Fangorn Forest: the compositing on the background is
| sloppy and the lighting on the hobbits doesn't go with it.
| nicce wrote:
| The Gollum (CGI) on LOTR was really a peace of art. It can be
| done well if someone really wants.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| The examples in this article are surprising because I don't think
| they look very good.
|
| While the CGI in the Star Wars example isn't amazing, it's no
| worse than the Ewok that has fabric folds showing on its costume.
|
| In the second example, the devil is too human looking so all I
| see is a person in makeup (good makeup) where Steppenwolf looks
| completely alien.
|
| Finally, the dune example gives a feeling of being truly out in
| the desert, where the Lawrence of Arabia looks like they're
| filming in a yard and the colors look oversaturated compared to
| what I've seen in real life deserts.
| bocytron wrote:
| Also, the deserts of Dune are no CGI, people really were
| running around in the desert...
| sleepybrett wrote:
| My understanding there are some 'matte paintings' (cgi or
| paints) in the distance (to get that awesome horizon), there
| is some crazy color grading happening, (flattening the
| colorspace considerably i'm sure), and there are some cgi
| overlays happening (whenever you see spice in the air or any
| kind of duststorm). So yes those shots, even though they were
| shot in actual desert are doctored heavily and perhaps can be
| considered cgi on the whole.
|
| That said the whole article reads as 'old art better than new
| art' 'old man yells at cloud'.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| CGI is to movies as autotune is to music or makeup is to beauty.
| When you have a solid base, and merely use these things to clean
| up a few rough edges, it works wonderfully. When you destroy any
| sense of realism or humanity under an entirely synthetic
| facade... yeah, nobody's buying it, it destroys the emersion, and
| it all looks / sounds the same after awhile.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| >nobody's buying it
|
| The top grossing films of the last decade disagree with this
| take. Many people are, in fact, buying it. We might not like it
| for aesthetic reasons, but you can't argue that it doesn't
| sell.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| I meant that colloquially, as in nobody buys that it's real
| (even when the attempt is to pass it off as being so).
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Sure, when I sit my ass down at the latest marvel movie I'm
| not there for 'reality'. Reality is, generally speaking,
| the domain of documentaries.
| greedo wrote:
| When I first watched Star Wars in 1977, I knew that the
| spaceships weren't real, that Luke didn't live on Tatooine
| with a landspeeder, or that lightsabers worked. I didn't
| care because of the "willing suspension of disbelief." We
| all know that the movies we watch are fake, Potemkin
| villages. We don't care if they use the film-making arts to
| help us suspend our disbelief. Doesn't matter if they use
| CGI, stop-motion animation, matte paintings, shoot on
| soundstage or in real locations.
| kleer001 wrote:
| Bad CGI.Bad animation.
|
| Good CGI is invisible.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| CGI worked pretty well in the original Matrix and Terminator 2.
| When CGI is innovative and fits the plot it's fine. When it's
| used in the same formulaic superhero movie 30-minute final battle
| scene we've seen a dozen times--with the same big boss and
| hundreds of disposable minions--it gets old.
| w0mbat wrote:
| Without even mentioning CGI, just modern digital color grading is
| wide open to abuse.
|
| "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" was absolutely mangled by
| the director. The colors are really distorted and awful. It looks
| nothing like the other movies in the series. Worse, it is
| otherwise a good movie.
| irrational wrote:
| I had a few people text me about the Amazon LOTR intro not being
| made with CGI.
|
| https://gamerant.com/lotr-practical-effects-good-sign-amazon...
|
| These are people that aren't the kind of people that I would
| normally think would care about things like CGI being used in
| movies. Apparently this is hitting a nerve.
| dekhn wrote:
| The problem I have now is that after reading about how
| Mandalorian is filmed, I simply cannot unsee the set. Every time
| somebody walks around you can tell by subtle signs that they are
| on a small set surrounded by CGI. These days I yearn for a true
| exterior shot.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I'm surprised there was no mention of Spielberg's challenges in
| making Jaws (longer story here -
| https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/31105/how-steven-spielbe...).
| For those not familiar with the story, in the 70s, they couldn't
| make a "realistic" mechanical shark for the film which Spielberg
| had been relying on. The shark didn't work most of the time, it
| looked weird, so he couldn't show it. Which meant he used the
| lack of being able to see the shark as a tool which improved the
| movie.
|
| There is currently an over-reliance of CGI, it's a cheap trick
| that the industry is getting used to. They'll eventually learn to
| use it properly AND the quality of the CGI will improve. These
| two factors together give me hope that movies will become good
| again.
|
| Of course, getting excellent writers creating new unique content
| and getting that content produced instead of more
| Marvel/DC/rehashes is a bigger issue I think.
| lancesells wrote:
| I also think a lot of CGI has hurt the directing side of things.
| Once you virutalize the camera the same sort of things happens
| where there's no gravity to a situation. I first started noticing
| it in Fellowship of the Ring where there were many establishing
| shots with a roller-coaster of a camera floating through the air.
| Those weren't egregious but now it's everywhere and poorly done.
| Give the camera some weight, let things be still.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Do you mean The Hobbit? Or what shots are you refering to?
| Moria?
| tr3ntg wrote:
| I'm glad the author included examples. In each, I preferred the
| CG version.
| vl wrote:
| >Even accounting for inflation, Jurassic World in 2018 cost about
| 25% more to produce than Jurassic Park in 1993, and all the
| dinosaurs in the original feel ten times as tactile and
| threatening.
|
| But, but, dinosaurs in the original were famously CGI!
| csours wrote:
| There were a few shots with CGI, and a lot of shots with
| practical effects.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I didn't see this article make any mention of the most common
| criticism of this notion, which is that you're comparing _the
| films of the past which have stood the test of time and are
| widely considered among the greatest films ever made_ with just
| any old blockbuster film released today. The same thing comes up
| all the time with pop music. If you really want to do this
| analysis you should have some mechanism of selecting historical
| films randomly instead of just considering the masterpieces that
| you remember off the top of your head.
| tannhauser23 wrote:
| The author is not saying that modern movies are artistically
| worse than old movies. He's saying that CGI, despite decades of
| progress, seem _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense
| of immersion:
|
| "Consider Ridley Scott's 1985 Legend, wherein Tim Curry's
| onscreen presence as a horned devil is heavy, weighty--despite
| playing a fantastical devil, his clopping around in hooves
| comes across as ontologically solid. Your eyes are not
| deceived. And moreover, under the slathered makeup and
| prothestics, he is still acting--when his lip curls, that's a
| real lip. Compare that to Steppenwolf, from the 2017 Justice
| League. After almost a quarter-century of "progress" in cinema
| he comes across as digital dust, a void where physicality
| should be. His superstrength is unthreatening, because deep in
| our occipital lobes we know Steppenwolf weighs nothing, impacts
| nothing. Therefore the entire movie has no stakes. Of course
| the bad guy will be defeated, he's a hologram."
|
| Yes, of course the article ignores the hundreds of old movies
| with terrible prosthetics and costumes. I think the author
| tries his best to compare similar things. For example, when he
| discusses the latest Dune with Lawrence of Arabia - both
| acclaimed movies. Specifically, he discusses how the desert
| scenes _look_ to our eyes:
|
| "Lawrence of Arabia from 1962 looks so much more real than
| Dune, even when just comparing the shots of people in Bedouin
| costumes hanging out in a desert ... For instance, the shadows
| both characters cast to their right. In the 2021 Dune, it is a
| monochrome chunk, despite the billowing fabric around the
| character. In the 1962 Lawrence of Arabia, the shadow of the
| fabric is actually see-through. It has dimensionality, thinness
| and thickness. Because it's a real shadow. So despite both
| being filmed in similar locations, one scene unconsciously
| triggers more belief in the ontology of the fictional world--
| the directionality of the light, the blue above the dune--while
| the other comes across as an ersatz reality."
|
| I felt this coming out of the latest Star Wars movies: the
| space battle scenes felt so... flat, despite being technically
| amazing. There's something to be said for actually shooting on
| location and using physical props.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| My favourite point of comparison is car chase scenes.
|
| To this day, it's just so blatantly obvious when they're CGI
| cars that don't actually exist. Though action is pumped up to
| 11 (not to mention occasional Michael Bay syndrome of fast
| zooms,a whole separate gripe), it's not as believable and
| impactful than physical cars at their actual limit.
|
| That being said, that's me, and a few fellow car chase geeks
| and possibly film nerds.
| Joeboy wrote:
| I know that at least one vehicle in this[1] car chase scene
| does not exist, but only because I've heard a director's
| commentary. I'm guessing most people wouldn't spot it
| either. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if there were
| others. I don't think it's a problem.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ARFyrM6gVs
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I mean, it's a 6 min clip; and the red subaru definitely
| _exists_ (they went on sale after production ended if I
| recall, a bit out of my price range:)... although why
| they took a canonical AWD rally car and made it RWD is
| _beyond_ my understanding.
|
| There are what - hundred or more individual shots linked
| in there? So we'd have to narrow on which one is CGI
| augmented and how much. But it's a lot more "Weighty" of
| a setup either way than most car chase scenes these days,
| and received praise at the time accordingly :). I just
| watched Red Notice last night, and beyond all the _other_
| horribleness, the car chase scenes had the classic shiny,
| unbelievable Star Trek Warp Space feel to them that 's
| common in so many movies today - and with 5-6 times the
| budget of Baby Driver, it's not that it's a "cheap movie
| with cheap effects".
|
| edit after a brief Google: Indeed Edgar Wright takes
| tremendous pride on the car stunts and practical effects
| in the movie:
|
| https://www.inverse.com/article/33512-how-baby-driver-
| did-ca...
|
| https://www.motorbiscuit.com/the-baby-driver-subaru-awd-
| rwd/
|
| In fact, the Baby Driver stunt drivers are complaining
| wildly about CGI in other movies:
|
| https://carbuzz.com/news/baby-driver-s-stunt-driver-
| condemns...
|
| So I feel if anything, that movie proves my point :-)
| [deleted]
| deanCommie wrote:
| These are still not fair comparisons.
|
| Legend and Justice League are both mediocre movies, but
| Legend won a ton of technical awards, including being
| nominated for Oscars for Makeup, BAFTAs for visual effects,
| and won an award for cinematography [0]. Justice League's
| list of awards is much more meager, and nothing for technical
| achievements. [1]
|
| The Dune and Lawrence of Arabia comparison is also flawed.
| Sure they're both "acclaimed", But Dune is acclaimed as "One
| of the best films of the year", and Lawrence of Arabia is
| acclaimed as "One of the best films OF ALL TIME."
|
| Also, Lawrence of Arabia is a real story of a real person set
| in the real world. So realism is bound to be important. Dune
| is a fictional story set thousands of years in the future in
| a different part of the universe. And specifically deals with
| a bit of mysticism and fantastical elements closer to fantasy
| than science fiction. Comparing the "reality" of their
| effects is apples and oranges.
|
| I'll give you Star Wars for sure. Star Wars most assuredly
| did NOT benefit from "improved" technology.
|
| [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089469/awards/?ref_=tt_awd
| [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0974015/awards/
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I haven't seen 2017 justice league, but I have seen enough
| modern day superhero films to be sceptical that's why his
| strength is unthreatening.
|
| Of course he's going to be defeated, he's the villain. Heroes
| don't get injured. Every strength based character is infinite
| strong.
|
| Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound, then
| fly, then fly in space, then lift a continent made of
| kryptonite which is "Superman's Kryptonite", if you will.
|
| Tobey MacGuire Spider-Man hurt his knee trying to slow down a
| train, Tom Holland held a flying aircraft carrier together
| with his hands. Yesterday's Doctor Octopus would be no match
| for today's Spider-Man and his small scale plots no interest.
| Even so, Alfred Molina's Doc Oc was a good and threatening
| character despite having CGI assisted arms.
|
| Hulk used to throw tanks about, now he punches alien
| spaceships into the ground.
|
| Iron man was a guy in a cyborg suite, with hulk buster he's
| hulk strong.
|
| Magneto was a strategist who could push away wolverine, now
| he can lift sunken battleships and stadiums.
|
| Wolverine was an eternal soldier now he can survive a hit
| from a nuclear bomb(!)
|
| Batman was a strategist who worked out, now he's strong
| enough to fight superman hand to hand.
|
| Nobody gets injured unless they can walk it off, nobody dies
| unless they're about to come back to life[mostly]. Nothing is
| damaged unless it's background scenery buildings and cars.
|
| Of course people aren't thinking it's hush stakes, it isn't.
| That's not CGI fault, it's poor story telling papered over
| with CGI, bad character writing with CGI energy beam weapons
| instead of personality.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I never noticed this, and now it seems obvioous: superpower
| inflation. Thanks!
| kobalsky wrote:
| I think the term for this is power creep and it also
| applies to games
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The last of these recent years' superhero movies I saw
| had the protagonist fly from the ground on earth into
| space and fly through a fleet of supposedly extremely
| advanced and capable and enormous spaceships in order to
| win the fight. Literally, simply flying through as if
| playing a connect the dots game.
|
| One was left wondering how there could be any further
| movies with this person available to fly through
| anything.
| tarmon wrote:
| They are typically just written out of the conflict. In
| this case I assume that you are talking about Captain
| Marvel whom I believe is always needed on other planets
| in other galaxies except for the rare occassion when the
| writers needs a deus ex machina.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Same for the Green Lantern Corps. They are always needed
| but there's far too few of them so 99.999% of the time
| the heroes in these stories kind of hold the front until
| a GL shows up and beats the threat relatively easily.
|
| I quite enjoyed that universe for a bit of time but the
| ever-inflating (and absurd) power levels and lack of
| actual stakes eventually ruined it for me. As it did with
| most mainstream superhero movies.
| kcartlidge wrote:
| It reminds me of the old EE 'Doc' Smith (Science Fiction)
| set of seven Lensman books. The last is an outlier, but for
| the first six books each feels like it is a similar tale as
| the previous ones but with the scales, powers, and threat
| levels turned up a notch.
|
| Almost like having used up the ideas available, the only
| place to go now is incrementally growing the constituent
| parts. And that's how I feel about most modern
| action/adventure/fantasy/scifi stuff - to quote another
| genre: _" this one goes up to 11"_.
|
| But I don't want it going to 11. Even for my SF/Fantasy I
| want it to _feel_ real. For me (and I know it is
| subjective) the author makes a good point.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| I think the really interesting counterpart to this is the
| anime One Punch Man. The main character, Saitama, can
| defeat any opponent, typically with one punch. It's the
| title for a reason; you know he'll always win, and it'll be
| disappointingly easy pretty much all of the time.
|
| The point of the series is that you can take such an
| uninteresting overpowered character, in a superheroes vs
| supervillains setting, and still end up with an interesting
| plot. Of course none of the plot hinges on the question of
| whether Saitama will be powerful enough to win, that'd be
| stupidly bad writing.
|
| Mainstream US superhero movies are mostly plots about
| whether their equivalent of Saitama will win. The action &
| graphics are the point, the plot is an afterthought.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| One Punch Man includes tons of close fights, however.
| It's just none of them involve Saitama.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I haven't seen any One Punch Man, but I don't doubt good
| writers can make any character interesting. Doctor
| Manhatten in Watchmen was basically a deity and didn't
| ruin the film with the snap of his fingers. Dr Who never
| loses and can still have good stories.
|
| I was more going for: with Tobey Macguire's Spiderman,
| Doctor Octopus was holding Aunt May from a building and
| taunting Spiderman with dropping her; the world was not
| at stake, the city was not at stake, almost nobody else
| in the city knows or cares who she is. I didn't think
| Spiderman would _lose_ , but I felt like it _mattered_
| and that it was in some way _difficult_ for Peter Parker
| to deal with, he had to take a chance, risk something,
| "only just" caught her. CGI tentacles didn't look
| realistic because they aren't a real thing, and that
| wasn't a dealbreaker. Nowadays a cloud opens up into an
| interdimensional portal and a flood of metal-living-
| skeleton-alien invasion spaceships fly through and it
| couldn't matter less if it tried; they are a swarm of
| whocares for the Avengers to punch through, which they do
| easily and uninterestingly and they didn't miss out on
| anything happening really. CGI isn't ruining it, bad plot
| is ruining it. Building turns to dust as thing crashes
| and explodes, is so overdone that's not even interesting
| by itself.
|
| Compare to early Hulk who was on his knees in a field
| against two(!) sonic beam tanks owned by the US Army,
| with only Banner's love of Liv Tyler to make him stand up
| and fight. Small scale and he was never going to lose,
| but this was the US Army against the unknown, Banner and
| the General's daughter, and it _mattered_. When Hulk
| threw the tanks, they were CGI and a bit unrealistic, but
| so what, that isn 't immersion breaking. Watching Hulk
| fight now is like seeing Star Trek's Lt Worf punch a
| Romulan spaceship while it explodes over The Fonz jumping
| a shark on a surfboard. It's not the CGI which makes it
| bad.
|
| On the YouTube Pitch Meetings channel, one of the
| recurring jokes critiquing films is the 'writer'
| describing the plot of a film and getting to a point
| where a character dies, and the 'executive' does a "who
| was that? Should I care, because I don't feel anything
| right now" reply. I don't need the hero to lose, or the
| CGI to be unnoticable. I want to feel like something is
| at stake which matters. CGI punchups may as well be
| watching a 2 hr demo of Street Fighter II.
| Ntrails wrote:
| I will grant some of what you've said, and so I will take a
| different tack.
|
| I have not seen a Daniel Craig Bond film that didn't have
| noticably CGI elements bringing me out of the moment. Some
| of the old (especially Roger Moore) bond films had pretty
| dire effects where it is obviously a man in front of a
| video screen, but I don't remember finding them as
| immersion breaking at the time.
|
| But, hard to say what is recency bias. I will say that
| Bourne stands out as having no such issues where CGI was
| obviously used... but maybe it was done better
| tshaddox wrote:
| This is cherry-picking. There are countless characters from
| comic books who are so powerful that they would be
| considered laughable in modern superhero movies the same
| way you seem to think a few cherry-picked modern superhero
| movie characters are laughably overpowered compared to a
| few cherry-picked characters from older superhero movies.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > Nobody gets injured unless they can walk it off, nobody
| dies unless they're about to come back to life[mostly].
| Nothing is damaged unless it's background scenery buildings
| and cars.
|
| This is probably the biggest thing. The biggest mistake of
| hero films is that characters who are strong are not very
| strong. They do big hits but its all clearly irrelevant. It
| doesn't really matter how strong they are absolutely.
| Getting thrown into walls is my particular pet peeve of
| damaging moves that never matter. There's an over reliance
| on suspense where its not really deserved. I feel Captain
| Marvel and Thor Ragnarok did this decently. They just
| shrugged and made it explicitly clear that the heroes were
| 100x stronger than the trash mobs and released any tension
| in the fights to just have a good time with them.
| aprdm wrote:
| There's so much CGI nowadays that even things you don't think
| are CGI, are actually CGI. Like buildings, glasses, doors,
| the most mundane things are done with CGI in many TV shows
| and movies.
|
| Jon Favreau was a person who was very much against CGI, until
| he was reviewing some of the first iron man work and couldn't
| actually differentiate CGI from non CGI shots, he gave up on
| that.
|
| There's bad cgi and good cgi, but 99% of the movies nowadays
| have a lot of cgi that you don't even notice, because it's
| good cgi :)
| tshaddox wrote:
| Yep. Basically any time you think "it must have been
| difficult or expensive to shoot in that location," you're
| probably right, and it's probably CG. And I'm not just
| talking about obvious examples like "abandoned Times
| Square." I mean pretty much any public area (especially a
| popular recognizable public area) where it would be
| logistically tricky to shoot.
| ST2084 wrote:
| Viewers never even notice good CGI, only bad.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Lawrence of Arabia is also one of the most expensive and most
| insanely massively epic films ever shot - I am not sure it is
| a fair comparison. Dune is a massive massive movie today but
| I am not sure I agree the comparison.
|
| Realistically yes we should just be doing more practical SFX
| but you have to realize it is not just some big hollywood
| exec deciding they want to ONLY do VFX - the available skill
| market for these things has drastically changed. In the 1980s
| there were lots of very skilled SFX people and studios that
| could do some incredible things. The amount of people with
| those skills has dwindled.
|
| I think the best example of this sort of thing is the OG
| Jurassic Park. Everyone has an armchair evaluation of why it
| holds up so well and many are correct but there is a subtle
| difference most people never bring up. Years ago I worked
| with a guy much more experienced than me who had originally
| been a talented stop motion artist and then as the industry
| progressed moved on to doing animation for VFX. He did a lot
| of animation for the CGI dinosaurs - imagine the scene where
| the T-Rex is chasing the jeep for example. The big difference
| is that because his back story was in stop motion he had a
| much more direct and real world experience of how things and
| people move and how their weight is thrown around. One of the
| underappreciated things in Jurassic Park and why it seems to
| hold up so well today is simply that the dinosaurs move like
| they should as huge, lumbering creatures - it ends up a
| subtle difference that ends up making a huge impact on what
| we unconsciously accept as "real".
| [deleted]
| nfw2 wrote:
| Also, Dune is a science fiction movie. Looking as real as
| possible was not necessarily the goal, but rather to
| maintain a stylized glean appropriate for a movie with
| hunter-seekers, force-fields, and sand worms.
|
| I think the VFX approach worked well for the movie, and
| movie critics seem to universally agree that the
| cinematography and effects were magnificent.
|
| A better comparison would be a modern period epic like
| Dunkirk.
| ChrisLTD wrote:
| There is a great YouTube video breaking down how Dune's
| special effects were created to look as real as possible,
| as opposed to what you get in the average Marvel movie:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIKupTibxKQ
| nfw2 wrote:
| Thanks for the link! I didn't mean Dune looked
| intentionally fake, but I think there was some
| cohesiveness in the creative decisions behind the VFX,
| the cinematography, the set and costumes designs, the
| editing, etc. that intentionally creates an enhanced
| dramatic aesthetic, along the lines of what you might see
| in a Baz Luhrmann movie.
|
| As per the original author's point, the shot included
| from Dune looks like something out of a fantasy world,
| whereas the shot from Lawrence of Arabia just looks like
| a dude walking around in the desert. But I think this
| difference was intentional and goes deeper than just CGI
| shagie wrote:
| Another series that I've enjoyed watching is the Corridor
| Crew. Their take on Dune (both versions) is
| https://youtu.be/OHPkdMGI6D4
| Zanni wrote:
| Anyone who's interested in this topic should be watching
| Corridor Crew. They spend a lot of time analyzing _why_
| good CGI is good and bad CGI is bad, how great CGI can be
| invisible, and how, yes, practical effects are grounded
| in a way that can be difficult (but not impossible) to
| replicate with computer imaging.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _Lawrence of Arabia is also one of the most expensive and
| most insanely massively epic films ever shot_
|
| Yes, Lawrence of Arabia was one of the most expensive at
| the time. The budget was $15 million, which adjusted for
| inflation would be $138 million today. The most expensive
| movie was released the same year, Mutiny on the Bounty,
| which had a budget of $17 million.
|
| Cleopatra blew that away the following year, with an
| estimated cost of $35-44 million. Which goes to show you
| money doesn't buy you a great looking movie.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree with any of the few specific
| comparisons the author makes. Maybe Tim Curry's Steppenwolf
| does look better. But this small set of specific comparisons,
| even if they're uncontroversial, don't provide evidence that
| a CGI effect on average will look worse than a practical
| effect. I can think of plenty of examples of practical
| effects that looks terrible and CGI effects that look great
| (and, crucially, aren't even noticeably CGI to most viewers).
| irrational wrote:
| > He's saying that CGI, despite decades of progress, seem
| _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense of immersion
|
| Other than Black Panther, I can't think of any Marvel movie
| that destroyed my sense of immersion. Maybe I have become
| used to it so I don't even see it anymore unless it's really
| really bad (like Blank Panther)?
| cmckn wrote:
| I think another great example is Jackson's LotR vs. The
| Hobbit films. The first trilogy was way more immersive,
| primarily because of the different balance of practical and
| special effects.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Also the latter films used abnormally high fps.
| aprdm wrote:
| What?! You should check your facts. It was way more
| immersive because they had way more time to do it and
| didn't had turmoil in the direction of the movie. LOTR is
| an example of great CGI done in almost every shot of the
| movie
| [deleted]
| mikepurvis wrote:
| To be fair, though, the Hobbit had a lot more issues than
| just that, chief among them being a ridiculously large and
| undifferentiated ensemble cast + the fact that there was
| nowhere near enough main story material to fill a 10 hour
| runtime.
|
| The Critical Drinker has a good take on the failures of the
| Hobbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il-0pW6BNSs
| spc476 wrote:
| It would have been better to make one film, and treat it
| like the fantasy it was (more geared towards children).
| Have a framing sequence where Bilbo is telling a very
| young Frodo about his adventure "there and back again."
| But alas, that's not the world we live in.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I assume you're aware, but just in case:
| https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/
|
| Obviously doesn't fix tone issues, but does chop the
| runtime in half by eliminating much of the most-
| obviously-superfluous content.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Also, I think a lot of it was having to make Orlando
| Bloom (Legolas) look younger instead of 10 years older
| (like in real life).
|
| It seemed to give a certain fakeness to all the faces.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| That is really one of the best examples there is for this
| particular topic.
|
| Same director, same setting and lore, presumably a lot of
| the same people worked on both sets of films. And yet for
| many people the Hobbit trilogy falls flat. The CGI often
| seems at fault here; for me the immersion was lost in the
| larger battle scenes, where the LOTR trilogy rarely
| interrupted the suspension of disbelieve.
| gfxgirl wrote:
| For me, the writing sucked. That's it. Nothing to do with
| effects.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _For example, when he discusses the latest Dune with
| Lawrence of Arabia - both acclaimed movies._
|
| But Dune is barely out for a few months - it's a blockbuster,
| for sure, with enormous production budget, lots of public
| interest, etc. But so was Jurassic World, the Star Wars
| sequels or the Hobbit trilogy. Whether Dune will become an
| all-time classic like Laurence of Arabia remains to be seen.
|
| Maybe a fairer comparison would be something like Lord of the
| Rings vs Dragonheart or Conan the Barbarian or whatever else
| iconic fantasy movie there was before the CGI era?
|
| Or for Scifi, maybe the old Star Trek movies vs Avatar? (Blue
| cat people, not the other Avatar)
|
| Or Star Trek TOS vs Deep Space Nine vs Discovery.
| CollinEMac wrote:
| > But Dune is barely out for a few months - it's a
| blockbuster, for sure, with enormous production budget,
| lots of public interest, etc. But so was Jurassic World,
| the Star Wars sequels or the Hobbit trilogy. Whether Dune
| will become an all-time classic like Laurence of Arabia
| remains to be seen.
|
| Those movies have worse visuals than Dune imo.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Lawrence of Arabia from 1962 looks so much more real than
| Dune, even when just comparing the shots of people in Bedouin
| costumes hanging out in a desert
|
| I don't quite feel that's a like-for-like comparison. All of
| the Denis Villeneuve's films I have watched have a
| surreal/unreal quality to them: from the top of my head
| Sicario, Arrival, and _especially_ the one with the weird
| deer, whose name escapes me. That 's just his "style" - I
| suppose it's how scenes are framed, color grading, and how
| his shots tend to linger; there's a dream-like quality to it,
| even for the "grittier" scenes - Sicario has a lot of those.
| ericmcer wrote:
| The weight of special effects is also lowered by just the
| sheer quantity of them. I would like to see a comparison of
| how much time is spent on battle scenes in star wars 4-6 vs
| 7-9. I turned 9 off because it felt like a 10 minute cgi
| fighting scene was needed between each sparse bit of plot
| forwarding dialogue. It may be a bit overdone when people
| fast forward through the action to try and find some kind of
| meaningful character interaction.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Interesting-- I actually found Dune 2021 extremely immersive
| and weighty. Though that was without any knowledge of which
| parts were practical vs CGI. Hopefully it holds up to
| multiple viewings.
| mordymoop wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think anybody except thr OP has ever
| complained about Dune not feeling visually weighty and
| powerful, so it almost comes off as a disingenuous
| criticism of the film. OP is comparing stills from two
| movies and essentially pointing out that one is obviously
| digitally color-graded and the other is obviously filmed on
| celluloid and not color-graded. The difference is obvious
| in a side-by-side comparison. However, if you actually
| watch Dune beginning to end, your brain accepts the color
| palette as part of the visual language, you don't even
| notice it.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I had another experience. I had the experience that
| everything was there (checkbox style), but seemed to miss
| the gravitas. Or maybe I was just mad that they didn't
| include the dinner party scene...which was pivotal to the
| story because it gave the reader the sense that there WAS
| hope, that the game was just starting...and only THEN
| betrayal. but that's what you get for being a fan.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| A common and worthwhile counterpoint to that is that people
| only notice bad or rushed CGI. Properly good CGI is never
| criticized because nobody can tell its CGI. The digital
| artists have the same problem as IT staff. People only notice
| you when something goes wrong. When everything is going
| right, you might as well not exist.
|
| A timely example is Disney's Book of Boba Fett. The show is
| almost entirely CGI except for the actors. There have been
| some criticisms about particular assets like the biker gang's
| speeder bikes. But I've yet to hear anyone complain about the
| environments looking fake. Mos Espa is almost 100% CGI and it
| looks like a real set.
|
| When it works your brain just accepts it. CGI is incredibly
| good at environments. I'd go as far to say that it has been
| indistinguishable from reality for the better part of a
| decade now. Where its gets noticed is in places where it
| doesn't do so well or when there were time or budget
| limitations. Fully CGI humans are still not believable and
| will probably be the last thing to get right. CGI non-human
| creatures have varying success. Compositing can still be
| difficult. Often its better to replace an actors entire body,
| save for the face, and create a CGI version in a fully CGI
| environment. Compositing a real person in a CGI scene is
| prone to floating body syndrome and lighting issues.
|
| The real answer isn't necessarily that one is better than the
| other. But these are tools which should be used together to
| make a better product. And I think you'll find that modern
| films with the best overall effects do blend the two. Mad Max
| Fury Road is a good example, the vehicles are real with real
| stuntmen climbing on them but the environment is artificial.
| Shooting a film in the middle of a desert with nothing in
| sight is not practical. But shooting the scene on a sandy
| path and compositing in the CGI desert is.
| fvdessen wrote:
| You don't have to not notice it for the cgi to make the
| film worse.
|
| You could certainly for example, film 'once upon a time in
| the west' in a green room and overlay the actors upon a
| western themed cgi environment, and have it look believably
| realistic.
|
| But are the actors going to act as if they were under the
| burning sun as believably ? Will they avoid looking at the
| sun ? Will they tend to seek the shadows ? Will they sweat
| ? Probably not, and the feeling you'll get from the film
| will be different, without you being able to know why
| babyshake wrote:
| I do think the Dune film suffered from this problem. I
| didn't really believe the actors were actually in an
| environment like Arrakis.
| 2III7 wrote:
| Arrakis was mostly filmed in a desert, how did it not
| feel real? The CGI in Dune was pretty decent IMO and the
| highlight for me was the ornithopters wing flapping. The
| motion blur of the wings was simply amazing.
| fvdessen wrote:
| From the making of I can see online it seems most of it
| is actually filmed in studio, especially when actors are
| involved up close.
|
| It is noticable that it's not filmed in a hot place
| because the actors are never sweating, they move too
| fast, their skin doesn't have the color and texture of a
| strong tan, they don't seem affected by transitioning
| from hot to cold, they touch sand with naked hands, etc.
| Compare with western movies that are actually filmed on
| location, they somehow feel like they're filmed on a
| hotter planet than arakis
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Not to defend the practice of "CGI everything," but
| there's a new-ish technique which I first became aware of
| from the Mandalorian, where the actors actually see the
| rendered CGI on massive screens around them - think the
| holodeck from Star Trek TNG. The physical props exist
| between the characters and the huge display, and the
| projection is even bright enough to (partially) light the
| scene. You can see this technique in the "Making of the
| Mandalorian" documentary series.
|
| I do think CGI is often overutilized, much to the
| detriment of many shows and films, especially in genres
| where practical effects get the job done (i.e. - not sci-
| fi). However, these techniques are evolving, and the
| actors can at least start to see visual cues and interact
| with the same digital elements that the viewer will
| ultimately be shown.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| It's called "The Volume" and it's a true game-changer.
|
| Because the environment projects its own lights,
| reflections are automatically correct and don't need to
| be added in post. It also gives huge freedom to the DP
| for shots because they don't really have to light
| anything specifically.
|
| And the best thing is that it's comparatively cheap so
| they can punch way over their budget effects-wise.
| monocasa wrote:
| To be fair, the volume looks extremely goofy if you're
| there. The perspective shifts with the camera, and
| apparently can be close to nauseating if the camera moves
| too fast, and doesn't feel like a holodeck but instead a
| room covered in screens. It's game changing for being
| able to integrate vfx, but it's arguably more distracting
| for actors than a green screen.
| babyshake wrote:
| There are also far less obvious examples of CGI not being
| noticeable. These days a filmmaker, especially a highly
| opinionated one like David Fincher with the necessary
| resources, can decide that they want something like an
| extra car parked on a street and add it in post with CGI.
| The audience never even considers the car wasn't there the
| day of filming.
| karaterobot wrote:
| That's not necessarily a counterpoint: it doesn't matter
| how much great CGI doesn't destroy the reality of a film,
| so long as there is any bad CGI which does. It's like how
| nobody talks about all the oysters that _didn 't_ make them
| sick.
|
| I don't really think that bad CGI ruins films in most
| cases, but I think the author of this article does.
| gfxgirl wrote:
| Most non-fantasy, non-sci-fi is CGI and has been for over a
| decade
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k
| CollinEMac wrote:
| There is a difference between CGI and using a green
| screen. I didn't watch the whole video but I didn't see
| any Computer Generated Imagery.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > A common and worthwhile counterpoint to that is that
| people only notice bad or rushed CGI.
|
| And similarly, people don't bring up the vast amounts of
| bad or rushed practical effects being produced at the same
| time films like Star Wars and Lawrence of Arabia were
| produced.
| chx wrote:
| Yes! I remember a Game Of Thrones CGI breakdown reel, can't
| find it now, which showed the Lannister camp and it was
| very interesting how much of it was actually real but at
| the same time how much was augmented by CGI. You absolutely
| couldn't tell.
| Izkata wrote:
| > I felt this coming out of the latest Star Wars movies: the
| space battle scenes felt so... flat, despite being
| technically amazing. There's something to be said for
| actually shooting on location and using physical props.
|
| Calling Elon Musk, you know what you have to do.
| Joeboy wrote:
| They are in fact building a film studio in space as we
| speak[1].
|
| [1] https://nofilmschool.com/space-station-movie-studio
| davesque wrote:
| I don't know if it was just me or the theater I was in but I
| felt like some of the effects in Dune were second rate. Was a
| bit disappointed, especially during desert scenes. I wish I
| could think of a counterexample of good CGI from modern
| cinema. Actually, I remember certain parts of Interstellar,
| for example the black hole and the 5-dimensional book shelf,
| were really well done. I think I was able to suspend my
| disbelief and just have my mind blown by them.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| It is hard to think of a good example of CGI from modern
| films because good CGI is invisible. There are an
| incredible number of effects shots in modern films and TV,
| everything from removing backgrounds to replacing
| stuntpeoples faces with the stars. Most of it you will
| never even notice unless you look.
|
| I don't disagree with the article entirely but I think the
| landscape of film has changed so much over the years that
| it is hard to make a comparison. The rise of superhero
| films has meant that blockbusters these days have to
| include comic-book style CGI characters, spaceships, and
| citywide destruction that is always going to look fake
| because it is literally incredible (as in non-credible) to
| our eyes.
|
| Dune is an interesting case because we can directly compare
| Dune 2021 to Dune 1984. Both SFX powerhouses of their
| times. Dune 1984 does contain some very impressive shots
| but nobody is going to say that it looks better than 2021.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > It is hard to think of a good example of CGI from
| modern films because good CGI is invisible. There are an
| incredible number of effects shots in modern films and
| TV, everything from removing backgrounds to replacing
| stuntpeoples faces with the stars. Most of it you will
| never even notice unless you look.
|
| But there is a distinction between CGI that is truly
| invisible to the average viewer, and CGI that is
| extremely photorealistic but is depicting events that
| very clearly could not be shot practically. I think
| there's a lot of scenes set in space, or in extremely
| bizarre environments, that simply _must_ be CGI but which
| looks as photorealistic as I can imagine (but of course,
| there are plenty of funny quotes of people saying that
| about imagery from the 90s that looks laughable now).
| Daishiman wrote:
| Having seen that movie and a bunch of similar movies with
| well-done effects a lot of color work, the quality of the
| theater is extremely important. It, like Mad Max, shines on
| high-quality projectors with lots of illumination, and both
| fall flat if you can't have the contrast levels high
| enough. In theaters with modern digital projectors, it's a
| feast.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Funnily enough, I felt some of the practical effects in
| _Dune_ were lackluster relative to its acclaim and high
| production, as well. The orinthopter in the sandstorm
| looked too much like a child 's toy. The aerial shots of
| Arrakeen City looked neat as a display model, but not
| enough like an actual city.
| belval wrote:
| I don't want to discount your experience, but this does
| seem like an unpopular opinion considering Dune won a lot
| of prizes for the special effects[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(2021_film)
| davesque wrote:
| I don't want to act all offended and everything, but I
| honestly don't understand why a list of rewards is a
| counterpoint to my personal opinion. I'm aware that
| everyone loved the movie. I don't care and I'm not just
| trying to be a troll.
|
| _Update:_ Actually, your response makes sense if you
| assumed, reasonably, that I actually wasn 't sure how I
| felt and wanted expert opinions. Left some other similar
| comments further down in the thread. Sorry to snap back
| like I did.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > but I honestly don't understand why a list of rewards
| is a counterpoint to my personal opinion
|
| Because it's an opinion from people that supposedly
| understand the subject matter more than anyone, so caries
| more weight.
| belval wrote:
| > I don't know if it was just me or the theater I was in
| but I felt like some of the effects in Dune were second
| rate.
|
| Your comment starts with a statement that seem to imply
| that you doubt your own assessment. The list of awards is
| a strong signal that the effects were not "second rate".
| Thus my comment confirming that seems to be an unpopular
| opinion.
| davesque wrote:
| [This was a bunch of needless snark so I voluntarily
| removed it]
|
| _Update:_ Actually, I think you 're right. I
| misrepresented my opinion as weakly held as though I was
| asking for a more authoritative source on the matter. So
| your response was appropriate and appreciated. I'm
| realizing now that I feel more strongly about it; like it
| wasn't just a matter of the theater having a bad
| projector.
| Tarsul wrote:
| the strength of the new Dune was in its sound design. At
| least that was the decisive factor that gave me goosebumps
| (I think). But the CGI deserves a shoutout wrt the design
| of the flying vehicles.
|
| On the whole I agree with the article, earlier movies (and
| Tarantino movies) felt more real due to them being filmed
| in real life.
| exhilaration wrote:
| I hope the sound design you're referring to doesn't
| include the dialogue, because me and the two other folks
| I watched it with in theaters couldn't understand half
| the dialogue. It was like the Dark Knight rises all over
| again.
| jspash wrote:
| The blue-eye effect looked to me like the first colourised
| movies where they hand-painted the actual film. It really
| put it me off. I don't know if they were meant to be
| "glowing" or if the colour just "bled" outside the contours
| of the eyes. Either way, I wasn't a fan.
|
| The rest was fine though. I've often thought that it's
| silly to spend so much time creating a huge digital scene
| with lots of detail only to pan by it in less than a
| second. Dune got that part right. Linger!
| Joeboy wrote:
| > The blue-eye effect looked to me like the first
| colourised movies where they hand-painted the actual
| film.
|
| That's how they did the blue-eye effect on David Lynch's
| 1984 version (with hand-painting, probably not drawing
| directly on the film). Don't know if that maybe
| influenced Villeneuve's version.
| tyingq wrote:
| > He's saying that CGI, despite decades of progress, seem
| _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense of immersion
|
| True, though many older movies without CGI also had terrible
| special effects the killed "suspension of disbelief".
| Comparing to just the best isn't really fair, unless the
| assumption is that all CGI is done poorly.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > He's saying that CGI, despite decades of progress, seem
| _fake_ in a way that subtly destroys our sense of immersion
|
| Because he _choses_ to use bad CGI in comparisons and
| completely ignores all the cases where CGI is invisible.
|
| See _Why CG Sucks (Except It Doesn 't)_
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24
|
| "I think that CG looks bad is because we only see bad CG.
| Amazing, wonderfully executed CG is everywhere, we just don't
| know it"
| js2 wrote:
| Another example.
|
| I recently watched _Knowing_ (2009) based on Ebert 's review.
| One of the things he wrote in that review was: "The film has
| sensational special effects, which again I won't describe."
|
| I found myself wondering if we watched the same movie. I
| thought the special effects were pretty awful. Comparing the
| scene the subway crash to say, the train crash in _Silver
| Streak_ (1976)[1] or _Speed_ subway crash (1994)[2], I
| thought _Knowing_ [3] was inferior and just looks terribly
| fake to me.
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qPAOarQxaU
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US2bcpW7KFU
|
| 3. https://vimeo.com/117341659
|
| Then there's the insane _French Connection_ (1971) chase
| scene which they could never film today:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzEloJ5venk
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_French_Connection_(film)#C.
| ..
|
| https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-
| culture/entertainment/video...
|
| https://nypost.com/2021/10/04/secrets-of-the-french-
| connecti...
| gfxgirl wrote:
| Effects that looked amazing in the past often no longer
| look amazing. I remember thinking the dinosaurs in Jurassic
| Park looked real. Now they look like bad CGI with bad
| compositing. Part of that is the first time I see
| something, especially in the theater, if the story is good,
| I get sucked in and am not looking for flaws. Where as,
| years later when it's no longer exciting, because I already
| know the story or because someone said "go watch these
| effects", then those issues stick out. Knowing's effects
| were good when it came out and good enough if you were into
| the story and not trying to look for flaws. I agree though
| that watching them now they look subpar, especially the
| subway.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Note that Ebert might be using "sensational" with either
| the first definition ("causing great surprise or
| excitement") or second definition ("presenting information
| with the intent to provoke intense excitement at the
| expense of other goals") given in most English
| dictionaries, rather than the third definition ("very
| good").
| smallerfish wrote:
| > . Comparing the scene the subway crash to say, the train
| crash in Silver Streak (1976)[1] or Speed subway crash
| (1994)[2], I thought Knowing[3] was inferior and just looks
| terribly fake to me.
|
| Speed probably looks best of the three. Knowing's train
| doesn't look real - maybe too fast, over blurred, missing
| reflections, whatever. Silver Streak looks terrible though,
| and is poorly directed.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| From the comments:
|
| >Fun fact: this car scene was kinda an actual car chase.
| The director made the stunt man drive the car in the middle
| of street of Brooklyn without any acknowledge from the
| people and drivers there so they can capture real
| reactions. (It's illegal but apparently nothing happened to
| them)
|
| (!) If that's true that's definitely why that scene is so
| good but hard to replicate. Though there are some props
| getting destroyed so maybe it's only true for part of the
| scene.
| js2 wrote:
| It was shot illegally (er, without permits). It really
| could not be done today:
|
| "The car chase was filmed without obtaining the proper
| permits from the city. Members of the NYPD's tactical
| force helped control traffic. But most of the control was
| achieved by the assistant directors with the help of off-
| duty NYPD officers, many of whom had been involved in the
| actual case. The assistant directors, under the
| supervision of Terence A. Donnelly, cleared traffic for
| approximately five blocks in each direction. Permission
| was given to literally control the traffic signals on
| those streets where they ran the chase car. Even so, in
| many instances, they illegally continued the chase into
| sections with no traffic control, where they actually had
| to evade real traffic and pedestrians. Many of the (near)
| collisions in the movie were therefore real and not
| planned (with the exception of the near-miss of the lady
| with the baby carriage, which was carefully rehearsed). A
| flashing police light was placed on top of the car to
| warn bystanders. A camera was mounted on the car's bumper
| for the shots from the car's point-of-view. Hackman did
| some of the driving but the extremely dangerous stunts
| were performed by Bill Hickman, with Friedkin filming
| from the backseat. Friedkin operated the camera himself
| because the other camera operators were married with
| children and he was not."
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067116/trivia
|
| The director recently said he regrets the shot:
|
| "As successful as the film was, I wouldn't do that now. I
| had put people's lives in danger."
|
| https://screenrant.com/french-connection-william-
| friedkin-ca...
| dehrmann wrote:
| I'd argue it's CGI's ambitions. A lot of old practical effect
| and green screen work doesn't hold up at all, either. CGI
| just made it easy to completely overdo it.
| nmstoker wrote:
| This is an excellent point. There are films where the CGI
| was intentionally kept limited - the film equivalent to
| someone sticking to a healthy diet and not overeating.
|
| I'm struggling to think of really recent examples but one I
| recall when CGI was starting to have this problem, that was
| pretty subtle (to the point that it's easy to watch it and
| not realise how many small CGI effects are used, along with
| some physical ones) is What Lies Beneath. It's mainly to
| cover up the impossible camera angles and you'd hardly
| know.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Also, the only reason that we think of recent ambitious CGI
| attempts as "overdoing it" is because they are by
| definition at the bleeding edge of our abilities _now_. Old
| practical effects and green screen work was probably
| "overdoing it" at the time too, because it was also at the
| bleeding edge of our abilities _then_.
| mirkules wrote:
| IMO, CGI is no different than any other effects: the
| purpose is to enhance "suspension of belief" to advance
| some plot line.
|
| For example, look at the original Star Trek. The effects
| were very unrealistic, everyone _knew_ they filmed planet
| scenes in the desert (not on a different planet), etc. But
| nobody cared, it's still a cult classic.
|
| Star Trek TNG is pretty much the same. Despite more
| advanced effects, everyone knows Data is just a guy with
| makeup, but it was much harder to think the Enterprise was
| not a real ship.
|
| At the end of the day, suspension of belief depends on
| delivery of lines, acting, etc, and much less on CGI or
| "classic" effects. CGI just makes (arguably) easier to
| achieve the effects.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > the purpose is to enhance "suspension of belief" to
| advance some plot line.
|
| I think that's overly restrictive. There's nothing
| inherently wrong with flashy CG environments, elaborate
| action sequences, etc. even if they're largely "for their
| own sake." When conceived and executed masterfully, I
| want to see the flashy stuff too! Of course, it's also
| true that sometimes very rudimentary effects can work
| great to advance themes or plots (like in the Star Trek
| series)!
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Agree very much, and that's really the triumph of a movie
| like Jurassic Park-- judicious, minimal use of CGI
| supplemented by lots of practical puppet work, miniatures,
| etc.
| aprdm wrote:
| minimal use of CGI? Have you looked into the netflix
| series "behind the scenes"?
| Melatonic wrote:
| It also holds up so well because it had some damn good
| compositors working it. An underappreciated realm in the
| VFX world.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Hmm, I will check it out, but I don't think my take is an
| uncommon one, for example:
|
| "Spielberg and his effects teams succeeded in creating
| convincing visual effects because they didn't rely on CGI
| as their go-to tool. In fact, only four to five minutes
| of the 14-15 total minutes of dinosaur scenes were
| entirely computer generated. All the other visual effects
| were created using Stan Wintson's various physical
| dinosaur models. The legendary technician, responsible
| for creating practical models for Predator and
| Terminator, built everything from animatronic puppets, to
| to a full-size animatronic T-Rex, and even Velociraptor
| suits that could be worn by stuntmen. CGI was then used
| to build on top of what the production team had already
| created on-set. In other words, Jurassic Park's CGI still
| looks so good today because there isn't much of it in the
| film, which makes sense considering the limitations of
| the technology at the time.
|
| ...
|
| But perhaps even more important than the breakthrough
| graphics was Spielberg's decision to still keep the CGI
| to a minimum. According to Dennis Murren, visual effects
| supervisor at ILM, once the director saw how convincing
| the digital dinosaurs looked, he actually rewrote the
| ending of the film to include the now-famous full-body
| shot of the T-Rex letting out a final roar in the
| Jurassic Park visitor center rotunda. But despite clearly
| being impressed by the capabilities of ILM, Spielberg
| still limited the CGI elements and retained the use of
| Stan Winston's puppets for much of the memorable dinosaur
| scenes viewers still love today. In fact, there's said to
| be a total of just 63 visual effects shots in the whole
| film, a tiny number compared to Jurassic World's more
| than 2,000 VFX shots."
|
| https://screenrant.com/jurassic-park-cgi-still-good-how-
| expl...
| aprdm wrote:
| You should check it out and watch the netflix series
| about it. Of course today movies have way more VFX shots
| than before. The technology isn't as expensive and is
| much more available to be used. They were just inventing
| it back then.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| And the point is that perhaps CGI being a rarity back
| then, and in the hands of the best production studios,
| meant that it was used more judiciously and to higher
| quality.
| duped wrote:
| I watched _Voyage of the Rock Aliens_ the other day which didn
| 't stand the test of 1984, let alone the test of time. It's a
| great example of practical effects that can stand up to modern
| scrutiny... and those that can't. The flying V spaceship looks
| better than CGI in B-movies today, and the talking fire-hydrant
| robot had more character than BB-8 in the most recent Star Wars
| films.
|
| But the sheet of plexiglass used as a "force field" was
| comically terrible, even for 1984
| munificent wrote:
| I think that's a fair criticism for music where there is so
| much of it that the filtering of time makes a real difference
| to our perception of past music.
|
| But cinema is a smaller world. Yes, there are plenty of
| independent films, but most audience attention has always been
| focused on the small number of tentpole films. And if you look
| at just those over time, everything the author says here still
| holds up.
|
| Watch some of the top ten box office grossing films from 30,
| 20, 10 years ago, and today. The change in style, tone, and
| quality is enormous.
|
| Pick any random comedy or drama from the 80s or 90s and it will
| have more _realness_ , more sense of _being there_ than movies
| made today for 10x the budget. This being despite the fact that
| the older films were shot literally on film and the grain is
| visible.
|
| Digital color, an obsession with CGI, and a fixation on
| storytelling that plays well across an internation audience
| (which means violence, action, physical comedy, and simplistic
| morality tales) has made today's movies a shadow of what they
| used to be.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I think that's missing the point. Most movies are mostly
| forgotten, and the merits of the story and storytelling carry
| the movie as a thing.
|
| If you pick a mediocre movie in 2019 and compare to a mediocre
| movie in 1959, the garbage storyline will be the thing you will
| turn the movie off for.
|
| In my mind, the weakness with CGI overuse is it enables
| lazy/sloppy practices that don't scale. Similar to in graphics
| work where Photoshop is abused to create impossible edits for
| expediency.
|
| My family has a tradition of watching Bing Crosby's "White
| Christmas" every holiday season. It's quaint how you can see
| the painted backgrounds and stages... the opening scenes
| feature cardboard bricks and cheesy props. The point of the
| article is that this era of filming is bland and will look
| cheesy in the future because of the reliance on tools. You can
| already see it today - compare the Sony Spider-Man movies to
| the last iteration - the age is apparent.
| iratewizard wrote:
| An easy litmus test to show its not the test of time is to plot
| the number of exceptional quality films made per year.
|
| In any form of art, there have always been pieces motivated by
| artistic drive (i.e. a work of art like seven samurai or loan's
| run) and pieces motivated by profit (i.e. a product like all of
| the capeshit movies or the transformer movies). What we're
| seeing in film and other similar industries is a cabal of
| gatekeepers who don't fund things unless it fits the mold of
| proven, profit driven products. Remove the Larry Finks of the
| world from power, and you remove the powerwhore gatekeepers
| that have no concept of beauty.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The problem with that is that you also need to consider how
| much time has passed since each film was released. In many
| cases, if it's been 10 years since a film is released it
| would be difficult to know how people will view that film
| after another 10 years have passed.
| ballenf wrote:
| Pick the top sci-fi movie rating-wise from every year, going
| back 50 years. Then rank them.
|
| Would the past be over-represented? My hunch is yes, but I
| think it's a fair metric.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Are you controlling for things like, say, the age you were
| when you first saw a certain movie? It's kinda unfair to rank
| a brand new movie against the older movie that you watched a
| hundred times because it was one of the few VHS tapes at your
| house when you were growing up. There could be thousands of
| kids now watching that brand new movie hundreds of times on
| their iPads who are going to have similar attachments to that
| movie. Some of those kids will grow up to be filmmakers,
| movie critics, pop culture writers, etc.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Sci-fi is a weird genre because there was arguably more
| interest in it during the space race--Star Trek happened at
| the same time as early Apollo missions. There was just a lot
| more content and a lot more imaginative content.
| enkid wrote:
| I mean, maybe? But I don't really think so. Here's a list
| from IMDB:
|
| https://www.imdb.com/list/ls009003184/
|
| Let's take a look at a few of the entry's from the 1970's
| that actually had practical effects:
|
| Logan's Run - Here's Logan fighting a robot:
| https://youtu.be/USADM5Gk9Gs?t=106 Star Wars - :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g3_CFmnU7k Soylent Green -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z2txLk0ybo Invasion of the
| Body Snatchers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc_0dlmSq7I
| Alien - here's the chest buster scene -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPQ7om598OM
|
| I don't think these hold up as well as nostalgia would
| suggest, the exception being the alien chest buster scene,
| which is amazing. The others are much less ambitious and
| simply don't look as good as modern movies. Many of the
| practical effects look small or toy like. Maybe there's a
| sweet spot in the 90's?
| Joeboy wrote:
| The chest burster scene holds up, up until the baby alien
| scurries off at the end. But there's a _hilariously_
| terrible effect later on where it cuts from a model of John
| Hurt 's head to the real thing.
|
| Edit: Ian Holm, not John Hurt.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA8jv1M6Y2g
| tasha0663 wrote:
| > Logan's Run
|
| Oh god. I can't imagine anyone ever thought Box (the robot)
| didn't look completely awful.
|
| It may lack good practical effects, but some of the matte
| paintings in that movie are gorgeous. I love when they get
| to the overgrown Washington D.C.
| greedo wrote:
| Using the low quality trailer for Star Wars is pretty
| disingenuous since it was intended to be viewed on small TV
| at 480i compared to 35mm (or 70mm) in the theater.
| patrec wrote:
| Indeed. An easy fix would be to compare, say, the year's
| biggest crossing action movies from 1980-1990 and 2010-2020 or
| similar.
| rbanffy wrote:
| You make an interesting point - the article is not comparing
| apples to apples - but I think that the issue is different.
| It's not that CGI looks fake. The latest Dune is impressive in
| every sense and I don't think the CGI looks fake.
|
| I think the toughest thing about VFX facing a director is the
| temptation to abuse it. They have to remember the effects are
| there to tell the story. They should resist to making
| everything spectacular/shiny/tridimensional/hectic where not
| everything needs to be. Compare the dark Los Angeles of Blade
| Runner with the lower levels of Coruscant.
|
| And yes. Darkseid is a ridiculous villain, with a lazy design
| and even lazier lines. No amount of CGI could save it. Not even
| if he were blue and lived in a Roger Dean album cover.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Even selecting randomly wouldn't be good enough: there are much
| more movies made nowdays. But if you look at only movies rated
| 8+ on IMDB, it's the same amount.
| wvenable wrote:
| It's also significantly easier (and cheaper) to make films
| these days.
| enkid wrote:
| I think the other thing that is missing from this conversation
| is the bar of entry has lowered so much with modern CGI. Look
| at a YouTube channel like Dust[0], which has literally hundreds
| of sci-fi short films using CGI to tell stories. Sure, they
| aren't 2022 blockbuster level, but they are 2010 TV level.
| There is simply no way practical effects would be able to scale
| the way that CGI has.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/c/watchdust
| the_af wrote:
| Agreed, but to be fair, the comparison is also with high
| profile "modern" movies.
|
| "The Thing" to most people today is not "one of the greatest
| movies" but a horror classic and -- visual quality wise -- on
| par with "Phantom Menace" or "Jurassic Park", if not worse.
|
| I think the criticism is valid: that the physicality of classic
| SFX is still mostly unmatched by CGI, and the eye and mind
| notice this.
| zardo wrote:
| One thing practical effects shots have going for them is that
| at their worst it still looks like something physically there
| with the actors.
|
| CGI looks at it's worst like it's painted on top of the
| scene.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| carlob wrote:
| > Agreed, but to be fair, the comparison is also with high
| profile "modern" movies.
|
| Mostly sequels, remakes, reboots or nth installments of a
| franchise.
| the_af wrote:
| Carpenter's The Thing is also a remake. So?
|
| I don't think this matters much.
| carlob wrote:
| You're not under the impression that most big budget
| movies nowadays are just attempts at milking the same
| character or universe to the maximum possible extent?
| zardo wrote:
| 'The Thing' wasn't greenlit because it used existing IP
| with a guaranteed audience. It's just a short story that
| recieved two very different adaptations 30 years apart.
| the_af wrote:
| I am, but at the same time I'm reminded it's always been
| like this.
|
| But isn't it an entirely separate conversation? Of course
| CGI hasn't "ruined the movies", that part of the title is
| hyperbole. But the actual conversation about practical
| SFX vs CGI doesn't have much to do with originality, I
| think.
| carlob wrote:
| Which is also why the point about architecture is so dumb.
|
| Shitty faux-traditional architecture is everywhere in the US,
| just look at the vernacular architecture of most suburban
| homes, whereas OP is comparing the buildings that we have
| collectively decided to preserve for centuries with some random
| junk that will probably be torn down in a decade or two.
|
| Then again I'm not even sure why I am surprised to disagree
| with something that comes from Scott Alexander. A crypto-
| reactionary not liking new stuff, what a coincidence!
| Spivak wrote:
| As someone really frustrated trying to buy a home that isn't
| soulless this still begs the question why we seemingly _can
| 't_ build buildings that are exceptional quality by the
| standards of 100 years ago -- at any price! For fun I've
| toured 5+ million dollar mansions for sale and they're just
| as shitty as any mass-produced suburban neighborhood, they're
| just bigger. Like what was even the point of technological
| advancement, better construction equipment, logistics,
| materials science just to make worse houses?
| wilkommen wrote:
| That's because all that technological advancement went into
| making houses _cheaper_ not better. Add to that the
| financialization of everything but especially housing over
| the last half a century (things that are the same as each
| other are easier to price and finance), and you get a
| country that builds mostly cheap low-quality housing that
| 's all the same as each other. Add to _that_ the fact that
| the labor force and the construction industry in general
| has coalesced around the new normal (which is natural), and
| you have a knowledge gap too, where most people and
| companies in the industry only know how to build the fast,
| cheap, easy-to-finance way. Anything other than the fast,
| cheap, easy-to-finance way is now niche, and therefore even
| more expensive than it would otherwise be. I think that
| this knowledge gap is the biggest reason why even even the
| richest people live in what is essentially just a bigger
| breadbox. If those rich people were to get anything other
| than a big breadbox, they 'd have to really know what they
| wanted and seek out niche professionals who can build to
| their exacting tastes. And some do. But most rich people
| are just like anyone else, and they pick their new house
| from what essentially amounts to a catalog, and the
| builders put in the catalog what they already know how to
| build and like building - which is fast, cheaply built,
| easy-to-finance, disposable housing.
| wcarron wrote:
| I have some insight into the high-end architectural world.
| You (in the general sense) absolutely _can_ get houses of
| exceptional quality. You (as in Spivak) probably cannot.
| Because they are insanely expensive today. But these are
| bespoke, 'if you have to ask you can't afford', old-money
| type expenses.
|
| When your estate/arch/construction costs start to exceed
| $20-50 million, you can get basically whatever you can
| think up. Giant multistory libraries, entirely of solid,
| old hardwoods with a glass walkwalk suspended from the
| ceiling? Done. 18-car garage? Done. Pool and minigolf on
| the roof? Done. Commercial level home gyms? Done. The
| client wants the absurdly large kitchen's cabinetry done
| without fasteners, just joinery: Done. When the client says
| 'I want a much higher PSI concrete for the foundation, even
| though it literally won't matter: done. $25k for a coffee
| table? Basically the same as an Ikea table to these
| clients.
|
| A few examples: A home being built for client of a friend
| had a 26ft-tall marble fireplace from a castle/villa in
| Italy (which the client also purchased for this purpose)
| disassembled, shipped to the US, and reassembled in his CT
| home. This was 1 of 4 fireplaces in the residence. Hell,
| I've seen a property in the Hamptons where the _guest_
| house would have been the envy of Newport, RI; and even the
| full-time help lived in a beautiful home on the estate that
| exceeded most normal people 's homes at 3600 sq ft.
|
| Humans can build nice things. It's just a matter of how
| much money you're willing to spend. To build great things,
| it's a matter of how much money you're willing to throw
| away.
| abakker wrote:
| Indeed. this is completely correct. In my hobby
| woodworking business in 2019, I made a $45k wall all out
| of CNC machined mahogany. It was patterned, and 2" thick.
| The design, Machining, install, and finishing took
| months. it was >$5k in raw material in wood, not counting
| the costs of fasteners, sub-wall, finishes, etc. Labor
| made up the bulk of the costs, though.
|
| Every part of that house in seacliff was following that
| mantra. Exceptional attention to detail, independent
| craftsmen contributing special pieces, and carefully
| selected design language. It was cool to work on it.
|
| Even as the lead person on creating that, I can't afford
| to replicate it in my own house. And my house isn't
| cheap. Its just not practical, and short of doing the
| whole house as an exercise in design and craftsmanship
| you just can't get the return on those things vs drywall.
| randomsilence wrote:
| >exceed $20-50 million, you can get basically whatever
| you can think up.
|
| Does that money give you access to people who can build a
| home with soul?
|
| An 18-car garage on its own is just a flex.
|
| >had a 26ft-tall marble fireplace from a castle/villa in
| Italy
|
| To me, this is a hint that the client couldn't find
| somebody to build something soulful anew. Instead, he had
| to take something exquisite from somewhere else to fill
| the void in his new house.
| spc476 wrote:
| Biltmore House [1], the largest private home in the
| United States, cost $5,000,000 to build in 1895-1900 (I
| think it's a beautiful home and I would _love_ to have it
| 's library). Adjusted for inflation, it would cost around
| $160,000,000 [2] (maybe more, depending upon how you
| figure inflation). In fact, I'm not sure you could build
| that today for _any_ amount of money.
|
| [1] https://www.biltmore.com/
|
| [2] https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/
| result....
| wilkommen wrote:
| What do you think it would cost to get a 750 square foot
| home built super quality in old style? I don't mean
| fireplaces from italy, I just mean stuff like real brick
| masonry, super well insulated, slate roof, hardwood
| floors, a real fireplace. Basically I want to build a
| house that looks like a brick house from 1875 but is
| energy efficient and structurally sound, with modern
| electricity, plumbing and climate control. Is that a
| thing that any builder would do?
| sumtechguy wrote:
| You would probably want an architecture firm to put it
| all together. They have the correct connections to the
| right people to make it work. You just listed off several
| different contractors. Roofer to do slate, Mason to do
| the brickwork, carpenters for the interior/exterior wood
| work, electrician for the modern electrical runs, plumber
| for water, architect for a nice plan for everyone to
| follow, AC/heating specialist for climate control,
| general contractor for all the general stuff and keeping
| things going to plan and holding people to task for not
| doing the job right and many will do things badly and
| argue they did it right. Had to argue with an AC guy once
| for an hour because he installed the unit in backwards,
| until the foreman showed up and made him 'put the unit in
| correctly'. A friend is currently dealing with a roofing
| guy whos crew did a seriously bad job (as in scrape it
| off and do it again bad). Add in something like 'smart
| home/IoT' and you will need a firm that does that sort of
| thing.
|
| Doable? Very much so. But it defiantly is a learning
| experience. Also keep in mind what you put into it may
| not translate into what it will sell for. That will
| depend on the area you build in and similar sized homes
| in the area. No mater how nice it is.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| I don't think this is correct at all, and this perception
| is probably largely due to survivorship bias.
|
| I have several relatives who are home builders and have
| acted as my own general contractor in building a home, so
| this is an area of interest to me.
|
| Comparing the _average_ home today (yes that shitty
| McMansion included) to the _average_ home 100 years ago,
| today 's homes are way more efficient and comfortable in
| terms of amenities, climate control, being draft- and
| vermin- free, and safe.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm guessing it's just a race to the bottom? I suspect if
| you were willing to pay significantly more you could still
| get a house constructed according to whatever your
| specifications are.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You'd also have to build that well made house not in a
| local trendy development on some private land that is
| away from everything.
| saltminer wrote:
| If you have money, you can absolutely get a house that
| will stand the test of time.
|
| But corporate builders aren't concerned about that. They
| do shoddy work because they know they can get away with
| it. It's just good enough that an overworked inspector
| will pass it, but by the time the buyer moves in and the
| honeymoon period has ended, the corporation which built
| it has been dissolved and its profits reabsorbed into the
| parent company. Good luck going after them at that point.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Right, that's what I'm saying about the race to the
| bottom. I'm sure you could find a corporate builder
| (perhaps even the same corporate builder!) to build
| whatever project you're talking about for 3 times the
| price and it will be significantly better quality. It's
| easy to lament the way the market has trended, but are
| you willing to pay 3 times more? Probably not.
| CalRobert wrote:
| That's interesting, where are you looking and what
| characteristics are you looking for?
|
| One difference is that we used to use old-growth timber a
| lot more.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| It's exactly the same as movies - what's missing is mass.
| Old houses made of stone and dense wood have mass and
| warmth and stability. Modern houses in the US are light
| and hollow. Even the walls are literally hollow.
| CalRobert wrote:
| That's... surprising to me.
|
| I own a 200 year old cottage. It has a LOT of mass. The
| walls are a meter of stone, and the mortar is lime. The
| thatched roof is about 1.5 meters of straw.
|
| It's REALLY COLD. Keeping it warm takes a huge amount of
| energy. I've removed some of the modern Portland-cement
| based render and replaced with lime mortaer and that at
| least helped with damp (it breathes a bit) but it's still
| really cold.
|
| Once you _do_ get it warm, though, it does take a while
| to cool down. Similarly, it can be quite warm outside and
| still take a couple days for the cottage to properly warm
| up - there's a lot of thermal inertia.
|
| The extension to it, built last year, uses 70x200mm
| (about 3"x8" in inches) studs, and has 200mm thick
| Rockwool insulation throughout the walls and in the roof.
| The windows are triple glaze. I heat the extension with
| less energy than the cottage, and it's 3 times as big and
| 5-6 times as much volume, due to the higher ceilings.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Yeah it's the thermal inertia that keeps it very steady.
| bbarnett wrote:
| We completely do, but many choose not to.
|
| One example? In Canada we have a standard for air
| tightness, and more, called R-2000.
|
| Houses with this standard have to have heat exchangers, for
| they are so airtight, that they require air be circulated
| in from outside.
|
| When it is -40C, this change can mean heating costs of
| 200/month vs 2000!
|
| I assure you, houses from 100 years ago were horrid with
| air gaps, poor insulation, and so on. All such houses have
| long since been retrofitted, rebuilt, otherwise the heating
| and cooling bills would be ludicrous.
|
| Old houses may look nice, but there are many things like
| this, which have been improved 100fold..
| moonchrome wrote:
| One thing I really like about staying in old places in my
| hometown (Europe/not US) is tall ceilings and windows not
| being airtight means there's always fresh air in the room
| and the coastal air is wonderful.
|
| Absolutely wasteful but so enjoyable.
| manwe150 wrote:
| The comment you are responding to discusses air exchange
| systems to supply more fresh air than simply dealing with
| a leaky old house. So both absolutely more wasteful and
| also less enjoyable than a modern and well-designed
| system.
| samatman wrote:
| I'm fairly certain you two are speaking completely past
| each other about radically different climates.
| dekhn wrote:
| We have the option of selling a home we own (but don't
| currently live in). It was built by my grandfather in law
| in the 1950 so over 70 years old. We could sell it for
| market rate (bout $1.5M) or renovate it (making it much
| larger, better layout, etc) for about $600K.
|
| I kind of rationalized that the house is still solid after
| 70 years, I know pretty much every inch of the
| superstructure now, so why not just renovate?
| ahoho wrote:
| The linked article about architecture was just embarrassing.
| A classic case of someone desperately trying to universalize
| their personal taste (to assume survey respondents have a
| consistent idea of what constitutes "classical" or "modern"
| is a stretch). It doesn't engage remotely with arguments from
| modernists who drove this change, or the scholarship on
| aesthetics,... very little substance for the length.
|
| It sort of read like a sanitized version of Charles Murray's
| "Human Accomplishment", which is a "quantitative" "argument"
| for why Western culture is superior that commits severe
| epistemic mistakes [1]. Scott Alexander has some good takes,
| but this is not one of them.
|
| And to give a positive example: I challenge anyone to visit
| The Barbican estates in London on a clear summer day, to take
| in the hanging gardens and constructed river, and not be
| awed. Modern and contemporary architecture can absolutely
| move the spirit.
|
| [1]: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/07/why-is-charles-
| murray...
| bendbro wrote:
| > The Barbican estates in London on a clear summer day, to
| take in the hanging gardens and constructed river, and not
| be awed
|
| Looks like a flooded commie block
| pmyteh wrote:
| Go there on a clear sunny day, it's gorgeous.
|
| And, given the absurd prices that flats there go for,
| 'flooded capitalist block' would be closer to the mark...
| lamacase wrote:
| If he's saying "everything is worse now that buildings
| don't look like the Taj Mahal, and clothes don't look like
| traditional Chinese ceremonial robes", how does this
| translate into support for Western exceptionalism?
|
| It seems to me like your postive example is a non-sequiter.
| I don't think Scott is arguing that it's impossible to make
| architecture that "moves the spirit" using modern
| design/construction. He's arguing that, for the vast
| majority of modern buildings, nobody is even trying to move
| the spirit. Even in cases where historically we would
| expect them to (major institutions, public art
| installations, large companies, rich people with large
| houses).
|
| The question is, why do people with almost unlimited
| resources choose to build rectangular prisms of largely
| unadorned glass or concrete?
|
| And your answer is (please correct me if I'm wrong),
| because modernists think it's better, and people generally
| agree even though they can't express this agreement in
| surveys?
|
| What is your basis for believing this? And even if you
| engage with the literature on aesthetics in architecture,
| how do you find yourself siding with the modernists instead
| of the critics of modernism like Christopher Alexander and
| Nikos Salingaros? This is a serious question, I've been
| trying for a while to find a defense of modernist
| architecture that I can actually understand.
| the_af wrote:
| I think there's a lost magic to practical SFX, but nostalgia
| aside, the single most important flaw I see in CGI that still
| remains unfixed to this day is...
|
| ... bad lights/contrast.
|
| In _almost_ every CGI scene, barring honorable exceptions, you
| see the CGI portions are fake because the lights are all bad. The
| comparison shot in the article between Steppenwolf and Tim Curry
| 's Darkness from "Legend" is telling: while Darkness is shrouded
| in, well, shadows with sharp contrast, it looks as if Steppenwolf
| is brightly and uniformly lit.
|
| Things that lack contrast and are uniformly lit are less visually
| interesting, especially when they don't match the environment. I
| notice this flaw in everything: Jurassic Park's dinosaurs, Star
| Wars ships, monsters in Lord of the Rings, mostly every modern
| creature effect. I _know_ CGI artists must know this, so I
| wonder... why is it so difficult to fix?
|
| (The honorable exceptions are mostly due to showing the CGI
| creature more sparingly, or where the light conditions by
| coincidence really match the creature).
| saltminer wrote:
| Lighting in general seems to be underappreciated, even without
| CGI.
|
| I'm reminded of Fifty Shades Freed, which starts with a wedding
| scene that's lit with green. Green lighting is basically
| nonexistent in nature, so when you see it, it's not an accident
| - someone had to mess with it, and it's usually to indicate
| something is wrong/unnatural. You can really see the care put
| into films like The Matrix with how they use green lighting,
| which is in stark contrast with films like Fifty Shades Freed
| which use it mindlessly.
|
| But when the author says
|
| > Every movie now takes place as if it were in The Matrix,
| appearing in deep greens or blues or in gray shades, like the
| complex colors of the world have been bleached out.
|
| I don't think he really gets it. Sure, unnecessary color
| grading is easier than ever to accomplish, but intentional use
| of lighting to help tell the story is probably going over his
| head.
| ravenstine wrote:
| CGI just adds way too much. Now that it's so (relatively)
| inexpensive for even modest productions, films can rely on
| spectacle to cater to the lowest common denominator, which is
| apparently far more lucrative than making actual art.
|
| As a side note, I'm partly ruined by having a father who has
| worked in VFX and CGI animation and dabbling in those fields
| myself. While CGI _has_ improved in my lifetime, I can 't help
| but see areas where big budget FX are obviously flawed and find
| it very distracting. As an example for some reason, studios
| believe that fully CGI animals must be animated with exaggerated
| motion and gestures that most animals aren't making at any given
| time; this leads to CGI creatures that, to me, are not
| believable. Animal animation also tends to be overly smooth and
| floaty. Of course these are often true for animated humanoids as
| well, but animals should be easier. I sucked ass at character
| animation, but my less-bad animations were the ones involving
| animals. Animals tend to only be doing one thing at a time, so
| it's really not that hard to work off reference material. This
| also isn't to say that animals should be portrayed 100%
| realistically in film; my point is that the physicality of CGI
| animals has barely improved, and it ruins the experience.
|
| But maybe I'm the only one? Sometimes CGI animals in films are so
| badly animated that it's hard for me to believe that even the
| average person doesn't lose some of their immersion when watching
| a movie.
|
| Now that I think of it, perhaps animals aren't used as
| extensively with mo-cap because of animal rights issues? I
| dunno... whatever the cause, there's something that I don't think
| is being done right most of the time.
| InternetPerson wrote:
| Hey everybody! Tell us your opinions about movies and CGI! I
| can't wait to hear what you think about superhero movies.
|
| This is really going to change things!
| marstall wrote:
| I agree - then I think of quality period pieces that use CGI with
| great artistry ("Zodiac" and "Hail, Caesar!" come to mind) and I
| think again.
|
| Check out, for example, this VFX before-and-after clip for the
| show "Babylon Berlin". In my view the CGI recreation of Weimar
| Berlin added enormously to the reality and presence of the story
| and characters.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI88uUw9Hnc
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Let me offer a comparable conspiracy theory. If you go back in
| filmmaking prior to somewhere around 2000, give or take a decade
| depending on the title and genre, almost all films look so much
| realer.
|
| Shall we call the idea that the films that look realer are better
| realism? At any rate there was no argument as to why looking
| realer makes a film better, it seems to just be assumed.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| "Sound did, in fact, ruin movies" "Color did, in fact, ruin
| movies"
|
| blah blah blah
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Not even closely. You couldn't make the Matrix without CGI and
| the CGI in something like Foundation looks so absolutely gorgeous
| that I wouldn't mind if I could just fly around in the world and
| gape at it.
|
| No matter how much I love TOS almost all the aliens were just a
| guy in a fursuit and all the rocks are shiny...
|
| Now of course you can make terrible movies and try to cover it up
| with CGI, but back in the day they just made terrible movies and
| tried to cover it up with boobs, guns and explosions. Not really
| that I mind either.
| quasarj wrote:
| Eh, old man yells at (CGI) cloud.
| throwaway032342 wrote:
| Counterpoint, CGI allows you to tell stories that would look like
| total shit without them. Maybe compare apples to apples and look
| at the 1980's dune vs the new one.
| Joeboy wrote:
| I think a lot of what people are complaining about is that the
| third act of a lot of big movies is just "...and then they all
| have a big fight". I've never heard anybody complain about the
| extensive VFX in The Wolf of Wall Street[1].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pocfRVAH9yU
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I wouldn't compare CGI, which is obviously very weak when placed
| next to reality, with real scenes. I'd compare it with the matte
| painting backdrops of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Movies like
| forbidden planet. If your go to see a CGI movie expecting to be
| "fooled" then you are certain the end up disappointed.
| wccrawford wrote:
| After reading all that, I can't help but feel that when movies
| first came out, there were plenty of people complaining about how
| live theatre plays were obviously better and everything is
| getting worse.
|
| The article even admits that CG is a lot better today than it was
| a while back.
|
| Yes, they make mistakes and things could be better. But that's
| because nobody is perfect and everyone is making it up as they go
| along. When nobody has done it before, it's impossible to copy
| them.
|
| Personally, I love today's movie and their CG, especially when I
| can't even tell it was CG. It used to be incredibly obvious that
| it was CG. And it used to be incredibly obvious that puppets were
| puppets. Everything gets better as people do it more.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Wait why are the dinosaur actors naked inside the costumes?
| revscat wrote:
| Why do I feel like there is a correlation here between TFA and
| Tesla's problems getting FSD to be fully autonomous.
| steve76 wrote:
| lbebber wrote:
| CGI is great actually, and most people have no idea when they are
| watching CGI stuff.
|
| It's just that being able to do just about anything, down to
| implausible camera movements, requires restraint, and sometimes
| that's lacking.
|
| (also low budget stuff might look bad, but that applies for every
| single thing)
| dgellow wrote:
| Not sure if it is caused by CGI or me becoming older, but I
| noticed the following: in the past I would see a movie landscape
| (let's say a new planet in a Sci-Fi movie, or adventurers
| discovering a lost place) and would feel crushed by emotions due
| to the beauty/darkness/emptiness of it and it's massive size.
|
| I cannot feel anything like this anymore, I just think "oh, cool
| CGI", and that's it, no emotions whatsoever. And that kind of
| ruins a lot of movies I would have previously enjoyed.
| ryeights wrote:
| I would think the latter, haha.
| brimble wrote:
| It has definitely, _entirely_ ruined effects-focused making-of
| videos. How 'd they do it? Computers. What did it look like?
| Someone using a computer. How can we show you the "behind the
| scenes" of that shot? Disable part of the rendering.
|
| All identical, all boring.
|
| The only interesting part is "how much of this shot was CG?"
| but a still conveys that. Extensive making-ofs are practically
| dead, except for people in the industry who want to know
| exactly which commercial plugin they used or whatever.
| [deleted]
| krnlpnc wrote:
| I truly hope there is a shift back to practical FX and 2d
| animation.
|
| Classic movies from the 80s like Alien, The Thing, My Neighbor
| Totoro, etc. look so much better to me than the latest
| blockbuster Marvel movie.
|
| There is something about actors acting in the same set you see,
| with the actual monsters you see, and the fog and lighting and
| everything else being real. And shooting on film just looks
| better to me.
|
| Hand drawn 2d animation looks so much better too. I much prefer
| its soft and imperfect look to the HD perfection of modern
| computerized animation. 3d animation while great in some movies,
| I feel is an overused default animation style today.
|
| I feel like we reached the perfect balance between visual art,
| technology and original stories back in the 80s, and have been
| steadily implementing cost/time saving optimizations ever since.
| dymk wrote:
| It's because you're very nostalgic for the movies of your
| childhood. And you listed three classics, when that era
| produced a lot of trash as well. That's all fine, certainly not
| a bad thing, but that's where the bias comes from.
| krnlpnc wrote:
| Nah it's not about them being classics, just widely known
| examples.
|
| I prefer even old grindhouse trash (that I haven't seen until
| fairly recently) over the nonstop modern day CGI drenched
| sequels and reboots.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Well, compare the number of films that Ghibli puts out compared
| to Marvel. Marvel pumps movies out at a furious pace in
| comparison; I'm not sure you even could sustain a Marvel-style
| tempo while remotely keeping up the same quality as Ghibli.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Studio_Ghibli_works
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Marvel_Cinematic_Unive...
| antihero wrote:
| Well there we go, quality over quantity.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| You have to remember that 2D animation has been around for over
| a hundred years and a lot of the bad old stuff has been
| filtered out by history.
|
| I think 3D animation is just starting to hit its stride. The
| Netflix series _Arcane_ is really beautiful, _Spider-Man: Into
| the Spiderverse_ was incredible, and I was even blown away by
| _Hotel Transylvania 4_ , which I was ready to write-off as
| corny kids dreck, but the manic slap-stick stuff they did in it
| is outrageously good. This isn't even getting into the epic-
| budget Pixar stuff...
|
| Also if Ghibili is your bar I'd say 99% of 2D animation isn't
| even on par.
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| I don't know if Arcane should be included in a list
| supporting the advancements of 3D animation. While the
| characters are animated, and I do mean that in the technical
| sense (i.e. actually moving the bodies), in 3D as meshes of
| polygons, a vast percentage of the effects are 2D
| vector/bitmap animations and all of the backgrounds are
| traditional static digital paintings.
|
| I am in no way saying Arcane does not 'look good' to me or in
| any objective way, in fact, I really enjoy the over all look
| of the show. But I think it is a bit disingenuous to use
| Arcane to prop up the advancements in 3D animation compared
| to 2D.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Is it though? Without advancement in 3D animation Arcane
| wouldn't have been possible. It's a fairly unique 3D/2D
| hybrid and that merging of the styles is apparent in how it
| looks.
| Retric wrote:
| I stopped watching _into the Spiderverse_ due to the bad CGI.
|
| Plenty of people liked it, but I think it's more people
| getting used to the style than it actually being good. Most
| modern animators and many viewers grew up with bad 90's CGI,
| worse the old guard of computer animators where making it.
|
| Taking with some of these animators they still recognize
| quality, but it's like their uncanny valley has moved.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| At this point the animation is so widely lauded that I'd
| say it's objectively well executed. I can certainly
| understand not enjoying the style though, I don't like the
| style of some of the classic Disney animations... but still
| can appreciate the effort and skill behind them.
|
| I don't really buy the idea that animators grew up with bad
| animation and have somehow lower standards... in the case
| of the handful of pro animators I know, they're absolutely
| massive animation nerds and their taste extends far beyond
| what they grew up with.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I consider this to be the greatest scene of modern superhero
| movies (Amazing Spiderman 2 - Electro first fight). The movie
| itself had a lot of problems and Sony is entirely to blame, but
| I digress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWNbliU6-LQ
|
| This scene does pretty much everything marvel movies are
| criticized for. Lots of CGI. Lots of explosions. Banter in
| dangerous moments. But I think it works extremely well.
|
| The use of bright color contrasts between red and blue; then
| later darkness is really sharp. The sound design of the moment
| highlights the villain's confusion and spidey comes off as
| really distraught that this guy is in this situation. You don't
| really have reason to think that Spidey will die here, but it
| does set up a level of belief that some civilians could get
| hurt here, and it does come off as pretty exciting to see him
| need to immediately pull off a difficult, slo mo maneuver to
| save them. The fighting is incredibly quick, with both players
| only doing heavy fight-ending moves. It's stylistic as fuck.
|
| tl;dr the biggest problem with superhero movies is the awkward
| uncanny valley of trying to be both realistic and absurd with
| CGI. Go big and stylistic.
| js2 wrote:
| I recently re-watched _Spider-Man_ (2002), not having seen it
| in over a decade. I watched it in 4K on a 100 " screen from
| my JVC DLA-RS400 projector.
|
| I was pleasantly surprised that the movie was as good as I
| remembered, and that the special effects held up remarkably
| well.
|
| I enjoyed its first major fight scene than the one you
| linked:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiaTyUcu5VM
|
| The frozen people effect in _Amazing Spiderman 2_ reminded me
| this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OANHfaJW3IM
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| I don't think shooting on film is particularly necessary; it's
| possible to match that look pretty convincingly. Though
| attention to _why_ the film look appeals to us is always
| valuable.
|
| Practical effects are probably getting easier, thanks to
| various 3D printing techniques, the expansion of low-cost
| microcontrollers, the low costs of servos, and the
| proliferation of small cameras and lens adaptations for
| rostrum/running shots.
|
| But saving money isn't the main reason we don't have practical
| effects. Saving _time_ is the main reason we don 't have
| practical effects.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Apparently Dune was transferred to film and back again to try
| and get the look. I'm not sure how much it really mattered in
| the end- I'm sure there are digital methods- but it did work.
|
| https://ymcinema.com/2021/12/03/dune-was-shot-on-alexa-lf-
| tr...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I don't think people know why they "like" or "dislike" a
| certain look. Take a look at cinematography, it's all
| "anamorphic this"1, "24 fps that", "digital is too harsh"
| etc. The article:
|
| > But it gave us the feeling we had been picturing a
| certain texture that's painterly but feels timeless...The
| film has softened the edges of the digital. It gave us
| something that film acquisition couldn't give us, and it
| gave us something that digital acquisition couldn't give us
|
| Cinematography still has clearly a long way to go. It's
| currently in the "we don't know what perspective is" phase
| of painting.
|
| 1 anamorphic lenses are, generally speaking, horrible. It's
| extremely obvious when they're used, which is probably the
| main reason why there has been a huge anamorphic filmmaking
| craze going on for a few years.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If your highlights have already been clipped because of
| digital, you're not going to magically get the benefits of
| film's rolloff. There's a lot more going on with capture in
| an analog/physical media like film than just grain that
| most people associate
| devindotcom wrote:
| Modern digital cinema capture has nearly film-like
| dynamic range. It's gotten pretty good. Film is the gold
| standard but it's not always worth the trade-off in cost
| and complexity. And ultimately a lot of it comes down to
| good grading, not the DR of the original shot.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Modern digital cinema capture has nearly film-like
| dynamic range.
|
| NEARLY is not EQUALs. The dynamic range that you are
| touting being nearly the same is the specific feature of
| film that I was refering to on how it handles highlights.
| It's taken 25 years to get to where we are nearly there,
| but I understand why some purists still prefer the
| acquisition on film. However, the nearly is good enough
| for most but the purists.
| greedo wrote:
| You do realize that all this range and depth that purists
| talk about is just like what audiophiles do when they
| talk about the "warmth" of a vinyl recording?
|
| So film has a huge resolution advantage especially when
| you use 70MM. Theoretically capable of 16K. Yet by the
| time you've developed the negs, created interpositives,
| edited, created masters, created internets, and finally
| created prints for the theaters, that resolution, that
| dynamic range, those "highlights" (could you be more
| vague) get lower and lower. Then you send it to a theater
| with a crappy projector that's out of calibration, or has
| a bulb out of spec. Then you get crap. Same with when you
| have this pristine film scanned for DVD/BluRay/4k
| whatever.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm talking about the ability to expose what would appear
| to be overexposed details in clouds while allowing
| shadows to be exposed to avoid details lost in the
| blacks. When color corrected, the highlights have the
| ability to be recovered to see the details back in the
| clouds. Just an example of a shot. If the exposure was
| too much for the clouds to be recovered, then the roll
| off in film looks much cleaner than just the clipping
| that occurs in digital.
|
| Your reply comes off as if I don't know what I'm talking
| about which just isn't the case. I've already stipulated
| in a previous comment that modern digital is good enough
| for most everyone one but purists. So your audiophile
| comment implies to me you missed some salient details.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Digital -> analog -> digital. Is that what made it so dark?
|
| DAD cataracts?
| echelon wrote:
| > But saving money isn't the main reason we don't have
| practical effects. Saving time is the main reason we don't
| have practical effects.
|
| Absolutely. There are a lot of reasons this is happening.
|
| Prior to the pandemic (which will be seen as a kinetic
| accelerant to a thermodynamic inevitability), _screen space
| was limited_ , meaning the biggest tentpoles would eat up a
| somewhat predictable lion's share of box office revenue and
| thus command a large percentage of screen real estate. If you
| churn out big things fast, you can fill the calendar year
| with your films, monopolizing on total screen space/time. You
| can bargain with theaters for placement and advantageous
| timing, maximizing your own ROI and preventing other studios
| from outcompeting you. This is more a function of pipeline
| maturity and scale than development time, but efficiency
| absolutely helps.
|
| It's also true that _viewers only have so much time_ (and
| therefore money). You want them to spend more time watching
| your content than they do on alternatives (other streamers,
| video games, social media). Quick delivery of successful
| series is essential. Netflix is trying to fill its slate to
| compensate for media losses, but also to run quick
| experiments to find things that maximize for view time.
| Content doesn 't necessarily have to look good to fit the
| need.
|
| The dust may look like it's settling, but it's not.
| Increasing efficiency will lead to lots of new competition in
| the space.
| zardo wrote:
| >But saving money isn't the main reason we don't have
| practical effects. Saving time is the main reason we don't
| have practical effects.
|
| And not just time in general. The CGI could take more time to
| produce than the practical effects, but it's in post. The
| practical effects have to be ready for the shot.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| That's even more: it can be done in parallel, through the
| entire production, as interaction of the actual physical
| prop on the set is not a memory barrier for the rest of
| production.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| 2D animation is alive in Japan.
| highwind wrote:
| These days lot of 2D animation look is achieved via 3D/CGI
| tools.
| snuxoll wrote:
| There's certainly a lot of use of it, but it's painfully
| obvious when they do so. I think with some more time and
| practice many studios could make it harder to tell the
| difference - but it might negate a lot of the cost savings
| (making more fluid animations rather than the very stiff
| ones commonly seen, taking advantage of squash/stretch so
| the movements don't seem so perfect like they were done
| using computer animation, etc.).
|
| Some shows/movies make it work well enough because there's
| things other than the animation that keep you watching,
| some use it for walking/transition scenes where it's easier
| to "blend" it in since it's background to the dialogue most
| of the time; but I really wouldn't say the "2d animation
| look" is even close to being achieved in many cases right
| now. Again, not because I feel the tooling is incapable of
| it - but because doing it right would nullify the cost
| savings and defeating the purpose.
| ginko wrote:
| Have a look at the remakes of Berserk or Sailor Moon. These
| are two of the most high-profile anime and manga franchises
| out there and should have plenty of financial backing, yet
| they look WAY worse than their cel animated counterparts from
| the 90s.
|
| https://mangathrill.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/12/pjimage-2...
|
| https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/...
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| That's some heavy cherry picking though. Lots of well drawn
| anime out today.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| I think so much of what made The Thing great is what they
| couldn't show because of their limitations, not because of
| their _great_ special effects. It 's a thing that the great
| digital effect artists have realized and integrated into their
| movies.
|
| When you look at movies like The Arrival, which is not
| considered a great special effects film because they're
| understated and get out of the way of the story, the effects
| artists plop a digital ship into the middle of a field and
| leave it there. Understated digital effects, in conjunction
| with practical effects, are often the most effective and least
| appreciated.
|
| Villeneuve has a tendency to direct movies that do this well
| (and I apologize for being a bit of a fan boy), and I hope that
| more movies take this direction.
|
| I enjoyed the Marvel films, but at times they looked a bit like
| digital vomit on screen and became hard to follow. I couldn't
| even finish Aquaman, TBH, as it was just over the top with the
| amount of digital noise. Though, Justice League attempted to do
| better than this, the Darkside fight was a bit nauseating =(
|
| Again, though, I think the Villeneuve films will stand the test
| of time, where as the blockbuster comic films will go the way
| of films like Predator. I enjoyed it at the time, but it
| doesn't really hold up.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > Classic movies from the 80s like Alien, The Thing, My
| Neighbor Totoro, etc. look so much better to me than the latest
| blockbuster Marvel movie.
|
| You chose three films that are widely considered to be among
| the greatest films of all time in their genre.
| ssully wrote:
| That's what people do. They remember the good and forget the
| bad. In 10-20 years people will look back and remember the
| "good" CGI movies from today and forget all the shitty ones
| that came out along side them. Rinse and repeat.
| lbebber wrote:
| That's already a thing, people asking why "CGI is getting
| worse"
| guelo wrote:
| Nope, none of todays CGI stuff is memorable.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Black panther is the #3 highest-rated superhero movie on
| rotten tomatoes. Sounds like it's even higher in its genre
| than The Thing (#138 in horror) and Alien (#5). Black Panther
| is not a bad movie in other aspects - but the parts that use
| (and overuse) CGI look as fake as any other Marvel
| Production. So how good the movie is isn't necessarily a free
| pass for CGI abuse.
| Zababa wrote:
| Super hero movies in general are mediocre. Being 138 in
| horror is probably still better than the top 1 superhero
| movie.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Black panther is the #3 highest-rated superhero movie on
| rotten tomatoes. Sounds like it's even higher in its genre
| than The Thing (#138 in horror) and Alien (#5).
|
| Not surprising, given that there aren't many triple-A
| movies with Black lead actors around in the first place,
| much less movies that are predominantly Black starred - it
| was labelled as "revolutionary" [1] for a reason and so
| generated a lot of (well-deserved) hype. That it turned out
| to be a damn good movie too only helped the matter along.
|
| [1]: https://time.com/black-panther/
| monocasa wrote:
| The superhero genre doesn't lend itself to the "don't
| actually show much to build suspense" style of film-making
| that horror could lean on back in the day to make up for
| how corny practical effects would look.
|
| It's not really a rousing endorsement that practical's
| greatest achievements are cases when you have the thematic
| luxury of not actually showing anything.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Ok here's an example on a more visual genre. Practical
| Yoda is more believable than CGI Yoda. (Practical Yoda
| can't do the "jumping pea" stuff but that was entirely
| laughable and defied suspension of disbelief entirely. )
| monocasa wrote:
| There's quite a bit CGI Grogu in The Mandalorian. You
| just don't notice it because it's done well.
|
| And remember, the the prequels were literally the first
| movies to have CGI major characters. Basing the
| effectiveness of the technique on them would be like
| basing all of practical effects on the first movie to
| have puppets.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Who said I didn't notice it? ;)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It feels like Hollywood has had a practical effects craze for a
| while in the past fifteen years thanks to _The Dark Knight_. Or
| maybe it 's just been Christopher Nolan (and some Villeneuve)
| keeping that flame alive. There certainly has been no shortage
| of public gushing over Nolan's use of practical effects, even
| if some of his films didn't really live up to the hype.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Fury Road gave a glimmer of hope of limiting the use of CGI. It
| gave me happy feet to watch it.
| greedo wrote:
| Fury Road used a ton of CGI. So much that without it, the
| movie wouldn't have been very good.
| adorton wrote:
| Fury Road makes pretty extensive use of CGI and digital
| compositing.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB3tdMDRQBc
|
| But it looks great so you don't really notice it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Fury Road also makes extensive use of insane level
| practical stunts that other features would have gone 100%
| GGI. There's a difference in enhancing with CGI vs entirely
| in CGI. The stunt peeps on the motorcyles, the insane
| pendulum thingymabobbers, the cars themselves, etc are all
| real and very noticeably better looking than CGI
| atarian wrote:
| That'll do dylan604. That'll do.
| madrox wrote:
| I wouldn't expect this to happen. It's like hoping software
| will shift back to writing C++. Everyone moved on for a reason,
| and the people that make up the industry as a whole simply
| don't have the skillset (or willingness) for that kind of work.
| You'll see the occassional autur/indie production, but at
| blockbuster scale? Never again.
| corysama wrote:
| Phil Tippett just finished a full-length, 100% stop-motion
| movie https://www.madgodmovie.com/
| lilthrow wrote:
| I think the point about balance is valuable. In the 1980's the
| digital transition had just started and mostly contributed to
| cleaner control of analog processes like computer-controlled
| tracking shots over models(all the "swooping spaceship shots"
| were done this way). But most of the things one could do to add
| visual interest to a shot, regardless of the particular tech,
| were fundamentally pre-production, not post: Storyboarding,
| staging, lighting, prop and costume work; well-rehearsed and
| directed performances. The parts that were meant to be special
| effects were still often obviously abstract in nature, outside
| of the biggest productions: e.g. a character walking away from
| a burning airplane wreck might just be composited on top of a
| fireball in a very basic way, if the production couldn't afford
| to destroy an actual airplane. Even just doing any compositing
| was not an easy task and involved a few specialty roles to
| create mattes etc. So there were some natural constraints that
| pushed everything towards building up the parts of the scene
| that were actually "live-action".
|
| Once CGI rolled in - and really, this was true of all graphics
| when you look at things like 90's magazines overusing Photoshop
| filters - we got a taste for adding multiple layers of
| production on top of everything, which made the final image
| less "tied together" and more of a chimera.
|
| I do think animation has gotten better overall, even 2D,
| because animation has always embraced being chimerical and
| covering that up by finding a consistent approach to the final
| image. All that's changed is that there's a lower reliance on
| large numbers of drawings. In the 80's, very few animation
| productions could really achieve their full vision - with few
| corrective tools available, you had to have some excellent
| draftsmanship just to get a product out the door. While there
| were opportunities to use that to expressive effect, most of TV
| animation stuck to simple shots and reused as much as they
| could get away with. This also really pushed the default look
| of animation towards whatever was easy to draw, which dampened
| the tone of works trying to feel serious.
|
| Now we have digital puppets that still are fundamentally 2D but
| allow the animator to spend more time on creating a performance
| that reuses snippets of pre-drawn material, which is overall a
| good thing. If they want to push a scene further and add
| additional camera angles or poses, they have the option to do
| so and can apply CGI to create the necessary references too -
| you aren't bottlenecked so much by drawing, but neither are you
| stuck trying to composite in a CG image, because you can paint
| over it and get whatever look you want, as long as that look
| isn't live action.
| Zababa wrote:
| > My Neighbor Totoro
|
| In anime at least, CGI cuts costs a lot, especially for 3D
| scenes. On the other hand, people are getting better and better
| at doing CGI these days. In general I feel like current
| animation has more movement overall, but it's not budgeted
| well. For example, in the introduction of Patlabor 2
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydCLeclaKik, there are lots of
| still shots, but some movements are impressive, and the
| backgrounds are gorgeous. It is one of the best anime movie
| ever made though, so it's not like everything at that time
| looked like that.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > I truly hope there is a shift back to practical FX and 2d
| animation.
|
| Most 2D animation these days is just CGI dressed up to look
| like 2D hand drawn animation. Actually, the reduced production
| costs is why we are seeing so many magna/light novel being
| translated into anime series, even if the underlying content
| isn't that great.
| greedo wrote:
| I guarantee you that you couldn't tell the difference between a
| movie shot on film and one shot digitally but with film-like
| effects applied to it.
| ddingus wrote:
| I've arrived in an interesting place I didn't expect.
|
| Mostly, I don't care!! First and foremost, is the story good,
| compelling?
|
| If so, I'm in! I see some of the effects, there are others I know
| I don't see, and good on those crews. Did their job. :D
|
| I like to see them, when I see them too. Used to be, looking
| back, poor effects would stand right out, and it took me out of
| the experience. But, there was one exception, and that was the
| original "Star Trek" shows. For some reason, I didn't care on
| those and all these years later, I think I know why, and it's the
| story, the people, all of it being compelling.
|
| Also, on that program the music is just awesome! I still use
| episodes as background when working. The sounds are just great!
|
| Now, I super appreciate real, filmed things. The lack of effects
| is the special deal now. Cool!!
|
| Finally, makeup:
|
| I love good costumes, makeup, all that tech theatre stuff. The
| only time it's objectionable is when I do see it, and am not
| really supposed to, and usually that comes down to some
| environmental thing, the actor struggling (like sweat or
| something crappy for them and the makeup), or what seems like
| excess, like caked on.
|
| Otherwise! Yeah. Decorate the people. Let's check 'em out.
| PKop wrote:
| Digital cameras replacing film has also ruined it. The dynamic
| range and depth of images that comes from film blows all digital
| images away...same for photography.
|
| Much of the romance and beauty seen in old pictures and films is
| due to this difference.
| posix86 wrote:
| I disagree on the author's definition of "real". I see two ways
| they can be defined in the context of movies: Real could mean
| that the objects portraid look like they were actually filmed
| through a camera; but it could also mean that the objects
| portraid look like the objects they're intended to portay. The
| former is easily achievable with practical effects. But the
| latter is in many cases ONLY achiavable with CGI, which in many
| cases already starkly outperforms any practical effects
| (admittably, to the detrement of realness according to the former
| definion in some cases).
|
| Which of the two you prefer depends on what it is you're looking
| for in movies. One motivation might be to see humans acting
| realistically, reacting to their environment and struggles. If
| that's all you're looking for, practical effects almost always
| win, because they allow budget to be allocated on actors and
| scripts, and actors have an easier time imagining to be in the
| situation they're acting to be in. Many blockbuster movies,
| however, are made with a different goal in mind. Marvel, Jurassic
| Park, Star Wars all don't have realistic human interactions and
| struggles as a primary value proposition, but interesting fantasy
| worlds and fights, with "sufficiently" realistic characters. I
| for one enjoy both types of movies, deeply, and I don't think
| that CGI ruins movies today. In particular, I don't think that
| CGI ruins movies like Jurassic Park or Star Wars, which in my
| view are great movies for the year they came out in, but by
| todays standard's are clearly objectively worse in almost any
| respect. Imagine something like the first star wars movie coming
| out today! Nobody would know about it, even fewer would care.
| Nostalgia is a powerful force.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I've seen this take too many times. CGI _can_ have the same level
| of artisanship as practical effects, you just need to put in the
| work. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a great example: Weta
| Digital was part of the entire filmmaking process, worked
| extremely closely with the art department, and was part of the
| same entity that made most of the props and practical effects.
| The digital effects in the trilogy hold up, even the ones that
| look a _little_ janky today, not because of some amazing
| rendering software, but because they were integrated into the
| vision of the films from day 1.
|
| I think this can be observed to a lesser extent on many more
| recent movies with strong vision behind them. For example, Sony's
| Amazing Spider-Man movies had generally generic CGI, but the
| Spiderman model and sequences were phenomenal. The studio and
| effects shops had a really strong idea about how Spidey should
| feel and move, and that drove his visualization.
|
| tl;dr it's not the effects, it's the creative bankruptcy.
| wffurr wrote:
| "As you listen to that gentle creaking, or that low-tone
| burbling, what you feel at that moment is the deep satisfaction
| that comes from witnessing Being, in all its irreducible and
| incomputable eddies and swirls. Your eyes are satiated. There's
| probably a German word for it, and if not, there should be."
|
| Anyone know the German word for this? There's gotta be one,
| right? Something to express the zeitgeist of CGI-laden current
| day cinema?
| clukic wrote:
| I recently watched Project X, a campy Matthew Broderick movie
| from 1987, and I was just blown away. It was so incredible to
| watch real Chimpanzees interacting with real human beings in real
| environments.
|
| I had that illusive sense of wonder that CGI is always striving
| for and failing to reach. And, as a consequence the movie almost
| felt like it was from a future where CGI had finally achieved its
| goals...the only thing is it was a campy movie from 1987.
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| newsbinator wrote:
| I don't think we need a shift back to practical FX or 2d
| animation in general. Only for those situations CGI can't handle
| yet.
|
| What we need is good stories and _un_ ambitious effects that
| support those stories.
|
| The author touched on several key problems:
|
| * Color Grading:
|
| > Notice the color differences. Every movie now takes place as if
| it were in The Matrix, appearing in deep greens or blues or in
| gray shades, like the complex colors of the world have been
| bleached out.
|
| * Shadows:
|
| > In the 2021 Dune, it is a monochrome chunk, despite the
| billowing fabric around the character. In the 1962 Lawrence of
| Arabia, the shadow of the fabric is actually see-through. It has
| dimensionality, thinness and thickness. Because it's a real
| shadow.
|
| * Over-ambition:
|
| > how could the same filmmaker go from making a movie as good as
| The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001 to a movie as bad as The
| Hobbit in 2012? It's not budgetary. The Fellowship cost 93
| million to make, while The Hobbit cost 180 million.
|
| Jurassic Park (1993) was so good and stands the test of time
| because the primitive CGI was hidden by night-time darkness. The
| filmmakers knew what was achievable and believable relative to
| the technology of the time.
|
| If in 2022 you make a movie with flat colors, fake shadows, and
| 3D characters (like Maz Kanata in Star Wars) who need to interact
| in scenes with human characters, then yeah: it's going to be bad.
|
| Modern movies fail because they're too ambitious. The battle of
| the five armies in The Hobbit was too ambitious: our technology
| can't make it look as good as live action yet.
|
| The answer is to make movies we can make with a mix of practical
| + CGI, and wait for the technology to catch up. And to fix the
| damn color grading. Songs used to sound good. Movies used to look
| good.
| greedo wrote:
| Color grading has nothing to do with CGI. That's a production
| choice not a technical limitation. DPs and directors have been
| favoring a limited or neutral color palette for the last two
| decades. Like any fashion, this will change.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| You don't get better by waiting until you can be better, you
| get better by doing your best, falling short and discovering
| how to overcome your shortfalls.
|
| You don't get a budget to 'try to build the battle of five
| armies perfectly and only then will you get to put it in a
| movie'.
|
| Overambition is frankly BAKED into the movie industry and has
| from the beginning.
|
| So yes, cutting edge effects will fall short, they have since
| the beginning of film. But the techniques are always getting
| better. When golum was introduced in the LoTR he was not
| perfect but you can see the improvement just within that series
| from movie to movie, he's always looking better... 'touch'
| interaction between cgi human actor also improves quite a bit
| but still lacks, the wrestle that frodo and golum have at the
| cracks has .. cracks.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Yes, each movie should aim to push the boundary out a bit.
| But you don't try to film _Avatar_ in 1978 (without
| completely changing the scenes), because with puppets and
| matte paintings it 'll be relatively unwatchable.
|
| 2D Lord of the Rings as an animated film in 1978? Sure.
|
| Live Action Lord of the Rings? Wait till 2001 for it to be
| good.
| gtm1260 wrote:
| I'm not sure I 100% buy this argument. Like yes, objectively the
| creature work in the new star wars lacks the weight and realness
| of the original puppets, or even those used in the Mandelorian.
|
| But we've also got to see the world of starwars in an absolutely
| incredible new way! x Wings skimming over the water with
| incredible camera angles, spectacular space explosions, realistic
| lightsabers that spark and have volume (sword fighting
| choreography aside).
| lemmsjid wrote:
| An interesting thing I've noticed recently is that CGI both opens
| up possibilities and closes them down, and it's in the closing
| that it becomes painful. As the author points out, in older
| practical effects movies, you knew that you wouldn't get many big
| macro shots of a lot of things happening at once. In Alien, you
| weren't going to see the alien walking around in natural light
| with camera angles all around it, because it would quickly become
| obvious that it's someone in a suit or an animatronic. In CGI you
| get the opposite scenario: you'll see big believable macro shots
| of fleets of spaceships, but when a human actor is interacting
| with a CGI actor, you know that they aren't going to believably
| inhabit the same small space: e.g. hugs, kisses, punches, etc.,
| are probably not going to happen, or, if they do, will involve
| some predictable trickery. For example if a menacing CGI robot
| strides threateningly towards a human actor, you know they won't
| believably grab the actor and go face to face, not without some
| cunning cuts. This is especially apparent in television shows
| with lower budgets. The space scenes in Battlestar Galactica were
| consistently incredible, but I was never once convinced by the
| non-human Cylons when they were in the same room as humans. I
| watch newer CGI movies with an eye towards how artists are
| addressing these issues.
| munchler wrote:
| As a big BSG fan, I have to disagree with the last part of your
| comment. The reboot's GGI Cylons were much more menacing than
| the original's actors clunking around in robot suits. (But it
| was still awesome to see the occasional old-school Cylon in the
| reboot. They did a great job calling back to the original show
| when appropriate.)
|
| Man, I miss BSG. Every sci-fi show featuring androids since
| then owes it a huge debt. (Raised By Wolves on HBO jumps to
| mind as a current example.)
| jrm4 wrote:
| While I think the article is something to consider -- this could
| be because I'm reading David Mamet stuff just because -- I think
| a lot of this falls away if you have a good _story_ which perhaps
| matter more than whatever CGI or not you 're using.
|
| E.g. I personally find myself dissatisfied with a lot of Marvel,
| probably because most of the movies are "cocky guy gets taken
| down a peg by someone who's kind of in the family and kind of
| not, but definitely wins in the end anyway."
| animal_spirits wrote:
| I haven't found any sci-fi movie interesting or entertaining for
| the last decade or so because of all the CGI. It feels like it
| takes the human elements out of storytelling. Which is why I find
| Wes Anderson's movies such a refreshing take. They use nearly all
| practical effects and it is human and fun. I would recommend
| seeing the French Dispatch, his latest movie.
| lm28469 wrote:
| sci fi suffers a lot from this. Some scenes of Ad astra, The
| Martian, Interstellar or Gravity scream "I copy pasted the
| actor's head in a 3d scene", it just doesn't work at all for
| me, even on a technical level you feel something is off in the
| movements/lighting
|
| I've recently watched prometheus right after watching the
| original Alien and it's just painful to watch
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Alien is my favorite movie of all time. I'm still made about
| Prometheus. Mostly for the plot, but the CGI is painful as
| well.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The navigation room star map sequence was magical, though.
| jahlove wrote:
| You should check out Prospect (Trailer: [0]). It's an indie
| sci-fi that I believe is still on Netflix. It uses a minimal
| amount of CGI and a lot of props and practical effects. The
| director did a few AMAs on reddit. [1]
|
| It stars Pedro Pascal before he made it big in The
| Mandaolorian.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSpw22HPdHU
|
| [1] https://redd.it/9v4wu3
| gavinmckenzie wrote:
| Also, if you weren't aware, Prospect started out as one of
| the early Kickstarter-supported indie short films, and it's
| great:
|
| https://vimeo.com/90049558
| omnicognate wrote:
| Moon falls just outside your "last decade or so" but would have
| been the exception that proves the rule. Deeply moving and
| intriguing sci-fi, all practical effects. I heard somewhere
| they used some models that were originally made for a Red Dwarf
| movie.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Great movie
| m_mueller wrote:
| give Villeneuve's Dune a chance if you haven't already. I don't
| agree with the post on this one, they went to great lenghts
| trying to make it feel real.
| ghaff wrote:
| Whatever your opinion is on Dune otherwise--I had my doubts
| on first viewing but changed my mind--it was clearly a great
| looking movie.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| The comparison of the shadows in the article feels a bit
| weird, considering it's comparing shadows in a bright clear
| sky vs a sky with a lot of dust and debris. Especially weird
| considering Dune does a lot to make it's CGI feel more
| grounded then the competition.
|
| All of Dune's outdoor scenes were filmed outdoors, to capture
| brighter light and sharper shadows. Instead of green screens,
| sand colored screens were used, to eliminate the subtle green
| glow from the light reflected off the screen. Even subtle
| things like having actual glass in the windows helps a lot to
| make a scene more grounded.
|
| Is Dune's CGI perfect? Obviously not. But it does look pretty
| damn good. And I'd like to see more filmmakers use it as an
| inspiration when producing other movies.
|
| If you want more info on Dune's CGI, I can't recommend this
| video enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIKupTibxKQ
| kingkawn wrote:
| Looking at how good real-life effects and modeling were getting
| in the 70s and 80s hard not to wonder how much technical progress
| would have happened if CGI hadn't taken over.
| qrohlf wrote:
| My favorite example of this is the fact that in the film "Knives
| Out", the looming oil painting of Harlan (the murdered patriarch)
| was actually just a green square all throughout filming - the oil
| painting itself was digitally comped in during post.
|
| Is Knives Out still a good movie? Yes. Would it have been
| possibly, perceptibly better if the actors had a real eyeline to
| work with on that painting, or the camera work was done with the
| cinematographer being able to see the real painting through the
| lens? Maybe.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Just seems lazy in that case really, what was the excuse? They
| didn't commission the artwork soon enough? Couldn't come to a
| decision on what the painting should look like soon enough?
|
| Think filmmakers are just too used to large amounts of post
| work so you end up with this lack of decision making and things
| become bland and diluted.
| zerocrates wrote:
| The painting also changes over the course of the movie... Of
| course they could have just made more than one painting.
|
| I do think it probably just wasn't ready, but you should
| probably see this as a win for quality: they got to take more
| time to get the painting they wanted without delaying
| production, and paid no visible price for it.
| Cerium wrote:
| I would never have known that the painting was pasted in
| had I not read it here. I have been contemplating watching
| the movie again, maybe I should wait another year or two
| first. Now I want to pay more attention to this detail.
| ssully wrote:
| If you didn't read this post, you would have had no idea the
| painting was CGI. Calling it lazy is probably as justified as
| if your boss called you lazy for using a third party library
| like Python Requests instead of writing your own http
| library.
|
| The fact is there is more CGI in modern films then you know.
| There are a million videos like this, but this [1] video on
| CGI in David Fincher films is really worth a watch to get a
| small understanding on how modern CGI is used in films in
| ways you might not have noticed or thought about.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QChWIFi8fOY
| fvdessen wrote:
| We don't consciously notice it. But it may make the film
| worse because we subconsciously notice something wrong, or
| because the actors don't act as well without the real props
| and setting to help them.
| infinitezest wrote:
| This isn't an especially compelling theory without some
| data to back it up. Not to mention some less nebulous
| criteria for good or bad films.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > This isn't an especially compelling theory without some
| data to back it up.
|
| It's not difficult to reason how a real painting could
| plausibly incite a more realistic performance out of
| actors than a green screen. This trope of asking for
| "data to back it up" for the most obvious things is
| tiring. This is an internet message board, not a top tier
| scientific journal. You can ask for evidence if you want,
| but do you really need to do that in this case?
| handoflixue wrote:
| > You can ask for evidence if you want, but do you really
| need to do that in this case?
|
| I mean, the job is called "acting" and I'd think someone
| is a pretty bad actor if they can't pretend it's a real
| painting instead of a fake. They're already pretending to
| be an entirely different person, in an entirely different
| setting, dealing with a reality that often has extremely
| different rules than ours.
|
| So, yeah, it seems like a pretty extraordinary claim to
| insist that they can handle stunt doubles, fake props,
| and painted backgrounds... but a single green screen
| painting is just too much for them to handle.
| ssully wrote:
| Well I consciously notice that Knives Out is a pretty
| good movie, so I think the conversation of what we
| subconsciously notice or not in this case is pretty
| silly.
| evan_ wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is _the_ reason, but the lighting on the
| painting, and the expression and pose of the subject, change
| subtly from scene to scene- reflecting the story as it
| unfolds.
| disease wrote:
| I feel like these points land harder when talking about animation
| rather than live action films.
|
| Consider that when Disney made Bambi 2 in the 2000s, they came to
| the realization that their animators did not have the skill
| required to animate deer antlers and then basically had their
| hand forced into using CGI. In the 1930s this was not a problem:
| the film contains not just hand-animated antlers but beautifully
| painted backgrounds, an incredible score and some of the most
| expressive character animation ever produced.
|
| It hardly seems to be a stretch to call animation done during
| Disney's golden age objectively better than what is being done
| today.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I don't believe there are not artists today who could animate
| deer antlers or paint beautiful backgrounds. Disney did not
| want to pay for them or wait for the time it would take to
| animate a film by hand.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Bambi lost $200k USD (as a result of being released during
| WW2) in 1942 when it released[0], the equivalent of ~$3.4
| Million USD today, so I'm sure they were cutting necessary
| costs. It only recouped the losses with subsequent re-
| releases, which had the benefit of access to the European
| market.
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney#:~:text=The%20mi
| li...
| zzzbra wrote:
| while I am 100% in the "more practical effects please" camp, I
| would also wager that criticism of the state of CGI in films
| today is in large part a matter of survivorship bias: we are only
| noticing the bad CGI, and not appreciating just how much more
| happens to be CGI. Case in point, no one has probably seen even
| half as many real animals in a film in the past ten years as we
| think we have.
| vlunkr wrote:
| This video from a few years ago is a great counterpoint:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24
|
| It's not defending all CGI, just arguing that we only notice it
| when it's bad. It's basically a toupee fallacy
| DoctorNick wrote:
| It's a simple reason for why practical effects were abandoned for
| CGI: film crews are unionized, 3d animators are not.
| draw_down wrote:
| agumonkey wrote:
| For now. There's a failing 2d animator field in Japan. Either
| the die or organize.
| speedgoose wrote:
| It's an interesting observation but why would the union have
| any impact on the use of CGI ? I never read that before.
| tantalor wrote:
| Unions tend to push members wages higher and improve
| benefits, conditions, etc.
|
| That makes non-union labor cheaper in comparison.
| snotrockets wrote:
| It's cheaper to underpay and overwork your workers, both
| harder when the workers are unionized.
| [deleted]
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| They don't have the collective bargaining power of a union
| and are paid much less/exploited, resulting in better profit
| margins for the owners of the film.
| stavros wrote:
| Can it be two reasons? CGI is also less work.
| kleer001 wrote:
| 22 year veteran of CGI here. It's not less work. It's
| certainly different work. In fact it probably takes more time
| because directors think (and studios let them) do do-over
| after do-over. But once a giant set is blown up, that's it.
| Once you've flooded the set and soaked your actors it's
| prohibitive to do it again.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Yes exactly. This is just another essay about this that misses
| the forest for the trees about this stuff unfortunately. Not
| only does this have negative aesthetic side effects, it is
| produced by what is widely reported as an overworked, underpaid
| labor force.
|
| The rhetorical lengths some people go through to avoid talking
| about the actual, material reasons for these things. We are in
| general much more interested in just lamenting society, instead
| of complaining.
| skulk wrote:
| It's fascinating to me that a movie production with a budget
| of 10^8 dollars can't slice off a tiny bit of that for the
| people that literally make the movie.
| ars wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by a tiny portion of that,
| virtually the entire budget of a movie goes to paying the
| people who make it.
| skulk wrote:
| I was trying to square the existence of GP's mentioned
| "underpaid labor force" with the gigantic movie
| production budgets I hear about.
| kleer001 wrote:
| There is a 3D animation union. M.P.S.C. #839
|
| Representing animation artists, writers and technicians since
| 1952.
|
| https://animationguild.org/
|
| Now, that only covers a small number of studios. So, of course,
| not every studio can be part of it. But it is a union and it
| does drive some of the industry standards and expectations.
| [deleted]
| jrm4 wrote:
| Not for nothing, I wish more people here would pay attention to
| forces like this _in IT._ I feel like there 's a lot of people
| not following the money when we discuss things like, e.g.
| Wayland.
| dehrmann wrote:
| That might only be a second or third-order cause. The real one
| is cost. I doubt unions are what drives the difference; it's
| that an animator can do what a crew of 10 did before.
| aprdm wrote:
| Cost is the only thing that matters. I don't believe the
| budgets of today's movies are any smaller than they were before
| CGI, CGI artists are very much expensive and there are tens of
| thousands of them working on a movie.
| Melatonic wrote:
| This. George Lucas and Steve Jobs really screwed over the VFX
| industry in the late 90s. God damn conspiring tech trolls.
| Daub wrote:
| Nowadays All movies are, to some degree, cg'd. Color grading (the
| final stage of the post-production process) is entirely digital,
| and things are being done with digital color grading which would
| have been un-dreamable in analog days.
|
| Also, let's not forget that lots of vfx address minor things like
| (from experience) removing an umbrella that the directors
| daughter accidentally left on set.
|
| Finally, practical fx frequently require a digital helping hand.
| Like removing visible wires from fly by wire scenes.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| Yes but it's clear that the article is not talking about this.
| It's talking about things like The Hobbit compared to LOTR. The
| latter is a classic, the former has aged terribly, in a big
| part due to awful CGI
| greedo wrote:
| Aged terribly implies that it ever looked good.
| asmos7 wrote:
| just came here to ask why the dudes in the dinosaur costumes need
| to be naked?!?
| stuart78 wrote:
| A dimension I dind't see mentioned in the article is the volume
| of production and changing dynamics in the VFX industry. Back in
| the 70s/80s/90/s there was dramatically less special effects-
| driven content being produced. The community of those films was
| so small that you could have minor celebrities in people like
| Stan Winston. As the demand for the resource has increased, the
| talent in the production team has not kept up. This seems to me
| to be a key factor in the decreasing average level of CGI
| quality. Also keep in mind that VFX is a generally bad business.
| While more is being spent on production, VFX shops are extremely
| margin-driven and when you combine tight margins with tough
| (global) competition you end up making tradeoffs.
| randomsilence wrote:
| >Notice the color differences. Every movie now takes place as if
| it were in The Matrix, appearing in deep greens or blues or in
| gray shades, like the complex colors of the world have been
| bleached out.
|
| Could this reflect that we as a society have progressed towards a
| more advanced state? Maybe we have reached a more 'real' reality,
| a bit like Quentin Tarantino movie characters. As a consequence,
| the movies that we are watching now look different.
|
| >There's the realer than real universe, alright, and all the
| characters inhabit that one. But then there's this movie
| universe. And so From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill, they all take
| place in this special movie universe. So basically when the
| characters of Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, when they go to the
| movies, Kill Bill is what they go to see. From Dusk Till Dawn is
| what they see. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/news/a41379/que...
| ryantgtg wrote:
| Vox wrote about this recently
| https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/culture/22840526/colors-mov...
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| I think this is an instance of the symptoms being mistaken for
| the disease. CGI did not ruin movies, it was the demand for
| shallow, detached, visual excess that has pushed aside story
| telling altogether in favor of cheap tricks.
|
| There are still good stories, but they make nothing like the
| movies with big explosions and apocalyptic visions ... insert
| Michael Bay joke here ..., but it's really also just a set of
| people taking advantage of and serving a systemic, cultural, and
| civilizational degradation and contraction, or even possibly an
| implosion. Michael Bay got rich/famous off spamming explosions
| because that appealed to the masses. People of the past would
| have likely found all these movies today extremely boring and
| repetitive, because they are. For example, I can recall exactly
| one movie I have ever seen that was not a "all ends well" ending.
| Essentially every single movie today is guaranteed to end a
| single way. There are no tragedies anymore, it's essentially all
| comedies (in the classical, not the modern sense), it's this
| weird mental drug that has been created that feeds only
| endorphins. It's boring and stunting.
|
| Just like movies did not ruin books, CGI did not ruin movies.
| They are merely phases on a clear degradation of our society and
| civilization where the people keep making poorer and poorer
| decisions. It's really not any different than the negative
| feedback loop of weight gain; more weight, means less likely to
| work out, which leads to physiological changes that make
| overeating more likely and has a negative impact on mental state,
| which acts as barrier to engaging in rigorous physical activity
| ... which starts the cycle over.
|
| "CGI ruined movies" because our society has been getting mentally
| less healthy and our standards, expectations, discipline, and
| principles have been dropping like rocks. It's the symptom, not
| the cause.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| Reminds me of the project that used convolutional networks to
| make artificial images look more realistic by mapping the style
| of real images onto them [0]. Just slap that on top of your CGI
| and call it a day.
|
| [0] https://isl-org.github.io/PhotorealismEnhancement/
| arduinomancer wrote:
| > Yet despite his best efforts, I cannot help but notice that
| digital post-processing seems to have ruined Villeuneve's more
| realistic vision
|
| I get the criticism of bad/overused CGI these days but the post-
| processing of Dune is a really bad example here.
|
| I'm a big fan of both movies but the post effect on Dune is
| clearly an artistic choice that makes it look more dramatic and
| dreamy.
|
| If it looked like Lawrence of Arabia it would totally change the
| vibe of the movie.
|
| Why would I want it to look like it took place on Earth?
| JaggerFoo wrote:
| The biggest problem I have with CGI is that the speed of motion
| does not match what is physically possible - especially in
| superhero movies. It's like the motion you get when watching
| "Family Guy" stunts.
|
| One interesting comparison, I would like to read about, would be
| between "Blade Runner" and "Blade Runner 2049". The original used
| models and moved cameras around the models for effect, whereas
| the sequel, I'm sure, used CGI but to good effect. I'm a fan of
| both movies.
|
| Cheers
| nicce wrote:
| I still find original Alien movies as the most impressing movies
| on effect side. Or old Star Wars movies.
|
| Even the old Dunes movie managed to make one.
|
| New CGI movies just feels so fake. Some feeling is totally
| missing.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| I just watched Alien again recently and had the same thought.
| It looks infinitely better and more realistic than anything
| made in the last few years. We should go back to using models
| and miniatures and restrict the computer to things like
| automated camera control.
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| Why would we stop progress on a technology just because it's
| not perfect? Particularly on something as subjective as this.
| This attitude is prevalent in some of the weirdest fields but
| oddly enough I don't see anyone saying we should stop flight
| because the leg room in modern planes isn't great.
|
| Although I'm curious what your thoughts would've been had you
| been around to see the Wright brothers on their first flight.
| Or the first cell phone that came in a suitcase. Or the first
| camera that was just a photo sensitive plate and a hole for a
| lens.
|
| How would any of this had been improved if people just gave
| up the second they realized something about the technology
| wasn't perfect?
| nicce wrote:
| Hmph. Isn't CGI just different path? We could have improved
| miniatures as well. Maybe technology to produce them or use
| with CGI. It is not so binary. Computers are no the only
| technology we know.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Cheap, but technically well-executed. A kind of economic
| uncanny valley.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I will note you are picking some of the best effects movies of
| all time and comparing them with everything else.
|
| On the other hand compare "The Expanse" (Prime Video) with B
| movies of the Alien era, and the level of story telling they
| are able to do in a long form TV show. Then compare TV shows of
| the Alien era. The story telling there is much aided by CGI.
| Tho that show uses a good mix of practical and fake. Lots of
| small sets for ships, lots of fake displays. Many fantastical
| worlds that they can pump out with CG.
| nicce wrote:
| It is also worthy to note , that comparisons are made for
| Marvel movies or other very high budget movies.
|
| I would put Alien above all of them.
|
| High budget movies could still use same techniques in these
| days but they aren't.
| monocasa wrote:
| Alien's horror genre gets away with not actually showing
| that much in order to build suspense. Few genres are
| afforded that luxury, particularly not super hero movies. I
| don't see many people citing Superman 2 as the kinds of
| effects we should go back to.
| nicce wrote:
| There are planets, spaceships, big buildings and so on
| for creating the atmosphere. CGI is used to create those
| in these days as well.
| monocasa wrote:
| And those aren't the points that people generally point
| to as failures of CGI. You can have goofy CGI with those,
| but you can definitely have goofy looking practical
| effects with elements too.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Nothing in my comment disagreed with your point. I agree,
| the practical effects in much of Alien are great, and
| better than CG for those things.
| Zircom wrote:
| Really? The little xenomorph skittering off after it burst out
| from the chest literally made me laugh out loud with how silly
| it looked, it was so incredibly stiff and fake.
| nicce wrote:
| There are of course some minor problems, but the overall
| environment creates so "real" feeling. It is not perfect, but
| somehow it makes one to believe this could be real. I don't
| really know how to describe that. It is missing from the
| modern CGI movies.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| That example of practical effects looked quite stiff and fake
| like you said. But practical effects also continued to
| improve over the years even though CGI came to dominate the
| film industry.
|
| _Alien_ was released in 1979, but a few years later saw the
| release of _An American Werewolf in London_ (1981) which
| featured a memorable werewolf transformation (all practictal
| effects). Then in 1982 saw the release of _The Thing_ which
| took practical effects a notch higher.
|
| Also, today filmmakers sometimes use a hybrid approach:
| combining practical and digital effects.
|
| I do wonder how much further practical effects would have
| developed if CGI haven't overtook the film industry.
| a1pulley wrote:
| > I think there's a genuine mystery to be explained here: if
| people prefer traditional architecture by a large margin, how
| come we've stopped producing it?
|
| It takes time--decades, perhaps centuries--to develop the
| techniques and traditions that produce beautiful architecture.
| When new materials like glass, steel, and plastic become the de
| facto standards in construction in a relatively short period of
| time, we can expect construction to be ugly or unrefined as we
| discover those techniques and establish those traditions.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| The author, is at best misguided, or worse lying.
|
| yes, "CGI" movies are dire. Not because of the CGI, but because
| they lack story and vision.
|
| Let us look at the main thrust of the argument: CGI movies feel
| fake.
|
| This is patently false. Did you know that the Great Gatsby(2013)
| has a fucktonne of CGI in it? https://www.redsharknews.com/post-
| vfx/item/859-the-great-gat...
|
| same with wolf of all street: https://youtu.be/2D7MqlNWUEs?t=137
|
| more modern version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HzQKsgNt70
|
| CGI is there for set extensions, and is really common. Its often
| cheaper to do a virtual set extension, than it is to build it for
| real.
|
| In short, the author is pining for the "good old days" which were
| never there. Yes, there are some standout films that look great
| from the last 60 years. But we are forgetting the sheer amount of
| dross.
|
| Of _course_ lawrence of arabia is gorgeous, its shot in
| technicolor with a fucking massive budget. Its an adventure
| movie, like jumanji its going to have bright colours.
|
| Dune is dystopian rebel movies, about complex and grubby power
| struggles. Just as it always rains when the main character is
| sad, or there is a storm when things go wrong, colour is a tool
| to signpost emotion.
|
| The author is a typical film theory fan, all talk and no
| experience.
|
| TLDR: the author is comparing the cream of 50 years of film to
| generic movies of today. Asserting things that are demonstrably
| untrue, as 95% of all big budget films have digital set
| extensions and other CGI elements.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I was on the side of modern music against autotune critics in the
| last thread, and find myself against the pro-CGI "modern movies
| are fine" narrative in this one, interesting.
|
| For me it feels like visual effects set the bar higher for
| greater spectacle. It's more easily to be jaded by spectacular
| effects and to become accustomed to them. (I'm also pickier
| towards films, often imagining how imagery could have looked
| better or the story could have been told different.) It also
| feels like we're in an era where many Hollywood films can easily
| have access to great cinematography, stunning aerial shots of
| natural vista, etc.- and then it just ends up looking like Mac
| wallpapers. So many films can have that National Geographic
| documentary look, even arthouse pictures like say _The Green
| Knight_. Is it just easier to film on location than it used to
| be?
| wvenable wrote:
| Everything has CGI from the most average TV show to biggest
| blockbuster and, for a lot of it, you don't even notice. What
| people complain about is the CGI that they do notice.
|
| I think the issue is not, so much, that there is too much CGI.
| It's that a lot of movies are effectively hybrid live action and
| animated movies. And the animated parts tend to be way over the
| top to the point of being boring.
|
| In Black Widow, the big 3rd act CGI explosion-fest was all
| planned out before the director even got involved with the movie.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Is CGI considered an automation that reduces overall production
| cost?
|
| I am not sure whether it is or not, but I wonder if it has become
| much cheaper over time. I remember a time when CGI in movies was
| a thing of wonder, at least it was to me in the 90's.
|
| Nowadays I definitely see the Blah-ness of it. But that said I
| find action movies extremely boring and unrealistic, so I'm out
| of the loop.
| ladyattis wrote:
| There's good digital effects and bad digital effects. Sadly, most
| digital effects are in the bad category. Compare say
| Pleasantville's use of digital color changes over time to make
| the story come alive with the changes the main characters
| experience. It really sells the story properly without looking
| out of place. Whereas stuff like what's listed from Justice
| League and The Force Awakens fails because they don't fit well
| with the story. Like Cyborg wouldn't need to be a CGI overladen
| presentation if they did subtle practical effects backed up with
| equally subtle digital effects. Steppenwolf is a whole separate
| problem of visualizing the character. Making him completely CGI
| was a mistake. For The Force Awakens, the same issue is apparent
| with Maz Kanata in that she should've been partially a practical
| effect prop such as what John Favreau did with Baby Yoda on the
| Mandolorian and then augment the practical side with digital
| effects to make it pop.
|
| Also, I'll say that there's one area that digital effects beat
| out old ones: matte paintings. Digital matte paintings are far
| better than what came before and allow for greater degree of
| flexibility for shots. But they've been abused for replacing
| location shoots for them entirely.
|
| Edit: I would also put Joseph Kosinski's Oblivion in the list of
| good digital and practical effects blending along with some
| location shots. It's really one of those things that once you
| notice who does it better you begin to realize that CGI and green
| screen alone isn't sufficient. You have to mix all the methods
| together (practical, digital, matte, etc) to achieve the look
| you're after rather than pretending someone using a 3d modeling
| tool can magically whip up the look in post-production.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| Don't worry, WSGI to the rescue
| Someone1234 wrote:
| People who say they don't like makeup, are often _really_ just
| saying they don 't like makeup they notice. Same is true with
| CGI.
|
| CGI is actually everywhere and often goes unnoticed, unless it is
| _bad_. I point to set-extensions as a perfect example of
| invisible CGI done well:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47IIj-hws7g
| lkramer wrote:
| I think this is correct, but it's also what the article says
| between the lines.
|
| A problem with a lot of movies these days is that they got this
| great new toy, CGI, and then they don't when to stop. Whether
| the CGI is good or bad, perhaps because you don't have to work
| around limitation you follow the formula that whenever you want
| to add some action or don't know what to say, or don't know how
| to get the main protagonist out of a sticky situtation, you
| just add a bunch of CGI, and solve it that way. It ends up
| spilling into lazy storytelling and lazy film making in
| general, as opposed to when you had to work along side
| limitations to tell a story.
|
| I think to me this seems most evident in the Star Wars films,
| where as technology progressed, the lack of imagination in the
| creators when not forced became increasingly evident.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| There are a lot of bad uninformed takes in this thread, but I
| think this is the worst of them all.
|
| First, CG has been part of films for more than 25 years now
| and it isn't a "great new toy".
|
| More than that though, movies just aren't made like this.
| People don't go out with a camera and try to make something
| sequentially, they are planned from start to finish and
| refined for years before actual production.
| greedo wrote:
| I remember watching Terminator 2 when I was in film school
| (1991). It was shot in 1990, and the tech for the T1000
| seemed incredible. Then a friend showed me how much CGI was
| used to clean up simple stuff that you would never have
| thought of. Watch the T800 (Arnold/Stuntrider) jump his
| Harley into the river bed. That was wire work cleaned up
| via CGI. Not really necessary, they could have shot a diff
| angle to hide it, but that's a tell as well. Movies since
| then have always used low-key FX and CGI for this type of
| journeyman stuff.
|
| The thing that makes this great is that it increases a
| movie's verisimilitude. Your shots don't need to mask or
| hide things. They can be more organic and real.
| lkramer wrote:
| In all honesty, I think you're right. But I do feel
| something has happened. I definitely enjoy new blockbuster
| films a lot less then older ones. I still think fantastic
| films are made, but they are usually more independent films
| on smaller budgets, and some of them do have CGI, also
| obviously so, but it seldom matter.
|
| Is it a problem with how the modern film industry puts
| together movie? I don't know.
| daveslash wrote:
| I agree with this. I agree with the author of the post that
| there is something _wonderfully authentic_ about movies with
| PFX before the rise of CGI, but then again I am noticing a lot
| of CGI; most of my family can 't stop gushing about how
| _unbelievably real_ most modern movies look ~ they 're _not_
| seeing the CGI.
|
| They also _love_ the Soap Opera Affect [1] of modern TVs, which
| I _can 't stand_.
|
| So while I agree with the post's author, I think my agreement
| is one of a matter of personal preference, not objective
| evaluation. Side note: As a nice "stay at home" hobby during
| the pandemic, I've gotten really into film photography;
| shooting it, developing it at home, learning as much as I can
| about the history and science of it ~ one consequence is that I
| view older movies shot on film in a completely different light
| now (no pun intended).
|
| [1] https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/what-is-the-
| soap-...
|
| Edit: Spelling, and to say that "my family" is both older and
| younger, so I don't think it's a generational thing, per se.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| One thing that bothers me about a lot of new movies and TV shows
| is that the actors just _look_ digitally inserted. Even when it's
| a static shot and there's no interaction with the background, it
| just looks wrong. I'm not sure how I identify it, but I suspect
| it has something to do with the way the actors are lit. I
| remember watching a Marvel movie where all the heroes were shown
| as a group at the end and I felt like I was looking at a high
| school yearbook because it seemed like they weren't all present
| in the same space. The production values are high for a movie
| like that and you'd think they'd be using state of the art
| techniques.
| octokatt wrote:
| A part of this that's missing is the effects of HD filming on
| practical effects.
|
| Back in ye old days of the 90's, props didn't need to be super
| good looking unless there was a close-up. Now in the days of 4k,
| every prop needs to look gorgeous or the suspension of disbelief
| gets pinged. Same reason why you have people going through the
| Marvel weightlifting program and shaving _everything_.
|
| The increase in film detail happened from the same technological
| push that made CGI. Now folk are trying to figure out what to do
| with this hugely different film-making world, and you can see the
| cracks.
|
| That said, I agree with a lot of the author's ideas, particularly
| about Dune.
| frazbin wrote:
| This only for TV though, right? Film was high resolution from
| the beginning.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| 35mm film comes out to about the same sharpness as a 1.5k CG
| image. Even with the best lenses and scanning, 35mm scanned
| at any resolution still doesn't get sharper than a crisp 1.5k
| upscaled to be at the same resolution. Even middle of the
| road RED cameras have exceeded large format film in their
| sharpness and sensitivity.
| layer8 wrote:
| Not quite. They once did a measurement of the effective
| resolution of actual analog movie theaters (sometime in the
| 2000's IIRC), and the result was in the ballpark of 720p, so
| halfway between (anamorphic) DVD and Blu-ray.
| gigaflop wrote:
| Ah, like when Kumail suddenly sprouted muscles after he signed
| on for an MCU movie? Sipping on that 'Hero Juice'?
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