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John Knoll on CGI, Tron And 25 Years of Change
StonyandCher writes to tell us John Knoll, visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic, is using the 25th anniversary of Tron as a platform to look back at the last 25 years of visual effects. "The type of imagery that was possible to create at the time was very clearly computer generated; it wasn't going to fool anybody into thinking it was live action. That was a limitation of the technology that worked very well within the story, that fit right in and made a lot of sense: if you're telling a story about events taking place inside a computer, inside a big virtual environment, what techniques should you use? Parts of the film were done by shooting live action then doing rotoscope and other optical techniques over the top of it, but the stuff that really looked cool and stood out was the stuff that was computer generated."
I'm sure it's not because of the technology involved. I don't know -- maybe the story didn't grab people, or they felt like it was too juvenile. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't technique-related. It was because, underneath the brilliant technology, it was pretty standard Disney fare. The Disney audience didn't appreciate the technology and those that did wanted better writing. After all, we were used to sci-fi of the Star Trek standard where the quality of the writing overcame the poor effects.
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Agree digital effects and rendering should be used as a tool to help the story, not a story to push rendering. I watch a lot more Japanese and British content now a days because a lot of the junk being pushed out of hollywood is nothing but CGI foreplay, used to please the eyes and dim the brain with no real content.
why remake it, the early 1980s special effects fit into the story very well, nothing really would be gained by more eye candy. Kind of like the silly addition of useless enhanced special effects to Star Wars, did nothing for the movie.
The grpahics may have changed and look better, but the physics and implementation are still awful. When I see spiderman swing, he just falls too fast and the swing doesnt look natural with the cgi (like, his body doesnt react or stiffen to the G-force).
And when Cgi characters jump off something and land on the ground, most of the time it doesnt look natural. I mean, are they even using earth's gravity acceleration of 9.8 m/s2????
Seriously, look at the scene from the first movie where Peter jumps from building to building. it doesnt look naturally he's falling too fast, and when he lands, the way his body looks when he lands just doesnt look natural. looks as if he just fell 3 feet. his body should have crouched/sunk more.
Has ruined far more movies than it's improved. When used discretely and where necessary to the story it is fantastic tool. But in too many movies the creators have reveled in their ability to create more and more spectacular stunts and made a movie that showcases CGI talent instead of one with an interesting and well told story. Think the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park" versus the infamous Jar Jar Binks. One was done very well and effects were used in such a way as to cover the inadequacies of CGI (which are still present today), while the other--well, not so good.
I'll toss out a few more:
That Genesis sequence was quite an eye-opener.
The ballroom scene, while not technically so amazing, raised public awareness of CG in movies.
After seeing this, I thought effects shouldn't matter anymore because now anything was possible. It still bothers me when people talk about the great CG effects in a movie. Who cares (except for Sin City...and Sky Captain...and 300
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Back then, they said the same thing about the movies made in a previous "back then". And they'll say it again about today's movies twenty years from now. And they were, and will be, just as full of crap as you are now. There is no magical bygone Golden Age for movies, or any other medium.
If you like the original so much, why would you need a remake?
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So what? Awards are meaningless. It's still a good movie whether it wins one hundred awards or zero.
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The reason we (the Television and Film people) use CGI for Computer Generated Imagery instead of CG is because in Broadcast "CG" is generally associated with Character Generator.
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I thought of this when reading the article when they asked Knoll about a remake. Remaking Tron would be impossible. Tron was something that really marked its time. Part of the magic of the movie was the era. It was a great movie, and the concept and graphics marked it's time well.
A rethinking of Tron is really the Matrix. Both concepts hinged on a person trapped in a computer and having to overcome the 'evil' technology that was abused in some way and returning it to human control. The Matrix is the natural evolution of Tron. Instead of a nice resolution where man gained control of the technology, in The Matrix control was never restored but man worked out a truce with machine. We've come from a place where we were unsure about the role of computers in the future to a time where we anticipate their power and understand that the genie doesn't go back in the bottle.
Both were masterpieces of their time that captured a culture's fears and anticipations of technology with cutting edge computer generated graphics which set the tone for the setting of the movie.