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Special Effects Lessons From JJ Abrams' Star Trek
brumgrunt writes "JJ Abram's hugely successful — on many levels — reboot of Star Trek has, for Den Of Geek, brought to the fore a lesson about special effects that many movie makers have been missing. Surely it's time now that special effects were actually used properly?" (The new film is not without some goofs, though only a few of the ones listed by Movie Mistakes' nitpickers are sciency.)
don't rely on special effects for content
Some movies are made to entertain people between the ages of 4 and 70 (i.e. spiderman). The wider the age range, the less room there is for typical plot elements, because younger audiences get bored quickly. Some movies are pretty good just because of their CGI alone. I might be risking my geek-card here, but none of the new Star Wars were actually that boring due to all the big-budget CGI/effects.
FTA: "when was the last time we had a blockbuster summer movie of any genre as downright entertaining as this one?" Iron Man last year. IMHO, Iron Man spent a bit too much time focused on taking on and off the suit. Other than that, the special effects were great and fit in with the movie. I especially loved him getting out of captivity using the original suit.
Even in a black hole there are too many lens flares.
Um... What exactly is TFA about, other than being a gushing fanboi ode?
better than "lens cap"! :-p
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
I went to the theater and the movie left me empty. I wasted time and money there and got nothing of value in return. This movie is so shallow you couldn't get your fingertips wet in it. If it were at least funnier or something. Instead you get scenes passing by with light speed while you sit there wondering: did I miss something? I must have, I haven't seen anything important yet. Half the movie in and it still feels like it hasn't started yet.
If you haven't seen it yet, don't. Download a pirate version first and if you like it, only then go to the cinema.
I specifically DIDN'T go see this movie because all the trailers made it look like a CGI-driven action-fest (a la Michael Bay). I hate those kind of movies. If this movie is NOT that, then its trailers did it a grave disservice.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The article gushes about how the efffects were not overdone, and only put in to enhance the story. The problem is, the story itself is the screenwriting equivalent of the overzealous effects producers the article complains about.
Don't get me wrong, the movie was awesome. It was a masterpiece, but it wasn't in any way morally superior to the Star Wars prequels - they just did the special effects right.
It just didn't live up to the older Star Treks, where the focus was on the sheer joy of discovery and the strength of the human spirit. There was a bit of the latter, but it was mostly just standard action-movie fare.
I would say I've successfully rebooted my computer when it comes back up and everything looks like it's working. The work I do on my computer once it's back up may not be worth anything, but it would have still rebooted successfully.
I have to agree with the author here, it was quite tasteful. I was turned off by several movies this last year due to liberal application of CG where it wasn't needed, but I never once had that feeling with this movie. I also have to comment on the fact this didn't suffer from the 'prequel' syndrome that Lucas's movies did. The art departments did an excellent job of recreating "period" technology that fit right into the setting.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
They had to be like that, to attract people who otherwise revile Star Trek for being a nerd's pastime. How else are you supposed to draw in the masses and make a killing?
It was great, and definitely worth seeing. There's a lot of action that you seem to not be interested in, but the plot & acting are excellent.
What's that then, when you move your lens in a particularly talented way?
Or did you mean flare?
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
After all the reviews I guess maybe my expectations were too high, but personally I thought this movie was actually pretty cheesy. The whole series of coincidences and bad acting starting with meeting Spock on the planet's surface was just ridiculous. Also, if you have this "red matter" that can create a black hole, why bother to drill to the center of the planet? Hell, you could drop off a black hole around Pluto and still easily destroy the Earth depending on it's size, but at the very least just putting it right next to the Earth would certainly do the job. This movie was more of a shoot-em-up and didn't show any of Kirk's ingenuity like we see in the Wrath of Khan, which I think will probably always stand as the best Star Trek movie ever made. I had always imagined Kirk was much more subtle with his "rigging" of the kobayashi maru test and I was really disappointed to see such a blatant and brainless resetting of the entire program as opposed to a small alteration that gave him just enough of an edge to win somehow.
You are right.
Although the movie is incredibly bad, people go see it.
It's because it has the names Kirk and Spock in the titles. The exact same movie with Picard and Data would be labeled as boring and as bad as Nemesis.
This is a movie that was practically ruined by lens flare and/or screen whiteouts in almost every scene. The cinematographer also insisted on having camera shake in at least 50% of the scenes, even if the ship was moving relatively smoothly though space. If there wasn't camera shake, the camera angle was coming up from the actor's feet at a 35 degree tilt. In sum, the cinematography was distracting and truely, genuinely, terrible.
While I agree it's a -bit- soon to be calling the reboot of the franchise a 'success', they have proven that it's possible. All they have to do is keep doing what they did.
Of course, I make that sound much simpler than it actually is, even assuming they really -know- why it's so successful. I've seen many franchises that get the first one spot-on, but then don't understand why. (Matrix, I'm looking at you!)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The new film is not without some goofs, though only a few of the ones listed by Movie Mistakes' nitpickers are sciency.
Uhh... What Star Trek movie were you watching?
Because in the one *I* watched, they traveled through the event horizon of a black hole, and came back out again (although, this is actually an interesting question over in Trek-land; warp engines let you travel FTL, so could you escape a black hole? I mean, after the tidal forces ripped your puny ship into it's component atoms, of course...)
Or, how about the "space dive", where they leaped out of a shuttlecraft and suddenly lost all their inertia? How about re-entering the atmosphere in a space-suit without any worries about friction or heat?
Or how about that giant drill? Why did it fall when they cut it off the ship? If the ship was in geosynchronous orbit, then the drill must have been traveling slightly slower than geo-synchronous orbital speed; it should have very gently drifted eastwards.
I am tired of films made for all the audience. The plot so simple as to be ridiculous. The players pathetic, (not his fault, just an horrible history that should ever been ever filmed to start with). The effects and sound over-emphasized. And the result, well, if you have 8 years it's a great movie.
But that's not SF, that's CRAP.
What's in a sig?
What's that then, when you move your lens in a particularly talented way?
No, no, no. Lens Flair is the stuff you put on your lens to express yourself. I believe the minimum is 18 pieces.
It seems to me that we're still experiencing special effects giddiness as many of the industry people that started in the 70s and 80s when things were hard and you had to build intricate models and crazy sets and sometimes colour things in with crayons are now the old coots in charge and leading some of these works of wonder out there, and literally can't control the power they have. It's not even that you couldn't do some things without CG but it was just too expensive and no one in their right mind would do it.
Just look at the Gungan/droid battle at the end of SW Episode 1; it adds virtually nothing to the story but does show a total lack of imagination by those in charge. They took great pains to construct an encounter that, for all its lasers, aliens, droids and tanks, is essentially a medieval skirmish where large formations clash at close quarters. 20 years ago you'd have to dress up a few hundred guys, build faux tanks and giant beasts, and many of those things in miniature as well, and then use a lot of clever editing to pull all of it together. It would have likely never happened because of the sheer physical effort involved, or they'd do a different style of battle instead because it'd be easier to show a few people on the screen at one time. George is not the only one succumbing to this, though he certainly is our favourite example.
The current state of CG in movies is almost what would happen if new Lamborghinis were suddenly being sold for $20k - many of the people who wanted one as a kid would probably get one, and then your roads would be packed with impractical but cool-looking two-seaters, and it would take some time before people came to their senses.
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
The thing that annoyed me the most about the new Trek was the abundance of 'shaking the camera during filming' shots I was subjected to. Can we give that a rest?
Those antipiracy dots are really annoying. Especially when you try to sneak them into a half-second of a special effects burst. Saw a couple in Star Trek, and at least four in Angels & Demons. In each case, there was an explosion or other high-contrast light and they tried to sneak in a few frames of antipiracy dots.
Although I think that technology is lame and unnecessary, there are a zillion less obvious places to put it...
Advice: on VPS providers
Personally, I knew JJ Abrams was no Michael Bay when the orbital drill, after being destroyed, fell into San Francisco Bay *right next* to the Golden Gate bridge, but somehow missed subjecting us to a gratuitous and cliched effects sequence of the destruction of San Francisco's most famous landmark, preferring instead to get on with the story.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
One of the "goofs" doesn't make sense to me:
The first shots of the Enterprise in space show it docked at the massive space station with the bridge facing the center of the station. When they show Spock entering the bridge for the first time (when the ship is still docked) you can see the view out of the front viewscreen/window. You should be able to see the huge space station, but all you see is empty space.
Submitted by BocaDavie
Isn't it possible that people in that century have figured out that you can have a camera facing backwards and put it on a video screen on a wall facing the other direction?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Perhaps it's just me, but I think special effects have gotten worse, not more impressive, over time.
A good example would be the scene where Wolverine is playing with his new adamantium claws in front of a mirror in the latest X-Men movie. You can't miss the fact that they have been added to the movie with a computer.
What gives? In the first movie, I believe, they used props. They looked real enough.
What about the first Hulk movie? I haven't seen the movie, I'll admit. But from the trailer it was obvious the CGI did not fit into the movie at all. Remember Jurassic Park? How fricking old is that movie? How can it be that it looked more realistic than newer movies?
Is this just a matter of using the computer too much? Is it a lack of care or skill? I don't know. I just know that these things didn't jump at me, figuratively speaking, so much five to ten years ago...
I can break the movie down into 10 words: I'm Captain Kirk and I'm going to kick your ass.
Star Trek was not a thought provoking movie. It didn't raise many of the ethical and moral questions that TOS and TNG did - in fact, it went so far as to shit all over that idea (one of the last scenes with Nero, Kirk chooses violence over peace). It also wasn't a deep movie - beyond the story of the TOS crew meeting each other there really isn't much there.
To me this wasn't a problem. It was an entertaining TOS-type movie (not to be confused with the TOS crew in a Roddenberry movie, ala ST1-4), with corny action movies, dead red shirts, the classic theme, the classic voiceover, and Kirk being a badass ("I've got your gun").
Overall it was a fun movie. It's no Godfather II, but it's certainly not a pile of shit like Twilight. Artistically, it's bunk. Entertainment wise, it fits the bill, and gives the Star Trek series the new legs that, in my opinion, it so desperately needed.
(And if you don't think Star Trek needed new legs, I'll say this: The later episodes of DS9 and Voyager sucked. Warp 10 being "everywhere at once"? The magical anti-borg shielding? Don't even get me started on the Enterprise episodes, or the three movies prior to this one)
When crafting his movie, Abrahms had two choices: either make a fully faithful canonic trek movie that would disinterest the public at large and get an outcry from hardcore trekkies, or make a fun, action-packed blockvusters that would get the larger public excited and get an outcry from hardcore trekkies. Seems like he made the most financially sound choice, seeing how hardcore trekkies are never satisfied with the end result anyway.
The minimum is 18 pieces, but some people choose to wear more, and we like to encourage that.
Nemo was told what year it was.
He waited 20 years to capture old-spock.
He had *plenty of time* to figure out that Romulus had not been destroyed yet, and *plenty of time* to realize that it would now be trivially easy for him to prevent the destruction of Romulus himself. Once he captured old-spock, he had the red matter. So he could have flown over to the star and sucked it up in a black hole a full century before it would go supernova and destroy Romulus.
They tried to explain that in his brief conversation with captain Pike, when he refused to accept the statement that Romulus wasn't destroyed. But after a full 20 years of floating in the void of space, you would think he would have calmed down just a tad.
So, he qualifies as a stupid bad guy. Given this story line, if he had been intelligent, he never would have been a bad guy, and we really wouldn't have had much of a movie. But I don't care. Movie writers should not rely on weak plot devices like that one to make a movie. Make your bad guys smart, damnit.
I also wonder how a mining ship got such kick-ass military grade torpedoes, and how he managed to maintain morale and loyalty in his crew for the 20 years they spent sitting on their asses, but I won't belabor those points.
You want to see good F/X? See "Angels and Demons". That wasn't filmed at the Vatican. The Vatican scenes, inside and out, were filmed in LA. It was done with partial sets, CG sets, green screen work, miniatures, matchmoves, and computer generated crowds. Can you tell?
Star Dreck was an easy F/X job. Anybody can do 3D spaceships. It's faking the commonplace that's tough.
I have to disagree with you on that. My favorite movie is Rio Bravo, which I first saw when I was nine years old. By current standards, that movie is slooooowww. It goes for over two hours and it's only about five minutes after the titles that someone first speaks something. But it's a wonderful film.
I loved it the first time I saw it because I became immersed in the action, I never realized time was passing. I remember it was only after the film ended and my father remarked on how long it was that I realized that nearly two and a half hours had passed.
It's a simple plot, but it's so good that the director Howard Hawks did the same thing again, not once but twice. All three movies are great and all star John Wayne doing a similar plot. I still have to see a film that I liked on Fx alone.
I think people who keep harping on this are missing one glaring fact:
Kirk successfully successfully got a distraught and emotionally incapacitated captain to step aside, and proceeded to save the earth from total destruction.
I could be mistaken, but I think the whole earth-saving thing is something they want to encourage in Star Fleet. That, you know, if you SAVE THE EARTH, the normal rules of promotion might become slightly more flexible.
Vulcans are very bad at calculating the velocities caused by supernovae.
Oh so very true. The black hole Spock was going to make wouldn't have done very much for the wave of radiation and near light speed particles escaping that would have baked the Romulans home world like a potato in a microwave. If the microwave was the size of a 12 story building.
How 'bout these?
The planet Vulcan would not compress into a black hole the same size as Vulcan. It'd probably be about the size of a marble. See Schwarzschild radius.
You can't drill a hole to the core of a planet. They're molten inside. That would be like trying to drill a hole into the center of a gallon of milk. Thin crispy shell, big fluid inside.
If you have something that sparks off a black hole, you could probably just drop it on the surface and it would do it's magic. The drill is unnecessary anyways.
Things do not go back in time when they fall into a black hole. They pass the event horizon and remain locked there until they dissolve as Hawking radiation. Besides, if things did go back in time 25 years, the ruined remains of Vulcan would have also showed up 25 years ago giving them plenty of time to prepare.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I cast "summon bigger boat"
The funny thing is that the only part of the ST canon which was NOT erased by the time jump thingy was mister Quantum Leap's contribution.
I enjoyed the new film as well, but it wasn't Star Trek and Abrams is still a lame jackass who thinks and writes exclusively using mechanical base emotions rather than the higher thought patterns some members of our race still try to embrace. The man and his vision is a link or two backwards on the chain of cultural evolution. That's why his characters all seem like shop-window dummies.
I sometimes enjoy Disney films, but that doesn't make Disney's vision of the world a good thing. Heck, I can also enjoy a bag of Doritoes from time to time.
There was a period when ST was not just empty calories. But hey, that's alright. As our culture has demonstrated, thinking is too much work. And now with the calming effect of the Vulcan empire gone, we humans can now focus on that stuff we all love so much; Endless War!
Sigh. Picard's Enterprise was my favorite and I knew it too good to last. People don't deserve happiness and sanity if they actively reject it in favor of pain, misery and small-mindedness.
The attitude and energy of this new film, particularly the scenes in and around Starfleet Academy, strongly reminded me of another film: "Starship Troopers".
-FL
A movie where they send mentally unstable astronauts to reignite the Sun by dropping a bomb in it.
The technical explanation of what they were trying to do is online if you want to read about it, and is actually based on advice from some physicist consultants the production team worked with.
The director seems to have (correctly) assumed that most audience members wouldn't want to sit through a lengthy briefing.
If you can't buy the idea that a few members of a team of astronauts might start exhibiting unusual behaviour when they're isolated and placed under extreme stress for a long duration, it's probably not your film though.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
is the incessant damn shaking of the camera by film makers these days whenever they want to evince a sense of action or urgency.
There was a time when holding a camera steady was considered the most basic of requirements for producing a watchable film, along with an editing style guided by the belief that anything worth putting up on the screen is worth leaving for on the screen for more than one second. That time ended abruptly when a TV show called "Miami Vice" came along. Suddenly it was "cool" to depict action by having a one-legged cameraman chase your actors down the street with a handheld camera.
There are brief instances where jolting the image around on screen is effective, such as when the Enterprise is being struck by enemy fire, but for the most part all this shaky camera work and split-second editing is a needless assault on the senses. If, god forbid, these are combined with the necessity to sit rather close to the screen in a packed theatre, the effect can be physically nauseating.
I wish today's film directors would embrace the simple rules that amateurs learned with the advent of "home movies" many years ago. Hold the f***ing camera still, and make each shot long enough that viewers can actually discern what the hell is on the screen.
Then again, he wouldn't be Captain Kirk if hadn't racked up three different court martial-worthy offenses. Kirk always bend/break/reinvent the rules when when circumstances require him to do so. The movie got it right.
Actually, "Star Trek" and the Daniel Craig "Bond" movies had exactly the same problem: the people who made them completely failed to understand what their respective franchises were supposed to be and thus removed everything important leaving only the superficial bits (like the setting) and trying to fill the gaping void with gratuitous action.
James Bond, for example, was never supposed to be a gung-ho action hero; his cleverness, wit, and charm are equally important (if not more so) than his fighting ability. Older Bond films, such as the Sean Connery and Roger Moore ones, had considerably less action and a slower pace than, say, "Casino Royale" -- and that's exactly how they're supposed to be!
Similarly, Star Trek was never supposed to be about action either. It's supposed to be about exploring the unknown -- and not just literally, but socially (e.g. "The Undiscovered Country" as allegory for the fall of the Soviet Union, Kirk and Uhura's interracial kiss, etc.), morally (e.g. episodes dealing with the Prime Directive, etc.) and intellectually/philosophically (e.g. all the classic "what if?"-type sci-fi episodes, such as "All Good Things..."). All the superficial cliches that non-Trekkies like Abrams mistakenly thought were important got shoveled in by the truckload: redshirts, funny accents, references to previous Trek stories (e.g. the "centaurian slug" or whatever = the "ceti eel" from "The Wrath of Khan"), technobabble, the setting and characters themselves, but the essence of Trek got completely left out!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
After all, in the Star Trek universe, the Earth is saved every other week. It's not such a big deal.
You sure you want to point to that explanation as "advice from some physicist consultants"?
Basically it boils down to them using a bomb made out of unobtainium, dumped into the Sun to simulate Big Bang.
VERY scientific. Like The Core. A tad less scientific than Armageddon though.
If you can't buy the idea that a few members of a team of astronauts might start exhibiting unusual behaviour when they're isolated and placed under extreme stress for a long duration
Religious people going crazy and wanting to bring on the end of the world? Nothing unbelievable there.
What IS unbelievable is that the entire fucking planet chooses to send a religious lunatic (apparently nobody caught on him being batshit insane during all those tests and training) - instead of one of those Russians that they put up in space and forget about them for years.
Or an otaku with a stash of hentai literature, videos and games.
And a supply of ramen.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens