Why Special Effects No Longer Impress

brumgrunt writes "When an advert for toilet roll now has a CG dog in it, have we come to the point where special effects have no lasting impact whatsoever? As Den of Geek argues, 'Where we once sat through Terminator 2 and gasped when Robert Patrick turned into a slippery blob of mercury, we now watch, say, Inception and simply acknowledge that, yes, the folding city looks quite realistic.'"

Comments

Cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

When was the last time you gasped at a car driving next to you? Yeah, people get used to technology.

Re:Cars?

[FooAtWFU]

I posit that special effects are like other kinds of art, now. No one is really "amazed" that you can put together some oil paints and come up with a picture. However, Starry Night is still widely recognized as some mighty fine artwork. It's what you do with it.

The folding city in Inception looked cool. No one was surprised that they could get it to look cool. For that you'll still need to look at things like Avatar et cetera. (Also very shiny, by the way. Total eye candy.)

Re:Cars?

[Beardo the Bearded]

Special effects aren't special when they're in every scene.

Re:Cars?

[theIsovist]

I'd also argue that inception was impressive because several of the special effects rely on physical techniques. The spinning hallway really was spinning during filming, which might not seem that important, but it means that we have a real system in place for rules. Gravity is never lost during that shot, which often happens in pure CG special effects. everyone's movements happen as naturally as we'd expect them to in that situation. When you replace with CG, you're likely to forget to add small details that the audience will notice consciously or subconsciously, breaking the experience.

Re:Cars?

[sribe]

When was the last time you gasped at a car driving next to you? Yeah, people get used to technology.

Night before last actually. Of course it wasn't so much the car itself, as it was the car's position and trajectory ;-)

Re:Cars?

[Nadaka]

The most impressive special effects are the ones you never know are there. I have a cousin that has done VFX work on terminator 2 and a few other blockbusters. He also worked on a number of drama's and comedies that you can't imagine having had digital effects of any kind.

Re:Cars?

[gknoy]

More importantly, often the best special effects are the ones that are NOT visually glamorous. For example, in Forrest Gump, they did some awesome stuff to make Gary Sinise look like he'd had his leg(s?) amputated. It was amazing. It was nearly invisible in the movie. If I hadn't known that Gary Sinise had both his legs, I'd have thought they had hired an actor without legs.

Re:Cars?

[PopeRatzo]

That you use a horror film in a discussion of CGI effects demonstrates just how thoroughly fooled most people are.

CGI appears in far more than horror and sci-fi genres. It shows up in dramas, comedies and everything in between. It's used to take age lines off a thirty-something actress. It's used to brighten daylight and make rain look real. It's used to enhance the look of water and it's used in practically every shot that takes place inside a car. It's used to change scenery and to add or remove extras from a crowd scene.

I still maintain that you miss most of the CGI effects that you see.

Poor Michael Bay

[dominion]

Does this mean that directors actually have to focus instead on character development, plot, and pacing?

Re:Poor Michael Bay

[maxwell demon]

No, it means directors have to focus on 3D. That's still new enough.

Re:Poor Michael Bay

[gstoddart]

They said that around 60 years ago.

And it falls out of favor after 6 months only to re-emerge as the new hotness after another 10 years. :-P

It's never really lived up to what people claimed it would be -- it's always been a hokey gimmick with no real staying power.

I for one will not deal with the eye-strain and headache of 3D that I've had the last two times I've tried to watch it.

Good

[Sarten-X]

Now filmmakers will focus on compelling stories, complex characters, and complete worlds, right? Right? Please?

Re:Good

[camperdave]

That's the thing with 3D. It keeps popping up.

Actually, I'd say it's worse than that

[0123456]

I don't just find CGI effects unimpressive, but fundamentally boring. They're good if they actually add to the story, but who cares if Keanu Reeves is fighting a raptor on top of a truck that's racing around the deck off a cruise liner that's going to explode if it goes below the speed of sound when it's all just created inside a computer? I could be impressed with effects in the pre-CG days when someone actually had to stand on top of a moving truck fighting a guy in a rubber dinoaur suit to achieve the same thing, but now, so what?

Re:Actually, I'd say it's worse than that

[TooMuchToDo]

"but who cares if Keanu Reeves is fighting a raptor on top of a truck that's racing around the deck off a cruise liner that's going to explode if it goes below the speed of sound"

Sir, I do think I'd pay to see that.

Re:Actually, I'd say it's worse than that

[MBCook]

I've been modding in this thread, but forget it. I want to post on this.

This is my big problem. I recently saw Indiana Jones & The Crystal Skull. I knew it wasn't going to be very good, but I was still amazed at two parts of the movie.

The first is when he was first being lead into the warehouse where all the artifacts are being stored. They have a show showing him walking in through the big doors, and in the background is a 20-30ft piles of boxes, made in CGI. Did you not have the budget in your $100m movie to buy boxes? Wait! You did. You piles of them 5 minutes later. I get you don't want to recreate the whole warehouse, but a single pile of boxes? It was pathetic.

At the same time the 'crystal skull' in the movie not only does not look like the real crystal skull but in fact looks like someone balled up palstic wrap and then poured resin around it. You couldn't have a few pieces of high quality glass blown? You couldn't have used the CGI for the skulls?

The CGI is applied in so many of the wrong places. The final scenes are very well done, as were the ants, but why keep spending the budget on making groundhogs look at Indy or troupes of monkeys playing Tarzan in a scene that TOTALLY breaks any suspension of disbelief.

I'm used to CGI. It takes a ton to impress me. But a good motorcycle chase that isn't all CGI and blue-screen will go a lot farther because I can tell they actually did it.

Heck, I suppose I'm lucky the quicksand in KotCS wasn't pure CGI. Stupid Lucas.

Re:Actually, I'd say it's worse than that

[nyctopterus]

This is interesting isn't it; modern CGI looks completely fake! In a couple of decades, we'll look back on this stuff and cringe. In a couple more decades, there will be people will watch it purely for the cheese factor.

Re:Actually, I'd say it's worse than that

[soupforare]

I just recently got the chance to watch T2 on bluray, I'm still amazed at the CGI in the film. I'm not certain if it's because it's comparatively "simple" effects or if it was just more tasteful use of the tool but it stands up a hell of a lot better than many more expensive/elaborate CG used in recent films. Some of the traditional FX appliances look like appliances but they did back then, too. OTOH, some are amazingly seamless, like the chest appliance for the bar scene.
Is it waxing romantic or did they just put more effort into FX back when they had to, and now they just throw money at ILM?

Re:Actually, I'd say it's worse than that

[bckrispi]

Much more importantly as we see in the Star Wars prequels, making an entirely CGI environment often results in extremely forced and wooden performances from actors

You've never acted, have you? One of the first things you learn in performance art is how to act without props, stage settings, or other actors It's just you, an empty stage, some lighting, and the audience. A CGI film is you, a green screen, sightlines, some lighting, and the film crew. They're practically analogous. Any "wooden" performance is not the fault of CGI. It's the fault of either the actor or (more likely) the director..

Technological Improvements Taken for Granted

[eldavojohn]

"Where we once sat through Terminator 2 and gasped when Robert Patrick turned into a slippery blob of mercury, we now watch, say, Inception and simply acknowledge that, yes, the folding city looks quite realistic."

Right and we also used to sit and stare in awe as a person used a phone from their car to make a phonecall. Now if a call is dropped we curse whatever carrier we have even though the sheer concept of what that signal is going through is borderline witchcraft. And so help me god if that signal drops to one bar. I act as if that communication capability is some inalienable right.

Any technology developed for one generation can now be taken for granted almost instantly instead of taking several generations for gratitude to ebb. Seriously, you could build a machine that extends life indefinitely through five minutes of use each day and people will complain that one model tingles more than another. And if it stops working, they'll flock to the internet to complain that their life was shortened. And if their internet isn't working, some company just violated the Geneva Conventions.

As computers (both general and special) become more powerful, you'll see this is in movies more and more. It's going to be like sound recording. Decent recording equipment is so cheap you can record a passable album in your basement. We expect decent CGI now that it's relatively cheap. Terminator 2 was the most expensive movie to make when it came out. Wouldn't be the same price today. I could sit here thinking of comparisons all day.

I guess I would question the author with simply: "Where did you draw the line and why?" He talks about 30 years of special effects but, yeah, 30 years in any lucrative field or market would see some drastic progressive changes like this.

Re:Technological Improvements Taken for Granted

[DoofusOfDeath]

Right and we also used to sit and stare in awe as a person used a phone from their car to make a phonecall.

I still do! These days I expect to see drivers texting.

Re:Technological Improvements Taken for Granted

[damien_kane]

"Everything is amazing right now, and nobody's happy"

To that, as Denis Leary said; "Happiness comes in small doses folks. It's a cigarette butt, or a chocolate chip cookie or a five second orgasm. You come, you smoke the butt you eat the cookie you go to sleep wake up and go back to fucking work the next morning, THAT'S IT! End of fucking list!".

Re:Technological Improvements Taken for Granted

[mcgrew]

Terminator 2 was the most expensive movie to make when it came out. Wouldn't be the same price today.

before I saw it, I read that it cost $n and thought to myself, "how in the hell could a movie cost that much to make?" After I saw it, I wondered how they could have done it with ONLY that much cash -- it seemed to me that they almost destroyed so many cars (and the building they blew up; the explosion wasn't CGI) that the cars and building alone would have cost that much!

Depends on what tools you had

[fishbowl]

I'm still really impressed by the special effects that filmmakers managed in the 1950s. To do the same with the tools they had available would still be very impressive today.

All the time! STOP

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I'm from 1890, you insensitive clod! STOP

FULL STOP

Re:All the time! STOP

[M. Baranczak]

The invisible baby horses under the hood love sugar. You can feed them through that special tube on the side of the car, just behind the doors.

Yes they do Impress

[DreadPiratePizz]

Who remembers the Matrix? I recall gasps in the theatre as the camera rotated around trinity in midair. That shit was tight. What about Avatar? Tons of people were impressed with the world of pandora and the 3D effects. Special effects can definitely impress, but only if you keep them moving forward!

Re:Yes they do Impress

[Locke2005]

Avatar was a good story, a compelling story that drew you into it, even without the effects. That despite the fact that with the exception of the biologically evolved 'net, there really weren't and new ideas in the entire plot line. The ideas were unoriginal, but put together exceedingly well.

Re:Yes they do Impress

[geekoid]

so instead of understanding his port, you just post your tradition knee jerk rant.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Ha said the story is unoriginal., but it was put together very well.

All plots are old, you simpleton. quite frankly, I'm glad there is one less unthinking reactionary interested in film making. So good riddance.

My son enjoyed the story, you know why? because he had never heard it. He hasn't seen Pocahontas, or Ferngully* It hasn't become cliche to him yet.

There are many good movies, and many fun movies. Both aren't the same.
RED wasn't a good movie, but it was fun as hell. Schindler's list isn't a fun movie, but it's good**

*it was far closer to Ferngullly the Pocahontas. that is a really small nit to pick,

**or so I've been told. I have no desire to see it so my appraisal is based on it's public acclaim and the fact that genocide is rarely funny.

Biggest problem is photography and edits

[gilesjuk]

My biggest problem is not the masses of CGI, it is the insistence of directors or photography directors that the camera has to fly around all over the place.

I would much rather have nice composed shots, nice panning shots. I don't want millions of different angles and machine gun edits (lots of edits per second).

So many films seem the same due to the above.

Re:Biggest problem is photography and edits

[andyr86]

The only really impressive technique in film making these days is the 'long take' where a whole scene is shot from end to end without a tone of edits. Hard Boiled has a great long take right at the end. Personally i think photography has gone down hill in the last decade, no one seems to care about colour, light and shade anymore. Why bother when you are going to screw it all up in post anyway.

Does this guy speak for all of us?

[mikaelwbergene]

I saw the folding city in Inception and thought "Holy fuck, that is cool". I guess I must have been the only one then?

There will always be room for movies focused around spectacles and eye candy because of visceral thrill... Perhaps the article writer has lost his ability to suspend his disbelief, but I was loving every second of the sfx (actors floating) and vfx (folding buildings) of Inception.

Re:Does this guy speak for all of us?

[The Wild Norseman]

I saw the folding city in Inception and thought "Holy fuck, that is cool". I guess I must have been the only one then?

There will always be room for movies focused around spectacles and eye candy because of visceral thrill... Perhaps the article writer has lost his ability to suspend his disbelief, but I was loving every second of the sfx (actors floating) and vfx (folding buildings) of Inception.

Oh, hell no, you aren't the only one. I felt the exact same way. I felt the sfx were absolutely amazing -- hell, I mentioned this to a friend just two nights ago now; I said that the sfx in Inception were even more awesome because they weren't "flashy" and in your face. But most importantly, the story was engaging and, IMO, unique. I spent most of my time going, "wow, what a mind fuck. Which level are they on again? Oh, yeah! And how will they figure out to do the kick with no gravity?"

I clearly remember T2. Even then, I said, "oh. Special effects, they're pretty cool. But the story kinda sucked."

YMMV and all that.

Ubiquity

[eepok]

It's called ubiquity. Once something, ANYTHING, is ubiquitous, it is then assumed to be normal, common, and easy.

Re:Ubiquity

[netsavior]

Exactly,
When 14 year olds are making realistic ligthsabre fights using a 50 dollar camcorder it just isn't that impressive when George Lucas does it. Even if he did it first.

Re:Two words: Star Wars

[D Ninja]

I never bothered to see the other two prequels - just looked up the story online later.

Your search - star wars prequal story line - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

        - Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
        - Try different keywords.
        - Try more general keywords.
        - Try fewer keywords.

Re: Mod parent up

[shidarin'ou]

This times 1000. We have the tools now, but very little worth putting them to use on.

I wish people would stop saying that the VFX are ruining moves. We're a tool used by the director (or, more often, by the studio) if that Director (or again, the studio) fail to utilize us within the story properly, how is it the VFX that are ruining movies?

And science fiction got there first.

[sehlat]

Robert A. Heinlein, in his 1950 essay "Where to?" mentioned as a law of nature that a nine-day wonder is taken as a matter of course on the tenth day, and Frederic Brown, in his 1954 story "Preposterous" told of a man who lives in a future so advanced even we haven't gotten there, and that man took for granted things like the "Fourth Martian War" and the "Immortality Center" who ridiculed science fiction and at the end of the story, "he quirtled."

Consider this: I was born in 1949, the year the transistor was invented. A few years ago, I realized I had on my person 1. a cell phone. 2. A PalmPilot and 3: a 60Gigabyte iPod. I suddenly realized that all of that represented more transistors, more raw digital storage, and more raw computer processing power put together than existed on all Earth the year I was born, and probably for several years after that.

What surprised me wasn't that I took these items for granted, but that, essentially, I was wearing them as part of my clothing.

Re:And science fiction got there first.

[sehlat]

Inconvenient? I can read information on my Palm while I'm talking to my wife at the same time. Where's your iPhone the noo?

crapy movies

[cuby]

Lately, movies seem like an excuse to show special effects with no regard for plot.

Re:crapy movies

[jpapon]

Oh get over yourself. Movies have always been an excuse for visual effects. If all that mattered was plot, storylines would be the end-all of story-telling. That has never, nor will it ever, be the case. Humans have sensory input. We like to use them.

The kids these days!

[Jedimstr397]

Moreover, the youth of this generation is completely desensitized to it, likened to a forensic investigator at a gory crime scene. Star Wars is saved due to it's 'cool' factor, but Toy Story 1 is shrugged off. Story and originality are very important, and it's great to see films that aren't remakes or sequels. But I will be at the Tron premiere tomorrow night, and that's because I connected with the original. The fact that it's in 3D is meaningless. The film makers of today are being forced to lure audiences in. It's a bit sad because who knows what's next? Holographic projection? It all boils down to the elusive "block-buster", and content is the unfortunate victim.

No respect for good stunt actors any more.

[Animats]

There's no respect any more when it's done for real.

There's a minor movie in which the female hero runs down the side of a 40-story building with a rope reeling out behind her for support. As she nears the ground, she flips to land feet-first, and starts shooting. That was real. The run down the side of the building was done by a stuntwoman, and the landing and shooting was done by the star of the film. Most viewers assume it was faked. It wasn't.

Overdoing it can make things worse. "Kick-Ass" has Hit Girl in three fights. The first two were plausible, which made Hit Girl credible - she had the right weapons and tactics to benefit from her small size and speed. The final one was overdone, with flying on wires, an impossible reloading sequence, and dumb tactics.

Re: Mod parent up

[vlm]

how is it the VFX that are ruining movies?

Allocating all the funds towards "yet another explosion" instead of ... well virtually all other expenses.

That's a *GOOD* thing.

[Anonymous Freak]

A movie shouldn't make you go "WOW!! THOSE SPECIAL EFFECTS ARE AWESOME!!!"

It should make you go "WOW!! THAT MOVIE WAS GREAT!!" REGARDLESS of the special effects. If the special effects add to the sense of wow, great. If the special effects make you notice them AS special effects, they're not doing their job.

Heck, a scene in Avatar distracted me because of the special effects. The "tree of life" or whatever it was called. I saw the "tentacles" hanging down, and my first thought was "wow, for such a high-budget movie, you'd think they'd do something other than clear plastic tubing with strand of glow-wire inside." Then I realized that the entire scene was CGI, and was impressed by the CGI so realistic, I thought it was a bad physical prop. I completely ignored the actual plot of the movie for a good minute while thinking about the special effects. That is a BAD thing for a movie maker. (Well, except Lucas, who uses special effects to hide the lack-of-plot...)

Re:Two words: Star Wars

[bigstrat2003]

Both. Besides counting words, I wish that a certain subset of Star Wars fans would STFU about a change which is completely ignorable if you choose to not watch the altered version of the movie, and doesn't even really change a thing anyway. It's been 13 years, they really need to fucking let it go.

Re: Mod parent up

[hierophanta]

take that up with management not the worker bees

Realistic vs pretty

[Dan East]

There are two levels to visual effects. One is what you see. The detail, the quality, the lighting, texturing, etc. In other words, how realistic it merely looks, which is more art than anything. The second is the physics and mechanics of whatever is being portrayed. That is where most movies screw it all up.

Everyone keeps mentioning Avatar, but it's not just how pretty it looks, but the physics and mechanics are all at least superficially realistic. Machines are bulky and slow moving, animals are organic and subtle, etc.

I'll name a few movies that totally screw up the special effects. Oh, they look nice, but the physics are so over the top that it destroys the movie.
One is Van Helsing. Tons of potential in that movie, but they screwed up the mechanics of the effects horribly. One scene shows the heroine being carried up in the air by a winged vampire and dropped. She flops around like a rag doll in such a ridiculous way that it literally insulted the parts of my brain hardwired to process physics.
Another is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Again, wonderful visuals and attention to detail, but the part where buildings in Venice fell like dominoes, and the method they used to stop it was to fire a guided missile (in the year 1899) to knock down even more buildings? Jumped the shark right then and there.
Transformers was yet another. Somehow the robot's mass and bulk would quadruple when converting from a vehicle into a robot. Just didn't feel right, although it was intricate and detailed.

So I think that's why special effects typically don't impress, because they lack the engineering (in a literal sense!) required to underpin effects to at least a token level of realism.

Re:Realistic vs pretty

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

One is Van Helsing. Tons of potential in that movie, but they screwed up the mechanics of the effects horribly.

I think you're being generous. If Hugh Jackman's character had been using a whip, then this movie would be indistinguishable from an adaptation of Castlevania by Uwe Boll.

Re:Realistic vs pretty

[Shadow of Eternity]

That's ridiculous. There wasn't enough walking back and forth to be a Castlevania game.

This is why I like Jackie Chan movies...

[tompaulco]

I am much more impressed watching Jackie Chan do nearly superhuman stunts than watching other actors on wires doing actual superhuman stunts. I cannot stand watching martial artists flying hundreds of feet into the air while kicking the crap out of each other or swordfighting. I'd much rather watch Jackie Chan scale a 12 foot fence using only his own power.

CG: Hollywood's "hammer"

[ryan.onsrc]

Notice how the article is addresses "special effects" and just about every comment is a gripe about CGI? This is the fundamental problem. As suggested by the cliche "to a hammer, everything is a nail": CG would be Hollywood's hammer. This is truly sad since there are numerous instances where CG is the *inferior* choice. Take a look at a Space scene in a Star Trek TNG episode or even Star Wars, and you will see what I mean. There is something organic and substantial about real models that just can't be replicated by CGI. Granted, they have come a long ways, but everything just *feels* smaller and much less grandiose when you take physical models out of the picture. And whenever I see a film where Liam Neelson is doing his own stunts, this jumps out at me and pulls me into the story. Replace this Liam Neelson bad guy busting scene with a CGId up screen shake-fest and I start falling asleep.

Forrest Gump

[Stele]

As others have pointed out, good stories seem much harder to come by these days.

I think back fondly to Forrest Gump - a movie CHOCK FULL of "special effects", none of them "visible". Every one added something to the story or visual style of the movie in a totally realistic way.

I think Transformers 2 finally confirmed for me that stuff blowing up wasn't enough. Why someone bothered to make The Expendables I have no idea.

Re: Mod parent up

[shidarin'ou]

Actually, production companies mostly allocate money to themselves. VFX companies have been dropping like bees lately from bankruptcy as clients demand more, better work faster and for less money.

Re: Mod parent up

[Chris Burke]

I wish people would stop saying that the VFX are ruining moves. We're a tool used by the director (or, more often, by the studio) if that Director (or again, the studio) fail to utilize us within the story properly, how is it the VFX that are ruining movies?

In the same way vodka ruins Bob's personality. Of course it's actually Bob's problem, and vodka is just a neutral tool that can be used for bad or for awesome, but it would still miss part of the point to ignore the vodka's role in enabling Bob to start sucking. Before vodka came along, Bob was okay most of the time. Well, some of the time.

Just to be clear, when we (or I) say "VFX are ruining movies", we are blaming it on the lack of creativity of Hollywood. It's just unfortunate yet true that the existence of affordable and good VFX allows that lack of creativity to flourish.

There's a lot to be said for limitations and how it can make movies better.

Look at Jaws, Spielberg's breakout movie. Think of how horrifying the opening scene is, when you never even see the shark as the woman is (you presume, under the water) being torn apart. How often that movie is positively compared to Hitchcock, the master of suspense. Yet that's not the movie Spielberg set out to make! Originally, it was going to be a crappy monster movie in the ocean with Jaws front and center the whole time literally chewing up the scenery. But because they couldn't get their giant hydraulic-powered animatronic shark to work in salt water (the ocean's just a big wavy lake, right?), he had to make adjustments and go for a much subtler, and ultimately more effective, style.

Or the biggest example of something "ruined by VFX": Star Wars. Lucas luurved his effects even back then and Star Wars had the best around. But nevertheless, they couldn't afford to do endless lightsaber effects so we only had a few instances of them being used heavily in dramatically important moments, and so they were more awesome. He couldn't have a million jedi and robots and lasers to make them all stupid and boring. He had to have real locations and sets that looked real and that actors could interact with. He had to have character moments because he couldn't fill the entire movie with action sequences to make you forget that you didn't care about anyone on screen. Hell, maybe the only reason we didn't have a bouncing spinning light saber Yoda in Empire was because there was no way for him to do that on the end of Jim Henson's hand. Well, that and Lucas had little to do with that movie...

Anyway.

I know it's not the VFX studio's fault that so much VFX is used in place of actual good ideas and story and character. It would be completely ridiculous to blame you for doing your work better, faster, cheaper. But uh, that's exactly what enabled a lot of this crap. It would be completely ridiculous to say VFX companies shouldn't accept checks from the producers of crappy movies, but uh, that's exactly what you'll have to start doing if you don't want to hear "VFX are ruining movies" anymore.

Hey, actually, I never thought to ask that... Do effects companies ever turn down work? Good actors will turn down work, because they don't want their name associated with some piece of crap. Maybe if only the directors with talent or just good ideas got to work with the best VFX, maybe something positive would happen. *shrug* I don't know.

I must be confused

[fyngyrz]

I don't watch movies to "be impressed by special effects." I watch them to enjoy the story. The better the effects get, and the more they can use them whenever they need them, the more latitude they'll have in telling stories. I've seen the insides of huge spaceships (starship troopers, various treks, star wars), ancient cities (various movies have shown Egypt as she might have been), whole planets (avatar)... dragons, aliens, and who knows what I've seen that I didn't even know were CGI... geez, what's not to like? If I never see another TV-show class "alien" with an obviously glued on nose and caked-on makup, that'll be just fine with me. And when the time comes, as I hope it will, to put Niven's Ringworld on the big screen -- or even just a General Products spacecraft hull (or a Puppeteer!) -- I'll be expecting some faaaaabulous CGI. Likewise the next time someone seriously does a WWII naval or air battle, or a martian landscape, or magic, or... Why *would* you use real stuff these days, even presuming "real stuff" applies to the story at hand?

If people are watching movies to be impressed, I guess they must have some motivation really different than mine. Not to say that sometimes I'm not actually impressed - but that's not what I lay money down for, that's for certain. Tell me a story. Do it well. Convince my eyes; convince my ears; do it so well that I don't have to suspend my disbelief, just go around it and immerse me in what, as best I can tell, is some kind of reality, Please sir, may I have another?

Bitching because CGI is too good, or widespread? Incomprehensible to me.

Re: Mod parent up

[shidarin'ou]

This is an excellent comment with excellent points, thank you. With those well stated points I would have to agree, it works as an enabler.

Re: Mod parent up

[infolation]

Well, from Hydraulx's Skyline downwards, really. But most VFX-heavy Hollywood blockbuster movies are put together in this way - and suffer from this problem. On paper, yes, the director determines the creative direction of the VFX shots. And the post house will revise shots, again and again if necessary, at the director's will.

But this is on a shot-by-shot level. VFX houses bid for jobs based on shot counts. Some VFX houses, e.g. (I work in London) Framestore, Mill FIlm, Molinare, bid on films on the basis that they put up investment funds based on winning the VFX work. These houses have their eye on pitching for future work, based on the current shots they're doing.

So you end up with companies producing work based on the in-house resources and proprietary techniques/technology they've developed. When hair/fur shaders finally became viable to render, furry creature movies popping up everywhere, Realflow/fluid sims = poseidon and a bunch of other fluid related films, massive/crowd-sims = the one meeelion zombies/marauding armies category of VFX shot.

This has always happened throughout film-making - films being realised because of what's technically possible. But the VFX process is so expensive, so labour intensive, so time consuming, that moving things around, at a creative level, is like turning a supertanker around on a sixpence.

In the end, producers and financiers play safe, pre-viz first, go for the tried and tested, the post-house's recommendation. Then reassure the director by giving him/her the illusion of control over these shots. They're such a significant portion of the budget, the director has no more true control over them than they do casting.

Re: Mod parent up

[im_thatoneguy]

Allocating all the funds towards "yet another explosion" instead of ... well virtually all other expenses.

It doesn't cost any more to write a good screenplay.

Actors are still a significant portion of the budget, more so than VFX in most features. And long gone are the days where directors have to shoot a film with a VFX supervisor sitting over their shoulder saying "Yeah that shot will be really hard, don't you want to do a lock off?" If anything the exact opposite is happening, directors are more and more just shooting regardless of everything being perfect and assume that the VFX will fix everything amiss. If anything that should make the films better if it means the director isn't being slowed down waiting for the art department to finish moving around background details.

If there weren't VFX in films the budgets would definitely shrink. But they wouldn't re-allocate those funds to the writing or directing it would just disappear from the budget.

Lastly I disagree with the premise that things are getting worse let alone that VFX are to blame. There was tons of garbage produced in the 50s, 60s, 70s,80s and 90s. For every Transformers there is a Steven Seagal movie or Santa Clause vs the Martians.

Crappy movies aren't a new phenomenon nor are they becoming more prevalent--it just seems that way because we forget all the shit we blocked out over a 10 year period and remember the 1 maybe 2 movies a year that were good.

Look back over the last 10 years:
LOTR
Gladiator
Letters from Iwo Jima (A movie only made thanks to CG)
The Assasination of Jessie James
Sweeney Todd etc etc...

I think the 00s were one of the best decades for film. And a large number of the films leaned on CG to help tell their stories. Imagine Gladiator without Rome and the Coliseum.

Re: Mod parent up

[Kreigaffe]

FX does ruin movies.

You like the original Star Wars movies, right? FX did not ruin them. Right.
Now jump forward in time. Lucas has thrown dewbacks and new aliens and fucking Greedo shoots first. The movies are much shittier now than they used to be. all thanks to FX (and George Lucas's never-ending desire to shit on my childhood and make bank while doing so)

Re: Mod parent up

[RJFerret]

I did 3D years ago now, back when it was emerging, in a small shop.

Yes, just like any other business, companies don't want their name associated with shoddy products that hurt their image and chance for future work. Or their principles disallow them to produce work for clients that promote products they deem harmful to their core business, such as children.

However, as someone else points out below, you have to have the luxury of cash flow, and not be desperate to keep the doors open.

Then there's also a sensitive issue, if the quality of your animation or effects far surpasses the quality of the set, then the set designer/company looks bad. If the quality of your animation lighting makes the DP's lighting look shoddy, then the DP will be upset with you. If the quality of your 3D performer is better then the actor... If the... Etcetera...

Most frequently however, you haven't the slightest idea what the quality of the final product will be. I always laugh when interviewers ask actors in a blockbuster movie if they knew it was going to be great when they signed on. Of course they say yes to promote the movie. But all they had at the time was a script treatment! Not even a script. They had NO idea whatsoever, all the decisions that would be made in the intervening months.

Well guess what? Effects houses know even less when they sign on.