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Pixels Are Driving Out Reality (vice.com)
An article on Motherboard today investigates the reasons why people didn't go "oh-my-god, that was awesome" looking at the CGI-based scenes in the recent movies such as Independence Day: Resurgence, Batman v Superman and X-Men: Apocalypse. Though the article acknowledges that this could be the result of some poor-acting, spotty storyline, or bad editing, it also underscores the possibility that this could be the aftermath of a "deeper mechanism that is draining all substance from our cinematic imaginary worlds?" The author of the article, Riccardo Manzotti to make his case stronger adds that the original Alien movie was able to impress us because what we saw was strongly linked to actual life. From the article: The humongous spaceship Nostromo -- a miniature model -- provoked awe and respect. When the creature erupted from Kane's abdomen -- a plaster model encased in fake blood and animal entrails -- people were horrified. The shock was registered on the faces of the actors, who, per Ridley Scott's direction, weren't told ahead of time that the moment would include a giant splatter of blood. "That's why their looks of disgust and horror are so real," producer and co-writer David Giler said. Manzotti further argues that some of the modern movies haven't left us awe-inspired because there is just too much CGI content. Compared to 430 computerized shots in the original Independence Day movie, for instance, the new one has 1,750 digitized shots. "People have been looking at pixels for much too long," the author argues, adding: Our imaginary world has been diluted and diluted to the point that, so to speak, there is no longer even a stain of real blood, love, and pain. Nowadays, when spectators see blood, they see pixels. [...] VR and augmented reality and the steady pace of CGI have pushed the process of substitution of reality to a higher level. At least, movies were once made using real stunts and real objects. Now, the actual world is no longer needed. The actual world, which is the good money, is no longer required. The virtual world, the bad money, is taking over. Yet, it lacks substance. The author makes several more compelling arguments, that are worth mulling.
Yeah, all the GCI overkill is boring as hell. Surprised it took someone this long to figure it out. My wife loves going to see new movies, but I have declined to sit through the GCI dickpissing contest they've all turned into and not been to the movies or bother much about watching new movies for over 5 years now.
I love watching older movies and TV shows with "real" special effects - models and stuff exploding for real, and real acting, heck Die Hard was on some random channel over the weekend, and I totally enjoyed watching it again.
"An article on Motherboard today investigates the reasons why people didn't go "oh-my-god, that was awesome" looking at the CGI-based scenes in the recent movies such as Independence Day: Resurgence, Batman v Superman and X-Men: Apocalypse. "
Out of those three I only saw Batman v Superman. The problem was that it just wasn't good. Yes we are past the point where CGI alone will make us happy. Take a look at Captain America Civil war for example. It was chocked full of special effects but it also had some kind of story and frankly a sense of humor.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I have a moderate fear of heights. I nonetheless flew in an ultralight aircraft once, in which there is no cockpit or other physical separation between you and several hundred or thousand feet from the ground. I recommend it - the purity of that form of flight is really something.
During this flight, I discovered an interesting phenomenon: up to a certain point, the distance between me and the ground was causing me quite a bit of unease. As we climbed higher, that unease went away. My working hypothesis was that my brain, evolved for life close to the ground, was able to comprehend distances of a few hundred feet, but after that it became unable to and everything became pretty abstract at that point.
Same thing with movies and CGI: once you leave the scale that represents actual human reality, you lose the emotional connection. Seeing ONE building fall down, or a chestburster popping out of ONE guy's chest is comprehensible. It's relatable. Your brain can connect to that. When entire cities are blown up or the world ends for the umpteenth time on film, it's just pure spectacle. It's not a relatable experience, and you'll never be able to emotionally connect to it in the same way.
The secret sauce is noise.
Here is a picture of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
Top: Real
Bottom: CG
They have both the SAME number of pixels, which means it must be the colors which are different.
Peter Jackson (used to) deeply understands using miniatures and bigatures to convey the "warmth" and "depth" with unique texturing and realistic lighting.
George Lucas on the other does not understanding anything about noise. Notice how the bottom textures look all bland. Everything looks fake and plastic. The word "Sterile" comes to mind.
It isn't about less, but more. Namely adding noise so objects look more realistic.
I've been writing software for the visual effects industry since 1992, and software I've written was used extensively in both Stargate and Forrest Gump (among hundreds of others). Having gotten into digital film post production since the beginning, I've always had a keen eye for visual effects, especially the "invisible effects" that my software was used heavily for. I would go to movies with friends and occasionally exclaim "wow, did you SEE that?" when clearly they didn't think anything "special" had happened. I once overheard a lady complain during Forrest Gump that it was a shame they made that poor actor with no legs run around and stuff for most of the movie on fake legs - he must have been very uncomfortable. I'd routinely watch a movie twice in row - the first time to check out the effects and the second time to actually "watch the movie".
As the quality of visual effects has increased, especially their exponential use in invisible effects, it is quite a bit more difficult to "see" effects in most movies these days. I still keep an eye out for bad composites (matte edges, grade matching, DoF/angle matching, grain matching, etc) and unrealistic CG, but I'm always really happy at the end of many films where I forgot to look for effects at all and just get sucked into the movie. Sometimes I'll just say "that movie SUCKED. But the visual effects were AWESOME!". It's been fascinating to watch (and be involved with) the evolution of visual effects over the past 25 years.
Though ... there could be a correlation. CGI effects are cheap, plentiful and ultimately disposable. Didn't like a shot? Just tweak a few setting and re-render. Try it 10 more times. Did an actor screw up? Just fix it in post.
Conversely, something like Mad Max: Fury Road, Alien, or Nightmare Before Christmas all require meticulous planning, careful coordination and the utmost dedication to each and every take. Things are literally blowing up, there's tangible blood splashing across the actors faces, and every scene in a stop-motion movie is hours and hours of tiny movements that can't be easily reshot.
I've heard Ben Browder (Farscape) claim the exact opposite of what you're saying (I think it was inthis video ). Basically he said (paraphrasing):
- CG is very expensive
- consequently the whole dialog is heavily scripted in advance, to the point where the actors come in, stand in their assigned spots (to match the CG), do a few takes to say their lines, and leave
- this kills any improvisation, and gives actors little room to put more into the performance
- so the end result looks very slick, but is lacking "soul". It feels scripted because it is.
I fell asleep all three times that I attempted to watch the second Hobbit movie. I didn't even go to the last one. It's not about CGI (I very much enjoyed Avatar, but the bending of reality like unrealistic fight scenes where someone can fall off a 10m cliff, brush themselves off and run away like nothing happened.
The best part of a Jackie Chan flick is the credit sequence out takes. In them you get to see how they filmed jackie chan jumping off a bridge onto a moving overcraft, how he lept between two buildings and nailed the fire escape, or how they made it look like he sledded off a cliff and grabbed a helicopter landing rail.
answers: He sledded off a cliff and grabbed a helicopter landing rail. No nets. He jumped off the building. No nets. he jumped off the bridge onto the hovercraft. he broke his leg. So they re-shot it with him doing it again this time in a cast that had been painted to look like the tennis shoe he was supposed to be wearing.
Seriously, when you know the guy is doing an insane stunt in a cast, one doesn't really need more and more and more to make it exciting. Watching Iron man plummet from the vacuum of space just isn't very thrilling compared to any dumb stunt jackie pulls off. I really dont' even mind he wears a safety wire when they are spinning him around at the end of ladder on a flying helicopter. it somehow doesn't ruin it for me. :-)
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
But it is true that using actual physical special effects can create some unique film events. My favorite is the scene in ET where Elliot reveals ET to his older brother. The actor playing the brother was not actually informed of how ET was going to be revealed, so the shock you see on his face is very real. If ET was just a digitally-created image edited into the footage in post-production, it's probable you wouldn't get quite the same response, particularly from child actors.
Further to that topic, CGI lets you create camera moves which are not possible in real life, in the sense that even if there was a fantasy/sci-fi/action/whatever thing going on, there's nowhere that you could physically place a camera which would get that shot. It violates the logic of the universe, which breaks the illusion for many people. In a film like Inception it can work but only because it's set in a surreal dreamscape, so you buy that it could work in that universe. But in a film like The A-Team it just looks ridiculous.
I loved the shakycam space battle scenes from the remake of Battlestar Galactica.
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This is just like the way people whined that color film had ruined the medium, and the ones before them who whined about talkies and yearned for the days of silent films.
I started at the NYIT Computer Graphics Laboratory in 1981 and left Pixar in 2000. These days I produce or am on screen once in a while.
While I was at NYIT they weren't story oriented, and thus all you see of them is demos. Pixar, on the other hand, always put story first. We knew that we could not make a film stand up on effects alone.
Today, a good 3D animation house can make absolutely any scene they like. And thus there isn't anything special about doing so. It's there if it needs to be there to tell the story, and not otherwise.
Bruce Perens.
Sure, I'm not saying that non-physical shots shouldn't be done, merely that CGI enables them to be overdone. The Matrix is a case in point: the Wachowskis were careful to use impossible shots sparingly, and only use them inside the Matrix; scenes set in the "real world" were much more conservative.
There is a story that Richard Donner put up a banner in the production office for Superman which had one word on it: "verisimilitude". That's what's missing from a lot of modern effects-heavy films.
That was a great shot from Soy Cuba. I'm also reminded of the opening of A Touch of Evil.
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Could you imagine any 12 current actors trying to pull off 12 Angry Men?
Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino, Don Cheadle, Jonathan Pryce, Robert Downey Jr, Harvey Keitel, Vincent Cassel, Jack Nicholson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Sean Penn,
Aside from people who'd actually get cast in such a movie nowadays, like Steve Buscemi, Paul Giamatti, Christopher Walken, John Malkovich, Tom Hanks...
Still no shortage of great actors.