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.

Comments

Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

I stopped feeling things when I was four. Thanks to Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, my perceptions were all made of ink.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[HornWumpus]

It dependence on effects that's the problem.

2001 had amazing model based eye candy for it's day. Puts you to sleep now.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[thundercattt]

It's more than the CGI although its a HUGE part of it. It's the pace of the film, the story the over acting. I too watch older movies because it's all really happening, they haven't sped it up, they haven't added shaking camera tactics to make it seem more crazy. It's just the actors performing. Still love Jackie Chan movies for this reason.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Anonymous Coward]

2001 was great considering they didnt know what the earth would look like from space when it was made, they got it pretty close.

I watched 2001 for the first time a few years ago, and I liked it a lot, didnt find it boring. The ending however was wtf.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[im_thatoneguy]

This really is how absurd the argument is. By his reckoning The Lion King should have been awful since 0 frames of the film were real with real lions! Apparently UP had no room for a soul because it was all CG!

There are awful 80s and 90s movies that have no heart and no humanity and rely on shoddy gore squibs and bad miniatures. Every decade has had it's share of unwatchable films with large budgets. Waterworld had very little CGI and very little humanity and it was ridiculously expensive because it did it all for real on the ocean. By golly when that fish man jumps out of the water, that's a real person wearing prosthetics! And yet somehow nobody walked away from Waterworld with a sense of wonder about a guy with prosthetic gills.

What sets this decade apart isn't CG it's the fact that we are currently living it. When you look at all of the films of the 80s you can pick out 3-4 really amazing ones that represent a film every 2-3 years and say "Look how great the 80s were!" But if you're in year 6 of a decade you're statistically not living in the year where a great film was released. Every decade is great in retrospect because you only need a handful of examples to represent a decade while you need a new movie every weekend to watch. If you watch 30 movies a year in all likelihood the one you watch this weekend will not be one you would cite as the greatness of the '10s.

But just looking back I would say Guardians of the Galaxy was great and CG intensive, Inception was great and CG intensive, The Lego Movie and Inside Out were both great and entirely CG, Big Hero 6 was great and all CG, TED was funny and CG, Both planet of the apes films were very good and CG led characters (Compare the new planet of the apes to the horrible Tim Burton CGI free one!), I liked Men in Black 3, didn't think it was any worse than the original, The Wolf of Wallstreet was packed with CG and very good.

It's easy to find good movies in 2010-2016 but you need a year or two to forget how many shitty movies you also watched. You only remember the great Disney movies you watched as a kid. You forgot for the most part "The Cat from Outerspace".

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[HornWumpus]

2001 was released in 1968. Years after the first man made orbit, after the first space walks.

The had pictures of earth from orbit.

The docking sequence was dazzling eye candy in 1968. You have to admit it could use an edit for brevity now.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[MightyMartian]

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.

To some extent that was also my observation watching The Force Awakens. The first scene from A New Hope, with the Rebel space ship being attacked by the vaster Star Destroyer still works really well, but the space scenes in the new film, and indeed in the Prequels, just don't have the same feel. The shadows being cast on the craft seem more real, because, well, they are. I also recently rewatched Star Trek The Motion Picture, and the way refurbished Enterprise was revealed was pretty breathtaking in a way that the reboots weren't. The Enterprise seems more cartoonish in the reboots, and less like a physical object.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[thinkwaitfast]

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.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Anonymous Coward]

I get it now, it's about the actors looking fake because they're interacting with stuff that isn't actually there.

I agree with you - today's actors are very 2-dimensional. I think it's because the "greats" came from a generation with very different substance abuse policies.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Lije Baley]

Heck no, I always wished it was longer. More models, more of J. Strauss. I think I'll go watch some Space1999 now...

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[colinrichardday]

For all of 2001's brilliant effects, I wish it had more plot. The part after disabling HAL doesn't make sense to me.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Pseudonym]

I stopped feeling things when I was four. Thanks to Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, my perceptions were all made of ink.

There's a good analogy here. Warner Brothers, Hanna-Barbera, and even John K cartoons were funny in a way that Seth MacFarlane is not.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Pseudonym]

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.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Ol Olsoc]

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.

Which speaks to thte massive over use CGITO tell the truth - we are over inundated with it, and I for one find it boring, some sort of replacement for plot and character development.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[ChunderDownunder]

I thought he meant Seth Green, Dr Evil's ginger offspring.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[im_thatoneguy]

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.

Easy to avoid. But also easy to do with real cameras too. Star Wars shot all of its sci-fi stuff as a miniature. You can make a camera on a motion-controlled miniature rig however you want as well. We're also always tearing down the limitations of what's an "impossible" shot in the real world. All of the great directors have been hunting for a unique shot that nobody else could pull off. You have the zoom-dolly aka hitchcock effect that's non-physical. You have wire cams these days for flying at high speed through trees. Some people build out entire rigs around a car so that the camera can placed on a gimbal almost anywhere outside a vehicle. There have been "process trailers" for ages where entire film crews ride around on a trailer with a car on blocks filming handheld in through the window. Gimbals make nearly impossible shots look smooth. Steadicam completely changed what "A real camera can do" by adding long smooth takes up stairs etc. Even take a look at the famous long shot from Soy Cuba in 1964:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

That's an "impossible" camera. The Matrix they even tried to launch the camera famously on rockets to achieve bullet time. With smaller go-pros it just might be possible today!

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Pseudonym]

Seth Rogen does cartoons?

Having said that, I disagree. Stoner comedy has not changed in quality since Cheech & Chong.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you better see it again.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Pseudonym]

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.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

Think of the crystals as NVM cards in a hotplug, RAID array.

As you take them out, it starts slowing down due to the need to rebulid the information from redundancy. As too many are taken out, it starts losing memory. Think of the filesystem as error resilient too, such that it doesn't completely fail immediately.

It totally makes sense. A modern space-worthy computer of HAL's complexity might as well work like that, it has to withstand countless faults due to cosmic rays, possibly hard mechanical failures due to micrometeroids, you name it.

The pitch change you could say it was a simple time stretching technique placed there to hide momentary processor slowness, intended for momentary hicups, that just never reverted due to widespread damage.

I think it was brilliant.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[arglebargle_xiv]

+1. When I go to see a film, I want to see plot, acting, drama, not a 90-minute nVidia commercial. Compare something like Apocalypse Now with... well, any equivalent film from the last 15 years. It'd be all CGI explosions and effects, with only the actors being real.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[infolation]

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.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Dutch Gun]

I think it's going to take a little longer for directors to properly learn how to use the tools of their trade. Remember that ubiquitous CGI, or "the ability to create anything on screen that you want to" is a fairly new thing. And like any new tool, it tends to get overused at first, because everyone is excited about new and shiny things.

The same thing happened in the videogame industry. Unreal was one of the first shooters with colored lighting. End result: the environments looked like a radioactive clown puked all over them. The artists were so giddy to show off *colored lights* as a feature that they couldn't stop themselves from painting the environment in bright, vibrant, primary hues.

Fast-forward a decade. Programmable pixel shaders are a thing. Ooh, we can do *bloom effects*. Woohoo - crank up the bloom to 11! Let's live in a dream world! Or maybe motion blur, or film grain. Or depth of field. None of which really make for good gameplay, and in many cases, simply distract or annoy the player.

Rinse and repeat for each new technology that comes along.

These days, the best videogame artists have learned that a light touch on these effects are often better than slapping you in the face with them. I'm really hopeful Hollywood directors eventually learn the same thing.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[blackpaw]

I think I'll go watch some Space1999 now...

For a *really* cheesy English 70's series its aged very well. Have the DVD Box set. Always wanted my own Eagle for commuting to work.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I think I'll go watch some Space1999 now...

For a *really* cheesy English 70's series its aged very well. Have the DVD Box set. Always wanted my own Eagle for commuting to work.

I confess, I loved that show for the models and the battles and stuff.

Also, The Invaders was a lot of fun too.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Ed Avis]

Resistance is futile.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[rainwalker]

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.

I think you've got it in one, at least a lot of it. Once you start noticing that your viewpoint isn't quite natural, it's really hard to un-see, and it lends this feeling of unreality. I feel like the POV moves too quickly in some all-CGI shots as well, whereas with miniatures you're limited by how fast you can move matter around.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[AK Marc]

In Matrix, the film was released before it was possible to do the camera tricks it used. It was the first, and until the "making of" came out, "impossible". Yet, those camera shots were liked, because they were impossible, not hated because of it. People are still CGIing that effect.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[dargaud]

Didn't they have women in juries at the time ?

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[jtgd]

Read the book.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[jandersen]

If you will allow me to go off on a tangent - I wonder if people will eventually get tired of all these special effects and animations that are realer than reality. I haven't watched movies for years, really, other than idly sitting in on whatever was on the telly when I felt to wasted to do something meaningful. I watched factual programmes for a while, but even they are now full of irrelevant and unrealistic effects that I can only presume were gratifying for the team to produce - they certainly do nothing for me. In many ways I long for the era of David Attenborough - there was something about seeing him waist deep in a muddy swamp, talking with a quiet passion about something he really wanted people to understand. Now, all we get is crap that is speeded up, with added soundtrack, "reality tv" effects and a "human interest" story line. Utter crap, if you ask me.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[GuB-42]

In New York, they could have women in juries. However, in 1954, it wasn't the case in all states.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[houghi]

I noticed that the majority of these great films are originals and not some sort of "the same again" movie: Planet of the Apes being the exception.

Perhaps we remember great movies because of their originality as well as the technical quality and that technical quality is just an aid to a good story, like a good camera is an aid to a good picture or an expensive kitchen is an aid to a good cook.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[AmiMoJo]

A little shakey cam is okay from time to time... I got through about 20 minutes of Hardcore Henry before I felt too sick to continue.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[mrmatthewcarlson]

Holy shit dude, let's remake it with an all-female cast!

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[mrmatthewcarlson]

ST: TMP Enterprise looks REAL! The scene is so long... But even when you are aware of slow pacing it still helps to build the awe. Kind of like how you can't skip to the really exciting part of a long piece of music and get the same effect.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[liquiddark]

Sorry, this is a complete misunderstanding of how acting works. The way that an actor expresses surprise - or shock or fear or love - is very different from the way their character does so. Making a moment surprising or shocking or horrifying for an actor is anathema to the process of creating a moment using an actor. If you want that, just do documentaries and reality TV. You don't need to hire someone whose entire life has been spent refining their empathetic muscles if you just want the person onscreen to display their own feelings.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[thoromyr]

Admittedly I haven't seen The Frighteners, but going by the title it sounds like more of his trashy sub-B movie horror schtick. Have you seen Heavenly Creatures? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavenly_Creatures) That was a movie worth watching, IMO

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Zak3056]

They did a remake in the 90s. I don't remember everyone in the cast, but it had Jack Lemmon, Geroge C. Scott, Courtney B. Vance, James Gandolfini, Tony Danza (that was was a bit of a WTF, but he wasn't bad), and some other people you'd recognize. The biggest problem with the movie is that it was really just a remake, completely faithful to the original with minimal changes. That said, it was a solid effort and I prefer it to the original (probably because the actors are closer to my generation).

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[dywolf]

part of it is also the simple oversaturation of large scale destruction, and these movies are too reliant on the mere spectacle of that destruction, using it (or trying) to cover other deficiencies in the plot or emotional content.

when the first ID destroyed those landmarks (using practical effects, not CGI, though not relevent to the point im making), it was shocking, but also rather unique. it hadn't really been done before, on that scale or that convincingly.

Now when the sequel has come out, no one cares really.
because in the past 5 years we've seen countless cities destroyed hundreds of times. its beyond the point of viewer fatigue now. and movies need to out grow it. sure, it was cool, and bit shocking, the first time, maybe even the 2nd.

but now its happening once every couple of weeks with each new movie, and no one cares anymore.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[dywolf]

oooo. good list.
that needs a mod up.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Cederic]

All the people going 'read the book'..

I read the book. Shit, I read the book before I even knew there was a film.

It's still a shit film. If you have to read a book to understand a film, the film is shit.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Cederic]

I'd watch that.

Except.. even with that cast.. why remake a great film? Just watch the original.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[dywolf]

don't forget that some of the most iconic scenes in matrix were also done practically, or mostly so, with minimal CGI, because they knew the limits (mostly) of the technology. (unfornately they forgot some of that in the sequels, and that's how we got Rubber-Neo fighting hundreds of Rubber-Smiths.....)

the slow mo swirl around Smith and Neo for example.
now, we'd just mo-cap them and insert them into a nearly 100% CGI rendering.

but at the time that shot was assembled from several hundred physical (and i believe high speed, since the action is still unfolding, ie they aren't simply stopped while the swirl happens) cameras surrounding the actors. the CGI in that shot was mostly to remove the opposing cameras from view and add the bullets/shockwaves. technologically, it wasn't that groundbreaking, as the cameras and wires etc were really new; what was really unique was the combination of that simple tech, along with simple level of resources (re: hundreds of cameras, and hundreds of hours editing time combining frames) needed to pull it off. the CGI itself there was a supporting/enabling tech, but not the main event.

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Cederic]

12 Angry Women?

Could easily work. The gender of the jurors wasn't relevant, it was the interplay between them, the oppressive setting, the characterisations. You could do that with female actors too.

As with a remake with men though.. why?

Re: Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Cederic]

Ah, c'mon. Apocalypse Now wasn't exactly short on explosions.

It's possible to do explosions and great dialog and plot. That Hollywood doesn't bother is pure fucking laziness. That they still make money is a sad indictment of western civilisation.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[dywolf]

Im quite sure you have no clue what youre talking about. Or rather, youre taking one method, and applying it to everything, and not everything and everyone has worked like that.

Many of the most iconic scenes in movies have come from keeping actors in the dark, getting their genuine reaction. Other have come about because the director manipulated the actor in some other way. They may know the scene, and have an idea whats coming, but in some way, they don't know it all. Or the director say, spent months flirting with his lead actress, and then destroyed her emotions the day of the scene.

Some famous examples:

Goodfellas - "Funny how?" ... only Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta knew what was about to happen. the other guys in that scene thought Pesci was actually getting mad. their obvious unease and discomfort was real.

The Informer - in the movie the The Informer, Victor McLaglen won an Oscar for Best Actor, largely because of one scene. the director, john Ford, already had a reputation as a hard ass, and for being unreasonably demanding, and berating his actors, even his friends, which McLaglen was a close friend. hours before this scene in which McLaglen was to be a shell of himself, reduced to tears, pitiful, etc.... Ford deliberately told him the wrong time to show up to work. when he showed up, Ford berated him in public for over an hour, just laying into him, calling him an awful actor, worthless, everything under the sun. McLaglen just took it, clueless as to why his friend and mentor was doing this to him.. Ford later said that he was sure he had destroyed their friendship, that maybe he had gone too far, and that Victor would walk off before they began filming. But he didn't, and when they started filming he just broke down into some of the most pitiful sobs ever filmed before. The final scene won him his only Oscar, and Ford another best director. (I highly recommend the movie.)

The Alien chest burst was mentioned.
the vomit scene of the Exorcist is another.

Willy Wonka -the kids never really were told beforehand what would happen, spending nearly the entire movie seeing things for the first time, reacting in true surprise and shock.

Glory - , the director had the offscreen guy keep whipping Denzel far past what they had talked about in setting up the scene. his pain, his anger, was all real.

Casablanca - has such a scene, of true emotional investment, though not frm manipulation. Because the film was made during WWII, when the patrons of the bar begin singing the anthem to drown out the german signing, many of those actors in that scene were citizens of occupied countries, real-life refugees cutoff from their homeland, who had fled the Nazis, particularly France, countries that were occupied right then. and their emotion as they sang their anthem, directed at actors playing germans (several of which really were german) was real.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Cederic]

Waterworld flopped because it was shit.

When you look at all of the films of the 80s you can pick out 3-4 really amazing ones that represent a film every 2-3 years and say "Look how great the 80s were!"

80 - Blues Brothers / Brubaker / The Long Good Friday
81 - Raiders of the Lost Ark
82 - Blade Runner / Ghandi
83 - Scarface
84 - This is Spinal Tap / The Terminator
85 - After Hours / Brazil
86 - Highlander / Top Gun / Ferris Bueller's Day Off / Aliens / Platoon
(holy shit '86 was a hell of a year)
87 - Full Metal Jacket / The Princess Bride
88 - Die Hard / The Naked Gun / Rain Man / Akira
89 - When Harry Met Sally
90 - Goodfellas / Brain Dead

Seriously, the 80s had cinema that more than stands the test of time. The current decade may eventually prove equal, but your examples? Really?

Guardians of the Galaxy? Yeah, that was fun, and is as good as 1-2 of the films I've listed. Only 1-2.
TED? Fucking awful film.
Planet of the Apes remakes? I'd rather watch Heston.
MIB3? Fucking hell, one of the star actors didn't even turn up for the film.
Wolf of Wall Street? Poor.

It's easy to find good movies in the past six years but you're not succeeding.
Black Swan / Senna in 2010, God Bless America / Tyrannosaur in 2011, Wyrmwood / Kingsman in 2014.

As you say, the films are out there, but shit, two of those are documentaries and the rest would be excellent films with no CGI.

The current use of CGI in place of plot, acting, cinematography and direction is fucking horrific.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[The Grim Reefer]

To some extent that was also my observation watching The Force Awakens. The first scene from A New Hope, with the Rebel space ship being attacked by the vaster Star Destroyer still works really well, but the space scenes in the new film, and indeed in the Prequels, just don't have the same feel.

That's probably because you were a kid when you first saw it.

No. It was because at that time there had been nothing quite like it before. Very few science fiction/fantasy films before that looked very real. In fact most looked pretty cheesy and it was obvious they were using miniatures. Although there were a few exceptions. But even the more realistic ones never gave the impression of just how enormous those capital ships were actually supposed to be like that scene in Star Wars. That was a "holy shit!" moment for adults and children alike. We also weren't jaded like we are now.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[lucien86]

The secret of why the space sequences in 2001 look 'slow' and why so much modern CGI looks like shit is simple. CGI effects are pure graphics - no laws of physics, no momentum, if objects meet they can actually fly right through each other and hence no solidity. 2001 in contrast tried to make the effects look and feel as realistic as possible, hence big things generally move slowly. Modern films can do it realistically - and they end up looking like 'Interstellar', or to some extent 'Gravity'.
The first Independence Day, care and attention to detail - mostly looks at least semi-real. Independence Day 2, Star Wars Prequels, Hell Rider, etc, etc ???
A simple basic rule is that good CGI tends not to be much cheaper than using models.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[lucien86]

What about Braindead? for sheer over the top zombie madness. Mover - strap - carnage....

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[lucien86]

But ironically with even less realism than most cartoons.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Some_Llama]

MIB3? Fucking hell, one of the star actors didn't even turn up for the film.

um. from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt14...

Why isn't Rip Torn in the film?
Rip Torn isn't in the movie, because he was arrested after breaking into a closed Litchfield Bancorp branch office in Lakeville, Connecticut, where Torn maintains a residence. He was charged with carrying a firearm without a permit, carrying a firearm while intoxicated, first-degree burglary, second-degree criminal trespassing and third-degree criminal mischief. The Connecticut State Police said that Torn broke into the bank thinking it was his home.... On December 14, 2010, Torn pled guilty to a litany of charges: reckless endangerment, criminal trespass, criminal mischief and the illegal carrying of a firearm and was given a two-and-a-half-year suspended jail sentence and three years probation.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Cederic]

Which is interesting but not terribly relevant when I'm referring to Tommy Lee Jones.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Hognoxious]

It is indeed excellent. It'd be pretty darn good even if it didn't have Kate Winslet prancing around in her (albeit sensible) underwear.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Pseudonym]

...just like a real FPS?

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[Wolfrider]

>You forgot for the most part "The Cat from Outerspace".

--The book was better, IIRC. Been a long time since I read it tho

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[silentcoder]

You mean like "Saving Private Ryan" ?

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[silentcoder]

The only example to do it some sort of 'good' in the last while was Avengers - and 90% of what made it good wasn't in that movie, it was in Agents of Shield and the follow-up marvel films (especially winter soldier). The actual political and social fall-out of the destruction being investigated - and real stories being told in the mess that came after.

That doesn't exist for almost anything else - so it actually had a new story and vision to tell. Avengers was spectacle - but actually dealing with the consequences of the spectacle was the most original thing in movies in a long time.

The closest parallel I can think of would be the series Dark Skies which only starts AFTER a successful and hugely destructive invasion and focuses on the survivors attempts to fight back and reclaim what was conquered. That was a great series the first few seasons but after season 4 it seems to have run out of stories. They had a few big successes and now what ? If they win - you get no more story, if you knock them back too far - then it gets too repetitive, the writers have tried to come up with an interesting way to keep the story going but I've not been impressed by the last two seasons, it lacked the substance and sense of hopeful desperation that made the early ones work. A key part of that formula lay in story and acting. The core of the plot was the former history professor becoming a major military leader - by drawing on his knowledge of past campaigns, he knows when and how underdogs have won and uses this to give his band of underdog refugees a fighting chance.
But you don't have a story anymore if the underdogs win (there the movie format works better - it lets the story end after the victory).

It's easy to show massive destruction and, as you correctly point out, we're tired of it. The impacts on the lives of the people no longer jump up in our minds when we see it because we've seen it a million times and our lives haven't changed because of it - so I think Marvell is on the right track there, the only way to care about the destruction is to, once more, care about what it means for all the people who are NOT part of the big battles, and you can tell great stories with that. Daredevil did that especially well - a great deal of the season one plotline was around corruption in the process to rebuild what the avengers invasion had destroyed.

Re:Man, animation must _really_ be evil then.

[NotAPK]

Much better funnier smarter braindead zombie madness.

Compared to 430 computerized shots in the original

[Threni]

> Compared to 430 computerized shots in the original Independence Day movie, for instance, the new one has
> 1,750 digitized shots.

I don't have a fucking clue what a "computerized shot" is or how you add them up but I know that i'm not amazed by anything in movies any more. Not visually, anyway. Nobody is amazed by something they've seen before. Computer graphics are part of the language of movies now; you can't make a sci-fi movie without them, so the focus should be on the story, acting, pacing etc. A lot of movies use graphics the way a lot of movies use car chases - to replace any vaguely meaningful plot. Graphics aren't going to go away, but i'm not sure it's possible to read anything into how no-one really cares about them; it should be obvious.

Sandbox rules get old fast

[Anonymous Coward]

Challenges and limitations keep things interesting. In a world where the screenwriter can rewrite every rule of the real world, and the CGI folks make it happen, there is no wonder, no surprise, no "how is that possible?" Everything's possible, so everybody's prepared for everything. *Shrug*, oh, he went there, whatevs. It's like playing in the sandbox, where no rules are made to be followed, just to exist until they're in the way and superseded at the whim of a kid. It's arbitrary.

Re:Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[Shadow of Eternity]

Mad Max is an example of CGI used right. Almost all of the stunts and scenes involved real actors and practical effects while computer imagery was used to put everything together and fill in backgrounds.

Pixels SUCKED.

[Anonymous Coward]

Adam Sandler is a crime against Humanity.

Re:Pixels SUCKED.

[Cederic]

Adam Sandler is a crime against his own talent. He can actually act.

He just chooses to make a very lucrative and comfortable career being mediocre instead of seeking out the writers and directors that could make him so much more.

I would pity him, except that he's insanely rich as a result. I guess it's hard to criticise really. You can always choose not to watch his films..

A Good Thing?

[bjwest]

Maybe this will get us back to the idea that movies should portray a story instead of a bunch of action shots blowing things up and a line or two of dialog here and there.

Re:A Good Thing?

[tbannist]

Maybe this will get us back to the idea that movies should portray a story instead of a bunch of action shots blowing things up and a line or two of dialog here and there.

Well, that should put Michael Bay out work then, and good thing too

Re:A Good Thing?

[dinfinity]

It really doesn't help that any time you criticize the story, you are so often met with the following classic comment: "Oh, shut up, it's just a movie. I enjoyed it."
No, that movie had a shit story which was riddled with plot holes, both of which you failed to become aware of because the filmmakers were shaking rattles and dangling shiny things in front of you.

Obligatory Harry Plinkett review and filmmaking 101 class:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:A Good Thing?

[thegarbz]

Why? What makes you think that action scenes have taken the place of the script? The person responsible for the one has nothing to do with the other.

There's no reason at all to believe that cutting back on digital camera work will make the script any better.

Re:A Good Thing?

[dinfinity]

A good blockbuster action flick doesn't need a great story

The quality of a story is not a binary thing. A story is not either great or shit. Action movies indeed do not need a great, thought-provoking story, but if the story is inconsistent or full of plot holes it is shit and should be allowed to be called out as such.
People get their panties in a bunch when you dare call movies they liked shit and start attacking you for being a killjoy and start throwing all kinds of straw men at you. Instead, they should just accept that they like shitty low-quality things from time to time, which is fine (and which in areas such as food doesn't seem to spark the same aggression towards critics).

Some of us just need to veg out from time to time with a few rattles and shiny things, plot holes and character development be damned.

There is this concept called 'the suspension of disbelief'. A story with fewer plot holes makes 'vegging out' much, much easier, because there is less disbelief to suspend.

I will even take "Battleship" over yet another god-damned superhero reboot.

The sentiment in the latter I agree with. But you should understand that in a way, you are partly responsible for those. The 'vegging out'-crowd is (still) not only rewarding but being very defensive of ever crappier movies with lots of rattles and shiny things in them. That (lack of) selection pressure is evolving the blockbusters in a certain way.

Re:A Good Thing?

[dinfinity]

I agree that the second part of that (fictitious) reply was not very constructive. It is something I would think as such but generally utter in a paraphrased manner.

Do note however that in this hypothetical (but common) situation, the first real aggression comes from the "oh, shut up"-part. People feel personally insulted when you criticize something they like, in this case (the quality of) a movie. Even though I would not be insulting them personally, they would experience it as such and proceed to attack me ("you're a killjoy", "shut up", "just enjoy the movie") for voicing my opinion.

I find the latter objectionable.

Re:A Good Thing?

[Hognoxious]

Tripe. The director is responsible for both.

Re:A Good Thing?

[houghi]

Or when they have a great story, but decide to rape it. "I am legend" as proof. They just did it so they could extend the copyright a bit more. At least I hope that is the reason they did it, because if they actually thought it was a good idea to rape the story this way, that would be WAY worse.

Re:A Good Thing?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Hey I like The Expendables for what it was, 103 minutes of pure brain melt with a plot shallower than the pool my kids play in.

Re:A Good Thing?

[jjoelc]

Counterpoint = John Wick

Re:A Good Thing?

[thegarbz]

Tripe. The director is responsible for both.

Hardly. The director is often hamstrung by the desires of the studios, producers, investors and other interested parties. That's how you end up with shit lines about copyright being a crime working it's way into movie scripts. That's how you end up with directors actively disowning their own movies and regretting taking part in the first place.

Directors have little leeway. They have more when they are also the producer. They have even more when they also procured or wrote the screenplay. They have the most when they also own the production studio... which is sadly also how we got Starwars Episode 1.

Re:A Good Thing?

[Hognoxious]

False dichotomy. Just because he doesn't have total control (yes, ultimately money talks loudest) doesn't mean he has no control. If the script is shite he should force a rewrite or sack the writer.

A well made miniature is still better

[stargazer1sd]

Go watch 2001, a Space Odyssey again. It was done with miniatures and painted glass mattes. It still feels a lot more real than a lot of modern movies.

Re:A well made miniature is still better

[HornWumpus]

No. 2001 was one of the first 'eye candy' movies. It suffered from it. Can you stay awake through the space docking sequence?

'Forbidden Planet' was an old movie with about the right amount of special effects (and a beautiful pair of tits!)

Re:A well made miniature is still better

[ihtoit]

or the city scenes in Bladerunner.

According to the included documentaries in the SE box set, only one camera was used, with up to 16 overlaid exposures per frame.

Re:A well made miniature is still better

[im_thatoneguy]

There were awful miniatures and there were awful matte paintings. Today there is awful CG.

For every 2001 there was a 2000 and 2 buck rogers from the 30th centuries with shoddy miniature work. Today for every rushed CG shot in a film there were 3,000 you didn't even realize were CG because they were perfect.

Every time someone whines about the quality of a CG shot I remind them of what things used to look like:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_grTE...

Re:A well made miniature is still better

[MightyMartian]

Trumbull is a master was special effects, and nowhere is this seen better than 2001. After all these years, it still remains the most accurate portrayal of space ever made. The only jarring part, and this can't be pinned on Trumbull, is the scenes on the Moon where no one shows any indication they're walking on the Moon itself. But the docking scenes and the various scenes in and around Discovery are still breathtaking.

Re:A well made miniature is still better

[MightyMartian]

I've seen 2001 about seven times and I've never fallen asleep. A lot of Kubrick's work is like that, more contemplative and more willing to let a shot linger without trying to punch it up with dramatic sound tracks or explanatory dialogue.

Re:A well made miniature is still better

[thinkwaitfast]

I don't think it's as much about good/bad cgi as now being able to do things that are so over-the-top unbelievable while at the same time looking completely real. The uncanny mountain?

Re:A well made miniature is still better

[myowntrueself]

Go watch 2001, a Space Odyssey again. It was done with miniatures and painted glass mattes. It still feels a lot more real than a lot of modern movies.

Gerry Anderson. Not only actual models but actual pyrotechnics! Theres nothing like stuff actually catching fire and exploding!

Of course, these days, in Hollywood there would be some major insurance and litigation issues to cover so use of real pyrotechnics in movie making has to be a thing of the past in North America.

Re:A well made miniature is still better

[iggymanz]

shit taste plebeian detected

the docking sequence is awesome

Re:A well made miniature is still better

[Rakarra]

No. 2001 was one of the first 'eye candy' movies. It suffered from it. Can you stay awake through the space docking sequence?

There were quite a few movies in the era that moved much more slowly than movies now do. I somewhat prefer the long takes of yesteryear to the current "cut every 1.5s" trend.

'Forbidden Planet' was an old movie with about the right amount of special effects (and a beautiful pair of tits!)

Maybe I got distracted by the tits! I was very young when I first saw it, and I found the Creature of the ID to be absolutely amazing. Watched it again yesterday, and the ID monster leaves a LOT to be desired. The practical effects and the matte paintings are still fantastic, but the lasers and the ID creature during the fight used low-budget Disney animation (not kidding -- they contracted out to Disney).
https://www.rogersrocketships....

I would love to see an updated version, but the matte paintings were just so good I'm worried a remake would ruin the effect.

Oh yes, Forbidden Planet suffered from a wretched soundtrack. Bad for the time, bad by today's standards. It was very experimental, but as with most experiments, you'll have some hits and some misses.

Re:A well made miniature is still better

[Danathar]

2001 was also made for Cinemascope, which I'm sure makes those first 15 minutes much more cool than watching those minutes on a small flat screen.

Re:A well made miniature is still better

[Rakarra]

Well, this was back in the 50s, right? I'd say just about anything synthesizer-based was experimental back then.

It's the story stupid.

[LWATCDR]

"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.

Re:It's the story stupid.

[tomhath]

Though the article acknowledges that this could be the result of some poor-acting, spotty storyline, or bad editing

They acknowledge the fact that the films just aren't very good. But then they go looking for other things to blame the suck on.

Re:It's the story stupid.

[thegarbz]

Out of all of those I just saw *the worst of the lot*. Seriously Batman vs Superman was just garbage. The rest of those however were a visual treat as well as a good story that stood up on their own.

But then that's no surprise. Man of Steel and the Watchmen were okay, but the rest of Zack Snyder's movies can only be described as woeful.

Re:It's the story stupid.

[BoberFett]

I blame piracy.

Re:It's the story stupid.

[Ranbot]

As a counterpoint, the story of Mad Max was by no means great or compelling. Heck, the main character spends the first quarter of of the film grunting through a steel mask/gag. That didn't stop the movie from being nominated for ten Oscars and winning six, including best picture.

Re:It's the story stupid.

[Gr8Apes]

the story of Mad Max ... first quarter of of the film grunting through a steel mask/gag. That didn't stop the movie from being nominated for ten Oscars and winning six, including best picture.

That pile of crap won 6 oscars (no, I can't be bothered to confirm it myself). I'd say the original was far far better, as were a bunch of other C movies made back then.

Re:It's the story stupid.

[Gr8Apes]

I saw ID: Resurgence. It was an ok popcorn movie that I did not dislike. Like the first, I didn't expect an awesomely well-acted movie. I expected some entertainingly humorous blow up some aliens action with some corny lines. It delivered that, mostly.

Re:It's the story stupid.

[colinrichardday]

No Mad Max film has won best picture at the Oscars, though Fury Road was nominated for it.

Re:It's the story stupid.

[Ranbot]

Interesting comment considering that the main reason Fury Road won so many Oscars is because Miller bucked Hollywood's 10+ year infatuation with green screens and CGI, and went back to classic old-school movie-making [like the original Mad Max films] with real effects, stunts, explosions, cars, costumes, choreography, and landscapes. Here's an article with more details and pre- and post edit comparison photos from the movie... http://www.dailydot.com/upstre...

Re:It's the story stupid.

[dyslexicbunny]

And even then, Civil War wasn't all that great. Winter Soldier blows it away simply because the script was tighter. Civil War seemed like an excuse to get from action point to point so we could have the heroes fight each other.

Re:It's the story stupid.

[Gr8Apes]

Yes, but he forgot to have a writing team that could put together more than two coherent scenes in a row, much less create a coherent story. It also looked like he mashed up the worst parts of the worst mad max movie (Beyond Thunderdome) with some of the abandoned (with good reason) film styles of the first. A shallow copy at best that left me with apathy about any of the characters.

Hey you Pixels, get off my lawn

[turkeydance]

blue screen whippersnappers

Basic Fact Checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

per James Cameron's direction, weren't told ahead of time that the moment would include a giant splatter of blood....

Um, James Cameron didn't direct Alien, Ridley Scott did. Basic factual errors like this make me wary.

Re:Basic Fact Checking?

[avandesande]

Actually it angers the alien living in my abdomen, making her wary.

Stargate Lesson

[Dutchmaan]

People fail to learn the Stargate lesson. Stargate being the first movie IMHO, that had significant CGI effects, was fragged down by a lackluster story line. It had beautiful imagery but that doesn't carry a movie. Conversely take Forest Gump where the CGI was so good that you didn't even know it was there and took its rightful place as a tool to tell a story, not the star of the film.

Re:Stargate Lesson

[Stele]

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.

Re:Stargate Lesson

[es330td]

Sometimes I'll just say "that movie SUCKED. But the visual effects were AWESOME!".

This is the reason that for the Academy Awards each category, save Best Picture, is voted on only by the members in that category. A movie can absolutely suck but have great music or amazing editing. The people who work in a field know for what to look when they watch and know good work when it happens.

Re:Stargate Lesson

[thinkwaitfast]

Did you work on Contact? The medicine cabinet was my favorite FX in the whole movie.

Re:Stargate Lesson

[Strudelkugel]

You and your colleagues are doing great work, no question about that. It's too bad that the story telling doesn't make use of it most movies today. I just watched the trailer for "Star Trek Beyond". I thought that it had spectacular effects, but could barely figure out what the story was. It looked like every other sci fi movie for the past ten years. Pew pew lasers, stuff blowing up, overdone aliens... Seriously Hollywood, you can't do better than this?

Re:Stargate Lesson

[perry64]

if you can find it, the ACM SIGGRAPH's "Story of Computer Graphics" (http://www.siggraph.org/movie/) from 2000 credits 1982's "Tron" as being the first film with significant computer graphics. There is a lot of discussion from people who worked on the CGI about how they did it.

However, to a man, they all said that they walked out of the theater saying, "Meh." They realized that the effects can't make the movie, there has to be something more.

Re:Stargate Lesson

[Stele]

I didn't work it on it directly (though I got to help out on some of the mecho-morph shots in Stargate), but my software was used a lot in Contact. That also was one of my favorite shots in the film, and a perfect example of something I noticed and people I was watching with didn't. "Did you SEE that? What? She opened the cabinet from the opposite side of the mirror! You're an idiot." That kind of stuff.

Another favorite scene was the long, "continuous" sequence where Ellie is driving in from the radio telescope array and then runs into the building, up the stairs, and into the control room and you can see the dishes out through the window. Since they couldn't shoot inside that building, there is an "invisible cut" when she opens the door and then they transition to a set, with the dishes composited in through the windows. Excellent! There are a bunch of effects shots like that, and Forrest Gump is FULL of them. I think my favorite effects shot in Gump was when Lt. Dan is on the floor on New Years Eve after falling out of his wheelchair. He shifts his legs around and gets back up in the chair, the entire time with that spool table in front of him. But when they shot that scene that table was never there, because his legs would have hit it. They did the same thing with the side of the boat when he swings around and jumps in. An entire section of the side of the boat was removed so he could do that in a "natural" way. Love that stuff!

Re:Stargate Lesson

[Cederic]

Yeah, on that topic Amelie was an eye opener for me after I'd watched it and not even noticed several hundred CGI effects.

There are a couple of obvious ones but primarily it's been put together with skill and subtlety that lets you focus on the story, the people, the film. I like that.

Re:Stargate Lesson

[Dutchmaan]

No, did you miss the part where I was talking about the original movie?

Re:Stargate Lesson

[Hognoxious]

I've been writing software for the visual effects industry since 1992 [...] their exponential use in invisible effects

Are you sure? I'd have thought a job like that would require at least a nodding familiarity with mathematics.

bullshit about nothing

[Gravis Zero]

lots of movies come out and the reason people like them has nothing to do with how much is life-like and everything to do with how it's presented.

this article is bullshit about nothing.

Yes but no.

[jxander]

While the point is valid, the 3 movies listed were hot garbage for reasons completely divorced from their special effects.

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.

So, I don't think it's the CGI itself causing this problem, but rather the environment it fosters.

Re:Yes but no.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yes but no.

[thegarbz]

Please stop with this meme. When we talk about CGI we are talking about complete computer remakes of entire scenes for no reason, often even rendering the main cast themselves.

Mad Max stood out against this. Every scene had some CGI but that was window dressing to the core components of the action scenes which were shot in a way that is basically unique in modern cinema.

Re:Yes but no.

[lgw]

Which goes to the point: it's not the abundance of CGI that's the problem, it's the lack of practical effects. Practical effects help bring the actors into the movie, which in turn helps bring the audience in.

The actors reacting appropriately to the effects is quite important (as any B-movie knows: if you can't afford the effect, just focus on the reaction and skip the shot). It's really hard for even good actors to react appropriately to something they can't see.

Re: Yes but no.

[jxander]

Exactly. And to take it a step further, it's harder for the entire crew to get fully invested in a film that's all green screen.

"Pretend there's a giant dragon or something," will simply never create the atmosphere of the giant animatronic Rex from Jurassic Park.

Lazy atmosphere begets lazy writing, lazy acting, lazy production.

Re: Yes but no.

[jxander]

An interesting take. I'll definitely have to watch the video.

Re:Yes but no.

[im_thatoneguy]

Please stop with this meme. When we talk about CGI we are talking about complete computer remakes of entire scenes for no reason, often even rendering the main cast themselves.

So they drove through a giant fire tornado?
http://animation-boss.com/imag...
There is a large formation of rocks with a giant waterfall spout built into it?
http://animation-boss.com/imag...
http://oneperfectshotdb.com/wp...
The main character's robotic arm was a real prosthetic?
https://hardinthecity.files.wo...
The cars weren't composited in for safety?
http://www.gizmodo.jp/images/2...
http://i2.wp.com/www.cgmeetup....
http://i2.wp.com/www.cgmeetup....

Entire canyon environments weren't created in CG?
http://www.konbini.com/en/wp-c...
The wheels weren't entirely replaced and the entire ground moving under the vehicles wasn't added in post to make shots of parked vehicles look like they were driving fast?
http://oneperfectshotdb.com/wp...

It's not a meme that a substantial portion of Mad Max Fury Road was shot on greenscreen. As much as any other big blockbuster like The Avengers. The only difference is that many Mad Max Fury Road (which I loved) are in plain denial about the extent of the CG in the film. There is a reason it was nominated for VFX.

https://vimeo.com/132806170

Re:Yes but no.

[thegarbz]

So they drove through a giant fire tornado?

Yes they drove. In the vehicles that were built for the shoot. That is exactly what I was saying. Every other movie would have just animated the cars and the people on it from the ground up.

No one is in denial about the use of CGI. You're just completely missing the point of both what is being said about Mad Max and the entire discussion here at hand.

Re:Yes but no.

[im_thatoneguy]

They didn't drive. I posted an image of them very much parked on a sound stage with a fan and a green screen.

No film relies exclusively on CG except for animated films. Even the worst offenders of over-the-top CG according to you also have practical effects. I understand exactly what's being said and what it comes down to is "when I like the movie they used CG properly" "When I don't like the movie they used practical effects!" Because there is no objective distinction between the actual film-making approaches used between a regular cgi reliant blockbuster and what they did on Fury Road. Fury Road relied heavily on fans and greenscreens where the vehicles were effectively props. And there are plenty of big blockbusters where they have an on-set vehicle that's actually filmed.

So every film is guilty of what you accuse them of. You only though seem to apparently care when it fits your narrative.

Re:Yes but no.

[thegarbz]

Yes I only care. And reviewers only care. And the movie industry awards only care. And apparently everyone in the industry only cares except for you.

Yep everyone is the problem here. .... I just noticed your name is Im_thatoneguy and I spat coffee on my screen. Thank you you've made my morning. Now please go back again and review what makes Mad Max so different before you come and tell me what my narrative is.

no, ID:R really did suck

[ihtoit]

SPOILER ALERT: they beat the aliens again with impossible technological crossover and obscene luck. Really, it was ID4 again only this time they fixed the tidal influence issue (and made a major plot point out of it yet STILL managed to fuck it up), stretched the suspension of disbelief thing WAY too far by trying to have us believe that surviving aliens built a twenty mile wide, five high structure out in the middle of the desert and in twenty years NOBODY spotted it... there's so much wrong with the movie, not least the terrible acting, you could run a thirty minute Youtube video and probably gross more.

Re:no, ID:R really did suck

[Richard_at_work]

Read the official prequel book to ID:R, the structure wasnt built, it was a ship that landed (they covered that in the film as well), and the issue was that it was in the land of an African warlord who was keeping everyone out - the book covered the "why" of not forcing access.

The film still sucked - for me, it was the leaping headlong from one scene to another, the pacing was way way too fast. The original had decent pacing, but ID:R tried to cram twice as much in, double the plot complexity and twice the cast and it doubled the pacing to make up for it.

Scale Matters

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[thinkwaitfast]

The Hobbit vs Dragonslayer . I remember thinking while watching District 9, wow this is like watching a video game, how boring.

Ridley Scott

[SvnLyrBrto]

The first Alien movie... the one with Kane and the Nostromo... was directed by Ridley Scott, not James Cameron.

FFS, Slashdot. Why the head do you call yourself editors if you can't be bothered to, you know, edit. If you're going on posting this luddite, "Oh noes, substanceless technology is disconnecting us from reality." crap, at least get the basic facts upon which you're basing your argument correct.

Re:Ridley Scott

[Anonymous Coward]

It suffered from the same effect as Agent Smith in the Matrix movies. One was terrifying. When there were hundreds of them, they were just annoying.

The wonder is gone

[Anonymous Coward]

CGI is to the point that pretty much nothing is interesting any more. "How did they do that" is no longer a question, the answer is the same: CGI.

When you have entire virtual worlds like Avatar and Jungle Book, where anything goes, there's nothing out of the realm of possibility for a modern director, save budget. I appreciate that modern CGI is not drag and drop. Jungle Book was not a cheap movie to make. But the better things like Jungle Book get, the cheaper everything else gets until CGI is flat out everywhere and ho hum.

It used to be that the Special FX were part of the draw of a Special FX movie. Good effects could overshadow poor scripts or acting. But not anymore.

I'd rather watch a bad Jackie Chan movie, knowing that what I'm seeing is what was done (at least it used to be, until he started doing wire work).

So, for me, the summer movie season, is pretty much dead. I wait for the dramas of the Fall, and the also rans of the spring. Try to get a good story.

Less is More

[avandesande]

They purposefully limited the views of the creature itself to build mystery and suspense.. a technique that seems to have been lost on most contemporary directors.

Pet peeve

[Fwipp]

It's all pixels. Anything you watch on any pixel-based display will be pixels.

If you mean CGI, say CGI.

Re:Pet peeve

[gweilo8888]

This.

/and also, get off my lawn

Confirmation bias at its finest

[Mrs. Grundy]

It's a simple recipe: have an opinion and then mine the past for confirmation of this opinion. If the amount of CGI in a film is inversely proportional to how much audiences like it, then Avatar should have been a failure and Waterworld should have swept the Oscars. You can make the exact opposite argument just as well by simply picking different films.

If the author wants to test this theory he needs to find a way to predict the success of the film based on his hypothesis before the fact, not after.

It's not CGI, it's familiarity

[rknop]

Remember when Jurassic Park came out, how impressed we all were with the dinosaurs?

Remember when T2 came out, how impressive the liquid metal man was?

The problem isn't that CGI is "bad". It's just a technique, that can be used well or poorly like anything else. It's mature enough now that you can use it a whole lot. But there's nothing intrinsic about it that makes it less impressive or less verisimilitudinous or less worthwhile to watch than other filmic techniques.

The real problem is that "lots of things moving at once look at the spectacle!" is no longer novel. We have scads of movies every year come out that show us that. So, when Jurassic Park had cool dinosaurs, it was *the* movie that had that. When Return of the Jedi had fighters flying all over the place in a massive space battle that upped the ante from the previous two Star Wars movies, it was fresh and cool and new.

Nowadays, that's just same old, same old. You can no longer impress by having lots of specatcle out there, because audiences have been there and seen that. it doesn't matter how you accomplish it -- CGI or otherwise. CGI only gets blamed because that's how people usually accomplish it nowadays. Maybe you can blame CGI because that's what made it cheap engouh to be overused so much. But it's not CGI itself.

Done well, it still entertains. Somebody else has already mentioned Mad Max. As another example, the speedster running through the exploding house scene from [i]X-Men: Apocalypse[/i] was a lot of fun, because there was more to it than just spectacle. The same movie at the end had lots of crap flying all over the places in a special effects spectacular, and it was kind of boring, because it was just gratuitous spectacle for the sake of spectacle, and that's old hat.

The word you are looking for is NOISE

[UnknownSoldier]

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.

Re:The word you are looking for is NOISE

[thinkwaitfast]

That was by design. By Ep4, things have been collapsing for quite a while. Ep1, there is still a lot of economic activity and things are still new, people can afford to maintain things.

Re:The word you are looking for is NOISE

[UnknownSoldier]

He wasn't responsible for the special effects in the original Star Wars though.

* http://www.starwars.com/news/t...
* http://www.wired.com/2013/02/s...

Re:The word you are looking for is NOISE

[bluegutang]

More like, adding noise so people blame the lack of realism on the noise, not the object being filmed.

I'm not going to RTFA

[Wain13001]

If the summary is even remotely close to what this and is suggesting, then it appears he really thinks that an overabundance of CGI is what makes people indifferent to films, and not the complete dearth of decent storytelling, character development, acting, and direction. I cannot RTFA...if I do I'll spend every 3 sentence griping to myself about what a useless idiot the author is, and how the article is pure tripe...

This would not be good for my mood or my evening. I'll pass.

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[ihtoit]

I could make a sci-fi movie without having to resort to computer generated visual effects.

It's not all flying saucers and shit.

1984 being right in there with a movie you could shoot with one camera and no computer to be seen.

Re:Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[Dunbal]

Mad max was also filmed in actual colors, not that horrible blue-gray dreary palette that makes everything look dark and all movies look the same.

Re: Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[Nidi62]

Well, District 9 did arise out of a desire to make a Halo movie, so it makes sense you would feel that way. As a side note, really wish they had made areal Halo movie. Forward unto Dawn wasn't bad for what it was, but it was too short.

Sort of like 3D

[Archfeld]

This reminds me of why 3D has never really impressed me that much, because it is used as the end all be all, instead of something to enhance a story that is good on its' own right. The CGI in the battle sequences of the Lord of the Rings movies is very impressive and was just used as an aid to a critical part of the story rather than for the wow effect. With the ability to animate effects and the entire world of literature to draw on, why is it Hollywood seems to just reboot the same lame crap over and over again ?

Who ya gonna call, Ballbusters ? Why isn't the 'new' Ghostbusters a new standalone story, rather than a reboot with 4 women ? 4 women could just as easily carry off a good new expansion to the franchise.

Girl Shy

[Cornwallis]

That's a silent film (1924) by Harold Lloyd. Funny as hell and a fantastic 20 minute chase scene at the end of the movie that still holds my attention especially when you consider he's doing his own stunts and it is as real as it can be 92 years ago.

Why? Because you know damn well it isn't CGI. You don't even notice it is a silent movie. It's available on Youtube. If you don't want to watch the whole thing starting at 56:00.

Lloyd has to stop his girl from marrying the villain so he's trying to get to the ceremony to stop it.

Re:Girl Shy

[MightyMartian]

Lloyd's work is extraordinary, still some of the most breathtaking stunts ever filmed.

I also think of Metropolis, with all its ingenious use of mirrors, camera angles, forced perspective and all the tricks of the day. Lang was a genius (as well as being one of the first directors for whom the epithets "tyrant" or "dictator" could be ascribed), and some of the shots, even in this age of over the top special effects, still seem very impressive. Again, it's because you have to ask yourself "How did he do that?"

Another phenomenal special effects film from the old days I highly recommend is The Thief of Bagdad. To ponder that this was all done through trick photography and editing gives you some idea of the skill of filmmakers in those days.

Re:Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[JaredOfEuropa]

I'd cite Avatar as another example. Not great writing but good use of CGI in a movie that is filmed almost entirely in a CGI world. But it's not easy, it demands an extra effort from the actors (VERY noticably lacking in films like the Phantom Menace), and Cameron employed some innovative techniques to make the camera movements believable, as it things were filmed using a camera on a dolly or boom in a real world.

Getting creatures right isn't easy either. Again Avatar did a decent job, but look at the more recent Star Wars movies, even the latest state-of-the-art production, and compare the creatures to the puppets from the original movies. The CGI looks plastic and faky in comparison.

Re:Too much action, not enough care in making us c

[MightyMartian]

That may be part of it too. I compare the space battle for Star Wars Episode IV with Episode III, and you can see the problem. The final Death Star battle scene sequence feels a lot like a WWII air battle (I'm sure that was intentional). There are quite a few fighters, but not huge numbers, and the shots aren't filled with wall to wall laser blasts, explosions and other visual noise. Compare that to the opening battle of Episode III, and it's like watching a film directed by someone with ADD. And the reason is, of course, that with models, there's significant cost to having multiple models for a single dogfight, and even where you have just a few models, it takes effort to cut and edit together various shots to create the illusion of lots of spacecraft. With CGI, particularly as the technology matures, you can just make as many spaceships as you want, as many laser blasts as you want, as many explosions as you want. I like to refer to it as the Michael-baying of special effects. Shots are so short, and speeds so fast that it becomes incomprehensible. Craft no longer seem bound by the even iffy laws of physics as found in your average science fiction epic.

Compare anything to Jackie Chan

[goombah99]

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. :-)

Re:Compare anything to Jackie Chan

[houghi]

A lot is not so much the use of 'tricks' but the way of filming. Wich Chan you will se the whole fighting scene. There will be a few cuts, but in general you see the whole scene in one go.
You know what is going on.

With modern movies, you see a lot of close ups and a lot of cuts. And half of the scene is cut so that you need to imagine what happened. Two guys in a dark alley, close up of the eyes. Fist the moves. A face that turns with blood flying out of it. And this for 10 minutes.
That is not a fight scene, that is a epileptic seizure. Oh and do it in the dark, in the rain with loud music.

Compare that with Chan's movies where you see everything. It could be two stick figures and it STILL would be better.

If you only show effects and none of the story telling, you will get none of the story telling and people will not be interested after a while.

Re:Compare anything to Jackie Chan

[Kiwikwi]

Reminds me of watching Tom Cruise climb Burj Khalifa in Mission Impossible, and thinking, "enh, the CGI is not really believable".

It may caused by jump cuts and other bad directing choices, but somehow, CGI is managing to ruin real stunts now.

Re:Compare anything to Jackie Chan

[samwichse]

On this note, have you seen the Daredevil TV series?

There are some overcut fight scenes, but some of them are nice and long and well choreographed. The first time I watched it, it actually made my brain say "something is wrong, I can actually follow this fight."

Standard old-fart rant about new media

[Namarrgon]

The whole article reeks of "fake effects were so much realer in my day". While his underlying point about ongoing desensitisation in society is valid, the focus on "pixels" as the new bad guy is merely echoing the same old complaints about new-fangled technology that we've heard since Plato.

At the time, when spectators saw red stuff, they saw blood.

No, they saw fake blood, as stated a couple sentences earlier. Imagine how much more genuine the actors' expressions would've been with REAL blood! But that isn't used because it has a few notable drawbacks, so a realistic fake is acceptable. Does it really matter what medium is used to produce the fake effect, if it's realistic?

Take explosions. People have been blown up (unconvincingly) in movies for a long time, but because setting off large pyrotechnics next to your talent is generally frowned upon by their agents, those are shot separately and composited later despite the extra acting challenge this requires. But if modern CGI allows us to send limbs flying without crippling insurance payouts, could this not be more realistic than practical effects?

But it's the movie examples TFA gives that really undercut the whole argument. Claiming that the biggest problem in Bats vs Supes was the pixels is going to induce severe rolling-eyes damage in anybody who's actually watched it.

Re:Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[Ranbot]

I loved Mad Max, but it's in the same blue and orange palette hollywood is obsessed with. Mad Max scenes were shot in full [Namibian desert] daylight, so it looked brighter, but undeniably blue and orange. Read here: http://priceonomics.com/why-ev...

Jackie Chan

[goombah99]

See also Jackie Chan, the inheritor of Harold Lloyd's mantle.

Less to do with CGI

[rsilvergun]

more to do with China. Movies have to be watered down until they translate across cultural boundaries. That plus there was a golden age in the 70s and 80s when directors like Ridley Scott were given carte blanc to make whatever they wanted. A few high profile bombs and some focus groups later and everything was crap.

Re:Too much action, not enough care in making us c

[thinkwaitfast]

Close Range

Safety Last

[tomhath]

If you're afraid of heights, don't even think of watching Lloyd's famous clock scene

Avatar is calling says "WUT ?"

[Crashmarik]

The new independence is bad and unengaging because it is bad and unengaging and a sequel to a movie that wasn't that great.

It has nothing to do with CGI vs Practical effects.

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[narcc]

I doubt it. Some people just hate everything.

Re:Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[Pseudonym]

Oh, yes the Portal colour scheme. That annoyed the crap out of me, too.

Having said that, to be fair, there are only so many ways you can adjust Namibia to look like country Australia minus all the plants. Do an image search for "Coober Pedy" or "Mallee" some time and you'll see what I mean.

Re: Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[Pseudonym]

As a side note, really wish they had made areal Halo movie.

I think they should make fewer movies of video games (or, if you must, do something like the upcoming Assassin's Creed and set a new story in the same universe). Movies are too short to get across the amount of story that you can fit into a video game.

A better alternative would be the epic TV genre which is all the rage at the moment. Imagine the Halo trilogy told over three seasons, 13 episodes each.

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[zippthorne]

You could shoot 1984 with a piece of clear glass....

Re:Obligatory Matisse quote

[Ol Olsoc]

"A large part of the beauty of a picture arises from the struggle which an artist wages with his limited medium."

Creativity comes not from the ability to do absolutely anything you want, but from the restrictions put on the process of what you are creating.

Re:Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[Ol Olsoc]

Do an image search for "Coober Pedy"

I'm half afraid to. Should I set the browser on safe search?

The perspective of a 3D animation professional

[Bruce Perens]

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.

Practical effects

[gsilver0]

I watch movies with my friends, usually old ones, and usually bad ones. We recently watched Rambo: First Blood Part 2, and while I can easily say that it's a bad movie, "Real explosions will always look good" and as a result, the action was still engaging. Likewise, the tanker explosion in The Terminator is still gorgeous. The explosions in such movies have so much more "physicality" to them, which seems to lack in modern CG. Especially how the fire works. I'm not saying that they *can't* make CG look that good, but it isn't there yet.

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[im_thatoneguy]

1984 being right in there with a movie you could shoot with one camera and no computer to be seen.

Except if you make it look like 2016 New York people won't buy it because it's present day and they know that the present day isn't exactly like the film. It will look like their known universe while existing in a future or alternate universe.

So unless you set your entire film in-doors with slightly different fashion or you have a massive budget to build a slightly alternate reality technology/architecture/fashion world for them to visit outside it's going to feel claustrophobic. CG will make your film better. CG made Children of Men *better*. You could tell the whole story of a near-future without CG but imagine children of men without his drive through London--but-not-London-as-you-know-it.

For instance take a look at this shot from Children of Men where they added a video sign to the bus. Sure they could film in London, but why bother, the end result is perfect and it is substantially cheaper. Or you could cut the 'gag' but you miss out on a nice subtle homage to children of Men's encouragement of suicide which enriches the immersion into the world.
https://www.fxguide.com/wp-con...

Re:Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[Rakarra]

I liked the cracked.com take on it which was written when the trailers for Jurassic World and the new Terminator movie came out. It pointed out six big mistakes that many CG-heavy movies make, and many times it's not just the effects shots that are to blame for why it looks unrealistic. Summarized:
6) Lack of visual restraint where you can make objects move in unrealistic ways when everything else in the movie obeys the laws of physics.
5) Color grading nightmares. Jurassic World had this dreary blue/grey sheen over every shot, digital or not. It made the whole movie look poor.
4) CGI was originally used as a last resort. Entire scenes weren't created CG, you had, say, close-ups of the T-Rex from Jurassic Park using animatronics, and that gave CG artists a baseline to match when lighting their digital creatures.
3) Most films forget a camera needs to exist. In wholly-digital shots, many directors feel the need to zip the virtual camera around in ways we couldn't possibly move -- and again, it just adds to sense of unrealism. I liked the Misty Mountains bridges/etc sequence from the first Jackson Hobbit movie as an example.
2) Uncanny Valley -- this can be triggered by miniatures as well. We also knew when CG didn't look quite right, so Jurassic Park did the smart thing by hiding most of it in the rain and dark. Some of the daytime outdoor scenes look terrible by today's standards, while the T-Rex rain attack still holds up.
1) I'm not sure the author really made his point well here, but it was something about how big effects sequences should have a build-up (first two Jurassic Park movies) and awe.

Re: Compared to 430 computerized shots in the orig

[AK Marc]

After a horrific indoor studio accident involving a real helicopter crashing to the ground and killing two actors,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_Zone_accident That sounds like what you are talking about, but it was outdoors, and 3 dead (two children). Not an exact match, but close.

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[dwywit]

In no particular order, Blade Runner, Dark Star, Planet of the Apes (w/ Charlton Heston), Silent Running, Donnie Darko, Metropolis, Alien, Aliens, The Terminator, Terminator 2, The Man who fell to Earth, Solaris, Serenity (+Firefly) for starters.

Bring back analog gore

[frrrp]

Seriously, it's a dying art form. Thank glub for folks like Olaf Ittenbach who maintain the faith.

48 frames per scond would help

[transami]

I wish more film makers would use 48 frames per second. When I saw the Hobbit in the IMAX I was awestruck. I felt like I was watching a stage production. The fast pace action of modern CGI is just too blurry at old school rates. (And forget the haters who panned it. That's just the tired refrain that always comes out against anything new.)

Re:48 frames per scond would help

[TeknoHog]

I wish more film makers would use 48 frames per second. When I saw the Hobbit in the IMAX I was awestruck. I felt like I was watching a stage production. The fast pace action of modern CGI is just too blurry at old school rates. (And forget the haters who panned it. That's just the tired refrain that always comes out against anything new.)

If the anti-CGI crowd were really about realism, then they should embrace higher framerates in their live-shot movies. The insistence on flickery 24 FPS just proves that it's not actually realism they want, it's basically a certain kind of visual effect in itself.

OTOH, the art of cinema grew out of early animation experiments, and it could be argued that realism is just one stage/genre in its development. Real artists are always interested in new ways of expressing their ideas, rather than churning out photorealistic copies of kitchen-sink drama. I'm sure guys like Bunuel or Dali would have loved to have modern CGI tech at their disposal.

Re:48 frames per scond would help

[gsilver0]

I also wish that higher frame rates were more common. The funny thing is, Youtube of all places is becoming the premiere place for high frame rate video. It's mostly used for videogame footage, but I eagerly await it being used in more big-budget movies. //Low framerates in movies have always looked bad to me.

Define the enemy

[AgNO3]

Don't be afraid to identify the enemy, Radical Hollywood pixels.

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[ihtoit]

location location location. If you want a built-up ruin, there's that beach resort Hitler had built to house workers on holiday that wasn't occupied for what, forty years? Most of it's still empty. You could basically walk in and shoot a movie in there. If you don't fancy a trip to Germany, there's wilderness locations everywhere. Seven miles up the road from me there's an abandoned railway station, and right next to that there's a spot where it's so quiet you can hear your own heartbeat. The 2006 Shane Meadows movie "This Is England", set in 1983, was filmed in Lenton, Nottingham, among other places - with no set dressing and no CGI. I know this because I saw them filming it. All they did was put up a windbreak and a video camera, that was it. You don't even have to be in the place your movie is set in. All of the outside scenes in Doctor Who which were *apparently* set in London were in fact filmed in and around Cardiff.

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[Anonymous Coward]

and by Solaris he meant Solyaris (unless you prefer American remakes of foreign films)

to toss a few more Akumulator 1, Brazil, Kin-dza-dza!, On The Silver Globe, Seksmisja, Tomorrow I'll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea, The American Astronaut

Big green room

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

On the rare occasion I watch TV or go to a movie, I can't help but realize that none of that shit is real, none of it. The actors are just jumping around in a big green room 99% of the time, and everything is added later- the set, the background, the other "people", the sky, walls, buildings, traffic....everything.

Watching the green screen show reels on Youtube has ruined it for me. I still enjoy the movie (usually) but deep down I know they're almost never actually on location or even on a stage set...they're just in a big green room and everything is filled in later.

Surprise..

[Reisrdok]

So CGI has stopped selling. What a surprise.

Things that have been forgotten by tv and movie industry:
- Best actors aren't always young and pretty. Characters need character.
- Good scripts cannot be mass produced with real time ratings as a driving force.
- Best tv series usually have a bad first season, maybe even second season. Tv series is a long time investment.
-- NEVER just pull a plug on series. NEVER. Always make a closing episode. Always bury your creations properly.
- Staying true to the genre creates markets. You cannot please everyone at the same time. Specially important when designing spinoffs.

Just my opinion. I'm usually more wrong than right. But I keep changing my opinion until I'm right.

The real issue we face

[angularbanjo]

Today, with the amazing compositing and rendering software we have at hand for filmmaking, it's no longer a question of whether we can, but rather whether we should. The storytelling skill needs to have mastery over the tools.

Like all tools

[drewsup]

CGI should be used to enhance a movie, not be the point of it. Its more a reflection of the poor scripting/producing going on these, a good movie should stand on its own, the cgi should only be icing on the cake, unless the whole thing is shot in cgi,(Like Avatar).

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[dargaud]

Computer graphics are part of the language of movies now; you can't make a sci-fi movie without them

I'm currently in the middle of watching Space Milkshake and I can tell you that there aren't any CGI in it more elaborate than matte paintings. And it's still very enjoyable. Will finish watching tonight.

Re:Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[GuB-42]

There is no such thing as "actual colors" in film. A camera and your eyes don't react to the same wavelengths and displays are also different. Additionally, your brain preprocesses what your eyes see in a way that is adapted to the real world, not a movie screen.
Colors are not realistic to begin with, so what you see on film are either an artistic choice or the result of technical limitations. Probably more of the former than the latter in any movie worth its salt.

Practical CGI effects

[sabbede]

That's one of many reasons "The Force Awakens" was so much better than Episodes 1-3. Heavy use of practical effects.

Re: Compared to 430 computerized shots in the orig

[mrmatthewcarlson]

Team America was visually exciting though.

Paul Giamatti

[ThatsNotPudding]

He was fabulous in Twelve Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer. Nice out take at the end too.

Re:Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[Bob the Super Hamste]

So I'm not the only one who hated CGI Yoda (Clone Wars series exempted).

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I would add GATTACA to that list.

It's fake

[OrangeTide]

No, it isn't real blood, it's fake blood.

Re:As Tarkovsky said, it got rid of the riff-raff

[HornWumpus]

The stewardess with the velcro shoes? Sublime?

Re:Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[Cederic]

Thing is that Avatar was just a shit film.

Fucking pretty, but shit.

Step 1 : Make a great film

At no point in that guide to making great films did "do lots of CGI" appear, pretty, shitty or otherwise.

If you really want beauty in a great film, try The Fountain. That's a beautiful film, and despite being made in the CGI era didn't need it. If Aronofsky can do it, why can't the cunts with massive budgets?

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[Cederic]

No challenge to any of those. A couple I didn't like but that's me, not the film.

I was about to ask which Metropolis, but both the old Lang one and the very different Japanese Manga version count as sci-fi, and are both worth seeking out.

The Japanese Manga one is extraordinarily rare in that it's pretty much the only non-English film for which I'd recommend watching the dubbed version rather than the original with subtitles.

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[Cederic]

I think parts of This is England were filmed in Grimsby weren't they?

Great film though :)

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[powerlord]

Story should always be the primary focus, but lets not forget that CGI can help if done right.

Not to switch away from the big screen to the small screen, but take a look at either Game of Thrones or The Expanse.

Both definitely have their share of CGI scenes, and when they DO go CGI, they go heavy, but in both cases, even if the CGI scenes are sometimes meant to "ooo" and "ahhhh" the audience, they are also in service of the story ... not the other way around.

The simple fact is that way too often a director gets his mind around an action/fight/chase/whatever that will wow the audience, and tries to deliver a bunch of these instead of a good story. Summer blockbusters have usually been especially egregious of forgetting this.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-11-defining-features-of-the-summer-blockbuster/

Re:Compare The Hobbit to Max Max

[JaredOfEuropa]

"Fucking pretty", yes. That was what we were talking about; effective or not so effective use of CGI. Not about the other qualities of the movie. Avatar did cgi well, really well, even though it was a shallow (but very enjoyable) movie otherwise. The Fountain? A beautiful movie with great visuals and a great soundtrack based on an interesting premise. But even so I thought the execution was average. A lot of it was just eye candy in another form, art for arts sake, a convoluted telling of a Ho hum tale.

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[ihtoit]

probably... they also filmed in Leeds and Sheffield.

Re:Compared to 430 computerized shots in the origi

[ihtoit]

oh, claim to fame: the short-lived reboot of the ITV soap "Crossroads" had some scenes shot in my old apartment (Willoughby Court, Lenton, which is no longer there having been demolished).