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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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.

Pixels SUCKED.

[Anonymous Coward]

Adam Sandler is a crime against Humanity.

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?

[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?...

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.

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.

[BoberFett]

I blame piracy.

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.

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.

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: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: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.

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. :-)

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.