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VFX (CGI Vs Practical)

PeteByrdie

PeteByrdie

Privateer in the service of Princess Frideswide
Joined
Jan 19, 2014
Messages
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I can't find a thread specifically about VFX, so here's one. Personally, I'm not a CGI hater, and, after many a documentary, I've realised there's a lot more of it about than we realise. Which means it must have been good.

Anyway, this guy's apparently decided to be the whistle-blower who's going to enlighten us about how CGI is used, what it means when they imply it wasn't used, and the apparent studio guidelines to downplay the use of CGI in movies. I found it fascinating. The third talks about the use of matte paintings over the years, and it was eye opening to me. Clever stuff.

Three videos so far, one apparently on its way.



 
I wouldn't say I'm a CGI hater per se, but it's that they applied to older films (ruining them) and once it replaced physical VFX by the late 2000s, movie quality nosedived.

And it always looks fake. But in some instances, it works better than the alternative.

Also, bit of trivia - Jaime Hyneman closed his M5 special effects shop while Mythbusters was still filming. I didn't know that until last year, it really crystallized the great loss of talent when CGI became standard.
 
Well worth watching and filled with interesting examples from the past, as well as recent effects-laden productions.

The conclusion seems to be that the dichotomy is entrenched in the publicity-machine, with an assumption that audiences are craving more authentic fare.

Given that Fantasy of various sub-genres has taken over big-budget movie-making, I doubt if CGI is really the issue.

The matte-paintings etc. of the past were usually an economy-measure, designed to enhance the illusion, without being noticed as such.

Once we enter the realms of the unreal, our attention switches to the means by which it has been manufactured. Suggestion is not enough, it seems, for today's audiences. Yet wasn't it once the most powerful tool in the box?

As one epic follows another, they are picked over by fan-boys and girls, often eager to be thought insiders, when it comes to the techniques employed. Maybe, they hope to rediscover the magic of their first encounters with the alternative realities of cinema; they keep stripping away at the clothes and never find an Emperor.

The new film wizards are great project managers, essentially, stitching together the work of hundreds of pixell-fixers. Yet they seem, too often, to be stuck in a trench, solving technical problems and tweaking effects to maximise impact, while the overall product remains all-too predictable and paradoxically unambitious.

Sitting through a modern action movie gives me a headache, usually. I can enjoy the CGI stuff for about ten minutes, then it palls. Two Looney Tunes or Tom & Jerry cartoons have the same effect but they never caused much existential head-scratching. So much of modern film-fodder derives from toys and comic-books that its growth is stunted, while its skin is on steroids! :pipe:

Edit: Attempted retuning of clashing Sartor Resartus metaphors.
 
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I'm all for practical and CG artists working together. I was commissioned to work on a premise that never got made called 'Cursed Waters' about 25 years ago (shit title but it was a working title). The idea was that water itself was the baddie. We had an Australian artists who animated a giant CG ice demon that was to come out of a swimming pool towards the end of the film which he did test footage for. My job was to create fake icicles, rust stop motion animation door locks trapping teens in a building, tears from our characters steam burning their faces and a tripod with camera fixed to a rotating rig we could control gelatine heavy water so it looked like it was travelling intelligently across interchangeable fake floors. I had to work closely with our CG artist and him with me so our stuff matched visually on screen. Basically we were coming up with ideas about any way water typically can piss people off. We didn't get past tests for that but I still reckon it could make a good film with CG and practical working together .. and a good story and good actors obviously.
 
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I’ve said it before but I’ll mention it again here. I don’t mind cgi, it’s used to remove tv aerials in historic dramas and that car they’re advertising with a black or reflective windscreen and the pack shots of products? Probably cgi.
The problem for me is that over the years, production houses seem to be using the same software so we get the same lens flares, light leaks, fiery explosions and falling debris so every action film looks the same. There’s a difference between using a product or tool straight out of the box and forcing that toolset the hard way to create a desired effect.

In comics, there are different artists and you’ll probably have a favourite whether it’s Schulz and Snoopy or Ditko’s Spiderman or some edgy Manga.
The thing is they brought an individual style to the stories but now you could pretty much edit 10 different movies together and it would all look the same.
Not great for a creative media.

In terms of practical effects, I usually refer to Gerry Anderson and his excellent explosive puppet series. With his diminutive cast, he was trying to prove he had the ability to work in live action. I wonder what his view would be on live actors now being hung on wires in front of a green screen.
 
Analogue Boy said:
production houses seem to be using the same software
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The more sophisticated the software, the more limiting it gets.

Some thirty years ago, in the days when the CD-ROM cover-discs seemed to offer infinite possibilities, I used to regularly buy MacFormat magazine. It did a lot to promote a 3D-rendering programme named, mysteriously, Bryce. Readers were invited to submit their artworks, generated by this cutting-edge tool. You created forms by clicking and dragging on points; you selected the skins they were to wear; you decided on the light-source and how many moons you wanted in your skies. Then you had to wait sixteen hours for the application to tie up your machine and choke on it or render a photo-realistic image of your own, personal alien planet! Good, geeky fun, in its way, though my machines were never up to it. Those who persevered and won prizes created indistinguishable, airless and unpopulated fantasy worlds. The monotony was obvious, after even a single issue or two. Images that might have enthralled me in a picture book of space, as a youngster, had become run-of-the-mill, as they were churned out by fifteen-year-olds, daily. The programme essentially constrained the user to create science-fiction landscapes; I never saw it used for anything else.

A few years back, I was given a version of A Christmas Carol to show to a class, as a treat. It was, I think, the 2009 Disney film, which starred Jim Carrey. I remember little about it, apart from a digital fly-through sequence, where Scrooge goes zooming over the streets of an imagined Victorian London, diving under bridges and dodging obstacles, until he lands in the gutter. It added nothing to the narrative but the visual jazz must have been felt essential to hype things for the young'uns. They could rest assured that they were in familiar territory! I also felt in familiar territory, as I sensed I had seen the sequence before, many times, often in trailers, albeit wearing different skins each time. Having invested in the algorithms, a studio can dress them and redress them as often as an Universal back-lot set. Just re-skin the buildings, re-cast your character and press Render! Old City, New City, Primeval Forest, Medieval Paris, Witch or Pterodactyl, Supercar or Insect!

Creative directors can use CGI intelligently enough: the Extras on Master & Commander go into the use of every tool in the box to create an "authentic" experience, despite the director starting the production by buying a real boat! I see that film is now 21 years old! :)
 
You do lose a bit of the magic when you see how modern superhero films are really made.

img_1_1698422577558.jpg
 
JamesWhitehead said:
The more sophisticated the software, the more limiting it gets.

Some thirty years ago, in the days when the CD-ROM cover-discs seemed to offer infinite possibilities, I used to regularly buy MacFormat magazine. It did a lot to promote a 3D-rendering programme named, mysteriously, Bryce.
Click to expand...
I used to have a copy of Bryce. It was named after Bryce Canyon, because the software was mostly used for landscape effects.
 
Bigphoot2 said:
It's very addictive. A real treasure trove.
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Y'know, I'm sure folk have often caught me watching behind the scenes documentaries and YouTube videos about special effects both practical and visual, and I've said, 'I could watch this stuff all day.' I've never actually put that to the test. I'm almost more interested in how movies are made than I am in watching the actual movies. Especially these days, when how the stunts and VFX are done is genuinely more entertaining than a lot of the movies.
 
PeteByrdie said:
Y'know, I'm sure folk have often caught me watching behind the scenes documentaries and YouTube videos about special effects both practical and visual, and I've said, 'I could watch this stuff all day.' I've never actually put that to the test. I'm almost more interested in how movies are made than I am in watching the actual movies. Especially these days, when how the stunts and VFX are done is genuinely more entertaining than a lot of the movies.
Click to expand...
I used to build models and am fascinated by the work that goes into making miniatures for movies. Must be heartbreaking to see all that effort and attention to detail being blown to bits for a few seconds of film.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
The more sophisticated the software, the more limiting it gets.

Some thirty years ago, in the days when the CD-ROM cover-discs seemed to offer infinite possibilities, I used to regularly buy MacFormat magazine. It did a lot to promote a 3D-rendering programme named, mysteriously, Bryce
Click to expand...
Nowadays they go out into the real world and 3d scan actual objects, making the shapes and textures real world perfect. As long as the objects exist in the real world and dont need to visibly interact with anything, your brain shouldnt be able to tell its fake.

For instance, nothing in this video physically exists, its a video game demo, not video camera footage of a real abandoned building.
 
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