What manner of death should be wished on people who complain about CGI effects in modern movies?

Forced to endure a 12-hour marathon of CGI-anchored movies.

The CGI shit was REALLY bad. CGI should be used in a bond flick to hide the wires, nothing more.

^^^^

this is all it took to set you off, dan???

Think of it as the straw that broke the camel's back.

I have NEVER watched a movie and thought "ugh, the CGI just RUINS this". EVER. Including the Spiderman movies.

You have no eyes.

btw sometimes CGI effects are really, really shitty and its not being retro-grouchy to wish that they'd just stuck to some old-fashioned shit that everyone knows how to do already instead of going for whizbang computeration

^^^^^otm

i voted for blunt force trauma because it is always correct to vote for blunt force trauma in any poll about anything

btw sometimes CGI effects are really, really shitty and its not being retro-grouchy to wish that they'd just stuck to some old-fashioned shit that everyone knows how to do already instead of going for whizbang computeration ppl could tell when they have really, really shitty cgi effects in their movies

I think old fashioned shit can be really endearing. Like the planes in Dr. Strangelove and how it's totally clear they aren't moving in any way.

Cf that photo with the miniature Ton-Tons on Hoth and people hanging out with the trap door open?

Bad CGI takes you out of the movie, period

Good CGI is like XMen 2 fuck yesssss

Puppet Yoda >>>> CGI Yoda

seriously

Flipping cyber-booger bouncing off the walls or something furry you can imagine touching. Get fucked.

You have no eyes.

No actually, I think I am just not a fickle douchebag.

btw sometimes CGI effects are really, really shitty and its not being retro-grouchy to wish that they'd just stuck to some old-fashioned shit that everyone knows how to do already instead of going for whizbang computeration

Yes, but oftentimes this only manifests itself because the rest of the movie sucks so hard that there's nothing else there to enjoy; I don't find this to be true of most of the movies where people complain about CGI.

Bad CGI takes you out of the movie, period

That's horseshit. Bad model effects have the exact same impact, ie however much you invest in your ability to identify something that isn't real.

The exploding heads in "Scanners" don't look real at all but that doesn't detract one bit from their impact; likewise Spidey swinging through New York.

haven't seen it in ages but the CGI in Jurassic Park was badass. most of the time it's used now because it's CHEAP AS HELL cf BABYLON5 or whatever.

i dunno, dude, there's something about a model ACTUALLY existing in the same physical space as the actors that makes it more integral to the scene

dan are you not conflating the argument against CGI in every instance and someone just saying "well the CGI in this particular movie wasn't well done"

When it's SHIA LEBOUF FLYING THRU THE JUNGLE WITH NEWFOUND MONKEY FRIENDS bad, i gets to complain

― Brotherhood of Stealing Shit to Sell to Trader Caravans (kingfish), Monday, December 1, 2008 12:56 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

T-minus 10 seconds till Morbs dips in here to make CGI Secretary Clinton joke.

Exploding head in Scanners looks way more real than Jar-Jar Binks shuckin and jivin on planet laptop, fwiw

the cheap-as-hell part is really what gets me: CGI is good in that it has made some otherwise costly movies cheaper. it's bad because there are definitely practical effects that would get better results but are waaaaay more $$$/time and are now left to the wayside.

I will almost always enjoy creative deployment of stagey, physical, "organic" effects more than run-of-the-mill CGI. I realize this is not really an option with something like a Bond film, but if you are making a Bond film, I think it's incumbent on you to either have truly awesome/credible CGI effects or construct your movie in a way that doesn't rely on them.

I don't think it should be too controversial to point out that there are a lot of times when CGI effects allow people to be a bit lazy about constructing movies and then just throw a bit of money at half-assing the effects they're shooting for. Maybe that's not what happens -- maybe they think it's going to turn out awesome and it just doesn't -- but that's always how it looks.

Also, anyone who is complaining about CGI who has anything at all positive to say about 60s/70s science fiction really needs to sit down and do a little bit of self-analysis here.

xp: J0rdan, my point is that I have yet to see a complain about CGI that I thought was valid, mostly because a) I accept CGI as an inescapable part of the toolkit that makes up the modern movie; and b) I can't think of an instance where something not looking "real" had a measurable impact on my enjoyment of a movie.

The disconnect between screenwriting / producing / directing is probably half the issue here -- getting locked into something that's been written into the script, but winding up in some sort of budgeting/administrative space where you have to say "okay, just throw together some CGI for that"

what the hell dan you are ignoring some pretty valid criticisms here

Dan are you kidding me? I have watched 60s/70s sci-fi with good effects and crappy, laughable effects; I have also watched modern movies with good CGI and crappy, laughable CGI. It's an inescapable part of the toolkit, sure, which means it's perfectly valid to discern between when the tool's used well and when it's used awfully -- same goes for inescapable elements like the writing or the acting or anything else!

When was Quantum of Solace so CGI-y?

i actually think CGI might be better deployed in cleaning up old films! like tighten up the effects just a bit (not addin shit) so they're even more seamless.

but c'mon, man, shia and cgi monkeys is terrible

No that was a real primate habitat place in Alabama.

When was Quantum of Solace so CGI-y?

yah rly

daniel craig is dead, didn't you know

Actually, I don't think I am. I am making the argument that a lot of people are lazily going "ugh, bad CGI" in the same manner that a lot of people lazily go "ugh, ProTools".

The "terrible" portion of Shia and the monkeys is the idea behind the scene in the first place, not the fact that CGI was used to create it; I put to you that there is actually no feasible way to include that scene in the 4th Indy movie and not have it be one of the most embarrassing moments of modern cinema (and I say that from the perspective of one of 6 ppl on Earth who will admit to liking "Crystal Skulls").

x-post -- There was the one moment with the water storage cave, I guess.

aka the scene where she should have turned to Bond and said "Tell me about your homeworld, James."

The second X-Men film is a good example of well-deployed CGI; some of Iron Man too. I won't yield to the romance of matte paintings and blue screens; special effects, like musicianly tools like Auto-tune, are neither good nor bad. What's troubling is how easily filmmakers rely on it as a kind of expensive caulking, used to patch up a gaping plot hole.

watching some of the behind the scenes bits on the lord of the rings dvds made it pretty clear that the line between "CGI" and "not CGI" is pretty fluid now anyway. it's not all just jar jar binks and making objects that aren't there on set.

oh man i liked shia v. the monkeys--it's a movie it's supposed to be ridiculous!!!

I hated all the CGI in Wall-E

The only bit of CGI in the bond movie i didn't like was the scaffolding and ropes scene. The freefall bit later on was enh, but otherwise passable.

which is why i said "use it to hide the wires," which i'm pretty sure is all they did with it on Dark Knight

o no way it's everywhere all the time

they corrected maggie gyllenhaal's posture in post

the cgi in bond was pretty good wtf

also, maggie gyllenhaal doesn't look like maggie gyllenhaal on film, so in secretary they just used jake and enlarged his head with blue-screen putty. xpost

so you're saying that Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) wasn't really there to be menaced with a knife?

I like the cgi in sci fi channel movies.

I like the CGI in Cube 2: Hypercube

I think I'd be cooler with CGI if they could find some way to make Shia swing into my bedroom.

I hope the people who were reacting to my hyperbole better understand my position and why I started this thread.

i saw turbulence 3: heavy metal this weekend, there was some great cgi in it

http://www.axelmusic.com/resources/covers/back/031398767725.jpg

Charmed had the most lol CGI effects even by crappy tv standards

altho they used a lot of cheezy old school effects too

funny thread idea, but dumbest discussion ever. duh, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, which is what i think nabisco was saying. also, know a good scifi that came out "in the 60's and 70's"? 2001

It's no Ice Spiders.

http://ohmygodzilla.com/sightings/bodegabay/godzilla_school_house_2887pic.jpg

funny thread idea, but dumbest discussion ever. duh, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, which is what i think nabisco was saying. also, know a good scifi that came out "in the 60's and 70's"? 2001

― k3vin k., Monday, December 1, 2008 9:39 PM (19 minutes ago)

dude by 2001 lots of people were using CGI duh

K3vin, you are relatively new here, right? Because as someone who has been instrumental in bringing the tone of discussion around here down to the level of "mouth-breathing lummox" I cannot even begin to fathom how this thread can be picked out as the dumbest discussion ever. It doesn't even begin to touch on the size of anyone's ass or Nicky Wire in a banana suit.

I loved the monkey cavalry!

someone should start a "dumbest discussions ever on ilx" nomination thread

I cannot even begin to fathom how this thread can be picked out as the dumbest discussion ever

a movie thread i noticed on here about 2 days ago is a valid contender

something about "finding the anti-Napoleon Dynamite", ugh

I loved the monkey cavalry!

http://i38.tinypic.com/2jebmnt.gif

oh pfffft there's much worse, look harder

i voted "vivisection"

"I hated all the CGI in Wall-E"

Aw Ned--you beat me to the punch. Funny guy.

bad cgi is less excusable than other bad special effects because not enough time has passed for us to get nostalgic about it yet

most OTM statement so far.

I was never bothered by CGI until I lived with a goddamn 3d animator who would see and pick shit out of the slightest bad effect or badly done walk cycle and now I cant NOT see it and it shits me.

I get sick of people moaning about CGI too, at least just throwaway interchangeable dismissals that don't specify why the CGI doesn't work/look good (is often because it's something new.

It only really happens with live action sci-fi tho, the toughest area...or sometimes dumb kids rehashes where they try and put a cartoon CGI creature among real people e.g. Scooby-Doo, Garfield

bad cgi is less excusable than other bad special effects because not enough time has passed for us to get nostalgic about it yet

― n/a is just more of a character....in a genre polluted by clones (n/a), Monday, December 1, 2008 4:31 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it sounds like i'm being flip but i am being sincere here, i do think bad cgi is less excusable than other bad special effect

These complainers: they should be eaten by the most awesomely shiny & polygonal of bad-CGI monsters, the LANGOLIERS!

http://www.clubdesmonstres.com/langoliers03.jpg

I dont mind CGI at all but it would be nice to see some other kinds of SFX done sometimes, like well-done painted backdrops a la Bladerunner, or models, or whatever.

langoliers pic looks cool to me!

that was a tv movie rite

are there 90s movies where the CGI is crap by now standards but is somehow CHARMINGLY crap with it? n/a probably right and we can't do that yet

There are as many bad not-CGI-effects in movie history as there are bad-CGI-effects. I mean. Really. They were not all Star Wars and Alien and The Thing. And Andromeda Strain was made before all those and had good CGI effects!

I mean if you look at Romero's films, compare Dawn of the Dead to Land of the Dead. Both really lacked 'verisimilitude' and had bad effects. I mean blue paint zombies & red paint gore vs. shiny oozing grit & oil CGI zombies. Both were pretty low quality effects.

Old Dr Who episodes. LOL condoms for maggots.

blueski --- yes! The Langoliers! (Also Lawnmower Man which is not as entertaining.) That 'Mind's Eye' video (which, personal bias, is just straight nostalgia to me) is a shiny polygon love festival (with an animated L.Ron fist-clutching-world sequence no less!).

Langoliers was made for TV and is wicked entertaining.

I was thinking Langoliers the whole time I was reading this thread.

I've also been looking for Forrest Gump shaking hands with JFK. My memory of that is that it looked like Prince Charles walking like an Egyptian.

Jurassic Park holds up really well in the CGI dept. Of course I think they spent $800 million on it & it was part puppetry, too, but: looks good, guys!

Loving u Mind's Eye.

Babylon 5 has pretty terrible (unconvincing) CGI but looking back on it, it's pretty impressive for something made on desktop Amigas. The crazy alien makeup holds up, though. Haircuts not so much. I never hear anyone going nostalgic for the effects though.

re: langoliers -- bronson pinchot (balki from perfect strangers) is awesome in this. creepiest paper-ripping ever.

i think that bad special effects are never going to ruin a good movie, because if it's good, you'll suspend your disbelief enough to enjoy it anyways

The spheres! THE SPHERES>

I dont mind CGI at all but it would be nice to see some other kinds of SFX done sometimes, like well-done painted backdrops a la Bladerunner, or models, or whatever.

Agreed, the reason the SFX in LOTR work so well is that they are a combination of all these things (well, that and they spent a shitload more time and money on the CGI than most movies do).

Lawnmower Man
ha ha i almost go along with this due to some sense of nostalgia for early 90s concepts of virtual reality, but it's not quite Tron level

Dan you so wrong

I don't complain about it much but they fucking suck

i rewatched carpenter's the thing recently and was amazed at how well those effects hold up and are still completely disgusting.

i mean it's weird that someone could only enjoy jurassic park if the dinosaurs were really realistic, because otherwise the idea of dinosaurs in a modern amusement park on an island would just be too unbelievable

that said, the movies that I see that use CGI can't really be ruined by it, as they're not generally Masterpieces of Cinema or anything. And if that was CGI in "Crouching Tiger," I can dig it. But CGI explosions, jeez they suck next to stuff that actually looks like they hired an explosives dude. What can I say? I like things that are actually blowing up!

finally saw Iron Man yesterday and i thought it was pretty much flawless effects/s.o.d.-wise

probably wouldn't feel the same about The Incredible Hulk, because of the increased focus on anthropomorphic transformation

The Fall was done with no CGI, absolutely amazing effects in that movie.

non-CG special effects had kind of reached an awesome peak in my mind before CG took over (the Thing being my main example), like how the last NES games (ie Kirby) had relatively amazing graphics & the next-gen looked not as impressive (given that it was NEW! TECHNOLOGY!) in comparison...each gen of console replaces the last just as it's hitting its stride....

I sound like Cpn Lorax.

I liked Babylon 5's effects! The only thing that's aged badly about that show is the haircuts.

is j0hn D. Big Jim McBob or Billy Sol Hurok?

"Sunshine" is an example of CGI not only making a film but comprising that film's very soul.

"I liked Babylon 5's effects!"

You've just exploded my brain scanners style.

btw are people using CGI in pornography yet? because I can really get behind that

"get behind"

"rimshot"

i'm pretty sure sunshine's soul was compromised by having a ridiculously incongruous final third

J0hn D. your hypothetical has exploded my brain.

another vote for "yeah lazy CGI can't ruin a movie, but it can make a generic piece of shit more annoying than that piece of shit would be otherwise." It's like watching other people play videogames, which is less fun than watching other people blow shit up.

True, n/a. Zombie-madman-captain-guy was a terrible error. Should have been them against the universe all along. Notice I said "comprised", btw. The CGI was a very, very good thing.

What I really hate is CGI in non-CGI animated films where it is completely unnecessary and also (greater sin) obvious. Like that whale in Fantasia 2000? Fuuuuck off, whale creator.

btw are people using CGI in pornography yet? because I can really get behind that

There's totally CGI porn.

bad cgi is less excusable than other bad special effects because not enough time has passed for us to get nostalgic about it yet

otm

non-CG special effects had kind of reached an awesome peak in my mind before CG took over (the Thing being my main example),

And the transformation in American Werewolf in London still blows my mind.

What surprises me with CGI is thatIi have yet to see in a movie someone do the most obvious "wire-removing" shot imaginable - a shot of someone looking into a mirror NOT filmed from a side angle to hide the camera, but filmed 'head-on' with the camera removed digitally.

btw sometimes CGI effects are really, really shitty and its not being retro-grouchy to wish that they'd just stuck to some old-fashioned shit that everyone knows how to do already instead of going for whizbang computeration

I Am Legend to thread.

The puppet effect in Jurassic Park are kinda distracting.

Good, subtle CGI = Zodiac

Per n/a, I'm trying to think of any movie where the CGI effects now seem quaint and of-their-time, and the only thing coming to mind is Galaxy Quest, and that's because (a) it's meant to be funny, and (b) they actually worked around their limited CGI by creating the most CGI monster ever, a pile of CGI boulders that floated around one another in a human-like shape. Probably proving once again that "clever idea about how to deploy effects" will always beat "using CGI to make any old idea look 'real.'"

is "morphing" CGI? because i'm sure there's some nostalgia for terminator 2 and the "black or white" video

Oh wait, I think they also did a Lost in Space where someone had a tiny CGI space-pet that the filmmakers were really proud of but now kinda makes you chuckle at how awesome they clearly thought it was. (This was from that era where all CGI stood out from the background by looking unreasonably glossy, like the "real" object had been laminated and dipped in gelatin before appearing on camera.)

lolz awesome - my buddy did a bunch of CGI stuff for that including the GG Bridge shot and the TransAmerica pyramid going up

that = Zodiac

^^ !! Terminator 2 is a prime example of working within your means -- if all CGI looks weirdly glossy and mercury-like, then this character will have the ability to turn into, umm, glossy mercury-like stuff

actually lost in space's cgi looked bad even for the time. worst movie ever made.

best bad cgi = Anaconda

imho

nah best bad CGI is like the Faculty or something

nah i hated that movie

Ice Cube scowling at a snake >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> some snarky half-ass kiddie "homage" to The Thing

i think that bad special effects are never going to ruin a good movie, because if it's good, you'll suspend your disbelief enough to enjoy it anyways

This is almost my thesis statement in a nutshell, only I would put it this way:

i think that bad special effects are never going to ruin a movie, because if it's good enough, you'll suspend your disbelief enough to enjoy it anyways

Jurassic Park holds up really well in the CGI dept. Of course I think they spent $800 million on it & it was part puppetry, too, but: looks good, guys!

― Abbott of the Trapezoid Monks (Abbott), Monday, December 1, 2008 10:54 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark

I asked about this a couple years back on Ask Metafilter: http://ask.metafilter.com/54341/Why-is-the-CGI-in-Jurassic-Park-so-good

i think that bad special effects are never going to ruin a movie, because if it's good enough, you'll suspend your disbelief enough to enjoy it anyways

Dan the gaping logical flaw in this is that for normal human beings, "special effects" are one of the many categories involved in deciding whether the film is "good enough"

p.s. write in vote for "they should be forced to watch Indiana Jones until they get it" because, yes, the CGI is appalling, but if you can't see that it's a bad movie for other reasons and, good or bad, CGI is a second or third order effect, then you have no soul.

lolxp

Your "gaping logical flaw" is my "obvious inference of how much importance the quality of SFX has on my enjoyment of a movie, ie little to none".

I mean we could equally say that

- bad cinematography isn't going to sink an otherwise-good movie
- horrible sound design isn't going to sink a good movie
- terrible acting won't necessarily ruin a compelling story
- even a problematic story won't ruin something that's visually compelling or well-acted

but our sense of whether something is "good enough" to forgive flaws in any one of these is kinda built around whether enough of the others are functioning decently -- why exactly would we cordon off CGI effects as not being part of that like everything else??

xpost - HAHA Dan did you seriously just try to defend your point by saying "that was clearly intended as circular reasoning?"

I kind of agree with nabisco, actually. For me, really bad CGI that doesn't realise it's bad (e.g. Indiana Jones) has the same effect on my enjoyment of the movie as sitting next to someone who texts all the way through the film: incredibly distracting.

other 90s films where the CGI holds up surprisingly well: Judge Dredd, Starship Troopers

and Boogie Nights

that was surely prosthetic

i think the effects in Iron man were successful because of the mix of animatronics and CGI a la Jurassic Park. Most modern filmmakers are just too lazy to go that way though.
I knew Indiana Jones was gonna be bad as soon as that CG Gopher or whatever it was popped up in the first scene. Just, why?

I just wish directors wouldn't use CGI by default, but otherwise I think the stuff is a net positive, and nobody is required to use it.

Exactly. There are things CGI does effectively and then there's stuff that it isn't necessary for.

i haven't seen indiana jones 4 and probably never will, but Shia LeBouf swinging on vines with real monkeys or men in monkey suits is better than Shia LeBouf swinging on vines with CGI monkeys.

Ok, actually I'm going to see Indiana Jones 4 now.

I knew Indiana Jones was gonna be bad as soon as that CG Gopher or whatever it was popped up in the first scene. Just, why?

I didn't actually hate the new Indianas Jones but that gopher really was like a gleeful "FUCK YOU" from George Lucas to the audience.

"I'm as guilty as anyone, because I helped to herald the digital era with _Jurassic Park (1993)). But the danger is that it can be abused to the point where nothing is eye-popping any more. The difference between making Jaws (1975) 31 years ago and War of the Worlds (2005) is that today, anything I can imagine, I can realize on film. Then, when my mechanical shark was being repaired and I had to shoot something, I had to make the water scary. I relied on the audience's imagination, aided by where I put the camera. Today, it would be a digital shark. It would cost a hell of a lot more, but never break down. As a result, I probably would have used it four times as much, which would have made the film four times less scary. Jaws is scary because of what you don't see, not because of what you do. We need to bring the audience back into partnership with storytelling."

-Spielberg

Steven "Should Not Be Allowed Within Earshot Of George Lucas" Spielberg

anything I can imagine, I can realize on film

proof that yr imagination sucks, Steve

CGI wasn't one of the five worst things about Indy 4.

ya but c'mon those gophers were some retarded shit

He has some other quote about CGI somewhere which I took as a mea culpa for that scene in Minority Report where Tom Cruise is hopping over the animated cars.

if they'd actually done the gopher caddyshack style it would've been awesome

"today, anything I can imagine, I can realize on film"

^^ See, I think it's precisely this rhetoric and mentality that's the problem -- the idea that CGI magically realizes things on film in a way that every previous effects technique didn't. It's still an effect! It still looks hokey if you do it wrong! There is no new magical thing that makes it any different from the old effects or frees anyone from the old burden of sitting down and thinking about how best to incorporate it into the story!

Haha I was about to post "nobody went around when they invented green-screen saying 'OMG now my imagination is 100% free,'" but then I remembered a whole lot of old videos that are defiant proof to the contrary

I'm really perversely digging the idea of analog Jar Jar binks now

The pictures...they're MOVING!

I am so one of these people. Dear Hollywood: more claymation and replicas please.

I'm really perversely digging the idea of analog Jar Jar binks now

its called "blackface"

ya but c'mon those gophers were some retarded shit

Greater evil: rendering them in CGI, or including them at all?

if they'd done them with hand puppets it'd be in a spirit of WTF? that i can respect

he kind of acknowledges that this "cgi sets you free" mentality can lead to laziness in the last part of the quote, nabisco. though admittedly his qualms here have apparently disappeared over time/lucas exposure.

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/11789

inspired by Lucas' revamping of STAR WARS can only lead to wrong

ANYWAY, all I'm really saying basically is that Lucas just should have cast this dude in the Phantom Menace:

http://thefaust.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/noid2.gif

no-CGI is exactly why john carpenter's THE THING has not aged as much as other more trendy special effects from the early 80s has.

if you ever get a chance to see tarsem singh's THE FALL which is also non-CGI... you will be impressed.

even the LOTR stuff that they invested ZILLIONS of dollars in looks pretty dated.

Well no, he seems to be suggesting that the fact that it sets you free leads to laziness! Whereas I think the idea that it makes you so much magically free-er than before to be ... weird.

Spinning the conversation in a more positive direction, what are the most astonishingly effective single-instance applications of CGI that you can think of?

its basically "cheaper" not "free-er"

x-post

Zodiac is some really great CGI, I'd put that at or near the top of the list

even the LOTR stuff that they invested ZILLIONS of dollars in looks pretty dated.

but in LOTR's case all of the 'dated' sequences would be first-time stuff that couldn't have been done any way other than attempted photo-real CGI on anywhere near the same scale. people slagging it off have no regard for this tho.

I think most of LOTR looks great, fuck a steve shasta!

The Dueling Beards of McKellen and Lee have NOT aged well.

Vote 2 for Zodiac. And the first Jurassic Park. Hell, even Terminator 2 still looks pretty good, since it works with the limitations the graphics had (as someone or other said above).

xxp much more annoyed at shitloads of decent cgi adding up to something as turgid as the lotr trilogy

Tron is pretty epic CGI... light cycles, solar sailor, disks...

but in LOTR's case all of the 'dated' sequences would be first-time stuff that couldn't have been done any way other than attempted photo-real CGI on anywhere near the same scale. people slagging it off have no regard for this tho.

oh so we're to give it a free critical pass since it's a first attempt...?

denothor's hairline should have been CGI, that shit bugged me on my last *rescreen*.

Why the indy gopher hate? and not the crazy CG buffet finale?

Would this really work in CG? Can you picture it?
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k42/takaradoll/gifs/29cc4c30.gif

re Tron: wasn't 99% of it animated, not CG?

ironically, all the live action scenes were CGI

yes there's CG sequences in Tron - lots actually!

i think i am nostalgic for the Back To The Future 2 CGI

oh so we're to give it a free critical pass since it's a first attempt...?

um, yeah, pretty much. i mean i always bear this in mind to the extent where i'm not just gonna trash it or claim it really ruins things.

did we establish on a previous thread when the exact point was that people stop(ped) being auto impressed by CGI effects? think it was just after Jurassic Park set the bar so high

I think the CGI in Lord of the Rings is so deeply embedded into all its aspects and the whole of its aesthetics that it's safe -- there'll be a short period where it looks a bit last-decade, sure, but not in a terrible way, and after that it'll just be of-its-time filmmaking.

There's such a huge difference between CGI that's wrapped into the basic construction and aesthetics of the film and some kind of random gratuitous thing or effect that sticks out.

King Kong was pretty effective.

yeah but that movie sucks

she really loved that fuckin' monkey

Also, many of the best effects in LOTR are good ol' fashioned practical effects, but I agree that it would have been hard to present the scale that movie requires without CGI.

Titanic is both a good example of CGI and a bad one. When you watch the camera sweep above the deck and look at the animated characters, they look about as bad as characters can look, but it's easy to forget that you're looking at a boat that doesn't exist, that isn't actually in that water, that isn't actually moving. Some sort of compositing effect would've been a much wiser choice for the passengers and crew, but alas.

think it was just after Jurassic Park set the bar so high

the worst effect i can even think of was the goofy puppet brontosaur face close-ups. haven't seen it in years, but i remember hearing gasps in the theater when the first dinosaur herds were revealed

most of the lol hobbits r small FX in LOTR were just camera angle changes, yeah? figured dude had made enough low-budget flicks that he knew the value of a good old practical effect

I'm trying to think of good CGI moments in otherwise-"organic" (or largely "organic") movies.

I thought the obvious computer people in "Titanic" were hilarious! I hated that movie more for ruining a perfectly great action movie by sticking a subpar period-piece romance populated by douchebags on the front.

kng kong was like titanic with a giant ape

i loved this Pushing Tin scene at the time (but totally gimmick and not trying to blend with reality so doesn't really count)

What about stuff like post-production sound and color/lighting? This stuff isn't often talked about in discussions of CGI good/evil, but it's just as artificial and manufactured.

the best shit about LOTR was the non-CGI stuff (arguably, gollum excepted).

[this could be a very boring subthread if anyone is v. bored]

1) that remote cable shot in the battle of Amon Hen which starts about eye level POV and then pulls up above with the uruk-hai running down the hill is AMAZING after many, many views.

uruk hai dere

sorry

the best shit about LOTR was the non-CGI stuff (arguably, gollum excepted).

Exactly. The reason that the LOTR CGI holds up & will most likely continue to do so is that it was constructed on top of an impressive foundation of actual, physical craft which was labored over with painstaking attention detail. Thus, where Lucas probably would have the hobbit village as yet another opportunity to blow minds with his whiz-bang techno supercomputers, Jackson actually hired peoply to use, you know, wood and stuff (though those elf villages do look way too Thomas Kincaid for their own good). I believe Jackson and co,'s devotion to such tactility grounds the films with a timelessness completely unshared by the already dated-looking SW prequels.

good CGI in non-CGI movie = the baby in Children of Men?

Costner's digital hairplugs in Waterworld

good CGI in non-CGI movie = the baby in Children of Men THE FUCKING AMBUSH SCENE???!?!?!?!?!??!

...in Children Of Men...

i liked the baby

There must have been lots of CGI in Dark Knight, right

A friend of mine worked on the CGI for TDK, actually - he was responsible for about two frames of Two Face's face.

There was a bit in QoS where the CGI really bugged me (sorry Dan but you know this thread is just an open door for these sorts of comments) -

When Bond and Hotso McHottenbutt fall to earth after Ye Olde Airplane Shootout. The sheer simplicity of the terror involved in falling from a great height - the innate, visceral sense of physical danger - it's not complicated. It's not elegant or complex. No one lands suavely in a situation like that. It's horrible. The entire scene has been leading up to this moment - the pace has been relentless. They are falling, barely parachuted, through the air - which was THRILLING - and they land with a big Warner Bros. WHUMP, skidding, Elmer Fudd-like, to a stop. It cheapened the totally intense feeling of physical danger I'd been feeling up to then. There weren't any bodies there to really get hurt after all. I didn't go and cry about it. I didn't even remember it until now. But it was a let-down.

i cant believe you cried about cgi in a bond movie

what a baby

I wish her name had actually been "Hotso McHottenbutt".

I don't know if it counts as crying but the CGI in Pirates of the Caribbean II was so full-on it actually made my eyes hurt

are we at the point in the thread yet where someone starts the ILX 1984 parody thread about how harryhausen is so much more believable than whatever that crap was in the last starfighter

"some films with greater production values have production values which are objectively higher than other films with demonstrably lower production values, and this affects my enjoyment of them to a subjective degree dependent on my own ideals of the films' potential and purpose, among other things"

I remember someone saying really loudly in the cinema "how do they do that?!" when skeletons dripping with water climbed up ropes in Pirates of the Caribbean. This was in Bristol though, where people are impressed if you walk on your hind legs.

Exactly. There are things CGI does effectively and then there's stuff that it isn't necessary for.

It's that non-necessary CGI that gets on my nerves. Getting back to Indy 4, the Shia/Monkey chase didn't bother me because it's super-frenetic and rapid fire. You never really get time to adjust to anything. However, earlier in the movie is an establishing shot of some cars driving on a air force base (this is right after Indy & the mushroom cloud). It's completely CGI and sloppy at it too. Couldn't Spielberg, etc. hired a couple vintage Plymouths and gone out to some of the old hangars at Edwards? (the F-86s and mountains could have been unobviously been cgi'ed in later)

The shot is only a couple seconds, but it's like someone pasted in a scene from Cars

I don't know if it counts as crying but the CGI in Pirates of the Caribbean II was so full-on it actually made my eyes hurt

I watched Pirates III on Blu-Ray and the differences between real/CGI were embarrassingly noticeable.

xp, yeah, you sometimes get the feeling that if director's like Spielberg can't shoot something in a studio on a lot and sleep in their own bed at the end of the day then convince themselves it's OK to CGI it.

some good CGI:

http://thecia.com.au/reviews/j/images/jarhead-8.jpg

I though the cgi scenes at night looked unreal in a very effective way

i've read this whole thread and am still not sure if the complaint is about movie-rockist types who think cgi is the visual equivalent of synthesizers and drum machines or people who just think shitty visual effects are shitty and sometimes distracting no matter what toolkit they're done with.

t/s: complaining about bad cgi vs. complaining about hilarious rear projection in fake driving-in-a-car scenes.

I see we are at that point in the thread.

people who just think shitty visual effects are shitty and sometimes distracting no matter what toolkit they're done with

OTM

Corollary to that... just because you can use CGI doesn't mean that you should.

The Common Gateway Interface gets a bad rap.

Yeah, I had forgotten about two-face being 50% cgi(and i saw the film again on friday, fer gods sakes).

Maybe it's just an uncanny valley thing, where once you get humans moving around onscreen(especially rapidly), the faults appear more glaringly.

Also, similar to telecom's complaint, the hanger base exteriors were really, really obviously greenscreened and i wondered why. how much would it have cost just to head out to nevada or even the fuckin' desert parts of california just to shoot some really easy things?

I don't know if it counts as crying but the CGI in Pirates of the Caribbean II was so full-on it actually made my eyes hurt

I thought Davy Jones's face was incredible.

the best thing CGI has done, really, is enabling the existence of the lion, the witch & the wardrobe blooper reel with all these people running around made-up and in costume from the waist up while the waist down is just neon green pajama pants

I watched Pirates III on Blu-Ray and the differences between real/CGI were embarrassingly noticeable.

That movie is so horrible that I can't even recall the effects...far from the worst thing about it.

POTC3 is amazing. you just hate art

Maybe it's just an uncanny valley thing

I'm kind of appalled that it's taken 200+ posts for someone to use this phrase, which is really the key to a lot of why CGI in live-action films can be so off-putting. It (the uncanny valley) doesn't only apply to humans, either. Sometimes something that looks 95% real is far more damaging to suspension of disbelief, etc., than something that looks (say) 80% real. So much CGI just looks totally fuckin' creepy.

(This is in addition to the "people tend to use CGI to do shit that shouldn't have been done to begin with" angle, which is OTM. Fuck a talking dog, at least one with rubbery-looking human mouth movements.)

And I've been watching a lot of old science fiction films, and even the cheapies confirm that a decent model/miniature trumps good CGI hands-down -- it's not even close. Actual physical objects look more real, more tactile, and respond in all kinds of non-linear ways that CGI hasn't yet learned to simulate.

Having said that, CGI as a tool for enhancement, rather than creating things from scratch, is a totally different issue. Even so, it usually requires big bucks to make it look good -- and by "good" I mean "I don't notice that it's there".

Actual physical objects look more real, more tactile, and respond in all kinds of non-linear ways that CGI hasn't yet learned to simulate.

yeah my favorite is when you can tell that the boat is in a fucking bathtub because the splash droplets are bigger than the windows

some films with greater production values have production values which are objectively higher than other films with demonstrably lower production values, and this affects my enjoyment of them to a subjective degree dependent on my own ideals of the films' potential and purpose, among other things

i was gonna contribute to this thread but all my points have already been made.

although i will say that i don't particularly go for "special effects" movies anyway. i like depresso-realist dramas and south park.

I picked "vivisection" because it may be the hardest of them all to accurately depict without bad CGI.

BAHAHAHahahahaha

I believe Skinny Puppy has proved your point for you, years back.

I picked BFT because I'm assuming that's what kills the newscaster in THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW

the only salient point I feel like making on this thread is that the extra stupendous edition of Kingdom Of Heaven has some making-of bits on it talking about the SFX and Ridley's like yeah so and so my SFX dude and I were talking about this and that and I was all CGI this and CGI that and he said Build It Do It Real Man It'll Look Better And Cost You Less In The Long Run and then Ridley is all you know what he was right!

basically you can make 300 extras into 3000 extras with CGI and it'll look pretty sweet but making 0 extras into 3000 extras looks like ass (ditto square footage of scenery, scaled for miniatures, I figure)

The problem here and on the ProTools thread is that this:

1. Most criticism of ProTools in music and CGI in film is lazy and kinda dumb.
2. Therefore all critics of ProTools and CGI are idiots.
3. Therefore ProTools and CGI cannot be validly criticized.

is sort of unspeakably bad logic.

I can repost the thing where I reduce this to production values again if you like!

(I do like that you linked this to the protools thread because now I realize that reduction is equally valid for music, where I wasn't really thinking of that before)

Actual physical objects look more real, more tactile, and respond in all kinds of non-linear ways that CGI hasn't yet learned to simulate.

yeah my favorite is when you can tell that the boat is in a fucking bathtub because the splash droplets are bigger than the windows

I'm having a hard time identifying what your comment has to do with mine...?

Also, I'm not sure that ProTools is really the right audio analogy for CGI -- to my way of thinking, it's more like the difference between sampled ("MIDI") and real instruments.

That's way more specific that what I'm trying to point out.
There have ALWAYS been blockbusters where the special effects, regardless of type, rendered them unwatchable to some part of the audience because they seemed so bad or simply careless, and by the same token there's always been some movies that did poorly despite having amazing special effects that were pulled off using the exact same methods and techniques as the blockbusters.
That's why I'm trying to make the point that this argument simply reduces to "production value" - more attention to detail, more time and care spent, is the distinguishing factor, and it really has little to do with the tools involved.
so your argument about real models versus simulations falls apart the same way as any of the arguments for cgi - if the person in charge doesn't give a fuck, or simply can't afford to do better, the result generally looks and sounds like shit, especially compared to a case wherein the person in charge DID give a fuck and DID have the cash for another shot (or a better attempt in the first place)

the best thing CGI has done, really, is enabling the existence of the lion, the witch & the wardrobe blooper reel with all these people running around made-up and in costume from the waist up while the waist down is just neon green pajama pants

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, December 2, 2008 3:01 AM (5 hours ago)

this thread is an important thread because why did no one ever tell me about this before?

wait until you see when the minotaur dude does a faceplant while trying to sprint across an open field in said getup

I think you've over-reduced the argument, though, because there are a few big points missing, e.g. 1. it's easier not to give a shit with a mouse in your hand, and 2. lazy digital work has a pretty specific look and feel that folks can recognize and reject as dumber or faker or whatever than lazy model work.

i don't really see what that has to do with minotaur faceplant

1. the guy with the mouse in his hand is not supposed to be the final arbiter of shit giving

2. your second argument is complete and absolute bullshit

3. minotaur faceplant is totally worth all the crappy cgi in the world

1. Not supposed to be, but most shitty work was never really supposed to be shitty.

2. This is the point where both of walk away, muttering "use your eyes and ears, MORAN."

3. That may well be true.

both of us

Are we at the point where we can start making "LOL asperger's" yet?

like hours ago I think

why hello there

Hahaha

it's not until 4:25 unfortunately

oh wait this one's better, and it's at like 4:13 I think

I am fast becoming a minotaur faceplant aficionado

ahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa

second one broken whaaaaaaaaaa

copy the link instead, it works that way

lol at minotaur, point proven it's all better without cgi

man tilda swinton is hot

I have done special effects CGI work for the last 15 years (not in Hollywood). I go see most of the blockbuster effects-driven movies at the theater.

Very rarely can they compete with the effects in Forbidden Planet from 1956. Seriously, go back and watch that movie. It looks amazing... (Tron gets a big pass with me though. Love it)

http://www.tunequest.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/forbidden-planet.jpg

you can't really include Tron in a cgi argument, because their cgi was supposed to mimic computer graphics anyway. They couldn't really lose lol, even if the backdrops looked like speccy graphics i would have still loved it.

man tilda swinton is hot

Special effects will never advance to a level where this can possibly be true.

She's damn hot as the Ice Queen. You crazy.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

ile full of boring shitcocks film at 37

i voted for blunt force trauma because it is always correct to vote for blunt force trauma in any poll about anything

― t (o_O t) (John Justen), Monday, December 1, 2008 8:55 PM (6 days ago)

one of the great pieces of trivia about tron is that they were using different kinds of film during different parts of the shooting, which is kind of a problem when 90% of your sets are flat primary colors that never change. there apparently was no way to fix it. i think they even realized this during filming. so they created the idea that the "grid" would "surge" every so often, and during these surges everything on the screen would sizzle and flash for a moment, followed by a subtly different color cast to everything

this was told to me approx. 15 years ago so i have no idea if it's true or not

Sounds good enough to me. We'll see how the they do it on the sequel.

People who complain about "CGI" are hilarious. They of course complain about spaceships and talking monsters and such so they can feel savvy to insider Hollywood stuff. Of course they never notice the vast majority of set extensions, digital matte paintings, snow, rain, fire, and water effects, etc.

thank you walterkranz I was really just trying to get all these other kids to agree with those points all along and yet they refused.

eventually I was forced to making them all eat my mother's habanero jelly in a sandwich which contained no peanut butter whatsoever aha aha ahahahahaha ahahaha.

anyone who sees enough cgi to differentiate is lame

*to differentiate or care*

one of the great pieces of trivia about tron is that they were using different kinds of film during different parts of the shooting, which is kind of a problem when 90% of your sets are flat primary colors that never change. there apparently was no way to fix it. i think they even realized this during filming. so they created the idea that the "grid" would "surge" every so often, and during these surges everything on the screen would sizzle and flash for a moment, followed by a subtly different color cast to everything

― Tracer Hand, Sunday, December 7, 2008 1:25 AM (17 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that is a great story but i dont believe it! that's the kind of thing that is routinely fixed with colour timing anyway. but still, would be cool if it were.

People who complain about "CGI" are hilarious. They of course complain about spaceships and talking monsters and such so they can feel savvy to insider Hollywood stuff. Of course they never notice the vast majority of set extensions, digital matte paintings, snow, rain, fire, and water effects, etc.

WTF are you talking about? I don't give a fuck about "insider Hollywood stuff", and of course I notice when something's a matte painting. I like the way matte paintings and models look -- I actively prefer it -- even though I recognize them when I see them, and even though I can perceive their limitations. CGI is an effective tool for many tasks, but for creating things from scratch, I still find that I respond far more favorably to older techniques.

Do I need to type out the DVD commentary I have where Roger Corman basically says the same thing? He's the antithesis of holier-than-thou fanboyism, and he knows how to make a fucking movie better than anyone on this thread ever will.

type it out, i'd be interested in reading it.

Of course they never notice the vast majority of set extensions, digital matte paintings, snow, rain, fire, and water effects, etc.

If you can make the fire from your CGI explosion look seamless and real, more power to you. But when it looks rather obviously fake, that distracts and bothers me (cf. Indiana Jones IV).

type it out, i'd be interested in reading it.

Will do, though it may take a while.

I misread walterkranz's post somewhat -- not really sure how I did that -- and I do agree that some CGI effects pass unnoticed (though I can frequently spot a digital vs. physical matte painting, and I do prefer the latter). But like milo said, that's a total strawman.

In any event, for me the main issue with CGI is with moving objects -- nine times out of ten they still just look subtly wrong to me, and the fact that I can't quite articulate what quirk of physics or optics is at work doesn't invalidate my point.

all the cgi luvvers here are the same people who derided the deathless love ArianeB and I enjoyed

poseurs

"IN-CAMERA" FOREVAH

on the production values topic: apparently for CGI animation the time it takes to render a frame has remained fairly stable since the early days, since the good animators ensure that as the equipment gets better they actually use it well. The idea of CGI as a cheap, quick way to do a difficult shot turns out to be pretty much phooey, unless you want to look ten years behind the times. I thought I had something to say that hadn't already been said, but I forget now.

Exploding head in Scanners looks way more real than Jar-Jar Binks shuckin and jivin on planet laptop, fwiw

― uәʇɹɐƃu!әʍ ˙ƃ ʎәu!Ⴁʍ (Whiney G. Weingarten)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYHaarxQTFk

Pet CGI hate: the replacement of blood squibs with dinky CGI blood - just fall over we'll deal with it later.

Plus if we ever want to figure out where Wong Kar-Wai lost it we need only watch Ashes of Time: Redux and his replacement of the film's original blood spray with glossy CGI that's seemingly designed to contrast with Doyle's matte cinematography.

lol this thread

Pet CGI hate: the replacement of blood squibs with dinky CGI blood - just fall over we'll deal with it later.

This^

It doesn't bother much me when CGI is used for spaceships or monsters or whatever, but I hate hate hate when computer graphics are used for something that can easily be done live action. A CGI dinosaur moving in full daylight is one thing, but squibs have been around forever. There's no excuse outside of sheer laziness not to use them.

I have a conspiracy theory that part of the reason big studios encourage the overuse of CGI so much is because it looks faker and hence less threatening to children. Getting the PG-13 rating = more money.

nothing was more comical than the first CGI torso explosion in The Expendables

the mummy returns remains the low point tbf

oh no, the low point was realized much earlier

Spawn (1997): I think this might be one of the worst filns I've ever seen

http://chud.com/articles/content_images/17/Spawn3.jpg

god there was a shooting scene in Sons of Anarchy recently with the WORST cgi blood splatter

actually i think this movie might be the low point for big budget cgi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFM0DyOT2SQ

this is why I watch scenes like Savini's head exploding in Maniac and let out a satisfied "ahh"

Did you guys never see THE LANGOLIERS?
It's probably not fair to complain about the CGI in a 1995 made-for-TV movie starring Balki Bartokomous. Which is why I'm not complaining, I'm saying it's crazy polygon heaven!

there's some kid's cartoon on TV now about a bunch of racing dogs which essentially looks like the early games on the Playstation 1.

I have a conspiracy theory that part of the reason big studios encourage the overuse of CGI so much is because it looks faker and hence less threatening to children. Getting the PG-13 rating = more money.

That and it gives studios/producers greater control over exactly how much blood appears. My main problem with CGI work is that just like the shift from sequence shooting to coverage shooting it's another case of fuckitwe'llfixitinpostproduction, an abdication of responsability. Both tendencies compliment each other (you can't plan many traditional special effects without knowing precisely which angle they're filming from - not helpful when it could be one of a dozen angles) and both hand over power from the director to the producer.

CGI isn't evil, it's just easier to control and to budget. I can recall so many really awful, ugly, cheesy, lolworthy analog special effects from the pre-CGI era that I am quite contented with the new level of overall acceptable mediocrity that CGI provides.

A CGI dinosaur moving in full daylight is one thing, but squibs have been around forever. There's no excuse outside of sheer laziness not to use them.

Well, for certain values of "laziness." Blowing of squibs means keeping extra copies of wardrobe around in case something goes wrong, taking longer to reset if you need another take, etc. Time is money.

I saw a Scorsese quote last week: "We are moving toward holograms." I don't think he was disapproving cuz, y'know, DiCaprio.

http://i.imgur.com/skq3NUv.jpg

Wasn't sure where to put that.

And neither were they!

FWIW, the most recent FX extravaganza I watched--the new Star Wars--had the least obnoxious use of CGI that I've seen in eons.

I dunno, Snoke looked pretty silly. But other than that, yeah, the CGI blended in nicely.

The Lupita character was a bit ropey too. I'm not sure I can think of a decent fully cgied character aside from Gollum.

Snoke was cgi in cgi though - he was a projection.

What is the word for the thing in cgi where everything's happening all over the screen all at once? When there's tons of animated smoke or monsters or clouds all moving in different directions in a giant unnecessary swarm? Noticed some more of that in the X-men Apocalypse trailer last night. I guess people really like it if they keep using it in every single fucking superhero movie. Maybe it looks cool on some kind of drug that I'm not high on or something?

CGI backgrounds are fine, it's CGI characters that still rarely seem to connect.

I also really disliked the Lupita character visually. I think part of it is the inherent hamminess of the CGI "acting" -- their facial expressions and gestures are always so exaggerated and change so smoothly -- the neck swoops toward the other person and the eyes suddenly expand in unison like robotic camera lenses. Maybe eventually the tech will be so good that they'll just motion capture all the tiny little tics and facial twitches of a real actor and render them.

Snoke was one of the weakest bits of that film. Just a gigantic retread of Gollum. He even looked kind of, I dunno, cutesy? Why have a ginormous hologram in a massive cave anyway? Makes no sense. Lupita was a tolerable character that kind of verged on Avatar-esque at times. Had she not been quite so CGI'd it might have been more convincing. Don't think it was the actor's fault really. I never fully understood why the crew thought it would be a good idea to go and visit her planet in the first place?

It was a minorly annoying plot point -- the way they visited what was supposed to be this totally safe resistance-supporting outpost but there was actually a spy there, like there just was, no explanation, no one double-crossed anyone, they were just lax enough to allow an imperial spy to be there.

(Not the thread for it but) It's space-Rick's, right? The owner may have their own preferences and/or underground railroads but anyone can walk in the front door - someone (Finn?) says "The First Order are probably on the way".

Ehh, that's not actually Rick's, is it? Well, you get the idea.

What is the word for the thing in cgi where everything's happening all over the screen all at once? When there's tons of animated smoke or monsters or clouds all moving in different directions in a giant unnecessary swarm?

Particles, sounds like. You have a particle generator, you set up the physics, and then you replace the particles with flying robots or whathaveyou.

otm on Snoke, it was the biggest fail of TFA for me.

Why have a ginormous hologram in a massive cave anyway?

It's a conference room of some kind. There are desks and chairs and everything.

http://screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/Star-Wars-7-Snoke-Kylo-Ren.jpg

"We have to report to Snoke in Science Center B in 30 minutes"

I thought this was kinda interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24

He really should have just been an actual giant, like a huge, impossibly ancient being. Snoke's first reveal came across as this and it was only after coming back to the character a few times that the reality of it just being a hologram of a fake guy that it built into a let down.

Something about Snoke being so huge just made him seem less frightening instead of more.

Particles, eh? Seems like effects like those have been continually used for ill for the better part of a decade.

Good CGI is like XMen 2 fuck yesssss

― uәʇɹɐƃu!әʍ ˙ƃ ʎәu!Ⴁʍ (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, December 1, 2008 3:57 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What is this epic bacon io9 post

I'm not sure it's called particles but I have done some CGI work in Blender and it is called particles there and it's called that in After Effects and other production software as well. It's a way to procedurally generate animation for swarms of things. From snow and sparks to people and swarms of robots. Like if you want to CGI in some snow, rather than animating each snowflake as it falls, you just make a particle field, tweak the physics so it is falling/generating at a desired rate, and let the computer do the hard work. Of course it's not limited to "particles" as there are other processes that are used and many are developed in-house, I think most big movies have proprietary lighting and army generators (for lack of a better term). I know for LOTR they had to invent some new software to get the massive armies, to make sure they all act slightly different, have some kind of AI, etc.

Ultimately tho CGI is a tool like any other in the box and it is up to the filmmaker to imagine something worthwhile.

it all goes back to boids iirc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids

the Super Bowl Independence Day 2 trailer was not promising - too many scenes that looked like video games

Couldn't disagree more with the original post, people have just got far too accepting of this mostly wretched looking bullshit.
How many good films are spoiled by some awful looking cgi? Off the top of my head Let The Right One In (although the distorted facial effects were good), Inside, Livid, Great Yokai War (some of the practical effects are super cheap but they're still better than the cgi). Crimson Peak would have been much better if they were far more minimal with the cgi. Mama had moments where they combined cgi with an actress and it looked really good, why didn't they do that the whole time?

As I was saying about the new live action versions of Cinderella, Beauty And The Beast and Maleficent, the Cristophe Gans version of Beauty And The Beast (and his earlier films), most fantasy/fairy tale films: the actors look like they're in a film like Who Framed Roger Rabit but instead of hand drawn cartoons they're meeting videogame characters or in a videogame world. And that's a shame because there's a lot of nice design in those films and I imagine the concept art books are better than the films.

That's a really great video MaresNest posted but I think it's even worse than that guy says. Some of those backgrounds can have you wondering or give film backgrounds this curiously flat look and colors that are just too controlled and unified.

Some of Lord Of The Rings trilogy cgi holds up really well (The Hobbit was a massive step down), haven't seen Jurassic Park in too long to judge the cgi parts.

I don't think Pixar and the fully cgi Disney films escape these problems. After seeing enough of them the movements all look so similar and I just sit there thinking about the programming of the movements unless it's as engaging and funny as their best films like Ratatouille. Other than the colours and some really nice effects they can do, it's just not very nice to watch. I thought The Incredibles looked unpleasantly cold and drab.

I watched the videos about the abandoned practical effects in The Thing prequel and they do look amazing. It's been said that people (studio, test audiences and some of the film crew) weren't happy with the practical effects but there's a pretty solid consensus that they looked superior to the cgi they finally went with.

I wonder if they'll ever get there, if no technological advances will ever make people, creatures, fantasy environments that aren't too fake looking. It's a shame there can't be research and development teams unattached to any actual films, so they can work away for decades until they find all the solutions.
But a big part of me would rather people just didn't make films that needed cgi.

no film can be ruined by the quality of its effects unless it's basically a worthless film

Severely damaged is bad enough.

LOTR is the quintessential movie that does not hold up due to its effects

And script and acting

the way i look at it the main thing that movies have going for them as an art form is that they are moving images. the way a film looks is to me the most important thing about it. bad cgi ruins this

xp lord of the zings

yeah otm NV is off the boil here.

a jumble of randomly sequenced cgi-free good looking images

otherwise I'll check out the book on tape at the library

play to your strengths, movies

I haven't seen Lord Of The Rings in a while and I'm sure I'm could pick holes in the cgi but I don't recall any other films doing much better with cgi creatures.

All other movies have in fact done so

the cgi in LOTR doesn't bother me at all bc it's balanced with a pretty heavy amount of practical effects and great creature design. The Hobbit movies are basically 100% moments like Legolas taking down the elephant except they look more like a video game.

All other movies have in fact done so

― The Perks of Being a Wall St R (darraghmac), Thursday, 9 March 2017 21:40

???

the cgi in LOTR doesn't bother me at all bc it's balanced with a pretty heavy amount of practical effects and great creature design. The Hobbit movies are basically 100% moments like Legolas taking down the elephant except they look more like a video game.

― nomar, Thursday, March 9, 2017 1:41 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i watched the last 45 minutes of the second hobbit film (or were there 3 of them?) a few months ago and it looked remarkably crappy.

oh yeah there were 3 of them, jesus. what garbage

I was pointing out in a roundabout way RAG that you were totally incorrect and that the CGI in the LOTR and particularly as applied to creature effects is in fact one of the worst things in the sad entirety of human creation

i'm in the middle of reading the Hobbit right now, reading half a chapter a night w/our son. and it's a pretty damn low-key book and it could have been amazing as a film if Peter Jackson didn't make the dwarves leap around like prequel Yoda and they didn't need to give a backstory to every dwarf or...oh fuck it.

No no let it out man let it out

It's definitely the fault of the haters that 90% of CGI looks like complete horseshit.

so the horseshit was convincing

Darraghmac- again, what films have the best standards in this sort of stuff? (whether or not you enjoy them)
I'd say Lord Of The Rings and Pacific Rim are about as good as I've seen this sort of stuff but that doesn't mean I love it or anything.

The Hobbit films and Jackson's King Kong have this really bad look of pieces of jelly tumbling around the screen.

2 more good films spoiled by cgi: Dance Of Reality with the seagulls scene and The Last Winter is considerably damaged by the creatures at the end.

i'd like to tell everybody itt thati complained about how the new alien looks in the prometheus thread

For me the biggest problem with CGI is not so much CGI as the reliance upon CGI to produce spectacle purely for the sake of spectacle, usually endless fight scenes between CGI heroes, villains, armies, or other assorted imaginary creatures. Up to half of many 'blockbuster' movies now consist of this kind of repetitious, visually predictable, fakey-looking stuff and it makes for boring movies, once the initial gee-whiz-look-at-that wears off, which is quicker for each iteration.

There's very little inherent drama in watching two CGI animations hurl one another into walls for the fortieth time in the same fight. Just move along to something more interesting, dramatic, touching, or suspenseful, plz.

It's particularly frustrating how Chinese martial arts films for a long time have loads of people who can do really impressive spectacle but film it badly, slow it down too often and put in bad cgi.

This was pretty impressive: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/vfx/cg-actors-logan-never-knew-149013.html

i love cgi for immersive spectacle and the more-or-less "realistic" rendering of impossible things. thinking here of avatar's forest vistas and the wonderful skull-mine-outpost thing from guardians of the galaxy. and it's undeniably useful in lots of non-showy ways: extending sets & locations, detailing period environments, erasing wires & tech, blending long takes (cuaron, iñárritu), all kinds of stuff.

strongly dislike it for busy action sequences (aimless otm), creature effects that could be handled practically, horror gore, and generic background prettification. if you can't manage to get a shot practically, it's a mistake to think CGI will save you. while the tricked-out long takes work wonderfully in children of men, the obviously phony ping-pong ball business sabotages an otherwise brilliant sequence. the awkward artifice of that one moment makes everything around it seem fake, or at least suspect. same goes for fincher's use of CGI in zodiac. why, after you've gone to all this trouble to create a convincing and deliberately drab replica of the period, would you junk it up with a dumb overhead taxi "shot" that looks like a video game cut scene?

Transformers is awesome.

Aimless otm for once

never noticed either of the "phony" shots contenderizer cites in CoM or Zodiac tho tbh those films are great, wouldn't change a frame.

(altho tbh I wouldn't bother rewatching CoM)

LOTR trilogy is actually notable for how much practical effects it uses (all the stuff with forced perspective, etc) Those films were really a labour of love

Then Jackson got to The Hobbit and was just like fuck it

Lots of posts I agree with since that lay it out.

CGI that fits into the look and feel of the movie is one thing, otherwise it's jarring, regardless of whether it was wanted or not. That's the "bad CGI" argument.

CGI that looks fine but is clearly CGI, removing the....heft....the risk of stunt work or the skill of eg an amazing fight scene- that's another complaint. I'm not bothered by what happens the rendered model of the character, in the same way that my heart doesn't skip a beat for Roger Moore's geriatric karate as bond. I'm not convinced. That's the "Matrix was cool and ambitious at the time but now it's embarrassing" argument.

CGI being deployed scattergun as if CGI were a draw in itself is the Jackson curse. Ten hours of viewing where 90% of the activity was put together in post very rarely manages to meld performance, script, plot into this artificial framework.

Willow is still the best looking movie ever made, and will look like willow forever. Kids will be laughing at the joins in Jackson's movies forever, and won't realise that there was actually a pretty great set of characters and story in a book before this shlobbering moron got a hold of it. This is the "fuck off im never watching avatar because the CGI is the point of the entire thing and who gives a shit" argument.

NB it is possible to do any of the above and get it right. Compare and contrast the star wars prequels from a decade back to the recent ones for an easy primer, and Kung fu hustle looks shoddy in many parts but the CGI is in service to the cartoon feel of an exceptional fable, not the USP that made you hand over your tenner at the gate

Willow is still the best looking movie ever made

feel like this should've been in ALL CAPS tbh

It stands regardless

On recent rewatch, Gollum kinda looks fake all the way through. Time has not been kind to him.

any of you guys try to watch Gods of Egypt

I only just saw a clip of that 90s Langoliers movie holy shit.

Willow actually featured some pioneering CGI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKzbsDG58pc

Jackson LOTR vs Bakshi LOTR innit

My nephews slept through all the Jackson efforts but were unable to sleep after watching the Bakshi one, fwiw.

Yep

Willow CGI is cool electric magic shit that you can't actually make irl that's another pass obv

That Willow sequence reminds me that the aging sequence in City Of Lost Children is really good.

There's a movie i havent thought about in a long time

I'm not a huge fan of it but it looks superior to most science fiction films and shows you don't have to have a massive Hollywood budget to achieve that quality.

Never forget.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtxyfQtZlKQ

Oh, is the breath fake? I never noticed.

I saw Rogue One with my dad and he had no idea Tarkin was fake. Sometimes bad CG is only a problem if you're aware of it.

Did any of you guys see King Kong skull island, those guys were straight up taking the piss - early on there were a few shots with non-monstrous animals, like a cat or a seagull would be animated in the same defiantly sub-walking with dinosaurs way, it was like a message to the audience "we're going full roger rabbit with this one lads"

Good times

tangent: one of the absolute worst CGI trends is the appearance of unexpectedly vicious fluffy creatures in shit comedies

e.g. Ice Cube getting attacked by a rabid gopher or whatever

Oh Jesus yeah

I'd say Lord Of The Rings and Pacific Rim are about as good as I've seen this sort of stuff but that doesn't mean I love it or anything.

The Hobbit films and Jackson's King Kong have this really bad look of pieces of jelly tumbling around the screen.

― Robert Adam Gilmour

saw pacific rim in theaters, hated it. perhaps the cgi was good? i couldn't tell. everything was dark and rainy and moved so fast i couldn't keep track of it. now get off my lawn.

also it's two hours of big robots punching each other in the face I dunno that it's key failing is how real the big robots look

I am now going to meditate and learn to be at peace with people who enjoy two hour cartoon face-punch movies and believe they should be analysed in depth

"internet eh?"

any of you guys try to watch Gods of Egypt

― El Tomboto, Thursday, March 9, 2017 7:02 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im real curious about this cos it sounds like a totally insane fiasco on the level of the 80s Hercules movies.

Yeah it's, uh, pretty bad.

Some of the worst CGI I've seen. I think the bullets in Pootie Tang were more believable

I wonder how many Music Promos have cgi -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ttGgIQpAUc

gods of egypt is so bad than even i haven't worked out a theory why it isn't

(unlike the hobbit, which i can tidily prove to you is not bad and the jelly-stuff is meant to be like that and etc)

(not that i'm going to)

Gods of Egypt has the makings of a cult classic and I will be proven right by history.

darragh and wins touched on it, but my take is that cgi is another tool in your cinematic toolbox and you need some level of parity between the film's tone and the computer generated effects. jurassic park has fantastic things in a setting that's not quite realistic so the combination of practical and computer effects worked reasonably well. starship troopers is pretty bonkers from the get-go so crazy-ass space bugs don't break the tone for a moment

on the other hand i can imagine spielberg thinking "oh, i'll prime the audience for ALIENS in the last act of indiana jones 4 by throwing a fake-ass prairie dog in at the beginning and then some monkeys midway through"

as bad as the batman/superman movie was, the funniest shit is that all of the ridiculous animated characters are easier to buy than the shots where henry cavill's facial movements are weird because they removed a mustache he had during reshoots in post-production

uh, I meant to say justice league i think. they're both pretty bad though

Trying to recall when I crossed the threshold from gritting my teeth through pretty much every deployment of CGI to feeling like they'd done a fairly admirable job of ironing out most of the kinks.

The other day I watched Zhang Yimou’s remake of blood simple on MUBI, some lovely cgi shots in that I thought

the thing that disappoints me most about the cgi revolution is that it happened at a point where practical effects teams were creating some genuinely astonishing work, building on like 75 years of painstakingly-acquired expertise, and the rush to embrace computer generation not only slowed or stopped altogetger further development but it also created a decade-long dead zone where cg tech hadn't yet worked out how to do a lot of stuff that practical effects-makers nailed a long time before

where would we be now if stan winston or rob bottin or whoever had kept on being handed huge budgets and encouraged to go nuts instead of 75% of that money getting ploughed into rendering stations

(stan winston would still be dead today obv but u get my point i hope)

honestly we should probably break it down in 2019 because over 90% of movies have some sort of computer generated imagery and it's seldom the night sky or fog or w/e that we're complaining about. characters that are fully generated can still be sketchy, especially ones not based on motion capture, but overall there's a ton of work done that's practically invisible

I saw the new Blade Runner over the holidays and thought the effects were lovely with the pointed exception of [redacted name of CG-rendered actor]. De-aging seems to have been largely resolved but knitting a character together from whole cloth still has a very long way to go.

I thought that one was fine? And only the face was generated, they had an actor right there with motion capture tracking on their face

bizarro gazzara- you're massively on the money there. I didn't really like Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy but the aliens in that were pretty impressive and got me wondering about possibilities.

I still cant stand the way it looks in most films. And even if you cant tell when it's there it can still be detrimental, I think using it for backgrounds so often does spoil the sense of space even if you cant tell where the seams are. Oftentimes a new film just doesn't look very real but you don't know why.

watched the LOTR films for the first time over christmas and a lot of the cgi looks shit and dated

some of it looked bad at the time honestly, other stuff looked fantastic. i think abt how much it helped (and was planned for) that CGI of that era would ultimately be printed to 35mm, massaging it into the image more

I seem to recall the CG and general visual artistry worsening across the three films. I love those big CG battle shots in the prologue of the first film.

i think dr c is right in that its great-to-patchy but not in any pattern.

overall willow looks better-and is better- noe

You think it should have more floaty cameras and sexual violence?

LOTR CGI is generally fine, primarily because of the mix of CGI and old-fashioned trickery

even Gollum is mostly good still, imo

I do think by the third one there's some sloppy stuff creeping in

that's probably the worst part of the graphics in some films -- there's this expectation that it's a given and that it can be done in a certain timeframe with a very proscribed budget and you end up with underpaid and overworked animators cranking product out in order to meet a deadline. or studios think that the director/cinematographer doesn't need to be deeply involved in the animation so you get another type of tonal mismatch

yeah CGI for any huge movie is bid out piecemeal to multiple studios, who have a strong incentive to underbid to get work, and thus then have their staff working overtime to get shots done, and then some asshole decides that Expensive Reshoots are required and so on and so on

the way it's contracted out to a bunch of vendors like that kind of floors me

still can't believe how shitty the incredible hulk looked in thor: ragnarok, a movie that cost $180 million and that people liked and recommended

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/a41905a88e2dacc6746b754b4f6af4cef04b6895/c=421-0-2092-1257/local/-/media/2017/10/30/USATODAY/USATODAY/636449735557748089-ThorRagnarok5974d7a2aceff.jpg?width=540&height=405&fit=crop

You think it should have more floaty cameras and sexual violence?

― gray say nah to me (wins), Friday, 18 January 2019 18:46 (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whats the 'it' in this latest dig then

some nerd stuff on star wars scenes with people doing stand-in work had this tidbit:

Digital really blurred the lines, because you could put a late photographed insert into a shot from principal photography, as is the case with this Anakin hand added to a shot in order to match an edit. pic.twitter.com/NNINx2WSsX

— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) January 20, 2019

xp... the film willow

cgi is awesome, idk what all y'all are complaining about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OocVcZodzII

Okay, admit it, Call Of The Wild is grounds for making cgi illegal in live action films.

xpost I can't believe I've never seen Mortal Kombat Annihilation. The wide shots looked pretty great and thick matte lines made me really nostalgic.