This is a great series which I've been waiting to post until it was complete. Link goes to part 1 of 4. All videos here Short version is that there is always CGI. Always. What really blew me away...
This is a great series which I've been waiting to post until it was complete. Link goes to part 1 of 4. All videos here
Short version is that there is always CGI. Always. What really blew me away in these videos was the studios who edited out the greenscreen backdrops from their behind the scenes footage (using VFX to hide their use of VFX). That's bonkers.
Why are some people so weird about CGI? It's so insulting to these incredibly skilled artists, who often work under crazy pressure and for nowhere near enough money.
I'm not anti CGI but I do object to it becoming an overwhelming default making any alternative inconceivable. Practical effects have a beauty and an (sorry for the silly word) ontological status...
I'm not anti CGI but I do object to it becoming an overwhelming default making any alternative inconceivable.
Practical effects have a beauty and an (sorry for the silly word) ontological status that I'm saddened to see gone. It hits different when you make real objects do magic. Practical effects touch something deep and primal in my mind that is hard to explain.
I think part of it is like the enjoyment of a good stage magic trick; It's fun to speculate just how they managed to do something, creating an illusion of the impossible while remaining strictly...
I think part of it is like the enjoyment of a good stage magic trick; It's fun to speculate just how they managed to do something, creating an illusion of the impossible while remaining strictly within the bounds of reality.
I watched The Last Crusade last night and it’s kinda fun seeing what’s a model and where they composited things. The black box of CGI keeps viewers out of the loop. I’m sure if you’re experienced...
I watched The Last Crusade last night and it’s kinda fun seeing what’s a model and where they composited things. The black box of CGI keeps viewers out of the loop. I’m sure if you’re experienced in the field you can really enjoy good CGI because you’ll have an understanding of what you’re looking at. I’m a web developer and often peek under the hood to see how a site makes something happen. But to most people it’s all magic.
I saw someone describe it as "CGI can look real but feels fake. Practical effects look fake but feels real", which of course is wishywashy and very dependent on what types of film you grew up...
I saw someone describe it as "CGI can look real but feels fake. Practical effects look fake but feels real", which of course is wishywashy and very dependent on what types of film you grew up with. But there is something about it for me at least where if I notice the CGI too much, my interest in the film drops. It looks boring. Something like this is like watching a boring video game, compared to a proper action scene like this even though both uses CGI.
Something I've noticed recently is that in a lot of shots where I think CG "looks bad," I'm really reacting to the camerawork. I think we've all built up a pretty solid subconscious sense of what...
Something I've noticed recently is that in a lot of shots where I think CG "looks bad," I'm really reacting to the camerawork. I think we've all built up a pretty solid subconscious sense of what kinds of camera movements and positions are physically possible for a real camera, and shots that violate those feel a lot less real.
Not that a whooshing CG "camera" is always bad, but I think you tend to notice...
Pacific Rim vs Pacific Rim 2. The way they framed and "shot" the action was a big deal, and the failure to capture scale is one of the bigger reasons the sequel didn't work.
Pacific Rim vs Pacific Rim 2. The way they framed and "shot" the action was a big deal, and the failure to capture scale is one of the bigger reasons the sequel didn't work.
I'm not against practical effects, but I do see lots of wild takes in the film world. Sometimes that films that look fucking incredible have "shitty cgi" (basically any marvel film in the last 3...
I'm not against practical effects, but I do see lots of wild takes in the film world. Sometimes that films that look fucking incredible have "shitty cgi" (basically any marvel film in the last 3 years), and sometimes that 80s films look amazing when the practical effects look pretty awful and stuff (big trouble in little china for instance).
The Marvel films have great CGI, they're just shitty movies. All the CGI in the world can't save a bad script or boring edit. If you want an 80s film which (still) looks incredible with largely...
The Marvel films have great CGI, they're just shitty movies. All the CGI in the world can't save a bad script or boring edit.
If you want an 80s film which (still) looks incredible with largely practical effects, look no further than Flight of the Navigator (also Captain Disillusion's longest video) - although there was still plenty of heavy lifting done in post, of course.
I don't think the Marvel movies are shitty. At least not all of them anyway. The main issue that Marvel has is greed. As soon as they do something that's somewhat new or fresh in the genre that...
I don't think the Marvel movies are shitty. At least not all of them anyway.
The main issue that Marvel has is greed.
As soon as they do something that's somewhat new or fresh in the genre that audiences respond to, they go back to that well over and over and over again and try to mine it for all it's worth until the film that actually did feel somewhat fresh is now completely tainted and lumped in with what came afterwards.
Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Avengers were all very good to great movies when they came out.
They tried doing exactly what those movies did they made them somewhat unique over and over and over again to the point that the entire concept just became exhausting though, to the point where the only people who can still enjoy those movies are people who have been living under a rock for the past 20 years and have somehow never been exposed to them, or die hard fans who would be happy with basically anything they release.
I don't think you could reasonably say that on their own, all of those movies are shitty though. There's some legitimately good filmmaking in some of those movies.
You're right, Iron Man and Guardians (only the first one of each) are good. Thor Ragnarok is brilliant. I'm not sure where the Spider Man animated films stand with regards to being Marvel Official...
You're right, Iron Man and Guardians (only the first one of each) are good. Thor Ragnarok is brilliant. I'm not sure where the Spider Man animated films stand with regards to being Marvel Official or not, but they're also great. But overall I don't think it's unreasonable to say the MCU is mostly made up of bad films.
In the context of this post which is largely technical movie stuff, they're badly edited, which is why the fight scenes are so boring. They're overly obsessed with spectacle which is why people say they have bad CGI. They're badly plotted, which is why they feel like a series of overblown CGI set pieces with little in-between to make them an actual story. They're badly written, which is why characters tend to feel 2 dimensional and spend so much time standing around talking about the plot rather than showing us the plot.
I need to qualify "bad" a little there, technically they're competently made and the people doing the work are skilled people, especially the VFX teams - it's just no matter how much polish one applies to a turd of a script, it's still a turd on release day. Most of the writers probably know they're writing formulaic nonsense, but they're getting paid. I can't and don't blame them at all. Plenty of people have got rich off the MCU and good for them. Good stuff has happened because the Marvel movies have made so much money - other comic adaptations have happened which otherwise wouldn't have done. Although also Watchmen happened so it's not all good news.
So yes, a few are good but I don't think enough to make the statement "Marvel films are shitty movies" untrue enough to need much in the way of further qualification. He said, at the end of several paragraphs of further qualification.
I remember thinking the most recent Ant Man movie had bad CGI. Maybe it was technically great but the scenes were from another universe or microverse or whatever it was so none of the objects in...
I remember thinking the most recent Ant Man movie had bad CGI. Maybe it was technically great but the scenes were from another universe or microverse or whatever it was so none of the objects in the scenes except for the humans were recognizable. No amount of particle effects and shadows and moving objects make something that alien look real. Well, it's possible to make alien things look real but you have to model weight and realistic acceleration and things like that and that usually feels missing from superhero movies.
I used to notice often when some CGI from a few years ago would look absolutely terrible, even though they were fine when they came out. This has either slowed down or I haven't seen many of those...
I used to notice often when some CGI from a few years ago would look absolutely terrible, even though they were fine when they came out. This has either slowed down or I haven't seen many of those movies lately, because I hadn't thought about it in a while.
I think of early CGI as when they'd draw on the film, usually when they needed lightning or something magical. Those went from looking so normal to me that I didn't notice they were fake half the time to kind of silly now. On the other hand, Roger Rabbit still looks pretty much the same to me as it did when it came out; Bedknobs and Broomsticks looks the same to me as it did when I was 5. Maybe that's because the cartoons were never meant to look like anything but what they were.
Practical effects don't age the same way. The original Godzilla looks like a person in a rubber suit - just like it did the day it came out.
The problem isn't CGI itself, it's that the modern incarceration of CGI has enabled incredibly lazy filmmaking. But also, no matter how good some CGI is, sometimes old tech is better.
The problem isn't CGI itself, it's that the modern incarceration of CGI has enabled incredibly lazy filmmaking.
While I love that video, and the technology is really brilliant, this isn't a clear cut situation where the older technology is better in all situations. Back when film was the standard, requiring...
While I love that video, and the technology is really brilliant, this isn't a clear cut situation where the older technology is better in all situations. Back when film was the standard, requiring two cameras was prohibitively expensive for pretty much everyone but Disney. Even then, they rarely seemed to use it. With modern digital cameras this technique makes more sense. It just makes keying easier. It will make CGI look better and be cheaper and easier to integrate, it's not replacing it in any way.
Also, it's still CGI/editing out backgrounds that tech is enabling.
There's a reason I said "sometimes" and not "always." Aging makeup comes to mind as well. Never said it wasn't CGI, but the point is that a practicle effect (lighting/recording 2 different...
There's a reason I said "sometimes" and not "always." Aging makeup comes to mind as well.
Never said it wasn't CGI, but the point is that a practicle effect (lighting/recording 2 different lightings) was able to provide a superiour technique to CGI editing methods, even if CGI is used later to enhance it.
The reason they didn't use it much was because only 3 of these things were ever made. We wouldn't see much CGI either if only 3 rendering servers existed.
In what way though? I feel it's more of a factor of having cheap quality camera; and so instead of planning a shot or at least thinking about it creatively you just put several camera all around...
CGI has enabled incredibly lazy filmmaking.
In what way though?
I feel it's more of a factor of having cheap quality camera; and so instead of planning a shot or at least thinking about it creatively you just put several camera all around and sort out the rhythm in post.
That's kind of what I'm referring to. 'Fixing in post' is a bad thing. It implies either laziness with shooting principle or a laziness in preparing the storyboarding. Or a willingness to discard...
sort out the rhythm in post.
That's kind of what I'm referring to. 'Fixing in post' is a bad thing. It implies either laziness with shooting principle or a laziness in preparing the storyboarding. Or a willingness to discard them on a whim and force late script changes.
Part of the reason Jurrasic Park's CGI holds up 30 years later compared to most films over the next 10 is that it was incredibly targeted and was used to complement practical effects rather than replacing them wholesale.
And while the cheap cameras are a factor, I'd argue the CGI plays a bigger role in enabling it. Practical effects are expensive, so it's more critical to 'get it right' in fewer shots, regardless of thr number of cameras.
Aging and de-aging CGI is still mostly-awful compared to good makeup.
I'm fairly sure nobody will get a studio to sign off on a multi-million dollar investment without a rock solid storyboard and associated shooting script. When production can costs hundreds of...
I'm fairly sure nobody will get a studio to sign off on a multi-million dollar investment without a rock solid storyboard and associated shooting script. When production can costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, winging it and letting the VFX team sort it out just isn't an option.
You can get away with it for some things, like dialogue when you know your actors are going to nail it - eg, Community scripts often had "Donald Glover does stuff here" because he's such a good improviser - and on certain types of film you can just let the cameras roll and see how it goes but that's almost always to do with acting.
Most, if not all, cases of "fix it in post" happen when the planned shot couldn't happen for some reason. Maybe the light was going and there wasn't time for another take. Maybe the actors were tired. Maybe the Cambodian government wanted their helicopters back. Maybe there was a technical fault with the camera. etc. You'll note the TV Tropes page you linked to has very few examples, and it also covers why people try to avoid doing it. Fix it in post is an error, not a plan.
Jurassic Park's VFX were amazing at the time but they do look fairly shonky these days, but it doesn't matter because it's a good story. ILM in those days were so freakin' good that even in 1993 they were years ahead of anyone else, and Spielberg is a fantastic director. But there's a lot of hacks in Jurassic Park to cover up shortcomings of the tech and make the effects look good. Corridor Crew have a great video on the topic (you might be surprised by how much CGI there actually is)
You would think so, but that's the case with a lot of recent big-budget films. Most notoriously, Avengers: Endgame didn't even have their costume design finalized and they had to add the costumes...
I'm fairly sure nobody will get a studio to sign off on a multi-million dollar investment without a rock solid storyboard and associated shooting script. When production can costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, winging it and letting the VFX team sort it out just isn't an option.
You would think so, but that's the case with a lot of recent big-budget films. Most notoriously, Avengers: Endgame didn't even have their costume design finalized and they had to add the costumes in post.
I'm a huge fan of writers and scripts, but on Endgame, as good as the movie is, as good as the movies those writers had given us were up to then, they still hadn't nailed what we got in the final...
I'm a huge fan of writers and scripts, but on Endgame, as good as the movie is, as good as the movies those writers had given us were up to then, they still hadn't nailed what we got in the final form.
One of the behind the scenes bits concerns the climatic moment of the entire epic. Where Tony steals the gems off Thanos, and holds his hand up. They knew they needed him to say something. To have something. The moment needed it.
And they didn't know what the fuck to have him say. They tried all kinds of stuff apparently. And then one of the editors, I think, was like "just have him say 'I am Iron Man.'"
Which is a genius line for that moment. It's perfect. It brings the arc back to Tony's origin, it plays off Thanos' having been wandering around grimly stating "I am inevitable", and all that. But that line, that moment that brought the infinity saga finally to rest, that put the last bits of ink on the page of Tony Stark's arc in the MCU ... the writers didn't have it. Neither did the directors.
They worked it, played with it, massaged and trialed and failed it, until they found it.
That moment is both amazing, and super annoying. Because I love writers, but they didn't have that moment figured out. And you really think that'd be a moment you write towards, throughout most of the story. But they just kind of wrote, and got there, and were like "hmmm, I dunno." And the directors even were just like "ehh, whatever, come back to it."
Sure they did get there, eventually. But what if they hadn't? Further, that moment, the final version of that shot we got in the finished film, that was a pickup. They had to bring Downy back in and put him in the dot suit and act out a bunch of stuff they'd come up with to see and hear.
You write a script so when you put a cast and crew together, you know what everyone's there to do. I feel like it's an important part of the process, and it's one of the things that CG and various other "techniques" have encouraged this era of filmmakers to let go. Used to be, you had to have your shit figured out before you called action. Now, they're all just like "ehh, whatever, come back to it later."
Little less "eh" would be nice these days is what I'm saying. Little more "we know" would be a welcome return to good filmmaking. Gosh, even a plan maybe. You could call it a script, use it to generate storyboards, which were this thing productions would use to map out who was where doing what while the camera did X and Y and Z to see it.
It may be a roundabout effect to be honest. The thing that practical effects encourage is restraint. If you're a director making a movie about an alien, in your head, you may want a crazy over the...
It may be a roundabout effect to be honest.
The thing that practical effects encourage is restraint. If you're a director making a movie about an alien, in your head, you may want a crazy over the top pseudopod blob with no face, and you may envision otherworldly experiences that you'd like to depict on set with ethereal and colorful effects, but that's simply your vision. Audiences don't know what's going on in your head, they only have their own experiences, some of which are universal and some that aren't.
If you're forced to rely on practical effects, you may be forced to settle for a star trek style alien with something on their forehead and some pointy ears. A humanoid just so happens to be a more universally related to creature for audiences though. They understand what then guy with the weird forehead and ears is feeling because they can read his facial expressions, and even though in the directors head, the alien blob would also be perfectly empathetic, audiences wouldn't identify with it nearly as much.
As a result, the story becomes more grounded and impactful because of the limitations imposed on you.
Of course, a great director would have the self awareness to be able to restrain themselves, or only use over the top CGI intentionally, where it's warranted. Great directors are rare though. It's much easier to just let the tools carry you away.
Spielberg famously had to work around not having a shark to show in Jaws. And for decades now, film students and critics and directors have praised the genius of that decision. How it added...
Spielberg famously had to work around not having a shark to show in Jaws. And for decades now, film students and critics and directors have praised the genius of that decision. How it added tension and stakes, how it took advantage of the unknown to let the audience play with so much that was going on in their heads. In the theater of their minds. Which worked brilliantly.
Today's directors, sometimes not even on the student level with the way technology has advanced, don't often have to "settle" for working around something. CG and effects houses/programs can put just about anything on the screen for the audience. No messing around with a mechanical shark that keeps breaking, no stunt guy who can't see in the monster suit and refuses to do certain things you want because of it, none of that.
Restraint is a powerful creative tool. Needing to work a problem, to have to sit down and think of options, is incredibly useful. But so many in this era of movies, even TV these days with prestige budgets, they don't have any such limits. They just say stuff that used to be insane, that would make the producers laugh nervously before demanding the real plan. Now they say crazy stuff, and the producers are like "okay, so we'll have VFX do that."
Parker and Stone with South Park have a story they told about the "In the Closet" episode. They were like "we want to have an episode where we riff on Tom Cruise being gay." And the lawyers were like "fuck no, you can't say that, instant lawsuit." Even after Parker and Stone pleaded, and pointed out how funny it would be, no. The answer was no.
So they thought some, and were like "okay, so can we say Tom Cruise is in the closet?" Lawyers were like "no, just no." Then they thought some more, and were like, "okay what about this. We'll have Tom Cruise physically be in a closet. Like, we'll put our Tom Cruise in a closet on screen. Then can we say Tom Cruise is in the closet?"
And the lawyers were like "okay, that you can say." And the episode works brilliantly. It's amazing how funny it is when they build up to it. Way funnier than if they'd just had the characters wander around ripping on Tom Cruise for being gay or whatever.
Limitations enhance creativity. Anything that makes an actual creator (not those lame Youtubers who call themselves 'creators' just for vlogging to their smartphone) sit and think is a good thing.
CG is an amazing tool for storytelling. But when you just lean on it because you know you can have a digital artist listen to you describe something, and have it appear, it turns into the kind of thing this thread is lamenting. Where you wonder where the magic that used to be an essential part of cinematic storytelling has gone.
The audience's imagination is a powerful tool. But you'd never know that if you never have to use it. It's a forgotten paintbrush in the bucket that today's productions don't know how to use.
I just saw an interesting example of CGI. Unfortunately, Netflix won't let me screenshot it. In Unfrosted, the new Seinfeld movie I'm not sure if it's either bad or hysterical, they give someone a...
I just saw an interesting example of CGI. Unfortunately, Netflix won't let me screenshot it. In Unfrosted, the new Seinfeld movie I'm not sure if it's either bad or hysterical, they give someone a "cereal burial". That consists of filling the grave with milk and cereal so the coffin floats as if it were on a cereal bowl. A woman cuts pieces of banana to throw in the mix. The whole thing is very obviously CGI. And I caught myself thinking it would be so much funnier if they had made an actual pool of milky liquid with oversized cereal! The mere knowledge that real objects were used would improve the scene so much! If you need another comparison: try to envision all The Naked Gun gags made today, with all the practicalities of CGI. Do you really think they would be improved in any way?
I might suggest that what you saw was some bad CGI. I bet there were tonnes of other uses in even that dire-sounding movie which you didn't notice. Like with all sorts of jobs, when VFX are done...
I might suggest that what you saw was some bad CGI. I bet there were tonnes of other uses in even that dire-sounding movie which you didn't notice. Like with all sorts of jobs, when VFX are done right you don't notice anything has happened. Obvious big CGI set pieces like entire Michael Bay films notwithstanding, of course.
The mere knowledge that real objects were used would improve the scene so much!
I'm not sure how. TV and movies are all fake, all the way down. Would it be better if the actors were real people, without makeup on? Almost certainly not. Would it be better if the sets were all real locations, undressed (not to mention not extended with CGI) and unlit? I'm not sure it would. Take away all the 'fake' stuff in a movie and you're not left with very much. Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg tried something like that with Dogme 95 and it... wasn't amazing. It was a good experiment. But many of those films are not good.
I don't see any reason The Naked Gun couldn't be made today[1]. I'm certain that if David Zucker had the filmmaking resources available today in 1988, he'd have used them.
[1] That's not to say the currently-in-production remake which comes out maybe next year is actually going to be any good, of course.
Going back to my initial comment on this thread: "I'm not anti CGI but I do object to it becoming an overwhelming default making any alternative inconceivable." I am absolutely not talking about...
Going back to my initial comment on this thread: "I'm not anti CGI but I do object to it becoming an overwhelming default making any alternative inconceivable." I am absolutely not talking about "no CGI", nor do I believe any large-scale movie literally has "no CGI". Having edited professionally, I'm pretty good about it and no example on that video would fool me. You don't even need a "good eye" for this. Scale alone can pretty much guarantee that something is most likely CGI these days. However, there are still plenty of circumstances where practical effects would be an improvement, and admitting that is not equivalent to saying that movies should have "no CGI".
While it is all fake, there is still some tangible physicality (if that is a proper word here) that CGI hasn't quite mastered yet. There is a noticeable difference if what is on screen is just CGI...
While it is all fake, there is still some tangible physicality (if that is a proper word here) that CGI hasn't quite mastered yet. There is a noticeable difference if what is on screen is just CGI enhanced of something that is physical present or if it is entirely CGI. The more in the foreground it is, the harder it is to get right. Fury Road is well known for its use of real cars and explosions, but there was plenty of CGI in the background where landscapes where changed or the five cars the filmed were multiplied digitally in the background. The unnoticeable CGI usually falls in that category, which I think what is meant by fake versus real. There is a threshold of fake we can tolerate until it becomes uncanny valley.
The same applies to old school effects of course. Like back screen projection is generally fine for shots inside a car, but when the entire scenery of people walking outside is a back screen projection it looks just as weird as a totally CGI rendered background.
Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed watching all four parts. It’s pretty educational. I think his thesis that practical effects lead to better CGI (actors and cameramen have a better reference, lighting...
Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed watching all four parts. It’s pretty educational. I think his thesis that practical effects lead to better CGI (actors and cameramen have a better reference, lighting information, etc) is very sound.
Watching it, I realized that what I really dislike in modern movies are the set extensions. It just looks unbelievably fake to me, and you lose the sense of the action taking place in a real world with rules. The audience tries to anticipate movement, but can’t because everything is at the whim of the CGI team.
He was right of course to point out that matte paintings on sets filled this role in the old days. But it was also a serious constraint: the story had to focus on conversations happening in rooms. That meant you didn’t have the scope of scene of today, but it kept you out of trouble.
I read, but can't find again now, a really interesting piece about how when shooting Dune, Denis Villeneuve had his VFX team use sand-coloured backdrops rather than green/blue, because it made the...
I read, but can't find again now, a really interesting piece about how when shooting Dune, Denis Villeneuve had his VFX team use sand-coloured backdrops rather than green/blue, because it made the sets feel more immersive for the actors and also the reflected light from them was "desert accurate"
I'd bet you haven't noticed 99% of set extensions. It's constant. Even in TV, these days, they paint in and out bits and pieces and it's almost always un-noticable. Some sets are almost entirely "extension" and you'd just never know.
You might like this video from RocketJump film school 8 years ago (jeez I can't believe it's been 8 years...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24
The Corridor Crew channel is kind of the spiritual successor to Rocket Jump and has a regular series with VFX artists talking about / reacting to CGI that's usually interesting.
The Corridor Crew channel is kind of the spiritual successor to Rocket Jump and has a regular series with VFX artists talking about / reacting to CGI that's usually interesting.
There are some great breakdown videos for Fincher’s work. I’m Zodiac especially, all the blood is CGI, but there’s so much more. this is a shit quality video. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xW2xhBSfFps
There are some great breakdown videos for Fincher’s work. I’m Zodiac especially, all the blood is CGI, but there’s so much more.
I've added some tags. I'm not sure if they live up to @mycketforvirrad's or @cfabbro's standards, but they're a start. I suggest if you care about tagging you ask @Deimos for tagging privileges....
I've added some tags. I'm not sure if they live up to @mycketforvirrad's or @cfabbro's standards, but they're a start.
I suggest if you care about tagging you ask @Deimos for tagging privileges. Both of you have been contributing to the site positively for a long time, why not ask for permissions to help out?
What sort of tags? I included some when posting but I have yet to manage to post something which has got the metadata "right" despite being here over half a decade... :)
What sort of tags? I included some when posting but I have yet to manage to post something which has got the metadata "right" despite being here over half a decade... :)
The tag I was asking for was literally video lol. I generally prefer to read my content so I have the video tag blocked. It's a small thing but if I don't see most of the videos, I don't spend...
The tag I was asking for was literally video lol. I generally prefer to read my content so I have the video tag blocked.
It's a small thing but if I don't see most of the videos, I don't spend time debating whether to pull out my headphones and I'm not disappointed that I can't quickly skim the article.
Ah. That's WAY below the level of metadata that would occur to me to apply, sorry. Looks like someone had put it in though! This particular thing wouldn't work as text, but I would say it's...
Ah. That's WAY below the level of metadata that would occur to me to apply, sorry. Looks like someone had put it in though!
This particular thing wouldn't work as text, but I would say it's interesting enough to get your headphones out for. Although of course I would say that..
This is a great series which I've been waiting to post until it was complete. Link goes to part 1 of 4. All videos here
Short version is that there is always CGI. Always. What really blew me away in these videos was the studios who edited out the greenscreen backdrops from their behind the scenes footage (using VFX to hide their use of VFX). That's bonkers.
Why are some people so weird about CGI? It's so insulting to these incredibly skilled artists, who often work under crazy pressure and for nowhere near enough money.
I'm not anti CGI but I do object to it becoming an overwhelming default making any alternative inconceivable.
Practical effects have a beauty and an (sorry for the silly word) ontological status that I'm saddened to see gone. It hits different when you make real objects do magic. Practical effects touch something deep and primal in my mind that is hard to explain.
I think part of it is like the enjoyment of a good stage magic trick; It's fun to speculate just how they managed to do something, creating an illusion of the impossible while remaining strictly within the bounds of reality.
I watched The Last Crusade last night and it’s kinda fun seeing what’s a model and where they composited things. The black box of CGI keeps viewers out of the loop. I’m sure if you’re experienced in the field you can really enjoy good CGI because you’ll have an understanding of what you’re looking at. I’m a web developer and often peek under the hood to see how a site makes something happen. But to most people it’s all magic.
I saw someone describe it as "CGI can look real but feels fake. Practical effects look fake but feels real", which of course is wishywashy and very dependent on what types of film you grew up with. But there is something about it for me at least where if I notice the CGI too much, my interest in the film drops. It looks boring. Something like this is like watching a boring video game, compared to a proper action scene like this even though both uses CGI.
Something I've noticed recently is that in a lot of shots where I think CG "looks bad," I'm really reacting to the camerawork. I think we've all built up a pretty solid subconscious sense of what kinds of camera movements and positions are physically possible for a real camera, and shots that violate those feel a lot less real.
Not that a whooshing CG "camera" is always bad, but I think you tend to notice...
Pacific Rim vs Pacific Rim 2. The way they framed and "shot" the action was a big deal, and the failure to capture scale is one of the bigger reasons the sequel didn't work.
I'm not against practical effects, but I do see lots of wild takes in the film world. Sometimes that films that look fucking incredible have "shitty cgi" (basically any marvel film in the last 3 years), and sometimes that 80s films look amazing when the practical effects look pretty awful and stuff (big trouble in little china for instance).
The Marvel films have great CGI, they're just shitty movies. All the CGI in the world can't save a bad script or boring edit.
If you want an 80s film which (still) looks incredible with largely practical effects, look no further than Flight of the Navigator (also Captain Disillusion's longest video) - although there was still plenty of heavy lifting done in post, of course.
I don't think the Marvel movies are shitty. At least not all of them anyway.
The main issue that Marvel has is greed.
As soon as they do something that's somewhat new or fresh in the genre that audiences respond to, they go back to that well over and over and over again and try to mine it for all it's worth until the film that actually did feel somewhat fresh is now completely tainted and lumped in with what came afterwards.
Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Avengers were all very good to great movies when they came out.
They tried doing exactly what those movies did they made them somewhat unique over and over and over again to the point that the entire concept just became exhausting though, to the point where the only people who can still enjoy those movies are people who have been living under a rock for the past 20 years and have somehow never been exposed to them, or die hard fans who would be happy with basically anything they release.
I don't think you could reasonably say that on their own, all of those movies are shitty though. There's some legitimately good filmmaking in some of those movies.
You're right, Iron Man and Guardians (only the first one of each) are good. Thor Ragnarok is brilliant. I'm not sure where the Spider Man animated films stand with regards to being Marvel Official or not, but they're also great. But overall I don't think it's unreasonable to say the MCU is mostly made up of bad films.
In the context of this post which is largely technical movie stuff, they're badly edited, which is why the fight scenes are so boring. They're overly obsessed with spectacle which is why people say they have bad CGI. They're badly plotted, which is why they feel like a series of overblown CGI set pieces with little in-between to make them an actual story. They're badly written, which is why characters tend to feel 2 dimensional and spend so much time standing around talking about the plot rather than showing us the plot.
I need to qualify "bad" a little there, technically they're competently made and the people doing the work are skilled people, especially the VFX teams - it's just no matter how much polish one applies to a turd of a script, it's still a turd on release day. Most of the writers probably know they're writing formulaic nonsense, but they're getting paid. I can't and don't blame them at all. Plenty of people have got rich off the MCU and good for them. Good stuff has happened because the Marvel movies have made so much money - other comic adaptations have happened which otherwise wouldn't have done. Although also Watchmen happened so it's not all good news.
So yes, a few are good but I don't think enough to make the statement "Marvel films are shitty movies" untrue enough to need much in the way of further qualification. He said, at the end of several paragraphs of further qualification.
I remember thinking the most recent Ant Man movie had bad CGI. Maybe it was technically great but the scenes were from another universe or microverse or whatever it was so none of the objects in the scenes except for the humans were recognizable. No amount of particle effects and shadows and moving objects make something that alien look real. Well, it's possible to make alien things look real but you have to model weight and realistic acceleration and things like that and that usually feels missing from superhero movies.
I used to notice often when some CGI from a few years ago would look absolutely terrible, even though they were fine when they came out. This has either slowed down or I haven't seen many of those movies lately, because I hadn't thought about it in a while.
I think of early CGI as when they'd draw on the film, usually when they needed lightning or something magical. Those went from looking so normal to me that I didn't notice they were fake half the time to kind of silly now. On the other hand, Roger Rabbit still looks pretty much the same to me as it did when it came out; Bedknobs and Broomsticks looks the same to me as it did when I was 5. Maybe that's because the cartoons were never meant to look like anything but what they were.
Practical effects don't age the same way. The original Godzilla looks like a person in a rubber suit - just like it did the day it came out.
How do you feel about virtual sets, like Stagecraft? (most famously used recently in The Mandalorian)
The problem isn't CGI itself, it's that the modern incarceration of CGI has enabled incredibly lazy filmmaking.
But also, no matter how good some CGI is, sometimes old tech is better.
While I love that video, and the technology is really brilliant, this isn't a clear cut situation where the older technology is better in all situations. Back when film was the standard, requiring two cameras was prohibitively expensive for pretty much everyone but Disney. Even then, they rarely seemed to use it. With modern digital cameras this technique makes more sense. It just makes keying easier. It will make CGI look better and be cheaper and easier to integrate, it's not replacing it in any way.
Also, it's still CGI/editing out backgrounds that tech is enabling.
There's a reason I said "sometimes" and not "always." Aging makeup comes to mind as well.
Never said it wasn't CGI, but the point is that a practicle effect (lighting/recording 2 different lightings) was able to provide a superiour technique to CGI editing methods, even if CGI is used later to enhance it.
The reason they didn't use it much was because only 3 of these things were ever made. We wouldn't see much CGI either if only 3 rendering servers existed.
In what way though?
I feel it's more of a factor of having cheap quality camera; and so instead of planning a shot or at least thinking about it creatively you just put several camera all around and sort out the rhythm in post.
That's kind of what I'm referring to. 'Fixing in post' is a bad thing. It implies either laziness with shooting principle or a laziness in preparing the storyboarding. Or a willingness to discard them on a whim and force late script changes.
Part of the reason Jurrasic Park's CGI holds up 30 years later compared to most films over the next 10 is that it was incredibly targeted and was used to complement practical effects rather than replacing them wholesale.
And while the cheap cameras are a factor, I'd argue the CGI plays a bigger role in enabling it. Practical effects are expensive, so it's more critical to 'get it right' in fewer shots, regardless of thr number of cameras.
Aging and de-aging CGI is still mostly-awful compared to good makeup.
I'm fairly sure nobody will get a studio to sign off on a multi-million dollar investment without a rock solid storyboard and associated shooting script. When production can costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, winging it and letting the VFX team sort it out just isn't an option.
You can get away with it for some things, like dialogue when you know your actors are going to nail it - eg, Community scripts often had "Donald Glover does stuff here" because he's such a good improviser - and on certain types of film you can just let the cameras roll and see how it goes but that's almost always to do with acting.
Most, if not all, cases of "fix it in post" happen when the planned shot couldn't happen for some reason. Maybe the light was going and there wasn't time for another take. Maybe the actors were tired. Maybe the Cambodian government wanted their helicopters back. Maybe there was a technical fault with the camera. etc. You'll note the TV Tropes page you linked to has very few examples, and it also covers why people try to avoid doing it. Fix it in post is an error, not a plan.
Jurassic Park's VFX were amazing at the time but they do look fairly shonky these days, but it doesn't matter because it's a good story. ILM in those days were so freakin' good that even in 1993 they were years ahead of anyone else, and Spielberg is a fantastic director. But there's a lot of hacks in Jurassic Park to cover up shortcomings of the tech and make the effects look good. Corridor Crew have a great video on the topic (you might be surprised by how much CGI there actually is)
You would think so, but that's the case with a lot of recent big-budget films. Most notoriously, Avengers: Endgame didn't even have their costume design finalized and they had to add the costumes in post.
I'm a huge fan of writers and scripts, but on Endgame, as good as the movie is, as good as the movies those writers had given us were up to then, they still hadn't nailed what we got in the final form.
One of the behind the scenes bits concerns the climatic moment of the entire epic. Where Tony steals the gems off Thanos, and holds his hand up. They knew they needed him to say something. To have something. The moment needed it.
And they didn't know what the fuck to have him say. They tried all kinds of stuff apparently. And then one of the editors, I think, was like "just have him say 'I am Iron Man.'"
Which is a genius line for that moment. It's perfect. It brings the arc back to Tony's origin, it plays off Thanos' having been wandering around grimly stating "I am inevitable", and all that. But that line, that moment that brought the infinity saga finally to rest, that put the last bits of ink on the page of Tony Stark's arc in the MCU ... the writers didn't have it. Neither did the directors.
They worked it, played with it, massaged and trialed and failed it, until they found it.
That moment is both amazing, and super annoying. Because I love writers, but they didn't have that moment figured out. And you really think that'd be a moment you write towards, throughout most of the story. But they just kind of wrote, and got there, and were like "hmmm, I dunno." And the directors even were just like "ehh, whatever, come back to it."
Sure they did get there, eventually. But what if they hadn't? Further, that moment, the final version of that shot we got in the finished film, that was a pickup. They had to bring Downy back in and put him in the dot suit and act out a bunch of stuff they'd come up with to see and hear.
You write a script so when you put a cast and crew together, you know what everyone's there to do. I feel like it's an important part of the process, and it's one of the things that CG and various other "techniques" have encouraged this era of filmmakers to let go. Used to be, you had to have your shit figured out before you called action. Now, they're all just like "ehh, whatever, come back to it later."
Little less "eh" would be nice these days is what I'm saying. Little more "we know" would be a welcome return to good filmmaking. Gosh, even a plan maybe. You could call it a script, use it to generate storyboards, which were this thing productions would use to map out who was where doing what while the camera did X and Y and Z to see it.
Eh, whatever.
It may be a roundabout effect to be honest.
The thing that practical effects encourage is restraint. If you're a director making a movie about an alien, in your head, you may want a crazy over the top pseudopod blob with no face, and you may envision otherworldly experiences that you'd like to depict on set with ethereal and colorful effects, but that's simply your vision. Audiences don't know what's going on in your head, they only have their own experiences, some of which are universal and some that aren't.
If you're forced to rely on practical effects, you may be forced to settle for a star trek style alien with something on their forehead and some pointy ears. A humanoid just so happens to be a more universally related to creature for audiences though. They understand what then guy with the weird forehead and ears is feeling because they can read his facial expressions, and even though in the directors head, the alien blob would also be perfectly empathetic, audiences wouldn't identify with it nearly as much.
As a result, the story becomes more grounded and impactful because of the limitations imposed on you.
Of course, a great director would have the self awareness to be able to restrain themselves, or only use over the top CGI intentionally, where it's warranted. Great directors are rare though. It's much easier to just let the tools carry you away.
Spielberg famously had to work around not having a shark to show in Jaws. And for decades now, film students and critics and directors have praised the genius of that decision. How it added tension and stakes, how it took advantage of the unknown to let the audience play with so much that was going on in their heads. In the theater of their minds. Which worked brilliantly.
Today's directors, sometimes not even on the student level with the way technology has advanced, don't often have to "settle" for working around something. CG and effects houses/programs can put just about anything on the screen for the audience. No messing around with a mechanical shark that keeps breaking, no stunt guy who can't see in the monster suit and refuses to do certain things you want because of it, none of that.
Restraint is a powerful creative tool. Needing to work a problem, to have to sit down and think of options, is incredibly useful. But so many in this era of movies, even TV these days with prestige budgets, they don't have any such limits. They just say stuff that used to be insane, that would make the producers laugh nervously before demanding the real plan. Now they say crazy stuff, and the producers are like "okay, so we'll have VFX do that."
Parker and Stone with South Park have a story they told about the "In the Closet" episode. They were like "we want to have an episode where we riff on Tom Cruise being gay." And the lawyers were like "fuck no, you can't say that, instant lawsuit." Even after Parker and Stone pleaded, and pointed out how funny it would be, no. The answer was no.
So they thought some, and were like "okay, so can we say Tom Cruise is in the closet?" Lawyers were like "no, just no." Then they thought some more, and were like, "okay what about this. We'll have Tom Cruise physically be in a closet. Like, we'll put our Tom Cruise in a closet on screen. Then can we say Tom Cruise is in the closet?"
And the lawyers were like "okay, that you can say." And the episode works brilliantly. It's amazing how funny it is when they build up to it. Way funnier than if they'd just had the characters wander around ripping on Tom Cruise for being gay or whatever.
Limitations enhance creativity. Anything that makes an actual creator (not those lame Youtubers who call themselves 'creators' just for vlogging to their smartphone) sit and think is a good thing.
CG is an amazing tool for storytelling. But when you just lean on it because you know you can have a digital artist listen to you describe something, and have it appear, it turns into the kind of thing this thread is lamenting. Where you wonder where the magic that used to be an essential part of cinematic storytelling has gone.
The audience's imagination is a powerful tool. But you'd never know that if you never have to use it. It's a forgotten paintbrush in the bucket that today's productions don't know how to use.
I just saw an interesting example of CGI. Unfortunately, Netflix won't let me screenshot it. In Unfrosted, the new Seinfeld movie I'm not sure if it's either bad or hysterical, they give someone a "cereal burial". That consists of filling the grave with milk and cereal so the coffin floats as if it were on a cereal bowl. A woman cuts pieces of banana to throw in the mix. The whole thing is very obviously CGI. And I caught myself thinking it would be so much funnier if they had made an actual pool of milky liquid with oversized cereal! The mere knowledge that real objects were used would improve the scene so much! If you need another comparison: try to envision all The Naked Gun gags made today, with all the practicalities of CGI. Do you really think they would be improved in any way?
I might suggest that what you saw was some bad CGI. I bet there were tonnes of other uses in even that dire-sounding movie which you didn't notice. Like with all sorts of jobs, when VFX are done right you don't notice anything has happened. Obvious big CGI set pieces like entire Michael Bay films notwithstanding, of course.
I'm not sure how. TV and movies are all fake, all the way down. Would it be better if the actors were real people, without makeup on? Almost certainly not. Would it be better if the sets were all real locations, undressed (not to mention not extended with CGI) and unlit? I'm not sure it would. Take away all the 'fake' stuff in a movie and you're not left with very much. Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg tried something like that with Dogme 95 and it... wasn't amazing. It was a good experiment. But many of those films are not good.
I don't see any reason The Naked Gun couldn't be made today[1]. I'm certain that if David Zucker had the filmmaking resources available today in 1988, he'd have used them.
[1] That's not to say the currently-in-production remake which comes out maybe next year is actually going to be any good, of course.
Going back to my initial comment on this thread: "I'm not anti CGI but I do object to it becoming an overwhelming default making any alternative inconceivable." I am absolutely not talking about "no CGI", nor do I believe any large-scale movie literally has "no CGI". Having edited professionally, I'm pretty good about it and no example on that video would fool me. You don't even need a "good eye" for this. Scale alone can pretty much guarantee that something is most likely CGI these days. However, there are still plenty of circumstances where practical effects would be an improvement, and admitting that is not equivalent to saying that movies should have "no CGI".
While it is all fake, there is still some tangible physicality (if that is a proper word here) that CGI hasn't quite mastered yet. There is a noticeable difference if what is on screen is just CGI enhanced of something that is physical present or if it is entirely CGI. The more in the foreground it is, the harder it is to get right. Fury Road is well known for its use of real cars and explosions, but there was plenty of CGI in the background where landscapes where changed or the five cars the filmed were multiplied digitally in the background. The unnoticeable CGI usually falls in that category, which I think what is meant by fake versus real. There is a threshold of fake we can tolerate until it becomes uncanny valley.
The same applies to old school effects of course. Like back screen projection is generally fine for shots inside a car, but when the entire scenery of people walking outside is a back screen projection it looks just as weird as a totally CGI rendered background.
Better link to the playlist instead of the channel itself
Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed watching all four parts. It’s pretty educational. I think his thesis that practical effects lead to better CGI (actors and cameramen have a better reference, lighting information, etc) is very sound.
Watching it, I realized that what I really dislike in modern movies are the set extensions. It just looks unbelievably fake to me, and you lose the sense of the action taking place in a real world with rules. The audience tries to anticipate movement, but can’t because everything is at the whim of the CGI team.
He was right of course to point out that matte paintings on sets filled this role in the old days. But it was also a serious constraint: the story had to focus on conversations happening in rooms. That meant you didn’t have the scope of scene of today, but it kept you out of trouble.
I read, but can't find again now, a really interesting piece about how when shooting Dune, Denis Villeneuve had his VFX team use sand-coloured backdrops rather than green/blue, because it made the sets feel more immersive for the actors and also the reflected light from them was "desert accurate"
This is a different article talking about the same thing
I'd bet you haven't noticed 99% of set extensions. It's constant. Even in TV, these days, they paint in and out bits and pieces and it's almost always un-noticable. Some sets are almost entirely "extension" and you'd just never know.
You might like this video from RocketJump film school 8 years ago (jeez I can't believe it's been 8 years...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24
The Corridor Crew channel is kind of the spiritual successor to Rocket Jump and has a regular series with VFX artists talking about / reacting to CGI that's usually interesting.
I feel like this headline could be about makeup and/or plastic surgery too.
He does mention the toupee effect in the video.
There are some great breakdown videos for Fincher’s work. I’m Zodiac especially, all the blood is CGI, but there’s so much more.
this is a shit quality video. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xW2xhBSfFps
Do you mind tagging this video please?
@mycketforvirrad
I've added some tags. I'm not sure if they live up to @mycketforvirrad's or @cfabbro's standards, but they're a start.
I suggest if you care about tagging you ask @Deimos for tagging privileges. Both of you have been contributing to the site positively for a long time, why not ask for permissions to help out?
They're beautiful!
What sort of tags? I included some when posting but I have yet to manage to post something which has got the metadata "right" despite being here over half a decade... :)
The tag I was asking for was literally video lol. I generally prefer to read my content so I have the video tag blocked.
It's a small thing but if I don't see most of the videos, I don't spend time debating whether to pull out my headphones and I'm not disappointed that I can't quickly skim the article.
Ah. That's WAY below the level of metadata that would occur to me to apply, sorry. Looks like someone had put it in though!
This particular thing wouldn't work as text, but I would say it's interesting enough to get your headphones out for. Although of course I would say that..
Thanks for the recommendation. : )