Is serviceable CGI here to stay?
I'm here watching Furiosa which has noticeable CGI. So noticeable in fact that my partner, who doesn't give a second thought to the technicalities of movie making commented on it. Painted backgrounds, obvious green screen and so on.
What is also noticeable is that the movie wasn't cheap to make. It has also excellent, energetic direction, camera work and action set pieces and the character design has the same care as Mad Max Fury Road.
The movie also has this cooky, kinda goofy tone from the get go. Stylistically the CGI doesn't really get in the way because there's a real distinct step between our reality and this crazy world on screen. It serves its purpose.
So what's y'all's thoughts about this? I think with money and time (I guess they're the same thing) the movie could've looked a lot better and avoided the paintbrushly fogginess that comes with the green screen -- but would've that actually been worth it?
(There's also a lot of stunts, real handcrafted care and crazy, inspired camera movement. The movie's good, you should probably consider seeing it.)
I think that every method of saving money is going to stay, and even when innovation happens, it's not always a step up.
LED volumes, which are basically curved rooms full of high quality LED screens, often including a part of the ceiling, are sometimes being used instead of green screens nowadays. They're theoretically better because they can create realistic and dynamic reflected light on the actors.
In reality they often cause you to notice that the scenes are shot in a virtual studio because the background is always mildly out of focus and the actors never interact with most of what's located in it, so you notice that it's actually a 2D video and not a real 3D object. This can be worked around when the production really makes an effort, only uses LED volumes where they really fit etc. But that usually doesn't happen.
Personally I much prefer the matte paints and clearly artificial sets of old Star Trek to the LED volumes used in say Strange New Worlds, which paradoxically make it harder to suspend my disbelief, I guess it's a bit like an uncanny valley of VFX. But the old style sets would likely be much more costly to make, at least on a standard modern enough to be accepted by the mainstream audience, and I also think that the current Trek production simply does not have the creativity to do something like that anymore, so virtual production was the obvious choice.
I also have a nostalgic taste for the old school style matte paintings and similar practical effects. Someone else has described it as "CGI looks real but feels fake. Matte paintings look fake but feel real".
Which of course is the same style of mushy argument like vinyl just sounds better and the like. The best visual effects are those you don't notice, but when I do the effect I just appreciate a practical effect more than good CGI.
I just picked up an old reel-to-reel home tape player/recorder from the 1950s at a thrift shop, along with a ton of tapes. A treasure trove timecapsule of a few home recordings (families singing happy birthday), tv/radio broadcasts, pirated and format shifted content, and mixtapes. Content ranging from the 30s to the late 70s.
Anyway, this thing is powered by 4x ancient tubes, probably needs a ton of circuitry fixed up, and the sound is full of cracks, pops, and hisses.
Yet somehow, it is in some ways more pleasant to listen to than the highly-accurate reproductions of today.
Like the difference between a campfire and LED floodlights. They both light the area around you, but their vibe is totally different. Ambiance counts as a huge part of the experience.
Edit: Vinyl can 100% sound better for one particular tangible reason: There was a very, very long period where they were the best-mastered releases. A lot of content that got its first CD re-release in the 90s had absolutely horrible mastering.
I don't think it is - though part of that opinion may be that I am an audiophile who understands but doesn't much care about vinyl. But in the case of virtual vs real locations and practical effects, I think we could find tangible and rational reasons.
The first is that when practical effects are done cheaply, they have different downsides than cheap VFX. You may see obviously fake masks or in the case of Star Trek fake rocks and plants, but the lighting is never going to be off and the objects are obviously really in the scene.
The second is that we are used to seeing intentionally fake props in theatre plays, where it normally doesn't stop us from sometimes getting even more real and emotional experience than from films. I think it's conceivable that our brains may partly switch this theatre mode on when watching outdated sets and effects.
Third reason may be that usually, though not always, when practical effects are used, they are done with more attention to detail even if they're cheap, because the process of creating them is different and doesn't allow for many real shortcuts.
I'm pretty sure we could find more. I think that ultimately the reason why many people prefer practical effects is emotional (to me they feel like the people making the film/show simply care more and made more effort), but that the emotions have real reasons like the ones above.
I think it's just easier to suspend disbelief if there's something real to anchor to. Like, if I asked you to pretend a rock is a phone, it might not look like a phone, but it shares enough characteristics to make the pretense believable. But if I gave you a piece of paper with a photo of a phone on it, even though it looks like a phone, it wouldn't behave like one (physically or visually), so the illusion is broken. Your brain can pretend one thing is another, but it needs to recognize that the original object is real.
You only notice CGI when it's bad. The rest of the time, it might as well be the real thing, only without you being able to tell it's fake like a matte painting or a falling pile of styrofoam chunks painted to look like rubble.
Nearly every single shot of a plane in Top Gun: Maverick was CGI, but nobody noticed. Same goes for cockpit shots. People straight up believed the misleading marketing about the film being shot practically, because the CGI was just that good.
I'm kind of tired of CGI getting thrown under the bus. It actually works so much better than old techniques that it would never make sense to go back, but all people focus on are the relative handful of instances where it doesn't work out.
I highly recommend this series by an actual special effects expert on how these kinds of effects used to work, how they're done today, and how modern Hollywood marketing relies more than ever on selling the lie that "practical effects are better" while actual productions rely on digital effects more than ever before.
To be fair, this whole thread is specifically about serviceable CGI. I'm defending obviously fake practical effects above, but that only applies when compared to CGI that's visibly not real. I don't think many people complain about CGI that is actually well done, it's just that often times the production doesn't spend enough money to get that.
My issue with ”the volume” and similar techniques is that the sets look like video game levels.
Not that they always look bad, the CGI can be great, but that you can clearly tell where the playable area (the physical set) ends and the non-playable area (the screen) begins.
You know, that might be one of the most apt descriptions I've heard. A lot of this "serviceable CGI" and other modern effects are just off enough for our brains to latch onto it as out of place. Even in cases where we don't necessarily consciously notice it, some part of us still does. It can be more jarring than something that's obviously fake or artificial. The more closely they try to emulate reality, the more we'll notice something wrong or off.
I disagree. LED volumes are sometimes noticeable, but matte paintings are always noticeable.
I thought the CGI was fine as is. As you say, it works with the tone of the film. I don’t mind if an effect isn’t perfectly realistic, but I do dislike it when an unbelievable effect takes me out of the story, like some of the fight scenes in Marvel films where the characters appear to be weightless. There are limits to how much I can suspend disbelief.
I saw the movie a few weeks after it came out, so I went into Furiosa with the popular complaint "the special effects are really noticeable!" prominently in my mind. Once the movie started, I didn't really think about the CGI at all. When there was that one scene with Chris Hemsworth and the bullets, I heard beforehand that was a really distracting CGI moment, but during the movie I didn't care.
Of course when a movie has really amazing effects I'll notice and appreciate it, but when the effects are "ok", as in not terrible, and the acting, world building, or story are good, I kinda filter out the effects and don't think about them, which I guess means they're doing their job.