ST Filming Techniques and Technologies for the ST

That kinda says it all for me.

 

People have different tastes.

I don't know what's dated about the Hoth scenes to be honest, apart from the stop motion tauntaun and the AT-AT, it's mostly shot on location apart from the indoor Echo Base sets and the Wampa lair. I actually find ESB look very modern to today's standards, it aged better than the other two movies of OT.

 

I think that's what dates it... It's the compositing of the snowspeeders, the stop motion walkers, the stop motion tauntauns, the miniatures and the lack of scale in the ground battle. I don't think it's any coincedance that one of the most challenging and 'pushing the boundaries' sequences (the battle of Hoth) is one of the ones that dated fairly fast. It's still a great sequence (helped by the editing, sound and music) but the effects are obviously effects and the ground battle itself is still very limited. The more one pushes the boundaries, the more technical challenges it creates (not always overcome) and the less sophisticated the technology at hand to realise the sequence.

I'm sure we'll get a similar sequence in one of the new films... where we'll have opportunity to see something resembling the 'perfect' ground battle.

 

You guys are talking about the dated look of the OT and I am over here thinking that no other movies that old stand up as well as the Saga does today.

 

It's relative isn't it? James Whale's Frankenstein still 'stands up'... as does 2001:ASO, the original Planet of the Apes, Silent Running etc. etc. but that doesn't mean that they don't, in comparison, look dated. Nor does 'looking dated' mean they are demonstrably bad. They are of their time. Films that harness cutting edge technology or push the technological boundaries always risk 'showing their age' a little more. Both the OT and PT were pushing the technological boundaries. I think that's something worthy of credit/celebration... regardless of whether one has a preference for one type of illusion over another.

 

I completely disagree on that.

The movie I find that stands up today was released after ROTJ but I still find amazed how great Aliens still looks. It does not look dated one bit. Even Alien and Blade Runner still looks good for today standards (even though you can already see some more iffy effects)

 

I was just adding some light humor to the convo, but to add what you are saying, my fav old movie that stands the test of time for me is A Christmas Carol with George C Scott.

 

I actually think CG often dates as badly as the practical stuff, if not more so, because the tech moves on so quickly. Digital doubles ( see early HP and the PT) I find bad for this. I think this is where balance comes in (and also ties into scale issues). I think CG opens up the whole Jurassic Park debate (just because you could doesn't mean that you should), especially when you're pushing the boundaries.

Also - agree - this is by no means a problem I would direct solely at the PT. I think most blockbusters share the same (video game) issue and for a lot of audiences it isn't even a problem. If you want to avoid being contentious about OT vs PT, I think the LOTR films vs the Hobbit films is a good comparison.

One set of films feels vastly difference to the other, and that can be put down largely to the shift in balance towards CG. I love the fun and the spectacle of the barrel chase, and the inventiveness of the Goblin Town stuff, but I don't ever "feel" any peril, compared to the battle of Amon Hen in FOTR, which is largely practical. Give me the real stunts of Raiders, or even the jump on to the tank in Crusade over CG doubles doing doing impossible twirls and flips every time.

 

As is your prerogative... That doesn't change my perception of it though.

I think the point I was making is that special effects tend to date a film regardless of how they are achieved. I think the only way to circumnavigate that fact is to have less effects sequences full stop. But I'm not sure that's a philosophy that should be applied to Star Wars... as Star Wars has progressively tried to go further and further... I’m pretty sure the ST will have more effects shots than both the OT and PT... regardless of what ‘they’ may say.

The battle of Yavin, Hoth and Endor all look like video games to me too... in fact, those sequences were primarily responsible for shaping some of the kind of video games we still get today.

I also don't agree with TLOTR versus The Hobbit comparrison. I think The Hobbit has infinetly better effects than TLOTR (which were, IMHO, ropey in many places). The reason why, IMHO again, TLOTR is better than The Hobbit has nothing to do with the nature of effects involved (although I accept that there's an argument for 'too much')... and it is interesting that TLOTR/The Hobbit does mirror the OT/PT debate in many, many ways... Also - Kingdom of the Crystal Skull utilised many of the same 'live stunt' principles as the early Indiana Jones films. Is it any better for it? Not that I'd for a second advocate getting rid of practical stunt work for digital... but I think that's a seperate debate.

 

I'm note sure what video games you were playing back in the 80s PJ

 

Mainly OT Star Wars ones....

 

I remember that wireframe look of Hoth well

 

by this logic, every battle onscreen is a videogame.

 

Yes. There is a huge difference between the battle in say Braveheart vs say Troy or any other large scale battle that hurls one CG army against another CG army.

And the games that came out of the 90s were recreating iconic sequences, not inspiring the look of the battles in the films.

Partly it's to do with the sheen that digital can give and partly it comes from the fact that at times in the PT battles there is a lesser use of practical elements in the frame.

And I have exactly the same feeling towards other films and franchises too.

 

I think you guys are misusing the term 'dated'. And Im not sure why anyone would be comparing the effects of a 30 year old movie with one from today. Sure the ATATs dont realistically walk, but people watch movies as a product of their time. What dates a movie is like fashion, pop culture references, or like noticably dated filmmaking such as overlong cheesy scenes with bad editing.
The reason the Star Wars movies are soo popular is because they are timeless

 

Indeed. And I found the Braveheart battles the most impressive (even if it weren't historical accurate, but that's another topic) although I like the Achilles vs Hector duel.

 

So are you stating that the battle in Braveheart is better depicted/.realised than the one in Troy? I know which one is historically more acurate and convincing for me... and it's not the one with Mel Gibson. Is the battle in Braveheart better then than the ground battles in TLOTR because it has more practical elements and less 'digital sheen' (whatever that may be)? I personally don't think so. Are the dogfights in the film Battle of Britain better than the dogfights in ANH and ROTJ? Were the effects in Space 1999 and 1960's/70's Doctor Who better than Star Wars becuase they used more 'in camera' effects and practical??? Again, I think you're confusing, or fudging, realism with real. One can't have it both ways...

 

Im still peeved iys unlikely we'll get an episode actually shot in 3D but guardians was converted and awesome so...

 

How about you just not watch it in 3D because seeing movies in 3D sucks? And exist to take more of your money?

 

Yeah, Yavin and the walker battle on Hoth strike me as game-like. The Yavin battle even has some Atari style going on the ships' readouts, but more pertinently the staging of the action comes across as a level being carefully programmed, step by step. On the other hand, Geonosis strikes me as the battle in Star Wars that actually feels like large scale conflict. At least in terms of SF pulp adventure, for me Geonosis succeeds in portraying war as messy and chaotic rather than an obviously plotted set piece which the hero "wins." As for looks and only looks, AOTC doesn't look like video game to me, but rather a motion picture circa 2002. Just as ANH doesn't look like a toy show, but a motion picture circa 1977.

 

Yep. Also, the critics said the same damned thing for the OT, that it was all to sell toys.

Anyone see Spaceballs? That was not making fun of the PT. It's all crass commercialization, wooden characters, yadda yadda Yoda. Been there, done that. But never with fans until they invented the Internet.

 

So I've been out of the forum for a while and didn't have the time to read everything from my last post to now, but I skimmed through it and read some of the longer ones. Before I chime back in on the CG argument that was reborn, let me answer a question that was posed to me. PS, how can I credit a quote to someone? All of your quotes have a lithe "THIS PERSON said" link at the top. I can't figure out how to do that.... this quote is from Pro Scoundrel

Resolution is a tricky word. A lot of people have this misconception that resolution is synonymous with quality, but that isn't the case. Simply put, resolution is just the size of the frame. A 1080p resolution is 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels tall; a 4k frame is 4096 pixels wide by 2160 pixels tall. So, technically speaking, you can blow up an image shot on your 720p camcorder to fill a 4k frame. It will look gross, because you are being forced to scale up pixels instead of leaving them at their native pixel size. The same applies to film scans. You can take a print of any size film - 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, 65mm, 70mm, etc - and scan it to any resolution that you want. I've even seen film scanned as high as 18k before. But just because you can doesn't mean you should. Like digital, film starts to artifact the more you blow it up also. This is because of the dpi of scanner. Dpi stands for dots per inch. It is a combination of the dpi and the resolution that contributes to the overall quality of the image. A good example of how this works is to look at something like an iPhone or a retina display. iPhones and retina displays have a super high ppi (pixels per inch, digital equivalent of dpi). This is why taking an image that might look fine on your desktop monitor might look blurry when you try to make it your iPhone's wallpaper, even though your iPhone's screen is physically much smaller. The higher ppi means that the pixels on your iPhone are much smaller, which means that a 1080p image on your iPhone will be physically much smaller than a 1080p image on your desktop monitor. In contrast though, the higher ppi count can make images on iPhone screens and retina displays look higher quality, even though they are smaller. Smaller pixels means we have a harder time distinguishing them, which means the image looks higher quality. Compare this to resolution. A 1080p video on your iPhone, which has a resolution of 640x1136, will look miles better than a 1080p video blown up on a 4k display (assuming the video is shot well of course). So when it comes to film, the dpi is the important component in the scan, but each different film print is only capable of supporting so high a dpi. Hope this helps Also, when it comes to billboards and posters and stuff, a lot of images shot for billboards and posters are digital. It just facilitates the whole workflow.

So back the the CG arguments and stuff that people have been having... honestly in the middle of this post I left for lunch and have forgotten a lot what I had to say But if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. For those of you who didn't read my earlier posts I am a visual effects and animation student, so I have a lot of experience in how they work.

 

That's my point. I am saying that a lot of complaint about the overuse of CGI explosion is really about how Bay tries to make every shots dynamic as opposed to CGI itself.

 

I could care less about Bay's use of CG. Most of it is brilliant (hello? ILM?).

I just want him to hold the damn camera still.

 

I think that there are similarities between Abrams and Bay in terms of shooting a film.

Just look at this scene for example and compare them to the Michael Bay shot