Discussion How do you want the new films to be made? CGI or Practical FX?

Sneak Peek Teaser for E7!!



Actually the fx for Metropolis still hold up! But yeah, even if they use a boat load of masks & miniatures, it'll be the year 2015, most of the young audience will have known nothing but modern fx. They won't risk making something that doesn't compete with Avatar etc. Even Peter Jackson stopped using miniatures!

 

Computer generated images (CGI) are special effects (SFX). "Effects" generally refer to "optical effects" - anything not captured live by the camera, even if the camera is recranked for multiple exposures. So all of the motion control stuff, stop motion & rotoscoping from the OT are considered "opticals" or fx. Practical effects are mechanical or technical in nature (such as animatronics, foreground miniatures or glass matte paintings) and are sometimes also considered special effects, it depends on who's making the movie and the genre. In a Muppet Movie all of the main characters are puppets or animatronics but they aren't considered "special effects" films; but The Dark Crystal & Labyrinth employed many optical effects (blue screen mattes etc.) and are considered "special effects films". The Elephant Man and Mask are not considered to be "special effects" movies and yet their main characters depend entirely on elaborate make-up appliances. It's really semantics.

 

This is a good summary. I remember listening to John Knoll explain their rationale. They would use model, CG practical effects depending on the time and cost and level of realism they could do at a particular time.

 

Both.

Of course filmmakers went nuts with CGI about ten years ago, it was a new exciting thing. And GL pioneering digital filmmaking. But now that we've sen enough finished products I think a mix is best. Backgrounds are fine, close ups I prefer something that looks lived in and real.

 

Look at this to see how far we have come:

 

That's not really 'beyond', though. It's just impressive applications of existing digital technology.

 

I say as many practical effects as possible. Just look at how ridiculous and overblown the effects in the prequels were. It was CGI blown everywhere.

"It's so dense. Every single image has so many things going on." - Rick McCallum

 

Dense with what? Combinations of every kind of effect, from the Q-tip crowds of the podrace to the matte shots of a real live volcano....the real magic is in the seamless compositing.

And even all digital creations like the Kaminoans were built from photographic elements.

 

So just like the prequels then!

HTML:

http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2013/03/19/the-under-appreciated-practical-effects-of-the-prequels/

What amazes me is that people actually think that EVERYTHING in the prequels was CGI. No, they were not. Everything from models to miniatures, props etc were used even the oldest mirror tricks in the book.

It's such a weird mind trick that people play on themselves that one version of faking it is more real than another version of faking it. People who will absolutely swear they can tell how real a model is because of the way light reflects off of it etc etc and CGI is so fake and they can tell etc. except they can't. "What do you mean that was a model? No it was all CGI not real."

People do realize that on the OT partial sets were built or not built at all and combined with matte paintings on glass adding live action? Somehow the "fake" shots in those movies are more real than the "fake" shots in the PT.

Using effects with everyone as a puppet or in suits in simply impractical now. It's what caused so many problems, delays and frustration to all when making the movies. Spend weeks and weeks and thousands of feet of film to get a barely workable Yoda puppet to interact with ONE person. Now it's done in days for the shooting and the actor or actors while the vastly superior and fully interactive performance is placed in later.

Shooting on a real location can be fine but let's go find Mustafar on Earth, Geonosis, Coruscant, Utapau, Kashyyyk etc. You can't they have to be done on green screen with digital mattes, miniatures, sets etc.

People in suits can be great but they are still people in suits. Even an incredible physical performer like Ahmed Best couldn't physically do the movement that a motion capture and manipulated version of Best's own movements could.

Like Lucas says on the ROTJ commentary talking about the fake Jabba puppet that is stationary on a cement block hidden behind a curtain to be revealed as opposed to GASP actually being able to have a fully moveable fake CGI Jabba that can be fully interactive.

I don't know about you but I wish people would stop looking at the OT through these ridiculous rose tinted glasses and see that stuff like fake Yoda puppet who can barely do a thing is no match for CGI Yoda who can do anything you want. Sometimes less is more but often as not less is less and more is better.

 

I understand that not everything in the Prequels was CGI, but some shots (Bounty Hunter Pursuit, Battle over Coruscant) like quite messy. Also, making the Clones entirely CGI in ROTS (minus their unmasked heads) was ridiculous and fake-looking.

I grew up with both the OT and PT and as for Yoda give me an engaging sequence of him as a puppet teaching Luke the ways of the force in ESB over his Sonic the Hedgehog flips with a baby Lightsaber in AOTC and ROTS.

 

I guess all those people hooting and hollering for Yoda in the theaters were hoping he would stop and meditate.

 

Sorry I don't even understand what you mean by that. They were amazing sequences. Again a combination of props, models, miniatures etc.

Again do you think they are fake looking because you know they were CGI? You are against the mere concept of them being CGI regardless of the movements being motion capture of real soldiers who they used? You would just feel better if they were men in suits and you knew that even if in the end it looked exactly the same?

I don't see the toal relevance of the puppet at all in this. What you are saying is that you were more interested in Yoda teaching the ways of the Force over him being in action sequences. Fine but that is a story point that is only indirectly related to the puppet vs CGI. The fact is that a CGI Yoda in scenes teaching Luke would be far superior to anything a puppet could do. It's not about the puppet but the character. What does make direct impact to a scene is that with a puppet it'd be impossible to use Yoda in a fight and make it look any good without faking so many shots that it'd be too obvious you can't do it.

For example Yoda "falls" in ESB off of Luke's handstand except he doesn't. We see him start to fall then cut to him getting up. We don't actually see the fall. Now we would and it would be expected. We forgive the OT movies for what they are because that is what they could do at the time but trying to get away with that now when you can do it is just cheating the audience and the movie makers themselves.

This also points to the thing that I personally see far too often whereby people who watch the OT filter everything through those movies and then create their own backstory. So when Lucas gives them the actual story he created it ruins their version. Going forward and making changes is so much easier than going back and making "changes" they are not real changes of course because the actual story wasn't told. People assumed that Yoda and the Emperor never fought with Lightsabres so when they were seen to it was at odds with what people believed was the case even though they made that up themselves.

Those people are simply the vast majority of the movie going audience who just want to be entertained at a movie and are not "fans" or even buy the movies or do anything but watch the movies.

That's why the PT made a measly 2.5 billion dollars at the box office 10-15 years ago.

 

I can agree on most of the points mentioned above, but the clones have really aged badly. Sorry, they look way too messy and fake, and the real person's head on top of them doesn't help the immersion at all.

You can get away with going CGI crazy with aliens and robots, since they can have any kind of physiology and movement you want them to have. You don't have a real world comparison for a General Grievous flipping and spinning around like crazy, so you can set him any kind of rules you want. Same goes for a vast number of aliens and creatures.

But you do have a comparison on how a real human looks in a suit of armor and the clones simply don't pass that test with me today. Again, the fact that you've stuck a real guy's head on them only makes matters worse. In fact, in the shot where Cody takes off his helmet and hands Obi-Wan his saber back - it is very obvious that the head awkwardly jerks back and forth, especially on BluRay.

 

I think a director can use a combination of old school effects and CGI effects for specific situations, but I think what makes a movie age well is using real locations. Real locations will always look real whereas CGI environments tend to look like video games. Just my 2 cents.....

 

Qui-Riv-Brid I get that a CGI Yoda can do many more things than a CGI Yoda. The puppet Yoda in ESB just looks more real and organic to me, even in his movements.

 

That's fine. I would say though that is simply your preference. I get it. I really do. I like the puppet too but I am not so much of a fan of it that I can't see it's deficiencies and problems. It;s a barely moving puppet that is "faked" with good direction and good will on the part of the audience. Look at the ridicule the TPM puppet got. Why? because it looked too good, too solid and "real." It didn't have that fragile look the puppet had due to it's construction no matter than it was actually much better and therefore more "organic". So for the CGI Yoda they had to make it look more puppet fake then they would if it was a totally new character.

Except the point is that the OT movies don't age well. Nothing really does. I mean they were made at the time with the tools available. The SE changes made vastly improved many things that they simply couldn't actually do no matter how much money and time they had then. Even with the changes you can't get away from the fact that one set of movies was made in the 70's and 80's and the other 90's and 00's. So obviously then all the "unreal" locations from the OT must therefore bother you? All the unreal sets with the unreal effects that you know are "faked" or it is just that one version of "fake" is real to you while the just as "fake" is less real? I don't follow video games but from various ones I've have seen they don't seem as real as the PT ones to me but if they are then they must look pretty amazing!

Again you can't do Mustafar and all those other amazing planets in the PT with real locations. So what is the answer then? Just don't go there and only go to a desert planet, an ice planet, a forest planet etc?

Imagine the total ridicule a major movie would get it they just tried to do things the "practical" way with no CGI. Never mind it'd be too costly but it'd just be laughed out of the theatres.

 

It's your opinion that the OT movies don't age well, and its my opinion they age well, that's why its an opinion.

And secondly, Lucas said in the AOTC commentary during the Kamino scenes that they could have built a huge model instead of using a CGI environment, it was just more expensive, but he said they COULD do it. So if it is a $$$$ issue, then that is a different argument, you are saying this can't be done today, and even Lucas would disagree with you. Look at movie like Bladrunner, that movie has aged well in my opinion, and its funny cause Lucas used that same template in his CGI environment called Coruscant.

You compare Raiders of the Lost Ark (real environments) compared to Crystal Skulls (mostly CGI) and in my opinion I think Raiders holds up much better. Listen, I am not trying to convince you what is better, because obviously we just see things different, but don't state your opinions that 100% of people agree with you, just as I won't say the same for myself.

 

I'm not saying that GL didn't go overboard with the digital visuals but I would make a sharp divide between what GL was doing and what most other filmmakers are doing. The visuals in the PT work on multiple levels and there are shots that are incredibly "deep", if you pause them, even tho they only last a split second, GL is building a whole world, it's analogous to what an illustrator or novelist does to create a world.He wasn't just falling back on the easiest method, he was actually pushing the envelope as far as it could go and really expressing himself and creating something that is incredibly beautiful to look at. I admire those qualities and I enjoy that I can still discover new layers in the PT, visual and otherwise.

I'm all for mixing it up a little, I started a whole thread on fantastic looking locations right on earth that could fit into SW. But the fact is that we are well into the era of digital film making. I'm not expecting E7 to be made like a movie from 30 years ago or to look much like one for that matter. I'm also old enough to remember how in the 90's most of fandom was down on puppets & stop motion (believe me, very few people were appreciating Harryhausen during that time) the complaints being that those effects looked fake ("jerky" motion, absence of blur effect which the eye experiences when it sees rapid movement in life, green matte-lines, static backgrounds etc). CGI was going to be the savior of genre films: "Finally, we can have realistic visuals in a sf-f movie!" Now it's the backlash to the backlash! Fans are starting to appreciate how beautifully crafted those fx were; audiences are also starting to realize that their own imaginations can provide a lot of the experience, and that it is an essential part of the experience, in the same way visualizing text is when you read or "filling in the blanks" between panels in a comic book. I'm glad that people are seeing this now, I think it makes for smarter and more sensitive viewing.

Where SW differs for me from most other film series is that digital tech has allowed every/any movie to have an epic canvas, and frankly, most of those movies aren't really epic, they're just overblown. SW on the other hand really is an epic story! And I myself want to see the most fantastical & detailed visuals possible, and all the big battles etc. If you did that in the old way the big battles in SW would look like:



That's nice but it's not on the vast, grand scale that SW should be on, imo. I want:







And let's not forget how many people complained about the puppet Yoda in TPM. "Yeah, but that didn't look right," they'll say. Well, one of the original creature shop guys who worked on Yoda (Nick Dudman) created it, working from the original molds and armature, Frank Oz operated the puppet and voiced the character, and GL himself directed it! Who's to say, even if they chose to go 50/50 between digital and practical, that it would "look right" to you?

 

They did build models for AOTC but in order for them to match the location footage they had to be shot digitally. ILM discovered two things: the models looked really small & lacking in detail when shot with digital film & the amount of light necessary to shoot them right caused the models to melt! So there was a break in model photography while they addressed those problems & some of what was going to be model was done CGI. And there are models in Kamino: when Obi Wan's gaze drifts up in the hallway when he's getting the "tour" you see a huge structure up above: that's a model shot! I'm pretty sure the hallway itself was a model. But how you could do thousands of fetuses in glass jars, all of them moving a little, with practical fx is beyond me!

 

Mustafar is a terrible example of CG versus location because a giant volcano with real liquid was constructed by the fantastic ILM model crew. Not to mention all the live bursting volcano photography that was done.

Again the computer magic is in the compositing. Nobody's pushing a button and creating worlds.

 

If you read my original statement I pretty much said there is a place for both old school effects and CGI depending on the situation. All I was saying that they need to have SOME real environments or the movie will come off as one big video game. I think TPM aged the best of the PT simply because Lucas used some real locations along with some CGI environments, I think that was a good blend for the technology we have today. I think AOTC and ROTS come off as very video game'ish and haven't aged well.

James Cameron said it best about CGI, 'It should enhance a movie, not overtake it!" T2 is a perfect example as you have the Robert Patrick Liquid Metal scenes that enhance the movie with CGI, same as the Abyss. Even Jurassic Park has a good combination of CGI and Model Dinosaurs, but real locations that don't make the movie feel dated.

I have been saying for 20 years that CGI would be the death of the summer movie simply because directors would abuse it to the point of making the story and characters secondary to the look of the movie, and I feel that Lucas was guilty of this filming the PT. Sometimes limtations actually made the movie better because you have to focus on everything else to make the movie great: Example: Jaws.

The bottom line for me is the story and characters are WAY more important to me then how a movie looks, even in a SciFi movie, because the only reason I will revisit that movie 20 years from now is not to be wowed by the special effects, but to follow the characters you care about. Hence why so many summer movies are forgotten these days because they are just CGI flavor of the month. Example: Independence Day. I had friends who were wowed by that movie in 1996, and now think it is utterly laughable because the characters are so lame and cheesy.

Now if the look and effects of the movie are more important to you guys then we can agree to disagree.

 

Why can't it be a both and? Both for the original post and "FX vs story and characterization"

 

In a SW movie the "look" and the fx are a very important part of the experience, moreso than in other live action films. I'm not a Cameron fan but he's pretty much exclusively making motion capture movies now, so he's probably not the best example. Abyss & T2 have dated for non fx-related reasons that have made the SW movie timeless for me: Abyss is locked into a Cold War political message (which was trite and painfully obvious even in '89) and T2 is littered with early 90's stuff, down to the appalling Guns n Roses song. AOTC & ROTS are completely self contained fantasies and are aging really well for me and I think the PT has a very strong storyline, even if it is handled feebly on the dramatic end. I don't play video games, I read books, study art and watch films; consequently, that's what I bring with me into the movie theater.

 

Well, of course The Abyss is a cold war movie, but that's like saying you can't relate to 'Platoon' because it is set during the Vietnam Era or Saving Private Ryan because it is set during the WWII era. And remember when Anakin says to Obiwan, "Either you are with me, or you are my enemy...." That is so George W Bush post 911 world!


George Lucas in 1983 from the new book 'Making of Return of the Jedi':

"Special Effects don't make the movie, and they are only important to tell the story and to give the characters credibility. If the characters are not there and the acting isn't good, the movie will fall apart. People think these are special effects movies. I would say the effects contribute to 15% to 20% to the enjoyability, effectiveness, and popularity of the movie."

Sounds like OT George Lucas agreed with me.