ST So J.J. Abrams wants Star Wars to feel real.

Yoda is literally 100X more believable than jar jar. Practical effects over racist cartoon bunny any day. Omg....

Insulting

 

Aw, come on. The racism is part of the realism of the character.

All joking aside, I agree that puppets can often feel more present. In some shots, Jar Jar looks perfectly present. I was saying that both characters would never fool me if they were standing in this very room. I would think one was a puppet and the other was a projection. The same goes with the best CGI, such as Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean, or the best film animatronic. Point is, you have to use your imagination, and the lighting and cinematography can sell very unrealistic effects, such as bad wolfman masks, or even CG animated characters. And even the very best practical effect would look fake if it was lit and filmed in a very stylized manner. Gremlins 1 looks more realistic than Gremlins 2 because of the lighting and camera movement being so much more realistic, despite an advancement in effects.

 

I agree with your previous points, but not so much about Cuaron. Have you seen Children of Men? If anything, Cuaron is the King of making the fantastical look and feel real. This is due to many of the elements you mentioned in your previous post, including the use of lighting. I'd argue Gravity has a realistic aesthetic as well, though it's certainly beautiful.

 

Indeed that end of Children of Men was the closest to being in a real war I have ever seen on film.

 

I've seen clips of it, but can't judge how the whole movie feels overall. I still find his style to be very stylized, which is not a criticism. I'm judging based on the broad, smooth camera movements in Gravity and his painterly (almost Rembrandt-like) lighting and color grading. Of course if you go far enough in that direction, it can help sell special effects in another way, not as realistic, but as part of a constructed reality. The reason fake effects pop out in a Lucas film is because there is not much hand held or fancy colored lighting or grading. Everything real in a Lucas film looks like it does in real life, so everything on top of that has to look as realistic as possible to merge with it. Whereas in a Tim Burton or a Cuaron film, everything looks like it has a style to it. Even if Cuaron or Burton shot in the real desert, it would probably look stylized in some way, either by color grading and camera technique, additional lighting, etc. This is not a criticism.

 

This is sort of nonsense. Basically the opposite is true. If Cuaron is known for anything, it's his incredible tracking shots that are very specifically making the setting and story feel more real by refusing to cut. The single-take shots that move all over the environment are meant to communicate a sense of immediacy and tactile reality. Even in Harry Potter he moves the camera through the geography of Hogwarts more than any of the other HP directors and the result is to make the setting feel entirely real and explorable.

 

Have you actually seen a Cuaron movie? Cuaron's films have almost a documentary level of realism. Him and Burton have absolutely nothing in common in terms of style or direction.

 

Personally, I don't feel like a lot of tracking shots are very realistic looking, but that's not a criticism. I know what you mean about it being explorable, but it still all looks like it is very set up to me. That's perfectly fine. I don't expect perfect realism from any film. It's an art form. I don't consider "fake" to be an insult, so I didn't mean it that way at all.

If you were to put hand held shaky camera and color grading on Jar Jar, it would basically look like Where the Wild Things Are by Spike Jonze. Many people would say it looks better, because they would not be able to examine the animation as easily. But that's not the aesthetic of Star Wars thus far. Sure, more camera movement and stylized lighting and color grading can obscure the flaws of CG, but I would rather have Lucas' more objective style to tie the saga together. Also, that objective style is an aspect of realism. Are we to think war documentarians are filming movies from the trenches?

 

As someone who generally prefers the classic static camera (such as in a David Lean film, etc), I understand what you're getting it. I also appreciate that your assessment of Cuaron's style is not an insult. I just think you picked the wrong director for your example, that's all. I would recommend watching Children of Men in its entirety. I honestly feel as if I lived in his version of a future England for a few hours, and it's a version that feels quite connected to reality (and the tracking shot sequence in that film is beyond realistic - its equivalent in Gravity has nothing on it).

I think you may have come to this conclusion primarily because of the use of tracking shots, artificial lighting and significant amounts of CGI in Gravity. But Gravity takes place entirely in space, and its aesthetic is not the best representation of the level of realism Cuaron brings to his fantasy worlds.

Tim Burton, Wes Anderson, and even Stephen Spielberg, I feel, have a far more stylized approach, IMO.

 

Sometimes long takes are so complex that they feel a bit theatrical. You see that a bit in Birdman, but this resonates thematically, of course. Cuaron's tracking shots are not like this. They're more in the spirit of Spielberg's oners on steroids. Some of them are so good that you don't even notice that there hasn't been a cut in minutes. I would recommend you go watch Prisoner of Azkaban or Children of Men to see what we're talking about.

 

I will watch that, and yes, they would be better examples. Except early Spielberg. JAWS, Close Encounters and Raiders really seem more objectively filmed to me. Just expertly so.

About Cuaron, I was also speaking about his Harry Potter. I felt it was darker and less natural lighting. More painterly than HP 1 and 2, and more advanced camera techniques. I love that one, by the way. That's the last great one in my mind.

When Spielberg was making Schindler's list, he decided not to do a tracking shot for one scene and just shoot it on a tripod, because he didn't want the film to feel as slick as his big budget films. I think that's the kind of thing that can make a movie feel more realistic.

 

JJ said less CGI and more actual sets. Of course, the OT had tons of bluescreen. However, digital does it better than film regarding travel mattes. And the PT had practical effects, sets, and locations. TFA will use digital for bluescreen and will have CGI.

 

Well Gravity is highly stylized but its also suppose to basically happen today and not be fantasy so any science flaws stand out.

 

Holy crap! A KenW post I agree with! Cue the Apocalypse! Yes, CGI can look real or fake. Practical effects (puppets, animatronics) can look real or fake. Much has to do with HOW they are presented. Jar-Jar (and the Gungans in general) looked way too cartoony most of the time IMO. OTOH, there were scenes where even though I hate the flop-eared moron, I was impressed with how he felt present in the scene . Those were exceptions, sure, but they were there! And even when a puppet feels more "present" and real, it can look terrible. Although the Yoda puppet in Episode I felt very present, it looked bloody awful. I prefer the CGI Yoda to that abomination. OTOH, I still think ESB Yoda beats the CGI renderings. So yeah, Ken, let it not be said I never agree with you!

 

Believe it or not, in 1998, the first thing I did after seeing the TPM trailer (I went to Waterboy just to see it) was write an angry message to ILM on their official page, about how animated the CG Dewback and Jar-Jar looked. They had a contact form. So I got this out of my system a looong time ago. By the time the movie was in theatres, I was ready to appreciate it on its merits, and was very impressed by Coruscant and Naboo. I think seeing animated creatures on Tatooine will always draw up comparisons due to the planet being from the OT. I appreciated the large scale that was allowed by advances in compositing and bluescreen. I realized that CG is just a different kind of "realism" than puppets, and allowed a lot of things that we would never have seen, such as Yoda in action and more agile monsters. I also realized that things like Taun-Tauns looked worse than the animated animals of the prequels. Both trilogies have their highly "unrealistic" moments, and I think we all have to suspend our disbelief and be absorbed into the story. When I saw TPM, Jar-Jar looked better in the movie overall than he did in those trailer shots. I was ultimately pretty impressed at what they pulled off, but I think Lucas cheaped out on not doing it as a head replacement on the practical suit they filmed. But it's his money, and I'm not going to tell the man how to spend it. It's possible it might not have matched completely.

 

To date, it is not possible to make a 100% CGI character look convincingly real. Just not possible. That said, I would rather suspend disbelief for a CGI character so that the character can do what the character was intended to be able to do....rather than deal with a muppet, that looks faker than fake could ever look...but hey at least you know it's really there next to that guy!

 

I did a google search for "JJ Abrams aesthetics" to see if anybody was talking about it, and this is what I meant in terms of "realistic" cinematography.

http://www.slashfilm.com/jj-abrams-visual-style/

So, to me the realism of Star Wars has only partially been about groundbreaking special effects, and more about realistic lighting and camerawork that allows the viewer to observe the scene in a more objective manner. Even shooting in natural daylight can result in "unrealistic" footage depending on the cinematography and color grading.

You look at a movie like JAWS, and even though that shark is fake, it is much more realistic than a modern Spielberg remake would ever be with a better shark prop.

 

I just want to see him hold the camera still!

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What's wrong with that? Yoda was incredible in the age of puppets and Jar Jar led to the current motion capture trend in Hollywood today (which will continue in TFA!).

1) Jar Jar isn't racist.
2) Both look real, but PT Yoda looks more real than both OT Yoda and Jar Jar
3) This is all opinion
4) It's just a movie, we all love SW, let's just relax

I agree with you on HP, but that's a part of why I disliked the Prisoner of Azkaban movie. Harry Potter is almost as much of a fantasy story as Star Wars to me.

Exactly.

Great post

 

Are the members of the Empire insulting to Brits? After all, almost all the imperial officers have a British accent...

 

I don't see how that is not totally subjective. I find the CGI characters totally convincingly real.

Now are they 100% photorealistic? Probably not but then what truly fantastic things in Star Wars ever has been 100% convincingly real in that sense? Machines come the closest but not characters though by ROTS it was easy to get lost in the CT's, Yoda, Greivous and the like as being high 90's.

Except oft times it actually isn't that is just editing whereas with CGI characters they are actually active in the same frame and having true interactions like any other human actor.

CGI Yoda I assume you mean?

 

Do you? By convincingly real, I mean if you didn't know otherwise, couldn't legitimately tell whether it was a puppet or CGI. There is none of that in SW, or anywhere in Hollywood. It hasn't gotten that good yet, where they could literally fool people.

My point is, even thought they can't do that, the pros outweigh the cons of using CGI, purely by virtue of the flexibility it lends the character. I'm much happier that I got to see Yoda do things.

 

Visual storytelling is about more than just realism. Like in the recent Planet of the Apes films, if we're going to have CGI apes, we can hardly do better than CGI apes with this much weight and personality; CGI apes acted to such a perfect degree. With real actors and technicians guiding the performances. There's a special sort of movie magic that happens when you get all those elements in line like that.

CGI is just another tool in the storyteller's toolkit. It can be used poorly, and it can be used wonderfully, and all the various nuances in-between.

 

CGI enhanced puppets and mocap.

 

In Dawn of the Planet of the Apes all of the apes, and in particular Koba and Caesar, look convincingly real.