ST Filming Techniques and Technologies for the ST

ROFL!! To you it does but then it always does doesn't it?

I find this other quote funny:

"Falcon chess board – stop motion done by Tippett. How cool is that? Could have been done so easily and quickly by CGI and its not."

Again someone who thinks that doing things in "CGI" is so quick, easy and not creative. What total rubbish!

I don't know how this would be done now besides stop motion. I guess there are several ways to approach it. For the prequels I would say based on how they worked then they would first create concept art of each creature based off of the original work and if they have them pull out the original models. Then make new reference models which would then be scanned to create a basic wireframe image and then do the rest digitally.

That of course assumes for such a relatively small background element tucked away in the corner than they might not do it in stop motion anyway for the relative few seconds needed.

Of course the "real" funny thing is as someone said when the video came out with JJ and the puppet from the Abu Dhabi set. The people that were all excited were excited because it was a puppet and they could tell it was a puppet just like they can tell when something is CG. They most often can't of course but obviously when you see a creature that can't possibly be a puppet or a person in a suit then it's going to be CG. It's the weird old "I can tell it's CG therefore it's not real" but of course they totally overlook the exact same thing when they can tell it's a puppet and therefore it's not real except for them it is.

Which is were we people who actually like both have it all over them because puppet characters or CG characters are both "real" to us.

I've said it over and over again and will continue to. It's all fake. None of it is real. It's all about creating and manipulating images. For whatever reason we have a certain segment of people who think certain ways of doing fake are real and other ways of doing fake are fake. Just another iteration of "it was better in the old days" thinking.

It wasn't better or worse just different. The images created in the prequels were impossible and impractical to do with analog tools.

I think it's been fairly evident for a long while that VII is going to use all the tools that the OT had that the PT also used and took to a whole other level that was impossible without digital composition. JJ wants to pull out some of the techniques in terms of stop motion and puppetry that the prequels didn't use at all like stop motion or puppetry which they only used some of.

Fine by me. I understand why some people who despise the "all CG" prequels (LOL!) think this is some rejection of those films.

Whatever. They can go on hating and despising and the like while I can have a grand old time watching Episodes I-VI and in future VII forward while they go on seething.

 

This isn't about puppets vs cgi. It's about aesthetics.

Movie:


Videogame:


Stop Motion Puppet:


After watching standard CGI effects for a while, suddenly this "different" type of animation comes out of no where, catching the audience's eyes.

 

If they want the Dejarik table in as a minor nod, why not get the guy who did it first time around to do it this time around too. No one is suggesting the Imaginarium have been booted out to be replaced by stop-motion. I think it's great to see them using every trick in the book.

 

It's a good idea... and a nod to the older movies (as some have suggested). Bottom line is that every decision, such as this, needs to make economic sense. If it's relatively simple/economic, then why not?. If it's economic to employ 1000's of extra's etc. then why not? I know I would. If it’s in budget... do whatever.

 

I would love to count the CG artists and CG effects groups in TPM credits and compare them to the count in EP7.

 

Wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to do that, as the way cgi gets done isn't anywhere near how it was at the time of TPM. 15 years is a lot of time when it comes to the advances of "new" technology, just look at where the internet was 15 years ago.
If you speed up the design process through advances in technology, you need less people to do the work more quickly. Accordingly, if they were currently trying to invent something new, they would likely need more people for it. You'd be much better off looking at the number of effect shots and find out how many of them where cgi. Though that wouldn't paint the whole picture either, as it says nothing about how difficult the shots were.

 

Fine by me but the mass audience have had their says long ago.

That's why the Jurassic Park CGI dinosaurs amazed the world and the stop motion ones tried over the years amazed a few fans in relative terms.

The majority will probably think it's just "All-CG" as usual anyway because of all the anti-CG people who slam all CG even when it isn't CG at all.

Tell people that the original film used early CG for the chessboard and they'll probably believe you or tell them they were replaced with CG for the SE's.

Like they are going to check?

 

Personally, I think it's sort of a desensitization to CGI. Notice that the last time we actually had a noticeable reaction to CGI was Avatar, which used a preposterous amount of CGI to make. Yeah plenty of movies have topped Jurassic Park in CGI over the years, but they don't really add much of an audience reaction.

For comparison, remember the first teaser for Independence Day? The one where the White House suddenly explodes? At the time, the idea of destroying the White House just seemed so shocking and edgy that it was popular.

One of the more recent GI-Joe films featured all of Paris falling to ruins. It was met with general "meh" after a few weeks.

So unless Disney literally wants to spend several times the US national debt to try and amaze audiences with really shiny CGI that won't really make the movie any better, they might as well go with a cheaper option.

 

I think that in the case of "G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra", it was more that the film was poor than the effects being, "meh". People will be fine with CGI being not so special so long as the film is worth it. Hence the success of each Marvel film and especially "Transformers", the latter of which has poor storytelling and directing, but hasn't been overtly impressive past the first film in terms of what can be done with a Transformer. Yet each film keeps making more money than the last, because the audience enjoys the ride regardless of how pedestrian the CGI is.

 

Which is always the case. In VFX ESB and ROTJ topped it but once people had seen it then they were never going to have the same amazement factor. If the initial film can be done then the upgrades later are not exactly startling. Pleasing yes. Startling? No.

Not sure what that means at all.

The cheaper and better option might now probably be CG for miniatures or it's just a choice and it depends on what you want to do. For Peter Jackson
he says he like CGI miniatures because physical miniatures are too limited in terms of being able to light them and are less flexible in terms of using the camera.

The technology that advanced the most, in the last 10 or 12 years, is really the fact that we did a lot of miniature shooting on The Lord of the Rings. All the big architectural structures of Middle Earth were really miniatures, some of them quite large. But, you’re limited to what you can do with a miniature because you literally have to have a big camera that has to sweep past it, so you can’t get too close to it and the detail doesn’t hold up too well, if you do.
This time around, there are no miniatures. It’s all done with CGI. Everything that we need to build, from a miniature point of view, we build as a CG miniature. I can now swoop in, over rooftops and through doorways. I can do things that I never could have dreamt of doing with the miniatures. For me, that’s actually one of the most profound differences.

 

and look how much "praise" Peter Jackson is getting it of ditching the miniatures in favour going all CG.

 

The issues The Hobbit has (when comparing it to TLOTR) has very little to do with the effects. It's more about the narrative drive, scale and an ambition to make The Hobbit bigger than TLOTR (which it really can't be in terms of drama, character development etc.). Some people look at The Hobbit and criticise the effects (not that the effects are perfect by any stretch) because they can’t articulate, or comprehend, the ‘actual’ differences between the two sets of movies. Same goes for SW (IMHO).

 

I don't think that's quite right. Yes, there are problems with the script of the Hobbit, but there is also a clear change in aesthetic that some people like less than the more tangible aesthetic of the LOTR films. It's a combined thing.

I agree that the same perception applies to the OT and PT though.

 

I think there's a bigger jump in aesthetic/digital v practical effects between TFOTR and TROTK than there is between TROTK and The Hobbit... yet TROTK is the best one of the lot (IMHO). Same applies to ANH and ROTJ/TPM i.e. I think the aesthetic of ROTJ is closer to the PT than it is ANH... again in my opinion. What is, I believe, sometimes conflated is 'scale'. ROTJ has a much bigger scale than ANH and therefore has more reliance on visual effects. I think it's that element that influences the overall aesthetic far more than how the effect is achieved... Although there is of course an argument that CGI makes 'big effects sequences' easier to realise/achieve, ergo they become more ubiquitous in modern films.

 

It does for me and for a lot of people.

Not sure where are you getting that with these Hobbit films, even Peter Jackson said that the battle of 5 Armies will not have the scale of Pellenor Fields battle. It has more scale and ambition than the book, but Tolkien implemented that with the appendices also with the addition of the Dol Guldur plot, but it does not have the scale of LOTR.

I comprehended the differences between the LOTR and the Hobbit even before the movies, just by reading the books, I did not expect going to the Hobbit movies seeing the LOTR part deux, nor did I expect seeing OT part 2 when I went to see the PT movies, but I can understand many people expecting such.

 

I've always preferred the puppet Jabba over the CGI versions, so to have puppet Hutts in the ST would be awesome!

 

That's a good point actually. I think TT and ROTK are bigger in scale than both Hobbit movies so far. The big difference is that the greater use of CG has let PJ do whatever he wants when it comes to the choreography of the action sequences, imo, to their detriment in terms of any feeling of peril.

The Goblin town sequence and barrel chase are both fantastically well choreographed video game cut scenes now (there's that term people love so much, but other than the word cartoon, which I think is even less fair, I can't think of a better way to describe them).

 

Just watched the first 'Star Trek'. Jeez this Mindel guy cant hold the friggin camera steady for two seconds. Even in the simplest camera settings theres is chakin chakin chakin ztztztztztzt, every 2 mins theres a freakin zoom-in or waving around the whole scene.. not to mention the lens-flare overkill... this really worries me.


Holy Fk i just checked Mindel on imdb and found out that hes behind 'Domino', in my opinion one of the worst lookin films of all time.

 

Indeed, if you watch the special features or the video blogs you could see that PJ likes to shoot in post-production with a mini-camera in a empty room, and with a monitor with a pre-viz CG of some of the areas, like Goblintown, Dol Guldur and other areas.

at 7:18

In Star Trek Into Darkness the camera movements are much smoother and much less shaky, of course using IMAX cameras that weight 5/6 times a normal 35mm camera may have helped

 

Watch John Carter and see if you hold the same opinion, Kwis. Or any of his other films. He and JJ were going for a certain look with Trek 09. I would lay money on them going for a very different and probably more classical SW look for VII.

 

The first Hobbit is my favorite looking fantasy film since TPM. Just gorgeous. I give Jackson major props for not limiting himself to a singular style.

 

What singular style?

 

The less vibrant, "grittier" look of the Rings film. I love those films, but in a lot of ways they lacked a certain something that I would describe as truly Tolkienish. The Hobbit really delivered the visual atmosphere I expected based on the source material.

 

I hope you're right, i really do. It just bugs me that a professionell can think that it is a good idea to begin every 3rd or 4th scene in a movie with a cameraflight like this:

 

I agree with that, the more colorful look of AUJ is awesome, can't complain with that.