PT Practical Effects in the Prequels- Sets, Pictures, Models, etc.

Movies and TV are a visual medium, meaning that the visuals are almost just as, if not equally as, important as the story and the characters within them. When you view a live action film or TV show, you expect everything within it to look live action. If you were watching the movie Beowulf, and all of the sudden a real human (not a computer generated one) entered on the screen, it would look just as out of place as if you took a poorly made CGI character or environment and inserted it into a live action movie. A blatant CGI object or environment in a live action film can be very jarring, and take you out of the story.

 

I agree with this, but I still care a lot about how the things we see on screen are made and how they look. I just don't get all worked up about certain things looking fake. And I have an extremely good eye for seeing things like that.

Anyway, I still think the prequels are some of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. They also have a stellar sound mix. Granted, most high-budget movies do these days, but Star Wars wins because of the uniqueness of most of its sound elements.

 

Man, remember the days when we all posted Sets, models etc from the PT?

What happened to those peaceful days?

 

We posted them all.

 

Son of a- What? All of them?

Impossible. If you'll excuse me, I shall travel the depths of the internet to find more Photos. I shall be back in dues time.

 

Good Luck on you 'damn fool idealistic crusade'.

 

Things were peaceful here at one point? I don't believe you.

 

Right after she was force-choked half-to-death by the man she loves.

2100 is also more effects shots than Attack of the Clones which is the film that most prequel bashers say is 100% CG.

And the reason we suspected TFA wasn't going to have any miniature is because ILM doesn't have a model shop anymore right?

 

The vast majority of the mainstream audience couldn't care less about "practical effects" or whether fake CGI looks "real." Neither do most fanboy geeks when they're being honest. They didn't care when it came to Avatar, The Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy. Disney and Marvel didn't put out geek-pandering panels at Comic Con telling people that Rocket Raccoon and Groot were totally real.

"Practical effects" is just a hipster argument brought up by some people specifically when griping about the Star Wars Prequels. It's a show of geek cred, demonstrating that they totally care more about substance even though most of these people will never write and publish anything in their lives.

Every year, the biggest blockbuster movies are mostly CGI fests. This includes The Force Awakens, which is hardly the technological throwback that the Comic Con marketing made it out to be. Flashy visual effects spectacles are an attraction, not something that turns people away.

 

No that's not the reason. ILM still uses miniatures on some of their films through the old ILM Model Shop that was spun off and is now 32Ten Studios.

The reason I suspected it wouldn't is because I hadn't read or heard a peep about them using models for the film.

That's the reason. But ILM still uses miniatures on films.

 

I think I've said this before, maybe even in this thread (I'm sorry all, if so,) but as a kid I knew grown adults who didn't even like Star Wars the first time around (old ladies, suburban moms and dads, etc), but who still went to every single PT film regardless because "well you have to go to see what cool new effects they came up with this time, at least." It was a draw that made people watch them, like, my parents and their friends talked about Jar Jar, for God's sake. It was still pretty damn novel then to have an entire 3D character in a major motion picture who interacted with actual human actors, but did not actually exist and wasn't a hand-drawn Roger Rabbit/Mary Poppins-style affair. People who didn't care at all about some of this stuff even knew what ILM was. The stuff they cranked out was damned impressive, especially for its time.

Ugh. This one's...a soapbox for me. Sorry, rant over.

 

Ah. Right. That is totally true. All we heard was real sets and practical effects. They said nothing about models or miniatures. I guess I just assumed they rolled all that up into the all-encompassing "practical effects". But I suppose not.

 

CG can do hard surface stuff just as well now as a model or miniature can. It wasn't that way during the PT which was why so many miniatures were still used.
But having practical on-set special effects gives actors more to act against. Models don't really accomplish that. So that's why you see the real cross blending of CG and practical special effects on this film.

 

Beautifully and simply stated. Movies and TV are visual storytelling. Movies even more so and Lucas' Star Wars movies go even further than that.

I highlight this particular fascination that some fans have with something "looking fake"

I just don't get that. It's all "fake" we know this to be true.

I like the way The_Phantom_Calamari put it:

I'm not trying to convince anyone their opinions are "wrong." I'm trying to get them to see what they're actually asking for. Lucas didn't use CGI just to show off; he used it because it was the best way to get his vision on the screen. So what you're actually asking is for filmmakers to intentionally limit their imaginations, all because a subset of the fan population seems to be almost ideologically opposed to suspending their disbelief when it comes to CGI. When it comes to visible matte lines, stiff rubber puppets, or obviously fake background paintings--then they're more than willing to ignore the flaws and suspend their disbelief. But never for CGI, unless it looks totally, 100% real. Do you not see the disconnect?

The easiest comparison is the puppet Yoda and CGI Yoda. I think both are great but the CGI Yoda looks like a real, living breathing creature that is fully interactive with a full range of emotion and character. The puppet I have no problem with but it can't do what the CGI Yoda does to that depth or degree. Now you can like the puppet more as a character but as PC said ignoring that the one is just as unreal as the other in the end but the CGI is almost totally 100% real looking while the puppet is far away from that.

Yet the one closer to reality gets scorned by these people for not being "real" while the one that isn't anywhere near that isn't.

Exactly. This dated argument I hear is another one that boggles my mind. Again we have these fans who talk about the "dating" of the "CGI" of the prequels or CGI in general yet they totally ignore the dating of the OT or other older movies like they haven't "dated" at all when they clearly have. I guess I shouldn't like Citizen Kane because it's effects have dated? Or the original King Kong? Alien? or all the other movies I can name?

The Thief of Bagdad ain't all that much apparently!

I was under a different impression.

I agree in that they have turned it that way. Of course for Lucas the visuals ARE the story because everything is a visual in his movie. The characters, settings, environments, structures et all.

That is what they delivered so I would simply call it accurate. I didn't expect anything much else before. I admit the lack of ambition in the actual movie did surprise me.

George Lucas' Star Wars ambitions for his 6 movies from 1977 to 2005 is what I prefer.

Sure those were ambitions which the original 6 also had and achieved but in comparison it had a distinct lack of ambition.

I don't "blame" them that much as such. As I have said many times no one working on them is a genius like George so I don't expect genius. As I said going in we all knew it was going to be the first Star Wars movie that went backwards in terms of the overall visual storytelling and scope and scale.

That was a given. The surprise to me was the low goals they set and therefore achieved.

I'm very happy to hear that you find them unsettling. That is rather the entire point. It's easy to be very safe.

Also obviously the "many viewers" you speak of are too few to worry about as the box office and all other success of the "CGI" era of movies over the last couple of decades demonstrates that this is a downside that applies to such a minute fraction of the audience that it's not going to have any impact.

 

The worst thing, I think, is that the media were also playing the game and brought up the same argument to why TFA is better that the PT because its was using more "practical effects". It shows you than even supposed "professionals", who we are supposed to trust in order to give us the most accurate information, also fail to see the reality and to do their own research and can be easily carried away by the wave and bias.

 

Puppet Yoda is a good example. You may argue that the CGI is more real looking, however I feel, and I think many do, because the Yoda puppet is a real physical object, in combination with Mark Hammil's interaction with it, and the brilliant performance of puppeteer Frank Oz, puppet Yoda does seem more real.



I certainly prefer puppet Yoda, because imo he was able to emote more realistically, and was ultimately a much more powerful character than CGI Yoda, who I found lacking in many respects.

I disagree. GL may have had some of the same ambitions, but the mixed reaction to the acting, the dialogue, and the characters suggest that he was not wholly successful in translating his ambitions or genius to the screen. This is why I believe it is smart that the creators of TFA focussed on the execution of the characters, since that was one of the major stumbling blocks that prevented the PT from recieving the critical acclaim the OT, and ultimately TFA recieved. So, you may call them low goals, but unlike for the PT, these goals were achieved in the eyes of critics and the general audience.

 

Who cares about the critics? The critics are literally about two hundred people in the entire country, with a reputation for negativity and pompousness with the mainstream population. Their opinion is largely ignored and has little effect on box office. They are also not an authoritative opinion, because most of them have no background in filmmaking and screenwriting. They're journalists who were lucky enough to get a frivolous assignment writing their opinions on the one or two new release movies per week, instead of having to cover a more important real life topic where they might run the risk of actually getting fact checked. Many of these professionally published reviews run only a couple paragraphs long and are no more substantive than forum posts.

Thye movie business is not run based on what the critics think, and artists should not have to worry about pleasing that crowd. Sure, they might like it if the critics are also onboard with mainstream moviegoers and their own artistic intentions, but people in general give the critics too much weight.

 

The strategy behind The Force Awakens was simple. Cash in on nostalgia, use the Disney marketing machine to draw in huge amounts of casual viewers (despite being unimpressed with the film, I saw it twice in theaters because so many relatives of mine, all non-SW fans who couldn't even tell you who Darth Vader was, had heard it was a big deal), and be as simple and unoffensive as possible. Very few people out-and-out hate this movie. Lots of people cheered with fanboy/fangirl delight the moment an Original Trilogy character showed up onscreen, before seeing what would even happen with those characters.

It was aiming low and casting a wide net. Silencing the Comic Con crowd with "practical effects" talk, but bringing out all the CGI spectacle for the mainstream ads broadcast in venues like the NCAA Championship football game.

 

What's a general audience anyway? People who vote on IMDb and rotten tomatoes? That's probably like 1 million people tops. Okay, it can be a huge sample, but it's still a very selective one because I think that only a certain demographic votes on these sites. I come from a family of "filmophiles" and I'm the only one who votes on these sites just because I'm keeping track of all the movies I see. My brother only gives votes on IMDb to the movies he thinks deserve 10 stars.

Then you also have to take into account that normally like at least a third of the votes come from the US. What if you pick one million votes from China? They have their own equivalent of IMDb and TFA currently has a score of 8.1 from almost 300k votes. On IMDb TFA has 8.5 from 53k US voters.

And how many people total have seen the movie? Approximately 100 million tickets sold in NA so far, with probably at least 100 million more in Foreign territories.

At the end of the day, it's all about how you want to read the data. I will say that TFA is definitely a success in most categories, but I wouldn't bring in the "general audience" card into these discussions. We're all SW fans here and some liked the movie, some loved it, and some didn't. Simple as that, we're still a minority. 99% of the people who've seen the movie don't bother with analyzing it and talking about it or even making one click on IMDb to share their rating.

People who do give their ratings usually have a very good idea of what they like and are usually a bit more knowledgeable on movies alltogether, but I wouldn't give their opinion much more weight just because of that.

I'm also fully in favor of deleting or moving these posts elsewhere, so that we can continue with what the thread is about.

 

Like I said anyone can like the puppet more if they wish. I like both fine. Both are excellent for their time.

Talking about the puppet as a real physical object and MH's & FO's performances are fine but the fact is the puppet simply can't interact with actors like this:



The expression of emotion on that level is impossible for a puppet.

Obviously I can't change your mind.

That the puppet is completely limited in expression is not subjective to me but totally objective.

The puppet simply can't do it.

 

Puppets are extremely limited in their ability to move and convey emotion.

Remember that long-necked, hunchbacked puppet alien carrying its offspring in a cage? The one hyped up by JJ in TFA's Comic Con panel?

I didn't even notice it in the actual movie until my second viewing. It's standing still by the side in the scene when Rey was trying to barter for food. The hunchback alien said and did absolutely nothing and was barely even noticeable.

Now, not all movie details have to be in your face, and a great amount of background detail can be inserted by artists and filmmakers. But I can't recall this particular alien even moving.

I doubt its presence was a make or break factor for Daisy Ridley's acting. I'd also have no problem at all if it was replaced with a CGI creature that could actually move and interact with its environment.

 

This is a pretty weak response by trying to pass off film critics as "failed journalists". There may be a large number of amateurs among the group of film critics, but you conveniently ignore the fact that a large number of established and professional film critics, who are knowledgeable about film making in general, also give the film universal acclaim (90% on RT cream of the crop, and 81 rating on metacritic). Of course anyone is free to disagree with their opinions, but they are the most objective gauge of a film's strengths and weaknesses.

 

This is a gross oversimplification imo. Anyone who takes the time to read some of the popular and critical opinions on why fans and people in general like TFA, would know there's more to it than this. The reality is that TFA is mostly acclaimed for the new characters it introduced, not for what's mostly cameos by OT characters.