CGI Is Starting to Suck

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Vidiot, Jun 11, 2015.

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  1. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    Exactly. It'd be a very interesting idea, but very, very, very hard to pull off. In the past, every movie with a successful CGI character has resorted to making creatures or robots, like "Gollum" in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, or the T2000 robot in Terminator 2. Creating a human is almost impossible -- though I have to admit, a lot of the Paul Walker scenes in Furious 7 were OK (though fleeting and very carefully staged). In the latter case, I believe they used stand-ins and basically pasted a Paul Walker face onto the existing body.

    The author of the original article would have been more correct to say "Movie VFX Are Starting to Suck." CGI, as Scott pointed out, is not all of it. But the non-reality of the visuals is tiring over time and does kind of have a sameness to it. A friend of mine steadfastly refuses to see a lot of these movies -- even the good ones, like Avengers or Iron Man -- because he's repelled by the "plastic look" of them. I understand what he's talking about, but it doesn't bother me as much.
     
  2. Drifter

    Drifter AAD survivor

    Location:
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    Yes, his two brothers were used.
     
  3. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    Note Mr. Chung is an expert in the field of VFX, and I bow to his considerable expertise.

    I agree, the whole thing of making actors much younger is a very interesting idea. The first time I ever saw this was in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, where they took 40-something Brad Pitt, made him look like he was in his 90s (and about 5' tall), then gradually reduced his age until he was in his 20s and even in his teens. I have no doubt this was unbelievably time-consuming and expensive, and probably not practical for a long project, but it was pretty convincing. The work they did to make Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan younger in the X-Men movies was pretty good as well.

    Actors' ages is one situation they never seem to able to get right on TV shows. They'll do a flashback to 20 years ago with the same characters, and you go, "come on! No way is this guy two decades younger." You can't do effects like this on a TV budget... not unless you hire a lookalike actor.

    BTW, Arnold has done this kind of thing before. There was some digital face blurring and crow's feet removal for Arnold on Terminator 3 back in 2003. (Schwarzenegger was 56 when that film was made.) But it's not nearly as extensive as what they can do today.

    Yep, I've gotten that same impression from quite a few films in the last year. Some I want to like (Tomorrowland), some I wind up hating (Furious 7), some I thought were good but not great (like Avengers 2), but there is a "been there/done that" kind of feeling setting in.
     
    Last edited: Jun 14, 2015
  4. The Wanderer

    The Wanderer Seeker of Truth

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    enough is too much
     
  5. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

    Location:
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    What gets me with CGI is something as is the case with the first Tobey SPIDER-MAN film. Okay, so they had to have Spidey swinging around the city -- so they utilized CGI. Okay -- it worked all right -- not an issue.

    But later on, Peter Parker is running across the rooftops and he becomes a cartoony video game image. Why? Why can't they use a stunt double, or some kind of trick photography, instead of "creating a fake character image"? I would ask the same question for when Spider-man fought some foes down on the streets. There is no need for CGI cartoonery there.

    I seem to remember seeing SPIDER-MAN 3 in the theater, and characters falling in the air and looking all fake and cartoonish. I could understand using CGI to portray The Sandman (was that Part 2?) ... but jeez, there is no need to rely on CGI just because you can.
     
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  6. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

    Location:
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    One other point here. People are starting to believe that "there is no other way to portray this or that other than CGI", and that is just a load of nonsense. After all, Hollywood had been portraying all sorts of fantastic effects even since the silent days of cinema!
     
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  7. pcfchung

    pcfchung Active Member

    Location:
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    Thanks for the kind words Vidiot. I am more of a reluctant VFX person. Although I was trained in live action, my background was animation. I just happened to be needed in this field at this moment in time.
    When it comes to 'replacing' real actors with CG characters, my feeling is that we will NEVER get there. Technology alone won't achieve that anyway. What our facial muscles can do ( all 43 of them moving in different combinations) is 100 times more complicated than any facial rigs I have ever worked on. Even if motion capture can get us some of that information ( that's a big question mark anyway), the facial rigs won't be able to show them.
    On top of that, there aren't many animators who can do good realistic animation. We (animators) suck big time at realistic human motion, whether it is body mechanics or facial. This is evident throughout animation history. I can't think of many good convincing realistic human walks (many bad ones). This is not gonna change anytime soon. We get away with fast movement but anything sophisticated, forget about it.
    It won't stop people from trying and no doubt I will have to deal a lot of it myself. I will bet my bottom dollar though- it will not be that difficult for anyone to spot the difference.
     
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  8. Chris C

    Chris C Music was my first love and it will be my last!

    Location:
    Ohio
    I have NEVER been a fan of CGI and I try to avoid any and all movies that look like it uses it, to a large degree. "Jurassic World" is the biggest opening movie ever, so the news said tonight and I'm supposed to be happy that the taste of the movie going public at large sucks a big one? These people truly need to get a life!
     
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  9. Chris C

    Chris C Music was my first love and it will be my last!

    Location:
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    Chaplin, Keaton, Harold Lloyd & The Three Stooges all made movie magic without CGI and I'd like to get back to THAT!
     
  10. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
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    I worked on the CG-humanoid animated Final Fantasy film for about a week back in 2001, and the filmmakers were absolutely convinced they were going to change the world, change Hollywood, and forever change the way movies were made. I always found the characters were too creepy to look at, and there were a dozen or more visual "cues" that something wasn't quite right here... the essence of the Uncanny Valley syndrome. I think there's a line that gets crossed when there's too many digital composites, too much CG, too much "tampering" with the image that it becomes the opposite of organic: so over-processed and tweaked that it no longer has any semblance of reality. This in a nutshell is why a lot of modern films are kind of going off the cliff in this area.

    BTW, don't get me wrong. There are a lot of huge, sprawling big "effects" films that I still like and can get into. I started discussions here on Guardians of the Galaxy and several other films long before they were released, and in many cases, they put story ahead of the effects and visuals, and I think they succeeded because they told a good tale and because audiences could empathize with the characters. But so much of today's stuff just does have a really plastic feel to it, where it's much too fake. "Plastic soul, man... plastic soul."

    Here's a 2014 interview with Viggo Mortensen where he slams Peter Jackson for "sacrificing subtlety for CGI" in the Hobbit films. He has some very thoughtful things to say, and I don't think this is just an actor whining because he didn't get to work in the prequels...

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...eter-Jackson-sacrificed-subtlety-for-CGI.html
     
  11. JBStephens

    JBStephens I don't "like", "share", "tweet", or CARE. In Memoriam

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    If you want to see a movie that's absoluely amazing made with NO COMPUTERS, watch The Great Waldo Pepper.

    One problem I see with crappy computer animation is that there's so much of it now, today's young generation expects it, thinking that's the way it's *supposed* to be done. So to them, it's "normal" for things to look like that. Just the way that people expect silent films to move too fast simply because they've never seen one at the correct frame rate.
     
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  12. pcfchung

    pcfchung Active Member

    Location:
    London, England
    I think Viggo Mortensen made some good points there. What we need to understand is that people like peter Jackson and Ridley Scott CHOSE to make those epics and make them that way (CG galore). Sometimes I think they are right on the edge of what can be achieved visually with the available technology and craftsmanship. They don't mean to make their films look 'CG' and artificial but the result might be exactly that.
     
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  13. Chris C

    Chris C Music was my first love and it will be my last!

    Location:
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    I realize that in 2015, that it is nearly impossible to make a movie without some sort of CGI, but Hollywood has turned a once "interesting" way to make special effects come to life, into making movies that are unrealistic.
     
  14. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

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    I re-read my review - I've not seen "Final Fantasy" since 2001 - and then found the effects to seem "off" much of the time.

    That said, I think I believed they were much more realistic in 2001 than I do now. I watched parts of the movie on Youtube and it's not vaguely "realistic" today:

     
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  15. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    I have to say, a lot of older movies have effects work that doesn't hold up well today. I gotta hand it to the Jurassic Park crew at ILM back in 1993: that film still looks pretty good today, even in HD. To me, that's a case where the effects truly serve the story, and the characters and plot are what drive it along. There's actually not nearly as many VFX in the original Jurassic film as people think -- plus they did use full-size animatronic creatures in some scenes.

    Very true. I've liked several of Jackson's and Scott's films in the past, but there's a point where I think they kind of veered off the road. King Kong really left me cold -- that's a film that should've been much better than it was. The simple stuff with the guys on the boat in the ocean was awful (as one example) -- very obvious CG that should've been done for real.

    On the other hand, I didn't mind Life with Pi, which had a massive amount of VFX composites and CG in it. Same with Gravity. The look of both films was amazing and felt fairly "real" to me, and I think most critics and audiences agreed. The Transformers films, though, are about as dead and inorganic as it gets. And I think the Dark Knight films relied much too heavily on VFX and CGI as they went on.
     
    Last edited: Jun 14, 2015
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  16.  
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  17. He actually turned down the opportunity to work on them from what I read. Thankfully. But boy did Mortensen get slammed by the fan base for his comments. It was ugly.
    Also Final Fantasy stepped their game up with the 2007 Final Fantasy: Advent Children. But I agree the 2001 film (Spirits From Within) was creepy looking.
    A clip from Advent Children:

    I don't think this would look good meshed with live action though. But it's fine on it's own plane.
     
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  18. +1
     
  19. Right. I'm just saying digital manipulation in general (or the non reality as you've termed it). As you know, personally I'm irritated by the color timing tweaks in movies nowadays. Movies are just so ugly to look at. Mad Max is the ultimate example in that it took this celebrated old school practical throw back and fudged it to the point where I thought it was entirely CG/greenscreened. Epic fail in my opinion despite the hard work and stunts in the film.
     
  20. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
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    Yeah, and sadly, that's my main line of work. These are tough times when directors and DPs are convinced that every scene needs some intense, over-the-top color grade to accentuate the drama. We got away from "natural" color quite some time ago, and it's hard to fight for it. (I believe there's another thread elsewhere about the orange/teal look, which is particularly intense in Mad Max and in Jurassic World.)
     
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  21. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

    Location:
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    Which is another reason why I will rarely go to see new films (do they still call them 'films', or are they now 'digitals'?) and why I much prefer to watch older movies.
     
  22. I just had to share the Canadian collective Astron-6's tweet. It said:
    If you look close there's a couple of live action moments in the new cartoon, Jurassic World.
    :laughup:
     
  23. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
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    Well auto tuning, DR compression and digital editing work so well in Audio it was inevitable that the concept and equivalent process would be moved to film haha. Let's throw 3D into the mix as well.

    That being said the movie going public may prefer the ersatz to the genuine just the way the pop music fan does.
     
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  24. Or maybe they just take what they can get? Producers like to pretend that audiences are driving the decisions but they aren't. They just choose between what's available.
     
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  25. PlushFieldHarpy

    PlushFieldHarpy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Indiana
    I caught a bit of The Two Towers on TV the other day, and the scenes where CGI Gollum and a human actor are together are not seamlessly integrated. You can match all the colors and lighting and tones, and a CGI character still looks fake and transplanted into the scene. In fact, the whole movie seems just like an experiment with the Gollum character, to show that a CGI character can be as interesting and "animated" as a human. It came at the cost of the rest of the film, as well, as that film veers so far from the Tolkien vision as to render it unwatchable, imo.
    From what I've seen the movie going public consists entirely of movie freaks who see everything that comes out or bored old people. Neither seem too picky or accurate gauges for public taste.
     
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