CGI Is Starting to Suck

The end result is what matters. If it looks 'right' on screen, does it matter if it was CG or not?
Effect and animation don't get weightless just because it is CG, it is because who ever did it in CG doesn't do it right.
Did we get any feeling of gravity in films like 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon'? Or any realism in class movie real projection? How about all the stop motion effects? I love to watch them but talk about weight and gravity? Forget about it. Digital or analogue don't make a difference to that.

 

This is true but the advantage of practical effects when it comes to gravity is that it's already there. With CGI you have to incorporate it into the movement because it is not there to begin with. Turns out that this is pretty complex stuff. the effects of gravity when applied to complex physical objects such as animals and humans when in motion requires all kinds of considerations and I don't believe there are any plug in programs that can do all the calculations needed to easily apply those effects. So artists have to in effect animate the effects of weight "by hand."

 

A much better movie that Spirits within on all counts.

 

This is an interesting video. Why special effects peaked in the 90s. The argument is that it is not the CGI itself that sucks nowadays. It is the fact that, in the 90s and early 00s, CG images were being composited over real backgrounds giving viewers that contrast between a background they could relate to a CG image in that familiar and believable setting. The contrast between the believable and the fantastic was what gave the CG image its wow factor. Nowadays, everything, including the background, is computer generated, robbing viewers of that contrast.

 

Special effects peaked in the 90s? Give me a break!
There are lots of CGI backgrounds that look better than Hulk. What about Gravity? Is that bad too?
It is silly to pick bad examples to support one's argument.
* I am directing this at the video, not you Encuentro.

 

I think Dustin Hoffman's recent comments are part of this anti-CGI/anti-VFX backlash (already being argued in a separate thread), and he raises some interesting points. I think good effects can compliment a great script, a great director, and great performances. The problem is when you have a so-so script, an inept director, and not-so-great characters. Pearl Harbor is a good example.

 

I'm not one of those anti-CGI snobs but I wouldn't be surprised if there were to be a period of time where CGI would start to get lazy.

 

I think that happened back in 2004.

 

I gotta say this thread kind makes me laugh. It wasn't that long ago when I mentioned what I saw as a fairly new trend among many directors to try to do as much practical effects as possible. Just about everyone called me nuts on that thread. And so it goes. The movie I am working on now is just another example of a young director who is committed to doing as little digital and as much practical fx as possible.

 

I saw San Andreas a couple of days ago and didn't pay any atention to VFX, they didn't looked convincing, there were no WOW factor, the story sucked as well as the actors. What's the point of spending 10 $ and a couple of hours of my time with movies like this? Maybe air conditioning (it was 111 ºF outside)?

 

what do you think of the current CGI?...I find it hard to tell sometimes. It has improved IMO.

 

It depends how much footage, who did it, how well it tells the story, and how well it integrates with the live action. Too many variables. I do grit my teeth when I see obvious CGI when I know it could've easily been shot live action, particularly when you see a shot where something is subtly wrong. TV screen replacement and bad green screen backgrounds are high on my list.

 

having the knowledge you have I guess it's harder to enjoy. I don't have that problem.

 

You're right and that applies to a lot of issues in all areas in life. Ignorance is bliss... But don't get me wrong I'm not being critical or disrespectful with that quote... It's just a well known quote that seems to fit. But if the masses are more on your side, then the schlock CGi will pass as acceptable, and we will continue to see more of it... unfortunately IMO. The arts have historically produced higher than required quality out of sheer professionalism and imbedded integrity. But the almighty dollar and convenience, may win out in the new order.

 

I have a vast amount of movies in my collection...CGI is not even a tenth. I like the fact that it's there for me to enjoy...no reason to snub it or jump aboard the I hate CGI bandwagon. I love many movies that others love to trash...give me an old B&W and I'm just as happy..

 

Who can watch a movie like Crouching Tiger and enjoy it while their intelligence is being insulted?

 

You know, I can kinda buy into it in over-the-top kung fu movies when people leap through the air and do impossible stunts. Heck, The Matrix was enjoyable on a lot of levels, even with the (then) innovation of bullet-time and all that other stuff. Brilliant movies. And then... they F'd it all up with Matrix II and III, which were unwatchable by humans.

 

I really enjoyed The Matrix when I watched it in the theatre. This is because I read a small blurb about how a lot of the movies' shots were made to look like a comic strip. For example:



Also, the green and blue tints had real meaning within the show.

In Crouching Tiger, they might as well have not erased the wires, just left them in.

 

I despise CG period for what it has become. I always prefer practical effects because to my eyes they're always more believable, but fully understand the need for CG when necessary.

But what gets me the most is the fact that I cannot buy anything onscreen anymore. Lazy plotting combined with unrealistic movements, backgrounds, placements and generally such a cartoony look that even cartoons would feel insulted. There hasn't been a film in years where I could actually buy what was going on during an action sequence for example. What this does for me is magnify all of the problems that a modern film has. The editing will be too fast and not have proper rhythm for the story which combined with the over-reliance on CG with such a complete lack of realism obliterates any chance for a narrative to work.

It is this problem when combined with the fact that you really cannot make a big studio film about characters or people in general in this day and age that has killed the movies for me. If you go back to big effects movies and why they worked, it becomes quite clear that without the proper buildup of character and story you have nothing.
-Because the shark did not work in Jaws and the production was in such a tizzy, everything had to be redone from scratch and built around what they did have, which were the people who inhabited the story; thus rightly shifting the focus from the shark driving the story to the human element struggling to combat elemental forces of nature. As planned, Jaws would have only been decent to good. It would have been standardized because it would have been a monster movie without the human element, which was the first thing the cut out of Benchley's novel.
-The entire reason why the final attack on the Death Star in Star Wars works is because by building up the characters over the entire film, it has us hook line and sinker. The reason why we are so swept up in the aerial dogfights amidst the massive DS canyons is not due to the groundbreaking sense of movement conveyed by ILM (though this helps) but because we are absolutely engaged in the fates of young Luke Skywalker and the struggle of the seemingly doomed Rebel Alliance. (Admittedly I used to like the 1997 additions to this sequence, but not only did this disrupt the flow of the 1977 edit and not mix well with the original shots, they are completely without the intricate setups of the original shots they replaced. Because they were so limited by the technology, shots had to be done in certain ways and because of this they milked every ounce of creativity they could--not so in the CG shots.)
-Mad Max is another perfect example. The original film gave the character a purpose, and the audience could feel the bloodlust across the last reel. The Road Warrior built up to the final epic chase and used the Max character's emotional arc to cause both anticipation and heightened tension in the audience. Even Thunderdome tried to elevate the moral and societal ideas of mankind gone to hell, but now we return to that same world in Fury Road to find it nothing more than an endless overload of cars and people determinedly flying everywhere for reasons that if closely examined have little or no effect.

The action film boils all this down to its elements. Because you essentially have little more than a simple plot, lead character and effects there's no getting away from this problem. So, how does one fix this? Easy answer is go back and re-learn from the masters in Hong Kong. Going back to the classic HK action films of the late 80's will reinvigorate even the most jaded of viewers, because there they fully embraced character in the midst of wall to wall action setpieces. Sure they could get cheesy at times, they had miniscule budgets, and were always terribly re-cut and dubbed for foreign markets--but they truly had heart which is probably the single greatest missing element in pictures today. Nothing anyone can do will ever replicate the greatest actioner of all, Woo's masterpiece Hard Boiled, but it does display just how much you can do with sweat, elbow grease and care.

Admittedly, I'm in the minority here, as I prefer even the most archaic effects as long as they support the story. King Kong to me is more effective today because the effects are so outdated that they seem almost otherworldly. But even with people going "back to practical effects" and "shooting on film"; it doesn't fix all of the intrinsic problems that are at the heart of these endless debates we have on the future of the movies. There is a definite reason why so many people flock to television and online programming and it may simply be that we need some kind of physical connection to the material reinstated. CGI is merely the tool used-the problem lies elsewhere.

 

My problem with modern CGI is not just that it lets writers off the hook, since movies turn into basically "well, we'll just fix that character/plot/etc in post," but the fact that CGI makes filmmaking LAZY.

Special effects are HARDER, and you just can't do everything with real effects, whereas you can do everything with CGI. And while this freedom can be amazing in the hands of a very disciplined and talented director (Alfonso Cuaron, James Cameron, etc), it avoids the CONSTRAINTS that force filmmakers to be creative. Part of what makes the effects in films like Blade Runner or 2001 or Star Wars so amazing is that not only were they difficult to do, they were limited by what was feasible. And this limitation FORCES filmmakers to think and be creative, but it also forces filmmakers to allow the AUDIENCE's imagination to be part of the experience. Part of what makes a great filmmaker is the ability to communicate to an audience all of the feelings and ideas and things that are happening. But when a filmmaker is never forced to learn how to convey something using the techniques of cinema to imply grandiose space or big monsters or fear, etc when they can just slap all of that on the screen by way of CGI, then it's almost like you're left with a generation of film directors who never had to bother to learn how to read and write in their language. They can hold a conversation, but they can't actually communicate very well at all, because they never were forced to.

And it's sad, because now it's exceedingly rare to see EFFECTS done for real, and with all the tools and tricks and techniques that encompass the LANGUAGE of filmmaking. What we have now are a generation of directors who are profoundly illiterate at the actual language of film.

So when I see a film like Skyfall that actually puts the efforts in to doing stunts and effects for real (even with miniatures), it is SO MUCH BETTER than the lazy CGI crap that comes out of the sterile 'creative' cubicles of computer minions.

My other huge complaint is not only the use of CGI, but the use of incessant cutting which makes especially action films just a logically incoherent and incomprehensible mess: http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/chaos-cinema-how-21st-century-action-films-became-incoherent.html

 

Simply not true. You can't make a sweeping statement like that.

 

To me, that's the biggest thing. Way too often, films are being slapped together without a lot of time and love, and -- whether or not they're dominated by CGI -- the lack of heart is what kills them the most.

Actually, most young directors I meet are aware of Hitchcock, Kurasawa, Lean, Hawks, Kubrick, Ford, and so on. Not everybody is just watching the latest film done by Fincher, Nolan, Spielberg, and so on.

Skyfall had tons and tons and tons of CGI in it. Modern films typically combine miniatures and CGI and live action, sometimes within the same shot, so it's rarely just one thing or the other.

There's a lot of truth to this. I get mad when I watch a current film and the fight scenes are so blurringly fast, you can't always tell who's punching who, who's winning, who's getting injured, and what the hell is going on. Too many directors and editors get caught up in believing "faster is better." More than two decades ago Spielberg bemoaned that younger viewers were being conditioned by MTV's rapid cutting to start demand that movies do the same thing, and I think he raised a very good point: since the late 1980s, there's been a paradigm shift to make the average length of shots shorter and shorter, with filmmakers terrified of having a shot run a long time and risk boring the audience.

I noted that in the first three Star Wars films, Lucas was willing to use establishing shots that didn't necessarily move very much. But in the later prequels, every single shot always, always moves -- usually with a slight zoom or a pan. So even George Lucas felt that restlessness and wanted to make the images move faster.

 

At least with the Internet-led explosion of film culture, knowledge of the classics and the past is more widespread...but spending any time amongst anyone my age (25) or younger--especially in the so-called film schools just makes me rage on and on inside. Yes, people can talk for social posts, classes, assignments or events...but do they really take this stuff to heart? I don't really think so.

Sitting in Skyfail ('Net pun title I adore), the end climax made me yearn for Licence to Kill. The fact the Bonds went to the CG route kills me more than anything else. Just another thing about these new pictures that helps me block them out entirely...there is more presence of the character in the 1967 Feldman spoof. Dead serious.

One of my favorite shots in Star Wars is the simple pan up from the grappling hook to Luke's face in extreme close up within the Panavision frame. Just spontaneous, quick and gorgeous. Agreed that in the Prequel-era it became incessant movement even in all the seemingly endless digital ship passings.

I can't think of one time recently where I was able to enjoy the pace of a film. It has become almost impossible to follow movements anymore--particularly in action sequences. It has gotten to such a point where it becomes a matter of "why even bother?" I remember people complaining in the theater during Bourne Supremacy..but now that looks actually watchable by today's standards. There is absolutely nothing wrong with locking the camera down and letting things play out from time to time--perhaps letting the action or even-gasp!-the story dictate the cut! I couldn't stop marveling at Verna Fields' stunning transitions when last watching Jaws. Each shot is just run up to the absolute maximum and snipped just at the right place so that it flows bang into the next scene without hesitation.

And to me the greatest loss the Bond series ever had was losing Peter Hunt. Nothing, nothing, nothing moves like the original films that he cut. Such a sense of movement, economy, speed, creativity and style...it was absolutely effortless. It's a lesser known fact that he practically saved Thunderball from being a four hour droning mess.

I can show people even something not too old like Ronin (I still want a sequel!) and they are bowled over at how much better things are when properly staged, cut and run. It only makes sense. If you cannot tell what is going on, you lose interest and become annoyed.

 

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Peter Hunt's editing. I worked on a film with a fight scene a couple of years ago, and the editor was very proud of himself for doing little tiny cuts within shots to make the punches faster. I laughed and said, "Peter Hunt thought the same thing back in 1964 on the Bond films." I'm pretty certain Hunt invented that trick.

The Bourne films are actually pretty clever, and I think director Paul Greengrass pushes the limit on just how much the camera can move and the editing can cut. Generally, I had zero problems figuring out where the hero was, where the villain was, who was throwing the punch, who had the gun, and all that stuff. And they work months and months and months on this stuff. Very little of it is done without a lot of planning, storyboards, and intense scrutiny. But I think a lot of other directors try to imitate this technique and it winds up a huge mess.

I think there's an over-reliance on handheld "jerky cam" technique nowadays, and I lament the era when sometimes cameras were handheld but they at least tried to hold them as steady as humanly possible. The artificial jumps and jerks they put in them -- particularly the sudden zooms -- feel very contrived and obvious to me. Way too much "look at me! Look at me!" to shots like this. I wish they would just tell the friggin' story and be done with it, and stop trying to be cute.