Anyone else sick of CGI?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Django, Jul 24, 2014.

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  1. vernon

    vernon Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Honky Kong
    To a certain point, if it's used to create things that doesn't exist or had become rare or extinct like alien creatures, alien spaceships, dinosaurs, ancient architectures and such, done tastefully that is, I wouldn't mind. But used as a substitute for real fire, water, helicopters, tigers, elephants, humans and other things you could find in your local store, no matter how good it's done, that's when I draw the line.
     
  2. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    I have no problem if they feel the need to use it in those cases. What difference does it make? NONE...
     
  3. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    really? I'm too busy enjoying the movie...
     
  4. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    CGI IMO is essential for the blockbuster popcorn movie. Rarely do I see much CGI used in a drama, etc...
     
  5. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    Indeed...to the point.
     
  6. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US
    Hate CGI? Looks fake? I guess you guys grew up in a different era from me.


    [​IMG]
     
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  7. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    LOL! if there ever was a pro CGI this is it! what we had to deal with back then. CGI opened up a great new fantasy world for us.
     
  8. vernon

    vernon Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Honky Kong
    It makes the biggest difference for me, take for example, Independence Day, there were all kinds of aerial action in it with CGI helicopters and jet fighters but there was not a moment as one of the audience, when I was holding my breath marveling on what's happening on screen for I know it was all done by a hack or a team of hacks sitting infront of a computer in a room. Now if it was done with real helicopters with real stunt work, I would jumping out of my seat and going, ''oooh'' and ''aaah''!
     
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  9. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    I respect your opinion, but real or CGI it's all serving the same purpose to entertain...I could care less if the aerial action was CGI...Damn! so was all the alien action. ..CGI did it's job for me...sometimes one has to stop analyzing and looking for faults...it's more enjoyable when you watch a movie instead of looking to rip it apart...something very common here...movies are meant for escape not aggravation...we have enough of that. the 2 hours I'm watching a movie is something I look forward to...a much enjoyed and needed one these days...
     
  10. Trashman

    Trashman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    You do realize they made Star Wars and Superman movies before the advent of CGI, right?

    And speaking of Doctor Who, give me the classic series over the new series any day. The classic series may not have had good special effects, but at least the writing was interesting and entertaining. That trumps special effects every time, as far as I'm concerned.
     
  11. vernon

    vernon Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Honky Kong
    Just like you, movies have always been about escape and entertainment for me too. I don't watch it for the sake of finding faults or anything but when certain things are presented to me in such obvious ways, I can't help but have opinions about 'em. However I wouldn't dismiss the whole film for having faults in any technical aspect but it would certainly bring the entertainment value a notch down.
     
  12. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    I understand totally...for me the only thing that brings the movie down is the storyline...BUT with many of my favorite actors I can ignore this due to the greatness of their craft.
     
  13. jawaka1000

    jawaka1000 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Netherlands
    You just have to use CGI right.
    I love how they fixed the mistakes in Blade runner.
    I really hated it when James Bond started surfing the tidel wave when the melted iceberg fell in the ocean. or
    When harrison Ford in the 4th indiana Jones movie jumped 30 feet on a allready running horse.
    It ruined the tension completely, when you know that the hero gets help from CGI!
     
  14. BayouTiger

    BayouTiger Forum Resident

    I think that may have been the low point of the series. Don't forget the invisible car.

    I can check my brain at the door and enjoy it, IF it's entertaining and at at least somewhat original. The new Star Wars movies had plenty of questionable CGI, but the mockery of the characters made them so bad that I didn't notice.

    I watched Pacific Rim again a couple days ago, and it's just entertaining as hell!
     
  15. goodiesguy

    goodiesguy Confide In Me

    Location:
    New Zealand
    I'd take that any day over CGI.
     
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  16. jawaka1000

    jawaka1000 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Netherlands
    "It conquered the world" was really bad, but it had Lee van Cleef!
    I'm a Frank Zappa fan, so I had to see it, I wanted to know what the song "cheepness"was about!
     
  17. marblesmike

    marblesmike Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    Most of Prometheus' was practical efffects except for one of the alien creatures (part CG) and the star map room (off the top of my head), as well as some of the ships.

    I didn't get the impression that the movie was a CGI-fest. I thought it was tastefully done. Now the script...that's a different story.
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2014
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  18. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Fire, smoke, and water are all pretty rough in CG. I think smoke is the worst.

    I think this is a problem with editing, timing, and pacing more than CG per se. There's a tendency nowadays to cut fight scenes much, much too fast, and the danger is that the audience won't know where the hell to look and who's throwing the punch and who's getting hit. A buddy of mine who's been an editor for 30 years often points this out to me if we're in the same screening together, and I have to admit, some modern films get much too confusing in terms of action and cutting. Really good films do not have this problem.
     
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  19. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Actually, you'd be surprised. As one example, I worked on a Western called Open Range about 10 years ago, and we had 160 visual effects in the film -- mostly to take away elements that would give away the fact that it was shot in Canada in 2003, rather than being a story that took place in the 1880s. I like "invisible effects" movies like this where none of the VFX are noticeable: no flying saucers, no giant robots, no buildings exploding.
     
  20. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Yes, traditionally those things have been difficult to get right, along with skin, hair and cloth. Much progress has been made on those fronts, especially hair, cloth and skin (using subsurface scattering, etc).

    I've seen fire rendered very realistically in SIGGRAPH type demos and certain types of water. I suspect these are still expensive to do with that type of realism for cinema just yet. Fire and explosions in movies always have a...transparenty/feathery look to it and smoke still looks like a swarm of bees most of the time - very dotty.

    Yes. I suspect the reasons are two-fold. Doing quick-fire cuts means that the stunt people don't need to be especially skilled, as the editing prevents the eye from seeing the full dynamics of the sequence.

    Secondly, it's designed to make the sequence look more fast paced and 'exciting' and allows for more intercuts with different takes.
     
  21. SgtPepper1983

    SgtPepper1983 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    Yes, if you look at almost all the great films through the years you'll notice a great sense of space they convey. Be it action or be it human relationships, there is a deepness to them.
     
  22. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    It's weird how fast a lot of modern films are cut. Spielberg talked about this as far back as the 1980s, saying <paraphrasing> "I'm concerned about how music videos on MTV are changing the way we have to edit films. If we sit on one shot too long, the fear is that the audiences will get bored, because of the fast pace of music videos." This has just gotten worse and worse over the years.

    An old pal of mine has said for 15 years that the movie that started this whole problem was Michael Bay's Armageddon, which was not only choppy but also had lots of flash frames, intense color, explosions, and all the visual gimmicks that Bay has popularized. I actually think Bay is an interesting filmmaker, but I think his work is done in by terrible scripts and bad characters. Visually, they're actually pretty interesting, and he does know how to cut fight scenes (generally). But the CGI in stuff like Transformers just makes me ill. Way, way, way too much of this stuff.

    I think there's a third reason: so people won't get a chance to realize the visuals look cheap and crappy. Especially the VFX.
     
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  23. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Maybe there's a forth reason: today's kids have short attention spans and are easily bored (not sure if someone in every generation makes this claim :)).
     
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  24. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    That was Spielberg's fear as well. Michael Bay's films definitely play into this. I sat down recently and watched three Michael Bay films in a row -- Bad Boys, Bad Boys 2, and The Rock -- and it's very interesting how he frames every shot, moves the camera, and cuts every scene. He's a much, much more clever director than people think he is.

    I think Bay's films are horrible, but he's a fascinating guy to watch. Turn the sound off, ignore the plot, and just watch the images. Beautiful work. Mindless and stupid, but beautiful. (Actually, I liked quite a bit of The Rock, but that's about it.)
     
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  25. Roland Stone

    Roland Stone Offending Member

    I like this explanation. The aesthetic choice of rapid editing is revealed as an economic one, because longer edits would require even more expensive CGI. Much like Spielberg cutting most of the shots of the mechanical shark, which looked terrible, out of JAWS, only to be applauded for the terrifying effect of his artistic "restraint."

    I don't know why directors don't work against the tide of movies that look like videogames or children's channel programming. Two of my favorite movies blew me away precisely because the director used long, unbroken shots in complete contrast to the hyper-editing of the era: UNBREAKABLE and CHILDREN OF MEN.
     
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