CGI Is Starting to Suck

what movies do you consider that have great CGI?

 

I'm not Vidiot, but I thought Valerian and Tomorrowland had great CGI, but that did not help those movies at all.

 

I agree, but I enjoyed Valerian more than Tomorrowland.

 

It's hard to argue with the Academy Award winners for VFX (or even the nominees) over the last 25-30 years. Jurassic Park was absolutely stunning for its time. The recent films that have de-aged characters (like Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War) was amazing work, the best kind of "invisible effects" that you wouldn't even look at twice if you weren't aware of it. The Visual Effects Society has a "bake off" where the nominate a dozen or so films every year, and some of the work there is fairly incredible.

 

BOM says $250m for budget, Wiki says $250-$300m, so we may never know the actual figure.

I still think it was a hit - just not the world-smashing hit WB wanted. "Justice League" is the clearer "relative failure"...

 

thanks...on the money and I appreciate you taking the time...: ) nice to hear for a change that some work can be incredible.

 

It's Strange. For mere morals that's a pretty good ROI --about 7.8% annually. You crushed the neurobreds runnig the Harvard endowment, congrats. But I guess it sucks in the movie world if you're counting on what 5x that to make up for other big losses and working capital to finance new projects. Ouch. Now it feels more like a total and utter disaster to me.

 

Hollywood math:

Hollywood accounting - Wikipedia
Creative accounting - Wikipedia
How Hollywood Accounting Can Make a $450 Million Movie 'Unprofitable' - The Atlantic
STUDIO SHAME! Even Harry Potter Pic Loses Money Because Of Warner Bros' Phony Baloney Net Profit Accounting

I've had this ongoing discussion for years. Bear in mind that the studio only gets half of the money taken in at the theater, so a movie that cost $300 million to produce but made $600 million in theaters has really only broken even. There are always additional markets like home video, streaming, TV syndication, and so on, so the hope is eventually it might make a little money.

 

I don't disagree at all I think maybe you have to look at the big picture. You can't measure the studio health by the profit and loss of one picture, right? But on the other hand one big winner can give them a lot of breathing room. Overall I don't think it's a hugely profitable business model to be honest . And it's super risky and hard to predict. And that kind of sucks because I want them to have the ability to take chances on long shots and losers.

 

I've worked in LA for a long time. I have a pretty good sense of what works and what doesn't, but I know how the game is played and I understand the risks. But at the same time, there's always surprises, and that's one reason why the business is often so interesting. As the great screenwriter William Goldman said:

“Nobody knows anything... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one.”

And that's really the truth. The problem nowadays is actually the opposite of what you think: studios are less inclined to take risks, and instead of making (say) 20 x $30 million medium-budget movies, they'd rather make three $200 million movies. This is a much bigger risk, but the potential for profits is much greater when you take a bigger swing at bat. Unfortunately, this gives us a lot of comic book movies, a lot of sequels, a lot of summer tentpoles, and a lot of remakes, which is not very good creatively.

If you want to know more about the problem, read Lynda Obst's book Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business, which explains it in extreme detail. Studios are not willing to take chances on long shots and losers -- they only want big, blockbuster movies with a lot of visual effects, because judging by the long list of the Top 100 most profitable movies ever made, a large percentage of the recent ones are all visual effects parades. And that's just kinda the way things are now.

 

She was clearly joking.

 

Here's a fantastic visual "before and after" comparison of the invisible CGI effects used in Alfonso Cuaron's recent Netflix film Roma...



I think this is a beautiful example of how, used well, VFX can be almost imperceptible and yet make a massive difference in the look of a film -- particularly a period piece like this where many of the buildings, cars, and other locations no longer look as they did, 50 years later.

 

That's dang good! Very well done. Is the fact that it was b&w helpful to the result, or irrelevant?

 

They shot it in color, and then Steven J. Scott and his team at Technicolor precisely turned that into B&W but emphasized different color channels in the process to create different gray scales as needed. On set, you'll see green screen in the background of some shots, which helped them make the composite.

 

That makes sense to me, as in the print world, on a typical budget, most colors are made up of a combination of just four colors yellow, magenta, cyan and black. However, you can ramp up the blacks by specing a rich black, which combines most or all of the four colors for greater saturation in the black areas. A similar technique can be used with printing richer b&w photo separations. Instead of separating a photo as b&w, it is separated as a color photo, thereby reaching a richer depth of tone.

 

OMG!

As a HUGE fan of Roma, I had absolutely NO idea there was quite THAT much CGI. Figured there was some, sure, but that's just stunning.

I'm just speechless watching this clip. Brilliant work.

 

Isn't it amazing? This is my favorite kind of VFX work, when it's just seamless and imperceptible. The stuff they shot on a backlot with greenscreen was amazing: you would totally buy it as Mexico City 1970.

 

Directors Guild of America article - Spring 2019 (James Cameron/Jon Favreau) do a full dive in on technology.

The Innovators -