CGI Is Starting to Suck

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

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  1. Lucidae

    Lucidae AAD

    Location:
    Australia
    "Chappie" had some of the most realistic CGI I've seen yet. That's the kind of movie that really needed it, though.
     
  2. JBStephens

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

    Location:
    South Mountain, NC
    My dad was a computer programmer. My great uncle was an animator. I know the difference. :D

    I said "computer programmer" because that's what they USE to create their effects, compared to ink and paint and cels.

    "The Aviator" wasn't bad, although the airplanes sometimes looked more like a swarm of flies than flight machines. It was rather silly.
     
    Last edited: Jun 11, 2015
  3. JBStephens

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

    Location:
    South Mountain, NC
    Tell that to the person who authored the Capital One website. Menus don't need to "ooze" down from the top. Screens don't need to "slide" from right to left. Etc. Etc. Etc.
     
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  4. Michael

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

    I gave mine to you don't you remember?
     
  5. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    It's the filmmakers who are over-relying on CGI VFX to try to take crappy scripts and make them into big blockbusters. Transformers and Fast & Furious proves that this idea can work in terms of commercial success... but they aren't good movies. And some of the effects work is terrible.

    I think taking a $2 million race car and jumping it from 100 stories up to another building 80 stories high, and then racing it through that building and jumping it onto another building 70 stories up is a little unbelievable. And that was not done for real. Half the movie is CGI, and one of the actors (Paul Walker) is part-CGI through more than 1/3 of the film. Almost none of the movie is believable, and none of it makes much sense. I understand why it made money. But I think stuff like this represents a bad direction for the industry in general.
     
  6. DLeet

    DLeet Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chernigov, Ukraine
    Don't agree with the article. CGI are done at times. Asgard from Marvel's universe does not look believable at all. But what I've always seen - CGI effects constantly get better and can be done better and better every single time. The problem is - old CGI effects that we saw on the verge of 90s and 2000s look laughable now.
     
  7. daglesj

    daglesj Forum Resident

    Location:
    Norfolk, UK
    I remember watching the second Matrix movie for the first time and that's when my love of CGI started to wane. I could not believe how amateur/shoddy some of those effects shots looked. They still haven't fixed them to this day. Not that it would help.

    For me the master of big CGI spectacle is DelTorro. He handles it just right.
     
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  8. Djmover

    Djmover Forum Resident

    I thought the CGI in Man of Steel was way over the top particularly at the end where Superman battles Zod and co and destroy everything in sight including Metropolis (no wonder Superman is hated in the upcoming sequel ).
    Anyway might just be my age (grew up with the Reeve films) but still thought the CGi was way over the top on this film.
     
  9. Ken_McAlinden

    Ken_McAlinden MichiGort Staff

    Location:
    Livonia, MI
  10. jeatleboe

    jeatleboe Forum Resident

    Location:
    NY
    Still, I much prefer a physical actor in costume being present. For all the so-called "advancements" in more recent "giant monster" films, I still sense that the monsters are nothing more than a cartoon-like image that is not really present in the scene.

    Even in the above pictured film (SON OF GODZILLA) there is more heart and emotion between "dad and son" than in any of todays modern and over-blown CGI action bonanazas. And you know something? The monster battles aren't bad in it, either.
     
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  11. Also I never really hear actors singing praises of CG...
     
  12. I'm not really a fan of Del Toro as much as I'd like to be (he really needs a new set of Western/English speaking actors), but I'm totally eating crow about The Hobbit now. I'd rather have seen his version or nothing at all compared to what we got. And that's no hyperbole.
     
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  13. Oatsdad

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

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    The robots were done well, but I thought some of the other CG was dodgy - I recall some funky-looking fire effects.

    Great CG or no, that's a pretty weak movie!
     
  14. daglesj

    daglesj Forum Resident

    Location:
    Norfolk, UK
    You me and thousands others. I bet he regrets it too.
     
  15. tommy-thewho

    tommy-thewho Senior Member

    Location:
    detroit, mi
    I agree.

    Sucker Punch was first movie I thought went way overboard with CGI.
     
  16. Lucidae

    Lucidae AAD

    Location:
    Australia
    Over the top visuals is Zack Snyder's trademark. At least with Sucker Punch it was justified, Man of Steel on the other hand...
     
  17. robertawillisjr

    robertawillisjr Music Lover

    Location:
    Hampton, VA
    As with most things the use of CG will find a balance. It is IMHO that CG is over and badly used now. But that should change as content creators get tired of the whiz bang effect and decide to create art again. BUT this may be too much to expect of Hollywood (and all of the other xxxwoods) since $$$ seems to be the only reason to make movies anymore.

    I would love to see a big money movie that was good (define "good" as you please) and used CG not just for whiz bang effects but to enhance the content of the movie.
     
  18. PlushFieldHarpy

    PlushFieldHarpy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Indiana
    I gave up on CGI after Ang Lee's Hulk (2003). Sure, the Star Wars films failed to showcase CGI as a legitimate progression in storytelling, but I still held out hope that there was some usage for it. The Hulk was so unimpressive, with such pointless, uninspiring effects that I said, "this is it". Transformers came along and were the nails in the coffin.

    CGI effects are a CARTOON, which the mind's eye will always register as fake. There is no suspension of disbelief as there is with physical effects (or at least, it's greatly diminished). It's like watching Space Jam or Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The only way to use them is to separate them from the actual body of the film as with Malick's Tree Of Life or even Kubrick's 2001. Then the mind can make the transition from fake to real without it ruining the movie.

    The Hulk was also the first movie I saw where action scenes seemed purposely animated to be so fast and furious you couldn't tell what was going on. This was carried to it's full effect with Michael Bay's Transformers.

    I also think the advent of totally animated characters went nowhere. I give you Jar Jar Binks. And then even Gollum in LOTR would have been better served by being played by a funny-looking actor in makeup. Then Peter Jackson might have been able to pay a bit more attention to where the stories were going.
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2015
  19. Not only that I'm never "WOWed" by CG. Back in the day if something crazy happened on screen it was visceral. You could feel it. You'd have a reaction to it. And it would have you asking, "How'd they do that?" and you were treated to some form of human physical triumph (i.e. stunts/driving) or engineering ingenuity from builders or architects. Human interaction and problem solving. Now when I see something I shrug it off as CG. Creating new programming is not easy, but it's not exciting either save for a few nerds. Doesn't help the audience or the actors. Boring.
     
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  20. A computer generated Scooby Doo. A computer generated Garfield. What next, a computer generated Paddington? :wtf:

    For those who don't get my reference, check out this video. Actually, a film.

     
  21. progrocker71

    progrocker71 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    So, you quote my post, without actually reading it or watching the video I linked in it. Instead, you bring up a completely unrelated scene in the movie (and of course the skyscraper jumping scene is CG, anyone would know that). Go back and WATCH THE STUNTS IN THE VIDEO I POSTED...and I never said ALL the stunts were real, but YOU were the one that implied the movie was 2 hours of non-stop CG and that NONE of it was believable...despite the video evidence to the contrary that you conveniently ignored.

    There is a ton of CG in the movie and they go so overboard with it during the final sequence it's like watching a cartoon, but there are a few very well-done sequences earlier in the film that were quite impressive. The race through the mountain roads and down the hillside were excellent I thought. The movie itself...yeah, it's mostly terrible aside from a few of those scenes.
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2015
  22. PNeski@aol.com

    [email protected] Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    How great are these films anyway?? we are talking about Popcorn movies ,and many are simply better because of CGI ,as long as they don't look like video games The fact the Pixar can still make good movies shows its just a matter of who is making the
    films and not the effects . Big movies like Transformers have only special effects going for them,and would be unwatchable without them
    The Hobbit films were jammed pack with CGI ,but they couldn't have been made without CGI ,Bad Matte paintings are all over the history of film ,and CGI isn't going away as long as people still go see, Or like it ,like the dragons on the last episode of Game of Thrones
     
  23. progrocker71

    progrocker71 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I love classic sci-fi films and physical effects...but they are no more "real" and still require a significant suspension of disbelief. I love War Of The Worlds, but of course it's obvious the spaceships are large models on wires, I know that, but I'm able to suspend disbelief because of the technical limitations of the time the film was produced. Of course I admire the craftsmanship of building the models and miniature sets, those are physical, tangible objects and our brains I think are wired to appreciate the effort and art involved with that endeavor. But really, c'mon, whether a special effect is done physically or CG...we all still know it's an effect. If you see a spaceship or a giant monster or a ghost or giant squid or whatever we KNOW those things don't exist in real life so of course we already know we're watching something that has been fabricated. What strikes me as odd is people that can suspend disbelief for one effects medium but not the other.

    I remember going back and re-watching Star Wars and Star Trek: The Motion Picture on VHS and noticing the little square-box matte lines around the spaceships that would turn as the ships turned...those elements have been fixed now (using computers) but if you were watching those films on home video during the 80s they were quite obvious. Did that ruin my suspension of disbelief? No. The films were still just as enjoyable, but of course that drew attention to the effects being effects. I would be willing to bet many people who praise the physical effects of the original Star Wars don't spend a second thinking about the computer tinkering that has been done to improve the seamlessness of those effects for modern editions of the films.
     
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  24. My biggest problem with CGI is that certain directors feel the need to use the technology when they could achieve the same results in live action with practical effects or just some light augmentation - there's nothing worse than a supposedly real actor being right up close to a camera when they're being rendered. In some cases, I've seen a "depth of field" solution employed where you rarely notice the transition from a distant model or digital figure into an actual person, but there are far more examples of just one being used, and once you realise that you're effectively watching a poorly integrated animation this is much worse than a few stray wires or matte lines being visible. Saying that, I certainly don't prefer the traditional approaches all the time, as there are some truly dire effects (especially from the mid '80s when video compositing became quite prevalent) that don't hold up. On the other hand, with the jump from SD home formats to higher resolution media, it's becoming harder for once convincing CGI to have the same results, and film makers certainly can't rely on pasting in the same model repeatedly to create large crowds, which is a particular issue that I've found myself noticing with greater frequency lately. At least just a few years ago this could be disguised under grain, tape noise or even the artifacts of poorly optimised compression, though it's becoming far harder. In the right hands, CGI remains a potentially amazing tool for expanding worlds and fixing minor issues to increase overall consistency, yet like so many others, its abuse or sometimes unnecessary overuse means we're drawn to complain about the most jarring demonstrations rather than its better applications.
     
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