Movie Advances - Round Table

Sharby · Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2005 5:19 pm Post subject: Movie Advances - Round Table

O.k all you popcorn and raisonette lovers it's round table time so make sure you've bought your tickets because this time we're heading to the future...of movies that is.

Over the past few years we've seen more and more CG in movies being implemented, Star Wars saga, Sky Captain and most recently Sin City to name a few. Yes the movies look great (though some of the stories weren't all that good..listen up Lucas) and the directors are able to do more with their vision of how the movie should look, but at what cost? Is the cost of CG less than having sets made?, is creating a completly CG character cheaper or better than having a live actor? (again Lucas pay attention..no more Jar-Jars!). Movies now a days are getting more expensive and taking longer to make....is it worth it?

The viewing room is yours....just make sure you throw away your trash, and enjoy the show.

Joseph_OBrien · Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 10:52 am Post subject: Re: Movie Advances - Round Table

The question "Is it worth it" would seem to be "yes", particularly if you're a film producer. Both Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow and Sin City were shot very quickly and at relatively low budgets considering the production values present. If you're a filmgoer, it's your ten bucks. People seemed to think Sky Captain was worth it, and the certainly felt that way about Sin City.

Anti-CGI people talk about bad CGI like there were never bad or unconvincing effects pre-1991 -- and most of them don't know what they're talking about anyway. I flinch every time some Roger Ebert wannabe pipes up with the criticism that "it looked so CGI" with no real understanding of what that means, as if the technique were to blame. No one criticizes stop-motion for looking like stop-motion. And the difference between good stop-motion and good CG animation is you'll never, ever notice the CG.

Case in point: in Attack of the Clones, during Obi-Wan's battle with Jango Fett on the landing platform, when he's wrapped up in cable and yanked out of frame. Quick, somebody tell me what the CGI element of that shot was?

Answer: all of it. Including a fully digital Ewan McGregor that holds up in a medium shot. And I'll bet you good money ILM gets a lot closer than a medium shot of some digital doubles in Revenge of the Sith. Not to mention the fact the every single clone trooper you see in those movies, including the ones in full close up, are CGI. No actual clone trooper suit was constructed for either film.

Jar-Jar jokes aside, some characters can ONLY be realized through animation. People drag out the Jar-Jar example all the time, but they seem to forget Yoda and Gollum. Why? Because the effect works -- you see a character, not an effect.

The fact is, computers have transformed the creation of visual effects from a clumsy, difficult process involving hundreds of man-hours into a proper art form, where the imagination of artists takes precedence over technique. Movies like Sky Captain and Sin City are as much art experiment as they are commercial features. The success and acceptance of the greenscreen technique is going to lead to more and more films that are approached like paintings. I don't want EVERY film to look like that, but I really liked the way those films looked.

Ratteler · Forum Member Joined: Jun 10, 2002 Posts: 561 Location: NYC

I look at it as a opening to a door I otherwise couldn't get through. Theorhetically I can make an entire animated movie in my Home Office that looks as good as anything Holly would. :wink:

The fact is that cost of a film has been artifically inflated for decades. The new era of CG film making is cutting out a lot of jobs that have been artifically kept alive by old studio folks who both fear change, and fear loosing control.

Sure you have people jumping the shark like Jim Cameron who now wants to work exclusivly in 3D projected films, but on the whole those who embrace digital are just going to be able to do more and meet that ever shrinking bottom line that has resulted from micro-marketing.

As for CG actors. It's going to change even more as we require more unrealisticly pretty people who never age. Is there a real difference between a CG AhnAld and one with a ton of makup and plastic surgery?

So far we stilll need PEOPLE to bring life even to 3D characters. Yoda, JarJar, and Golum were all the result of extreme motion capture work right down to their facial expressions.

And I have yet to "HEAR" CG. The best synthetic voices are tuned recording of a real persons phoenems chained together in a Text To Speech program... and they still sound mechanical.

So no matter how realistic our photonic puppets may become... with out the right people pulling the strings and lending them voices... they still won't exist.

Film has always been about illusion. Starting with the first trick of making 12-60 indivdual pictures look like movment.

I'm more worried about bad writters destroying film.

itisitex · Forum Member Joined: Sep 01, 2002 Posts: 186 Location: Tx

Is it worth it that is a loaded question i guess it would depend on the outcome of the movie case in point star wars is well worth the price of admission.
another case in point is catwoman not worth the price of admission.
I think good CG sort of levels the playing field a bit if an actor or actress is to egotistical they can be replaced with a CG character at a fraction of the cost. This can help the budget of a movie a great deal while keeping none stars from charging 15-20 million to star in a movie. What ever happens though make sure to get ILM to to the work or take a chance at crappy CG/ real world blending like catwoman.

electranaut · Forum Member Joined: Jan 03, 2004 Posts: 91

It's true that CGI still relies on people doing a lot of physical stuff at the moment, such as actors providing mocap data and voice work. Good CGI is now capable of photo-realistic views of absolutely anything imaginable already. I think the next big interesting thing will be the challenge to get rid of any need for actors at all, even for mocap and vo.

I agree with Ratteler at about the currents state of play with these technologies, but another decade or so could see things really turning around even in these fields. There are already some "virtual singer" add-ons commercially available for music creators which aren't always perfect but which are capable of some extremely convincing results, showing how far speech synthesis has come. As for mocap, well, have you seen the stuff already being done by NaturalMotion's Endorphin package? This is the technology at an embryonic stage and already it's pretty jaw-dropping. At the moment it only simulates certain parts of mocap, but it's getting better all the time.

Photo-realistic CGI has, in my opinion, not much further to go and the oohs and ahhs of, say, Jurassic Park are already a distant memory when nowadays even a very small team can blow the world to smithereens in a million different spectacular ways. The downside with all this technological advance is that we've already been spoiled so much, Joe Public probably won't even raise an eyebrow at the next cutting-edge breakthrough, even if it allows him to remake The Matrix on his cellphone.

C'est la vie...

GhostofMacbeth · Forum Member Joined: Sep 21, 2001 Posts: 619

I think it works.. to a point. My girlfriend would disagree since she really hates CG stuff and seems to be able to pick it up pretty quickly, even if it was well done. I think if it is well done and is something that couldn't be done with live action then go for it but if it is just doing it to do it then why bother. I still think the masks etc from the original Star Wars work better than some of the best special effects from the newest ones. Plus I still can't get the stormtrooper havin a seizure out of my head from the 1997 "improvement" ...

Ironbear · Forum Member Joined: Nov 06, 2001 Posts: 1038

pilou · Forum Newbie Joined: Feb 09, 2004 Posts: 4

Yes, I think that directors can do great stuff with CGI, but the problem is that they are focusing on the wrong things. I think that Lucas made great stuff with Attack of the Clones, but the main problem is that most CGI in that movie is unbelievably shiny and clean. I mean, in reality things use to have marks and a not always polished look. Movies are unrealistic when they exceed the polished looks. For example in The Matrix Reloaded you could notice the CGI because Neo looked too smoth and polished...

I think that Lord of the Rings is much more like it... Instead of using only CGI, Jackson joined smartly CGI with real props and New Zealand beatiful places. If it will look better in reality, don't use CGI!

A good example of cleverly used CGI is Spiderman 2. In this movie things look really fantastic and it's hard to spot the difference between reality and CGI scenes.

Advances are being made everytime in CGI and I think it will get better and better. It's just that directors have to realize that because they are telling a fantasy story, things don't have to seem unlikely to be real in our universe.

The real advance will be when they make something like Final Fantasy, but in where you can't spot the difference between real actors and CGI ones. Then director can make the actors age very fastly if they want (if they will tell the story of the complete life of a character), instead of having different real actors for each age of the character. They also could make TV series in which the characters would age normally, but whenever there is a flashback the director can shot teh scene not having to worry for the actor being older at that time for a flashback.

What will be really good is that CGI actors have real "personalities", made with AI... It could be fantastic that instead of worrying of posing a certain character, that they just told the character what to do, and having the CGI actor his own personality and acting method he would make the best in the scene, using his own "learnt" expressions. Something like the movie S1mone...

After all I am really optimistic about CGI, let's just hope that directors don't forget about what's even more important: scripts and good dialogue.

itisitex · Forum Member Joined: Sep 01, 2002 Posts: 186 Location: Tx

The advancement of CG as caught everyone in Hollywood and like most good things it will be used to much just like a good song on the radio after hearing it every hour on the hour it gets old and expected. Movies are the same way when everything is CG or the majority of the Movie is CG it gets old fast. The directors on the otherhand have to realize
that even though CG is cool and can help a movie it should only be used when making a set would look to fake or it would be too dangerous for the actors to do.

Ironbear · Forum Member Joined: Nov 06, 2001 Posts: 1038

*nod* I'm optimistic about CG and f/x, I'm just not optimistic about directors and writers. There's not enough Jacksons and Millers to counterbalance the hordes of schlock directors and recycled writers.

Even the good ones can burn out and fall into the schlock pit - how many seriously innovative things has Carpenter done since Halloween I and The Thing?

CG is a tool, like color or THX... it's story, writing, and skill that make it or break it.
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bgraves · Forum Newbie Joined: Jun 21, 2004 Posts: 2

One of the things that made me decide to re-discover my artistic roots and embark on a new career in art/animation/writing was how totally crappy most of the current crop of movies, especially animated films and those that use alot of CG, are. It really seems like the only purpose of a storyline anymore is to string together disparate special FX clips >

If I spend another $13 at blockbuster to get 6 hours of crap, I'm going to give up watching movies altogether... I can't help thinking that I could have done a better job on some of them...

On another note, if you havn't seen the movie "Ghost in the Shell - 2", check it out. Iit's amazing! A beautiful blend of mediums and makes a good attempt at a storyline...

DrDestruction · Forum Newbie Joined: Oct 23, 2001 Posts: 3

Speaking as one who has worked in the film industry for fifteen years, all I can do is look at these CG films with continuing dread.

These films are nothing more than a justification to corporate Hollywood that my job should be replaced with that of ten pimply-faced teens who will work for a quarter of what I make. All that does is ensure that the higher-ups in the production abscond with more money in the name of "cutting the bottom line".

After all- why spend money on sets, crew people, property, and other things when you can make those same teens waste months (if not years) creating every single item for the movie in the computer. Just promise the geeks in front of the computer a credit at the end of the film, and they'll type away like the chimps who are probably busy creating what passes for the script.

Marathon · Forum Member Joined: May 04, 2004 Posts: 18

I find I rather enjoy seeing a movie with well done CG... as long as it' not OVER done.

There've been a few cases where I've seen something obviously done with CG where it wasn't needed. The reverse is the same, too. For instance, I've seen some horrible wire work done that could have been better served using a CG sequence.

Overall I think advanced CG, if very well done, can be seamless and realistic, especially for impossible or dangerous stunts, or bizzare characters, and adds yet another tool for the movie makers to take advantage of.

I don't, however, believe that it should always be looked at as just a way to save yourself some time or money by not creating beautiful movie sets and props. Those types of things are pure works of crafting art, and it allows the actors even more freedom to interact emotionally with the enviroment, instead of trying to act in front of a blue screen.

Hasdrubal · Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:59 pm Post subject: Re: Movie Advances - Round Table

This question will show my age, but why can't they run cartoons before the movie?

I know the theaters all stopped running toons before movies 30 years ago, but six minutes of 3-D Bugs Bunny before all the second rate feature movies would make the experience more tolerable.

Marathon · Forum Member Joined: May 04, 2004 Posts: 18

*Chuckles*

Alas, I know what you mean. How many times have you gone to see a movie only to find the Previews were the highlight of the evening? Bring back the cartoons! ;-)