CGI in films

[wide_inside]

By every one's raving revues of cgi-fest films, I guess I might be the only one. But I hate CGI, and have never seen a film where it has been used successfully.

LOTR is a prime example.

So, the fellowship are pegging it away from the goblins and all that. They enter the great hall running at a great pace. Oh hang on, an impossible pace, unless they're on roller-skates. Even between paces, when a foot is supposedly stationary on the floor, they are still gliding forwards. It looks like Dangermouse for pete's sake.
Next, they get out of the mines, big "helicopter" shot of them running over craggy rocks, jumping from rock to rock, running up and down slopes. Apart from our elf mate of course, because he pretty much walks over a flat surface, no matter what the ground under his feet is doing. He also leans wrong when he walks. The whole thing looks like an intro sequence to the next firs person shooter.


I really can't think of one film in which cgi is used seamlessly. It made Gladiator look like Starwars, and Starwars look like walking with beasts. Where's Harryhausen when you need him?

wide

[Arch Stanton]

CASINO


This film use's shed loads of CGI to re create 70's Vegas. But you wouldn't know that unless i told you. :p

[SqueakyG]

I also think that CG (the kind that is supposed to be spectacular and obvious, rather than "hidden" CG) is usually fake-looking. Even if it is totally photo-realistic, it is hard to be impressed by something that you KNOW is CG.

It's like... CG makes ANYTHING possible on the screen. So when anything is possible, NOTHING is impressive.

The only CG that ever impressed me and totally immersed me in the scene was the T-Rex scene in Jurassic Park. I attribute its success to two factors: 1) This was the first time CG had been used to make a phot-realistic creature; and 2) Because they studied animal movement and animated the T-Rex wonderfully.

No other CG has ever impressed me in the same way.

[Fat Man Hackett]

Someone told me that that Final Fantasy film used CG, but I just can't spot it... :D

[Doorman80]

Blade was spoilt for me by using crap CG effects:mad:
They didn't even try to make the blood look real

[Shingster]

Apart from our elf mate of course, because he pretty much walks over a flat surface, no matter what the ground under his feet is doing. He also leans wrong when he walks. The whole thing looks like an intro sequence to the next firs person shooter.

Did you fall asleep during the scenes set in the snowy mountain top?? Legolas was walking over snow coz he's an Elf, so he should be gliding over that rough surface!!

Where's Harryhausen when you need him?
Yeah, the Fx in the likes of Sinbad and Jason & The Argonauts look dead realistic & seamless don't they???:confused: (I don't want to appear to be dissing HarryHausen, but to me his animation techniques looked just as fake as CGI does.)

If you hate CGI so much, why did you go to watch one of the most CGI-rich films of all time???? :confused:

[neilalford]

I think the problem may be that these days you only really notice CGI when it is bad (except for obvious CGI creations, like the cave troll in LOTR), I would think that nearly every film released these days has some sort of CGI work done on it at some point you just dont normally notice it.

Using the LOTR example, while watching the film only one bit of CGI really stood out as bad for me and that was Legolas on the cave trolls back, other than that I didn't find myself noticing it at any point and I generally pay a lot of attention to CGI effects as I nearly ended up working on it as a career.

[Michael Brooke]

<B>Yeah, the Fx in the likes of Sinbad and Jason & The Argonauts look dead realistic & seamless don't they??? (I don't want to appear to be dissing HarryHausen, but to me his animation techniques looked just as fake as CGI does.) </B>

A crucial difference, though, is that they look convincingly solid, something that I always have a problem with when it comes to CGI (the sharks in <I>Deep Blue Sea</I>, anyone?).

Not insignificantly, Jan Svankmajer, unarguably one of the world's greatest living animators (his work with blending live action with claymation in films like <I>Food</I> makes Harryhausen look like Georges Melies!), refuses to work with CGI, as he says he needs to work with solid touchable objects in order to breathe life into them.

[GAmbrose]

What about Cast Away, that has shedloads of CGI, but it's so seemless you would never notice (other than the planecrash sequence)

Gary A

[Dan Druff]

Robert Zemeckis is one of those directors who uses CGI brilliantly in his movies (nearly every shot in Contact has an element of CGI, not just the space shots).
Personally, I feel CGI is improving a lot. LOTR was excellent, and the likes of Spider-Man will push the envelope even further. People often list older films with model effects that worked (such as Empire Strikes Back or Blade Runner) but what about terrible models near the end of Superman, or bad water effects in films like the aforementioned Harryhousen classics or Ben-Hur and the like?
CGI is the way forward.

[Michael Brooke]

<B>CGI is the way forward.</B>

No, it's <U>a</U> way forward. Like any new technology, it should be used in tandem with existing technologies, not as a substitute for them.

[jimmy_b]

Originally posted by Michael Brooke
<B>CGI is the way forward.</B>

No, it's <U>a</U> way forward. Like any new technology, it should be used in tandem with existing technologies, not as a substitute for them.

:clap:
My thoughs exactly.

[beobrand]

One of the best examples of the fusion of techinques that produces (IMO) the best results is Terminator 2. It has brilliant, ground-breaking CGI, models, animatronics, stunt men, even back projection...The end product is brilliant. I think an over dependance on CGI in modern movies is where the problems arise.

Deep Blue Sea's animatronic sharks were, I thought, very convincing...but the CG ones seemed to have been cobbled together in a couple of weeks. When CGI is done really well, it IS photorealistic and lifelike. The problem is that few films have excellent CGI throughout, especially ones that rely on it to tell much of the story. Also, inanimate objects, buildings etc. always seem to look good with modern CGI, it is the animation that really shows the effects up in most cases.

[smiddyboy]

I had a massive argument with my brother over christmas about this very subject.

In relation to Lord of the Rings, i don't think that you can get a finer example of CGI. And trying to pull of some of the effects with any other method apart from CGI would have looked noticeable, especially with some of the camera moves during some of the scenes. Trying to film these scenes in the conventional manner would have been impossible. For the example of the cave troll, how would have pulled this off without the use of minitures,puppets,claymation etc. But i also agree that there is a point that can be crossed. you just have to look at The phantom menace too see when the cgi becomes the film and not part of it.

What is worrying my brother is that in the next instalment there is a breed of creature that they come across which i am pretty sure that will be completely CGI. My brother beleives that these creatures should be animated in a more 'conventional' way i.e with elaborate puppetry or animatronics, but i am positive that this would look just as fake and artificial as any cgi.

[Dan Druff]

Originally Posted by Michael Brooke
No, it's a way forward. Like any new technology, it should be used in tandem with existing technologies, not as a substitute for them.

Yes, of course I don't mean actors and stuntmen, animatronics etc. will be completely replaced. But the CGI of the future will be able to deal with almost everything for much less $, models will be still be built, but for scanning into the computer etc. Everything basically can be scanned and manipulated with a lot more success than some movies of the past. But the beauty of CGI is the creation of images that simply could not be put on the cinema screen, or outside of the mind of artists and movie-makers. Lord of the Rings is such an example.
My fav movie is Blade Runner. An entire city of the future is created with outstanding success. That is the peak IMO of pre-CGI, and unfortunately film-makers such as Stephen Sommers are over-using CGI so the impact is simply not there. At the moment it has a lot to do with budget, as well as talent.

[Cap'n Al]

John Woo on CGI: 'I hate it, it always ends up looking fake to me'

Personally, I'm fed up with seeing laughably bad special effects in films; even <i>Pearl Harbor</i>, which had some stunning moments, was better when it was obvious that real boats were being sunk, rather than the pretty but empty computer effects used elsewhere in the battle sequences.

[bazkeane82]

Originally posted by Cap'n Al
John Woo on CGI: 'I hate it, it always ends up looking fake to me'

Personally, I'm fed up with seeing laughably bad special effects in films; even <i>Pearl Harbor</i>, which had some stunning moments, was better when it was obvious that real boats were being sunk, rather than the pretty but empty computer effects used elsewhere in the battle sequences.

isn't john woo making a cgi teenage mutant ninja turtles film???

[rfawley]

and the worse film to date for BAD CGI is....... The Mummy Returns (never mind the bad plot, script etc..!) The Scorpian - aaaaaaarrrrrrggggggggghhhh

[skye_storm]

Mummy returns aaaaaaaaaaaagh, spot on, worst cgi ever, looks like it took an afternoon to make!

[Ron Hill]

When model making is done right and combined with the finest in puppetry you get unbeatable (yet) results.

I'm thinking of the Queen Alien in Aliens and the animatronics in Jurassic Park.

CGI is still in the maturing process I feel. As for LOTR, I found the CGI very good on the whole but I do agree that the running scenes in Moria are not good. Why Mr. Jackson didn't get them to run against bluescreen and then digitally edit the actual running footage into the CGI backdrop is beyond me.