Most of the movies us nerds are looking forward to in 2012 have something in common — lots and lots of special effects. So, let’s talk special effects for a bit.
The things that can be done with special effects today are amazing, and yet despite all the advances in technique and technology, a lot of special effects still aren’t particularly convincing. More often than not the fault doesn’t lie with the effects technology itself, but in how the effects are presented.
Basically a lot of movies do dumb things that rob their amazing effects of all their impact. Stuff like…
Using CG Effects When They Don’t Have To
This is one of my biggest pet peeves — when movies break out the CG effects for minor stuff that doesn’t require them. A spider has to crawl on some lady’s arm? You could just get a tarantula from a pet store and plunk it on her arm, but nah — better computer generate that s–t!
While I generally enjoyed the movie, Chronicle was particularly bad for this. The movie’s about three teenage guys gaining telekinetic powers, and for the first half of the flick all they use them for is small stuff like making cameras float, or pushing cars around a parking lot. It’s all stuff that could have been done with simple practical effects, and yet they pull out the CG for all of it.
That said, the scene where they make Pringles fly into their mouths will blow your mind.
When movies resort to CGI for such minor things, it almost always looks bad because, really, it’s just a spider on a lady’s arm or a floating camera. It’s not a big showpiece shot, so the effects artists aren’t going to put that much effort into them, but here’s the thing — these “unimportant” shots looking like crap will make viewers less likely to accept the big stuff later on.
I don’t know about you, but once I notice a few really unconvincing special effects my brain goes into “spot the s–tty CGI” mode. Because of that lame spider or floating camera early on, my brain doesn’t want to accept the giant ape or superhero effects showdown that comes later. In other words, if a scene is too unimportant to bother making your CG effects look decent, don’t even bother with ‘em.
Making the Camera Do Stuff a Camera Can’t Do
The advent of CGI means filmmakers no longer have to worry about the limitations of actual physical cameras — they can create scenes entirely in the computer and have a virtual camera that dives, swirls and swoops around like no real camera actually could.
These virtual cameras are fine if used with restraint, but they rarely are — even great directors like Martin Scorsese go overboard with them. His latest movie, Hugo, is full of scenes where the camera swooshes through twisting corridors full of complex machinery and clockworks — these scenes are supposed to be exciting I think, but they didn’t make much of an impact on me. Based on the impossible way the camera was moving my brain immediately concluded “oh, okay, we’re taking a cartoon break” and didn’t reengage until the camera stopped flying around.
Gears…so many gears.
CG effects are basically just extra detailed cartoons — don’t call attention to the fact with a “camera” straight out of an animated Disney movie from the 90s.
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Jurassic Park still looks better than most CGI fests out there. That’s what happens when you use CGI only when there are no other options.
It’s kind of sad that Spielberg himself apparently has no idea why Jurassic Park still works based what he’s done recently with stuff like Crystal Skull and TinTin.
Seriously. 20 YEARS OLD and the effects still work. Alongside it, T2′s liquid effects look outdated and crappy (at least the film is well written) and yet the dinos in JP look more believable than almost anything since, including the 2 sequels.
Let’s hear it for Stan Winston
Here here!
I agree with all these points in general, but with two caveats: I thought Gollum’s eyes worked (maybe just because he already looked pretty weird), and the hypercolor CG bonanza was the entire point of Avatar. It didn’t look realistic or lifelike, but it did look very sharp and detailed and alien (which is appropriate, no?). I would imagine/hope that Cameron himself didn’t expect the movie’s story and world to be taken seriously enough that viewers being “distracted” could be a problem.
Pretty sure that Avatar patted itself on the back heavily for what a realistic and believable world they’ve created, in the computer. Just watch behind the scenes or making offs, how proud everyone is of their “realistic” animal and plant designs and making Pandora seem like a real planet when really it’s just an unbelievable fairy tale world.
*buries head in computer-generated sand*
The first point about making cameras do what cameras can’t do is one of the things I love so much about Breaking Bad – they do things with the cameras that no one has ever done before.
Eh, most of Breaking Bad is still done with real cameras — at least up until the point I’ve watched (maybe they start selling meth on Pandora in Season 3). It’s creatively shot, but it’s not like they’re computer generating all the sets and having the camera spin around wildly all the time. When they do break out the CGI it’s usually to make a specific point/joke.
@ Nate: I could be wrong, but I think that’s what he meant. They use actual cameras but are very creative how they use them. See the episode “Fly” for a good example.
I’m all for creative use of actual cameras — I just don’t like when they just computer generate the whole damn scene and the virtual “camera” is made to do things a real camera obviously couldn’t do.
Yeah, that’s what I meant – it’s done with exceptional photography, no CGI. If there has been any CGI (beyond the end of the fourth season finale), I haven’t caught it.
They miss the point all together when they use special effects now a days. THey’re called “special effects” for a reason, meaning that when used, they are supposed to be memorable, and if overused, they are just boring. Like the Star Wars prequels, for example, how many times do we have to see ships landing or taking off? Who gave a shit at the beginning of Sith when there was a huge battle in space where it looked like a clusterfuck of a pianting by an elephant holding a brush with his long nose.
Inception was the best example of using special effects for their actual purpose. Each scene that used CGI was awe inspiring, and then the hallway scenes were all practical and blew your mind. It’s no longer special if overused.
I thought that space battle was one of the better parts of Sith. It impressed me. Though I’ve always been a big fan of giant clusterfuck space battles. I guess this whole thing is a matter of perspective though. I usually know when a movie’s going to be nothing but a lightshow, and so I appreciate a good one when I see it, rather than being disappointed that things didn’t look real or whatever. I guess maybe the point here is that it sucks that those kinds of movies exist in the first place, and it’s sad that those movies so often make huge amounts of money… but bad movies would still be plentiful and profitable without the lightshow ones.
The thing about unnecessary cg in the Star Wars prequels that pissed me off the most was that all the stormtroopers were cg when they didn’t have to be. There is no good reason in the world why but every time you see a stormtrooper in Ep II and III it looks like utter shit. They even (poorly) photoshopped in the face of the actor on a cg body when he needed to say stuff with his helmet off.
@JJ
What makes the space battle in Ep. III so bad is that there’s no involvement for the viewer at all and the fact that it’s just one giant, confusing, overloaded CGI effect doesn’t help that. It’s just a big battle and we don’t know who or why or what is going on at all. We’re basically supposed to be impressed/excited just because a lot of stuff is going on. It’d be like Return of the Jedi starting in the middle of the final battle without any of the buildup, planning, increasing of tension. You wouldn’t care cause it’s just stuff happening.
And like he said, the Prequels simply overuse CGI to a massive degree because they do almost everything with it. Everything’s a green screen set and every action scene is crammed full of things happening that becomes hard to care about anything because you can tell they’re just trying to show off with how much they can do without ever stopping to ask themselves if it makes sense or makes things more interesting.
I certainly agree with xlarti about the CG stormtroopers looking lousy, and a lot of the other creature designs being ridiculously overdone — the Geonosians, for example. But I guess I’ll just have to say different strokes for different folks as far as the space battle goes. I’m pretty sure the opening text crawl provided at least some context for that battle, and if you’ve seen Episode 2, you know (or can quickly figure out) which ships belong to which side. But then again, like I said, I’m biased; I love big space battles. In fact I even own a computer game called Gratuitous Space Battles, so obviously I’m not averse to those.
Dagnabbit! I can remember when “Special Effects” was tying onions on your belt! The ladies loved it…..I can’t remember how many ankles I got to see…
In addition to the general awfulness of the entire movie, one of the things that I really hated about The Crystal Skull was the entire, overly GC’d forest chase scene. None of it looked real, and it was probably all done in stationary vehicles in front of a green screen. But the fact that they had obviously gone in and put GC dirt tails flying off the tires of Indy’s jeep was particularly insulting to me. It looked completely fake and they might as well have drawn in “speed lines” like a first grader drawing a jet flying.
Also, it seems every movie Sylvester Stallone makes now has to include all CGI blood. Which is something that technology has not advanced far enough to accurately capture. Or, maybe I’m wrong, and the phyics for CG blood are amazing, but it’s old blood packs that look completely fake. I don’t know. Luckily, I’ve never seen anyone get shot in real life. I just know that it looked like the blood effects in the Expendables was done with MS Paint.
Yeah, the jungle chase was my least favorite part of Crystal Skull too — largely because Indy has a long history of *really great* elaborate vehicle-based action scenes. It’s kind of amazing that the guy who made Raiders of the Lost Ark could look at that jungle chase scene and think “yeah, this is good enough”.
It’s simply because of the sad fact that it’s no longer the same guy. It’s an older, softer, comfortable franchise custodian rather than a FILMMAKER directing Indiana Jones.
Spielberg may occasionally be able to get the old mojo up for personal projects, but he can’t sustain it, and he brings none of it to the studio chum anymore. I mean, he got way more out of Last Crusade, Minority Report, and Munich than anyone with his sort of comfort level should be expected to, so sometimes it does work.
I have to add that Sin City used nearly all CGI (they had 3 sets I think, and used some cars) and did it wonderfully/beautifullly. However, this has become one of the exceptions.
expanding on the article’s first point, I hate it when they create CGI animals/creatures that react to things the way a human would. The cgi spiders always move the way a human would, the cgi rats and mice always have some sort of human-influenced personalty, etc. See the giant centipedes in King Kong as a great example.
The Matrix Reloaded’s fight scene with all the agent Smith’s is a really good example of the “bouncing back and forth of CG and real actors”. The entire color temperature changes. Really bothers me.