I watched close encounters recently after watching Independence day. You know what? The special effects in close encounters are not only a hell of a lot more impressive, they are a hell of a lot more believable. I mean look at Blade Runner, I don't care for that movie one bit but the special effects are absolutely beautiful. Everything has that vague beautiful hazy kind of effect around the lighting and in doing so has this amazing dream-like quality that really makes it feel like the future. Now, Special effects today? They may be impressive but somehow they still are less impressive than the likes of Close Encounters and Blade runner.
Yeah, doing effects has gotten too easy. People lose focus on what looks real, and we're left with CGI cartoons populating 80% of the movies made these days. In the future, CGI is going to be seen in the same way we now see stop motion- good on those rare occasions when the effects people cared.
The stop motion dragon 1981's "Dragonslayer" was more impressive then the CGI dragons in "Reign of Fire" or "Eragon"
Quote from: GregMcduck on August 14, 2007, 07:43:13 PM
The stop motion dragon 1981's "Dragonslayer" was more impressive then the CGI dragons in "Reign of Fire" or "Eragon"
:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:
And Vermithrax was a computer-controled figure. They would program her movements a few seconds at a time, shoot and then program her again.
Ironically, there are parts of
Godzilla when she's moving through the tunnels that are complete rip offs of the scenes of Vermithrax moving through her cave. I've watched
Dragonslayer soooo many times I noticed it right away.
(god, I'm such a nerd)
I'm starting to get the feeling that Principal Skin-Trade doesn't like this movie ;)
The movie is bad, yes, but I can't say it's the worst movie ever. Battlefield earth is much, MUCH worse. The problem is it's not worse because of the "special effects", they are of the same quality, sad to say.
The special effects aren't the problem with this movie, it's the writing. Special effects are supposed to enhance the story, not BE the story.
For the most part I like summer blockbusters, I guess I disagree with Principal on the quality of effects ...when I go to a sumer blockbuster I leave my suspension of disbelief at the door ... its just another genera (albeit a rather new genera that was arguably started by ID4) ... its not meant to be perfect merely fun
Quote from: bettertomorrowamy on August 14, 2007, 09:00:13 PM
The special effects aren't the problem with this movie, it's the writing. Special effects are supposed to enhance the story, not BE the story.
Of course I agree with you. If you read any of my other posts you would know that I hated the writing in the movie too.
Quote from: Principal_Skin-trade on August 14, 2007, 09:05:18 PM
Quote from: bettertomorrowamy on August 14, 2007, 09:00:13 PM
The special effects aren't the problem with this movie, it's the writing. Special effects are supposed to enhance the story, not BE the story.
Of course I agree with you. If you read any of my other posts you would know that I hated the writing in the movie too.
Well I think you should have a thread about the downfall of Sci-Fi movies. There are so many good stories written that there is no excuse for a movie this bad to be made, and called sci-fi.
Again, I agree with you.
Personally I think the problem with a lot of CGI is that it doesn't look tangible. With some many of the 80's sci-fi and monster movies I grew up with I felt that I could at least touch or be touched by the creatures, which made them much more interesting to me.
Also the Special Effects in The Thing are still really really cool.
Those of you complaining about the CGI, you are aware that almost all of the effects in Independence Day were models, right? The film was might right on the cusp of the CGI revolution and while there is obviously CGI in it (the force fields, most obviously) the ships and exploding buildins are models.
What do you guys think of "The Host" in terms of CGI?
I really thought the movie would've improved the less you see the monster. There's not enough mystery about it, and the climactic moments seem underplayed when you can see everything. Maybe I'm not looking at it right, I don't know.
The only reason I complain about modern special effects is that most of them look so sterile, so inorganic. Now some movies have used them to really great effect(Pardon the pun), but most of the time they're just made to show a spaceship flying through outer space and little else. Sure, it's cool but it's got no heart. Now the Millenium Falcon... that was a ship that had personality and heart, it was practically a character.
Yeah, the spaceships were models, but I could not "believe a shapeship could fly". Now don't get me wrong, the initial arrival of the ships is mostly impressive, but the dogfights looked ugly as well. Of course, it didn't help that Will Smith was talking in those scenes.
Quote from: Johnny Unusual on August 15, 2007, 10:01:10 AM
Yeah, the spaceships were models, but I could not "believe a shapeship could fly". Now don't get me wrong, the initial arrival of the ships is mostly impressive, but the dogfights looked ugly as well. Of course, it didn't help that Will Smith was talking in those scenes.
I won't disagree with you on that. The design completely failed to take into account the scale of things. Because they were so obsessed with making sure the audience was "awed" by the effects they overlooked the subtle things like atmospheric haze that would have given the visuals more depth.
ID4 may be a very stupid movie, but some of the special effects get to me every time. Especially the scenes where the large space crafts arrive over New York and all of the other cities. Its just so beautiful looking. But the dog fights, like someone else said, are bad CGI looking. Especially when the alien ship explodes, the "fire" looks like orange smoke ( but let's face it, back in the 90s these SFX were as good as somthing you'd see in LOTR at the time ).
As for stop motion puppets, I've always been split on those. They look realistic enough, but when it comes to movement, its choppy and not fluid. That's where CGI improves on where motion capture gives their movements extreme realism, however when it comes to "looking" realistic and blending it with the real enviroment, that's where it gets tricky. However, some advancements on CGI have changed this like the photo-realism of Gollum, and Davy Jones ( who was so realistic, many people took him as an actor wearing make-up ).
Quote from: Phantom of Krankor on August 16, 2007, 09:36:43 AM
As for stop motion puppets, I've always been split on those. They look realistic enough, but when it comes to movement, its choppy and not fluid. That's where CGI improves on where motion capture gives their movements extreme realism, however when it comes to "looking" realistic and blending it with the real enviroment, that's where it gets tricky.
I know my opinions aren't popular here but I'll put the stop-motion parts of
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms or
20 Million Miles to Earth - that happen in full sunlight - against all these movies using CGI that have to have the "effect" shown in the dead of night in the middle of a rainstorm or fire sprinkler malfunction (
The Relic) or keeping the point of view of the camera constantly in motion (
Van Helsing, I, Robot) to hide the flaws.
What's more, until the CGI Yoda in
Revenge of the Sith, CGI's can't act (and that might have been by default). Even the rod puppet Rancor in RotJ gave a performance because it was an organic extension of a human being.
Quote from: Phantom of Krankor on August 16, 2007, 09:36:43 AMHowever, some advancements on CGI have changed this like the photo-realism of Gollum, and Davy Jones ( who was so realistic, many people took him as an actor wearing make-up ).
I had no idea the Monkees were pioneers of CGI.
Quote from: Just Some Guy on August 16, 2007, 02:01:43 PM
Quote from: Phantom of Krankor on August 16, 2007, 09:36:43 AMHowever, some advancements on CGI have changed this like the photo-realism of Gollum, and Davy Jones ( who was so realistic, many people took him as an actor wearing make-up ).
I had no idea the Monkees were pioneers of CGI.
Well, give Papa Nez a chance and he'll say he had a hand in inventing everything.... ;)
Phantom saved me the trouble of pointing out Pirates 2, which I study like crazy these days. John Knoll and the ILM did an amazing job and totally redeemed themselves in the area of visual effects. After the sterile, lifeless Star Wars prequels, they nailed the crew of the Flying Dutchman, no contest. They finally had the response to Gollum that they were looking for (and knew they were capable of).
In terms of the advancements of CG, you may complain about the dozens of shots you notice, but I point you to the thousands upon thousands of shots that you've watched in the last ten years that you didn't even know *were* visual effects. So much is done nowadays in subtle nuance that the audience completely misses, and this is where the real art of visual effects lies, I believe. Directors like Fincher, Gondry, Spike Jonze, and others have a habit of using visual effects to effect the nuances of the tone of the shot, or to help tell the story, rather than to try and blow shit up and astound the viewer with scale. This is where some of the best visual effects work is being done right now, and I love getting my issue of Cinefex in the mail and poking through the articles to see what I might have missed in the latest release.
Quote from: ChrisHanel on August 17, 2007, 02:09:28 PM
Phantom saved me the trouble of pointing out Pirates 2, which I study like crazy these days. John Knoll and the ILM did an amazing job and totally redeemed themselves in the area of visual effects. After the sterile, lifeless Star Wars prequels, they nailed the crew of the Flying Dutchman, no contest. They finally had the response to Gollum that they were looking for (and knew they were capable of).
That makes it sound (and appear) as though they can get this stuff right when it truly matters to
them....but other than that it's all just a toss off.
Don't get me wrong. I think CGI has it's place and can do some very entertaining stuff.....
But it's not the answer to everything Hollywood is trying to make it out to be.
For the most part I've always favored a combination of CGI and practical effects gelling together in a movie. Can anyone tell the difference between Doctor Octopus' CGI arms and the practical arms controled by offscreen puppeteers? I think that indescrimination between the practical and CGi has everything to do with the fact it's easier to convincingly pull off inorganic subjects than organic ones because at this stage in FX while still impressive, you can still see some plasticity in the overall skintones and whatnot.
After watching this movie, I have to say that the CGI has gotten very dated. A lot of it looks like any bad greenscreen from an 80s movie.
Oh, and CGI can be used wonderfully. The original Jurassic Park was one of the biggest things to push it into the public eye, and that still looks awesome (Though it was mixed with animatronics as well).