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Computers taking over film making..

Zakaree Sandberg

Zakaree Sandberg

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Feel I need to vent, and curious on who is like me on this subject..
I am really OVER all these movies that are 75% + CGI...

STAR TREK, Transformers, 2012.. so on..

I just want things to go back to story telling and REAL footage.

Sure there are times for CGI.. but i just hate seeing everything go that way..

uggg DONE
 
Gotta agree. I saw (actually, i forwarded thru) Wolverine the other night because the acting and story were terrible but EVERYTHING was cgi. It was the most cartoonish, unrealistic thing ive ever seen. Everyone could basically fly and i think i remember there being a cgi construction excavator! Just plain stupid.
 
storytelling aside,

this is so ignorant to say. people need to drop the whole CGI is evil nonsense.
get over it, grow up and go blame the shitty film on the director and his bad choices not the vfx artist who were given the crap direction.

puppets look like puppets, cg looks like cg
ita fake either way.....
the only difference is one has reached its limit and the other has not.
get over it.

those films you mentioned would not be even possible in terms of effects WITHOUT CG
there is a human behind the computer, its not T-1000s running them.
Some of the best miniature effects directors of photography work at my company and they are on a computer.
people that could school most people on this forum with 25-30 years of experience.

its ironic that you post this nonsense on a forum of a camera that is essentially a computer with a sensor/ lens attached to it.
 
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Zakaree Sandberg said:
my point wasnt that they should abolish all cgi.
I just see it everywhere now, and its so obviously fake to me.
but whatever.. it was my rant.
Click to expand...

so go jump on maya and see how good you do at it....all u have to do is press the magic button and the computer does the rest. its pretty easy....
if you dont like the results just keep pressing the "make better" button...the "make more real" button is great too.

so you didnt think a 240 foot red monster in an ice planet 400000 light years away look real?

heres a hint.....its not
MOVIE MAGIC

BY THE WAY HERES YOUR ANSWER, from 1-10:
Titanic, 1997, $1,848,813,795
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003, $1,133,027,325
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest, 2006, $1,065,659,812
The Dark Knight, 2008, $997,037,655
Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, 2001, $976,457,891
Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End, 2007, $952,420,425
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2007, $938,468,864
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 2002, $926,284,377
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, 1999, $924,288,297
Jurassic Park, 1993, $920,100,000
 
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MiguelOrtega said:
storytelling aside,

this is so ignorant to say. people need to drop the whole CGI is evil nonsense.
get over it, grow up and go blame the shitty film on the director and his bad choices not the vfx artist who were given the crap direction.

puppets look like puppets, cg looks like cg
ita fake either way.....
the only difference is one has reached its limit and the other has not.
get over it.

those films you mentioned would not be even possible in terms of effects WITHOUT CG
there is a human behind the computer, its not T-1000s running them.
Some of the best miniature effects directors of photography work at my company and they are on a computer.
people that could school most people on this forum with 25-30 years of experience.

its ironic that you post this nonsense on a forum of a camera that is essentially a computer with a sensor/ lens attached to it.
Click to expand...

Great points man. I don't understand all the hate for films that have CGI elements thru-out most of the film. If I could afford to shoot the majority of a film on a green screen and just add in the backgrounds I would. It would work out really well for locations that are logistically impossible or very difficult to do. Plus then you don't need to deal with the elements out in that location. Instead you get to shoot on a stage in a very controlled environment, which is a lot easier on everyone involved. Plus it can take place anywhere you have a soundstage.

The films that were listed above suffered for bad directing, which makes for bad storytelling. So all the CGI effects in the world won't save those movies.
 
Get off my lawn!
Click to expand...

Bitching about CG is like bitching about film stock. It's just one more tool to tell a story.

The Fellowship of the Ring. Incredible story. Incredible CG.
Species. Terrible story. Almost No CG.

And oh man Benjamin button. 80% cgi and such a terribl-- wait.

Most of Star Trek was live action. Personally I thought the Obviously-A-Power-Station-in-CA-Engineering-Room was more offensive to my visual senses than any matte painting.

And what counts as CG? Matte paintings? Set extensions? Was Gladiator ruined because everything above 6' was a digimatte? Did Zodiac look like shit--it was shot almost exclusively on green screens it practically had as many greenscreen shots as the 300. How about The Green Mile? The Last Samurai?

BTW the lowest rated movie I see currently playing on Rotten Tomatoes is Obsessed. A movie with probably little to no CG. Meanwhile one of my top 5 movies of the last 10 years is Ratatouille a film without any live action and a great story.
 
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they hate it because its easy to say it doesnt look real, but then again they are looking at a squid man with 8 legs who lives underseas....not real as opposed to what? no one thinks about the enormous amount of hours and love thats put into everything we do..theres an assumption that since its CG its not human, and thats just nonsense.

15 years ago cg was looked so down upon that had it stopped because of disbelievers we would never have benjamin buttons, davy jones, gollumn or even transformers which hate it or not was a amazing feat in visual effects, in 15 years we have surpassed what it took practical effects nearly 80 years to achieve our only setback now is the limitations of the tools, processing speed. in 20 years vfx will be in a place i cannot even imagine.
and hopefully then we will get more respect.
 
Saying that movies like "Star Trek" are "all CGI" is somewhat misleading. There are big swaths of straight-forward live-action photography in many scenes, or at the most, some CG touch-up work somewhere in the frame to change a view out of a window or get rid of a wire rig, etc. Same goes for "Wolverine", there are lots of normal scenes in there, people sitting in a pick-up truck talking, etc.

Now you could say that the effects were almost all CGI, but that's different from saying that the movie was all CGI. Even a movie like "300" still built a lot of sets and filmed real actors in them, so it can't be considered an "all CGI movie". A Pixar animated film, on the other hand...

Which brings up what someone else said about "Obsessed" being terrible but being low on the CGI quotient, whereas "Up" is all computer animation and is quite effective.

When people complain about CGI, what they really should be complaining about is bad CGI.
 
they hate it because its easy to say it doesnt look real, but then again they are looking at a squid man with 8 legs who lives underseas....not real as opposed to what? no one thinks about the enormous amount of hours and love thats put into everything we do..theres an assumption that since its CG its not human, and thats just nonsense.
Click to expand...
Not only that they hate it and think it doesn't look real... even when it is sometimes real. And not when they MISS all of the CG that was done perfectly.

Take Zodiac. I think people would be amazed to find out how much of it is CG. Nobody would pick it out as a bluescreen shot. I watched the movie like 3 times. I'm a compositor and VFX artist and I missed dozens of shots that I didn't even suspect had a pixel in them.

Then we have movies like the 300:
300-Movie-Publicity-Still-300-222374_1500_642.jpg


There's no question they used CGI. But you know what I think it looks awesome. And there is no way you could afford to shoot it that way.

On the other hand you have stills like this from David Mullen's Manure:
page13_1.jpg

Mostly CGI Free but still accomplishes the same sort of look.

So stylization isn't limited to CGI but if you don't like the stylization it's unfair to say it's the doing of CGI when a similar level of stylization is possible practically. And I can bet you dollars to donuts there are going to be a lot of people who hate manure and say it's all fakie CG.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
When people complain about CGI, what they really should be complaining about is bad CGI.
Click to expand...

well said David,

what bothered me is to say star trek and transformers is bad cg.....
seriously.....do people really think transformers and star trek are bad cg??

this stuff is so freaking amazing looking.....i knowing how to do this; look at the work put into those films and smile knowing how many people practically killed themselves getting this to look so amazing. the modeling, texturing, animation, muscle simulations, effects animation, compositing and then have someone with no experience at all in even making a cg teapot go and call it bad cg. i hear critic say optimus prime looked all stupid with all those small parts....so you mean bad conceptual design/ director..what does small parts have to do with VFX?

its so, so easy to be a critic......
 
Now I'm on a roll of counter-rant. :)

Master and Commander:
http://www.cgfocus.com/interview/story/54&page=4
Now mind you these aren't the best matte paintings or composites I've ever seen. But in motion I never noticed them in the theater.

One of my favorite movies is Letters from Iwo Jima. That movie could NOT have been told without CG. And you have long 30 minute sequences of that film where 80% of the frame is a matte painting and CG.

ddomain_nuke_flags.jpg


Band of Brothers.
Another tv show ruined by copious amounts of CG.

725.jpg
 
When you do effects digitally you are usually paying a company an agreed amount to do the effects. Sure you might have some overages but you don't have practical effects that might cost a buttload to shoot with usually a union crew and SAG actors. Most of your gum chewing young movie going audience
thinks effects are "cool" anyway. You will still have a few huge films being produced where the lead actor makes $30 Million for 6 months work, but when you can have 200 geeks sitting at computers for 6 months for the same price.......
 
HAHAH stirred up a pot :/
I never said any particular movie was bad cgi.. at least i dont think i did.. ill have to go back to the first page to check..

I was just saying i see alot of over use of cgi..
not ripping on the talents of cgi artists at all..
I wish I knew how to to do it:)

it was a personal taste opinion anyways..
I just prefer organic movies. thats all:)
 
You know what 2/3rds of the movies you cited do have in common? They're all shot on Anamorphic. Maybe you just hate movies shot on anamorphic lenses. Maybe Anamorphics are taking over filmmaking. :D

I just want things to go back to story telling and ROUND footage.
Click to expand...
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
You know what 2/3rds of the movies you cited do have in common? They're all shot on Anamorphic. Maybe you just hate movies shot on anamorphic lenses. Maybe Anamorphics are taking over filmmaking. :D
Click to expand...

hahaha maybe;-)
no no.. i went on my rant after watching a 2012 preview and I was having high hopes for it.. then i kinda felt let down in the preview and felt like they were using awesome CGI and crazy effects as a crutch for storytelling.. and Im probably being unfair since the movie isnt out yet and I havent seen it.. but My main gripe was with people using CGI as a crutch.. I actually liked star trek and the first transformers (not super excited about transformers 2).. so I guessssss my main problem is with shitty movies using CGI to carry the film. Make sense?
 
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