CGI sucks please discuss

[Stazbumpa]

tuppence/

CGI is in danger of getting silly imo. George Lucas has taken his fruitfull Star Wars universe and ruined it more by bad film making than CGI, but to be honest the CGI in Ep 1 and 2 did piss me off, it was just so horribly over the top.

The CGI in Spiderman was just plain bad.

Matrix Reloaded was better but still has a couple of unnecessary and decidedly ropey bits left in (like the agent jumping onto the bonnet of a car and then onto the roof of another at 60mph).

The point Ignus made about the Aliens films is spot on. Aliens just isn't scary anymore.

Peter Jackson and his LoTR films are CGI heavy, but it seems to me that the CGI is a means to an end. Most other films reek of "we must use CGI this and that or it won't be cool", whereas PJ seems to say "I need a 20foot Cave Troll, they don't exist so I'll CGI it, but the guys in the Goblin masks will do as they are nicely". I feel that any other director would've used CGI for nearly everything that wasn't close up in the LoTR films.
And Gollum is just a lesson in how CGI should be done. He is part of the films, not the main reason watching them.

The reason I'm arse kissing Peter Jackson is because on the Fellowship DVD special features it surprised me as to how much of the films characters and locations were real, whereas the Star Wars Ep1 and 2 Making Of's were all about 2 real actors in front of a huge blue screen and fuck all else.

Hopefully, Lucas will die suddenly and Pete Jackson will be drafted in to finish/re-shoot Ep3.

/tuppence


PS: Is my avatar sufficiently hypnotizing?

 

[old.[MPZ]Padwah]

Originally posted by Stazbumpa
PS: Is my avatar sufficiently hypnotizing?

Yeah, but they aren't real, it's just another case of runaway CGI

 

[plightstar]

Yeah it is I just spent the last hour clucking like a Chicken

 

[old.ignus]

you sound like the sort of person who fell for the lara croft nude cheat april fool gag.

 

[plightstar]

Who me?

no-way I find the Tomb Raider series boring including its main character

 

[Arnor]

Originally posted by WPKenny
Erm..moving back onto the general topic at hand...

Yes I do think CGI is far too over used. A physical puppet looks ten times better than CGI.

It's just something tells your brain that the CGI isn't real but when you watch a puppet you can say to yourself, it doesn't move quite right or whatever but there's no denying this thing does phyisically exist no matter how many men are off camera pulling strings.

I do agree with the point about Peter Jackson and LOTR. It does go back to the early days of Star Wars. But instead of HAVING to invent new ways of doing stuff, he WANTED to because he knows it looks far better on the screen. The only bit that bugged me in LOTR2 was when they rode out of Helm's Deep pushing all the Urukai (sp?) off the bridge. The physics or something of the CGI there was messed up.

seconded, though I just saw hulk once, I liked it, it was very different in both filming and plot/story-"template" (in lack of better words)

And it's true that with most cg-effects your brain just goes "*bleep* *bleep*, cg detected"

THe problem I feel with cg in movies is that ppl/directors have too much faith in it, they are missing the obvious-duuh bone telling them that while this char has 2arms&2legs and a black coat and sunglasses, its still not Keanu Reeves.
They dont see this so they try to show off the cg by filming his face dead on, when you can easily see that it doesnt look like him at all.
Do the graceful thing when your using cg, be subtle. dont flash it off like a cheap hooker.
( anyone else feel that the agent-jumping on car-hood looked TOTALLY cheesy? my realism gland and my coolness-membrane were REALLY fighting about that one tbh
"omg! he just crushed the car by jumping on the hood!" vs "sheesh, could they do it more cheesy, he looks like his back is the size of a small Honda when he lands on it"

[rpg geek]
and its Uruk-hai afaik
[/rpg geek]

 

[Anasyn]

Originally posted by Stazbumpa
The reason I'm arse kissing Peter Jackson is because on the Fellowship DVD special features it surprised me as to how much of the films characters and locations were real

Was it on there that I saw that documentary?
I saw one somewhere about the making of the entire series (kinda, it focused on 1, and the Helms Deep section of Two Towers (another perfect example of good use of CGI)) where, instead of CGI-ing loads of sections, they used CIE (Computer Image Enhancement) where they built Rivendale with foam etc, modelled it (bringing in the two most renowned LotR artists on the planet, who actually hadn't met until then), and making the stuff and using mini-cams before letting pros play with the image (thereby having a real image, enhanced to look even better, instead of a generated image which always look unreal).

The program they used for the Uruk-hai though (yes it is that), was impressive... bet my computer couldn't run it Very reminiscent of the Total War style engines I think, but that could just be me.

I think the way they went about the whole thing (building to mega scale, tiny scale, 1:1 ratio scale and filming it all properly, then seeing what maybe they could have managed shows just how much real life and good modelling in the first place does leave for better films, it also allows for better personal touches I feel, like the roughness of the columns in the mines of Moria, where age has made them slightly brittle, the intertwining of the trees in the elven lands with the structures in a natural way, not a computer "ordered" way, looks a lot more natural.. very well done and only increases enjoyment of the movies.

 

[doh_boy]

Originally posted by Anasyn


The program they used for the Uruk-hai though (yes it is that), was impressive... bet my computer couldn't run it Very reminiscent of the Total War style engines I think, but that could just be me.

I remember reading that the first time they ran it they all ran off!

funny if true \o/

 

[Tenko]

To be honest there are some not great instances of cgi in the LOTR films but thats probably due to it technicaly not being possible yet (I'm think the ents looked the weakest bit and Gollum in a few cases not quite 100% convincing).

But it definitely shows how it should be done. Actors (100s of them), Miniatures (make them bigger than my house, that should work), Real props (The weapons and armour is real for close shots and when its safe) and cgi the bits we can't do that way.

Result? The best technical film since the gigantic leap that was the 1st Starwars films.

CGI is here and it rocks, just for fucks sake do it properly and dont expect it to make your actors act, your directors direct or Jar Jar Binks any less than a fucking twat.

 

[Tom]

what CGI should be for

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

Originally posted by Tenko
CGI is here and it rocks.

I'm not sure I 100% agree with you here, at least not yet. You spend your entire life looking at things, you know how they should behave, you know how they should look, yet CGI still manages to miss by not being quite right raising a flag in your brain where you go 'this isn't real'. They need to constrain CGI to things that aren't real or to the background until they manage to work out how to iron out the little problems that mean that a central CGI character will raise that flag.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Yes but

one thing you've got to remember is to look how far it's come in such a short space of time. The progress on CGI is ridiculous now, it's getting better and better - in a few years time there will be CGI that the human eye cannot seperate from real life for most things (living organisms will probably still be detecablt though).

This is both good and bad. It'll open movies up to things that have never been possible, had the budget for or whatever. Versatility and the director's total control will be able to push forward films as they're supposed to be seen.

And bad? Well, if CGI looks 'real', we're gonna stop being impressed by CGI - being impressed is a BIG part of going to the moives.

 

[ReActor]

Originally posted by Wazzerphuk
And bad? Well, if CGI looks 'real', we're gonna stop being impressed by CGI - being impressed is a BIG part of going to the moives.

This is my problem with CGI. Film effects have to be incredible to impress me these days because any time I see an effect, I just think... hmm... good CGI (or, more often than not, bad CGI). If something amazing is done without CGI, I'll tend to assume that it's "all computers" and still be unimpressed.