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Whenever I hear 'CGI is unreal', my reaction is that most effects will be 'unreal' because the level of belief isn't going to be there.  Most aren't going to believe that a man is going to swing on a web across Manhattan, no matter what effects are used.

 

Course, when it is used appropriately for more mundane uses, it can be quite seamless, because the situations are more believable.

 

As for effects, the main difference between then and now is we've gone from one visionary with a small team, to companies with hundreds of employees working on these effects.  Harryhausen may not appriciate the difference, but it has made a lot more possible.  Course making it easier (in a relative sense) has had the price of having too much at times.  Sometimes there should be some restraint, because just because you can doesn't mean that you should.

 

Getting back to the subject, I've only recently gotten into Blu-rays, and I have the problem that I own a ton on DVD already, and unless there is a pretty good deal, I don't feel the need to upgrade.

 

Combine that with a library of movies where I might not get back to some of them, the options for renting and streaming movies I haven't seen, the value proposition isn't always there.

 

No, if you're refering to my comments.  I already accounted for that aspect of "unreal".

 

In fact, "mundane uses" can often reveal how unrealistic some of the CG effects look (at least to me) -- and I pointed out as much.

 

We are very used to seeing real things in everyday life, so it can actually be quite difficult for CG work to try to replace real things on screen.

 

And yes, sometimes, we may also be fooling ourselves about the "realness" of images because of preconceived notions about how things should look despite the fact that a 2D image (presented on screen) shot thru one lens w/ all the usual photographic restrictions cannot truly look exactly like what we think we see in real life.

 

At the end of the day, the art/FX/etc. either work or don't work (to varying degrees) in conveying what's needed for the film.  And at least for me, the CG work in very many cases just don't work well (in large part because they often do not seem "real" or rather "true" to the vision as it appears to me).  Sometimes, they are better off just relying on more traditional methods (whether FX or actual stuntwork), and sometimes, they are better off just going w/ the idea that "less is more" (so to speak)...

 

And ultimately, if whatever effects are not too jarringly "wrong", the underlying substance of the film itself will likely be what matters most...

 

_Man_

 

Edited by ManW_TheUncool - 7/18/11 at 3:38pm

Mr.Bigshot,sir ??

what Harryhausen says,

"Although he finds CGI impressive, he isn’t excited by it and he can’t help but raise an eyebrow at the division of labour in the studios, hundreds of people tinkering away on a monster’s arm or leg or shadow. "

In that i read he knows there are good people sweating it out,but he finds that the studio's methods and work ethics have changed.

btw,isn't this CGI a misnomer.It stands for Computer graphics Interface. and not CG as in Computer graphics.

I still maintain that Harrhausen will always be the kind of man to praise his peers,and the artists down in the trenches.

AFAIK, CGI = computer generated imagery.  I suppose one can debate about what "generated" actually means in practice...

 

_Man_

 

Oh yeah !

imagery.Of course.

thanks ManW !

What I believe, and what I see Harryhausen saying, is that factory assembly lines and shots jobbed out to completely separate effects houses all over the world is no way to create artistic effects. It can make more effects possible, and it can make more complex effects possible. But it takes the vision of an artist working with a manageable crew that is supportive and sympathetic to make creative and artistic effects like George Pal, the Leideckers, Harryhausen and all the other great golden age effects guys did.

Maybe kids today can't see the difference. They can't see past the shimmering matte lines and the wires to see the imagination underneath. They think big white shoeboxes coated in leftover parts from model kits are what space ships look like and a million brown wrinkles are what aliens look like. I prefer Flash Gordon rocket ships with art deco tail fins and disembodied heads in glass domes like in Invaders From Mars. It isn't as complicated and detailed, and it certainly isn't realistic. But it sure is imaginative and beautiful.

For me, what is very often lacking in CGI effects is the apparent lack of mass in the images. They just seem to lack weight. Additionally, movement often seems contrary to the way we would expect to see it in the real world--objects either move too quickly and/or too smoothly and/or at the wrong acceleration/deceleration. CGI is much more often successful for static objects.

I do have to say, though, that The Golden Compass was exceptional in its use of CGI, and its Oscar was well-deserved. Also, Sunshine has probably the best CGI spacecraft I have ever seen.

I understand completely Bigshot as i was raised on a steady diet of Godzilla and Santo films.

And sometimes i look at cheesy low budget monster movies and the feel i get is one of nightmarish visions.

What i mean is that you watch really bad special effects from the 50's and 60's and if you watch it in the right conditions
( A horror movie at night in the dark-something like The hideous sun demon )and there's something not quite right about it.

Love that.

Nostalgia is very powerful thing,i think that is one of the reasons we buy dvd's from the 70's and the 80's
We want to trigger a feeling we had on that summer night when we first saw Escape from New-York.

But back then cuts were longer,scenes were more theater-like in the way they were shot.
Now it's all cutcutcutcutcut and we've adapted to it and the kids are raised on it..

Why anyone would spend their time defending the "artistry" of the special effects we see in films today boggles the mind. Oooooohh....Harry Potter just shot another CGI lightning bolt out of his wand, what amazing artistry I can't wait to see that again.

There's more artistry in the first 5 minutes of Bram Stoker's Dracula than in anything I have seen in at least the last ten years.

When I look at the culture of the past, I see sophistication and beauty. Everything from movies to music to ads for bras in magazines were better in the 30s, 40s and 50s. Then I look at today... We have astounding technology- computers, Internet, HD TVs as big as a door... And what do we watch on them? YouTube videos of kids falling off skateboards, movies with muscle men in green or black or red leotards, Jackass movies.

If I'm Nostalgic, it's for a time before I ever existed. It would be a shame if the current generation decided that this is as good as it gets and let cobwebs form on the great music and drama and movies of the past. I see that happening every day.

Yeah dude but you forget that Captain America is coming out soon. So you see we still have great art and literature.

If you're ever interested in short time-travel stories and themes of longing for the past,you have to find and pick up
Jack Finney's book of 12 short stories called About time.

and one of those in particular called I love Galesburg in the springtime.But all 12 are worth reading.

Haha reminds me of this admittedly lame acronym I came up with (but it still makes me laugh) when Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon came out. I would tell people it used CGP instead of CGI. Chinese Guys Pulling (ropes).
I'm here all week! Try the fish!

I must confess some dismay at the idea that somehow the current wave of visual effects does not contain artistry, or that we haven't seen any good work in the past ten years.  I understand if this is someone's opinion, which they're entitled to have, but I don't have the same reaction.

 

CGI work in the best cases is done by people who actually put a lot of time and effort into their work.  When Jurassic Park, for example, was done, I recall Dennis Muren commenting at the time how pleased he was to have found a way he could really get the dinosaurs to move that was a step past stop-motion.  He didn't do this as a slam on Ray Harryhausen's work - if anything he was celebrating the work that had been done before him and trying to take it further.  This was the whole idea behind the "go-motion" work done by ILM twelve years earlier on Dragonslayer and then on Return of the Jedi.  As someone noted, CGI is a tool like anything else.  It can be misused or overdone, and it can take people right out of a movie.  When the tool is used correctly, it can display tremendous artistry. 

 

I'll give an example of interesting artistic work from just two years ago - Coraline.  It utilizes both traditional stop motion and CGI in fairly innovative ways.  It's a movie I was happy to see nominated for Best Animated Film, and it made for great Blu-rays, both in 2D and in active-shutter 3D modes.  I'll give another example - Hellboy II: The Golden Army.  It's both a funny movie and a fun series of set pieces - and they took some time to create it - and a lot of it was on-set material directed by Guillermo del Toro.  If we're discussing comic book movies, there are some very good ones.  I haven't seen the ones this year, so I wouldn't know about them - but I found the second X-Men film to be quite good, including its effects, and I found both Christopher Nolan Batman movies to be very good.  I also found the VFX work done for Inception and The Prestige to be quite good.