Is anyone else amazed by the level of realism in special effects?... (1 Viewer)

[RickER]

True that when you know its a special effect you can tell it is. If i am into a movie i dont even notice things like that...on the first viewing anyway. The worst, and i mean worst effects that took me out of the movie would have to be from American Werewolf in Paris. Good lord that was bad CGI!

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I try to treat the visuals in a movie as I would the illustrations in a book, as long as they help convey what the story is and they propel the narrative, I don't mind if they're a bit fantastical looking. Most of the stuff in the Lord of the Rings trilogy are very CGI looking, but they are presented within a story that is very fantastical in nature and so I just accept them.

Within a fantastical context, fantastical visuals work. It's only in films that depict hard reality do I expect seamless visuals, fantastical visuals wouldn't have been acceptable in Saving Private Ryan for instance because Spielberg wanted to portray war as it actually looked, I can't point to a single effect in that film that looked phony to me.

I also agree about the different methods used in Jurassic Park, Stan Winston's work, while brilliant, did not mesh well with the fluid-like look and movements of ILM's Dinosaurs. They got better in The Lost World and even more so in Jurassic Park III, but still not up to being a totally seamless illusion.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

The reason I posted that example was that I would bet that not a single person here who has seen the movie in the theatre even picked up on the fact that that church was mostly digital. Sure you can pick out the imperfections in a still grab which shows exactly what was added, but I sure didn't see or hear any complaints about digital sets in the DaVinci Code thread.

So taking that back to the start of this thread, I think it shows the realism of special fx these days.

 

[Malcolm R]

Or it shows how OVERused they are.

What's wrong with just finding a church and filming in it?

 

[Richard_D_Ramirez]

For a character film, I was surprised at the amount of special effects involved in A Beautiful Mind. Watching the "Making Of" featurette on DVD clues you in all of the FX you might never think were used.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

Very true. A lot of the times they probably could have. But on the flipside the perfect church could be on the other side of the world and there just isn't the budget to get a crew over there. It also allows the director to get the perfect look he/she was going for without having to fully build the set or find it in the real world. Doing it digitally might have been cheaper. Might not have been, you never know on these things unless you are the one writing the checks.

It just shows that a director can get the perfect look they want digitally and no one would be the wiser. Whether they achieve that all rests on the talent of the artists. As we all know, some don't exactly pull it off.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

I think you forgot House of the Dead.

 

[Diallo B]

come on holadem. you know what he meant.

 

[TedT]

I am. Loved the "Lost In Space" movie just for the special effects.

But I often wonder if 20 years down the line if I'm going to look at the effects in the Lord Of the Rings & latter Star Wars films and think that they are cheesy.