Is CGI going to kill American Cinema (1 Viewer)

[chris winters]

As stated numerious times, the problem is not CGI, its what CGI is being blamed for , souless marketing tie-ins polished up and promoted as cinema. Of course CGI is not too blame for this, although its often sugested that Speilberg and Lucas are. CGI is not going anywhere. over 90% of all mainstream films have digital effects in them, just not obvious ones. Wire removal ( stuntmen) sky replacement, color correction/timing, bluescreen pulls/matte cleanup, etc... Movies are technically cleaner now that ever before because of all these tools. Creatures and splashy effects may get the glory, but these kinds of shots are many smaller post houses bread and butter. And dont blame CGI for the sins of crass buissiness men posing as artists.

Also if you took away and replaced a lot of the creatures done in CGI with puppets/suits/stopmotion whatever, they would not hold up to what our eyes are now used to. Its only through rose colored glasses that we look back and think superman looked great flying over metropolis or the rancor monster from return of the jedi was flawless. I love harryhausen animation as much as the next guy, but if you had that style of effect in a movie today, it would be laughed at. (not animation, just the technical look of the stop motion puppet). Does anyone really argue that the two headed dragon from willow, the rancor monster, the rubber dragons from dragon slayer, or countless other "analog" creations, woudnt look more sophisticated had they been done digital. There are exceptions of course. E.T. still holds up better as a practical rather then digital effect, as would say chewbacca ( imagine a CG chewbacca! i shiver at the thought !) Its just about knowing what is best given your filming situation, and using the tools with all their respective limitations accordingly.

The other issue is that directors are so accustomed to the "post process" fixing things, that there is real lazy filmaking going on these days. Directors dont understand the whole digital process, and then force post production facilities to correct a lot of things that could have been gotten right the first time on set, or at least prepare the shoot correctly to produce better results when it comes time to create the digital effect later. Thus the work suffers and facilities have to compromise by making polished garbage out of a no-win situation of footage.

 

[chris winters]

Just to add to the other side of the argument, I would say there is a case to be made that before directors had the freedom of CGI to visualize their splasy effects moments, they were perhaps forced to be a little more creative with their storytelling, and thus essential elements to a good movie like plot, character and script benifitted as a result. Plus practical effects are still alive and well today, with advanced robotics being used for scenes in the jurassic park movies, and teddy in A.I. etc... Its all about knowing when to use what. Actors are also a factor, maybe you sacrafice the look and movement of a creature in order to have a puppet on set for the child star to interact with, and thus get a better performance, and a better film. (good use of this E.T. , bad use of this Phantom menace)

 

[Morgan Jolley]

The thing is, movies with stop motion animation and puppets looked bad before CGI came along. It looked fake in those movies, so CGI just made it look even worse by comparison.

I do admit that Yoda from Empire looked more realistic and life-like than in Episode I, but the amount of control and the things they are able to do with him in CGI are more than they could do with puppets, so I am in support of CGI in this sense. I would rather have a director be able to do spectacular things and fulfill his vision with CGI and sacrifice a very small bit of a sense of life in the CGI characters than have stop motion or puppets and force the directory to make sacrifices to the production.

 

[Edwin-S]

The problem is, people are stupid enough to go see movies JUST BECAUSE of special effects.

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Not really. Movie trailers are made up of some of the flashiest FX eyecandy in order to pique interest in a movie and initially it can be a drawing card but ultimately people still want a story. If the movie doesn't deliver that then the box office drops off quickly because word spreads that the story doesn't match the visuals.

Movies like ID4 can have poorly written stories and still be successful, not just because of FX, but because they satisfy some need for escapism. People just want to be entertained and see the hero win out against huge odds and are willing to overlook all the absurdities in such stories.