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[Synbios459]

It seems now and days whenever someone who is a making a movie gets to a part that needs to be done in a special way most directors are like "Screw making it look believeable, just use CG!!" A good example being Star Wars Episode II. Back before CG directors almost always found some clever way to make something work, but now directors just don't seem to put as much effort into it as they used to.

 

[Bizarro Sun Yat-sen]

Well, good CG requires plenty of cleverness in its own right.

 

[Mason]

I agree about the clever work around issue. It's interesting to hear directors talk about older films and how they wanted to do this but settled for that, or how they had to come up with some workaround because for financial or technical reasons, it just couldn't be done. I do think CG has made directors lazier overall; there are always some places where it can be extremely useful, but I think it has become too much of a crutch.

 

[White Man]

CG has RUINED action movies. Part of the fun used to be the "How the hell did they do that?" factor. There used to be spiffy specials about it on the Discovery channel. The magic is gone. Frown.

 

[Ryu]

I don't think it all falls on the directors. Sometimes, directors have a certain vision for a scene and if it can't be done physically or financially, they just go with CG as the cheap and working alternative. True, I like the work arounds and the stories behind them, but think about certain movies that would never come to be because there was just no possible physical way to make it happen. Sure, the Hulk is a pile of crap if you ask 99% of the GAF population, but would you have rather had a modern day movie like the hulk done with a guy in green paint throwing around miniatures?

 

[Nerevar]

It seems now and days whenever someone who is a making a movie gets to a part that needs to be done in a special way most directors are like "Screw making it look believeable, just use CG!!" A good example being Star Wars Episode II. Back before CG directors almost always found some clever way to make something work, but now directors just don't seem to put as much effort into it as they used to.

One of the first movies that really made great use of CG was Jurassic Park. Go back and look at it, it still looks pretty believable. I don't think CG itself has made them lazy, just a lot of directors (i.e. Lucas) have no idea how to use it.

 

[Synbios459]

Yes, I do agree that JP and LotR were great blends of CG and real-time; something the other directors should learn from.

 

[Dan]

I think the worst is when the CG is there only to show off. I cannot stand when CG creations do random actions that serve absolutely no purpose in the film's diegesis. It's just there to say, "hey, look what we can do with our computers, now you can act impressed and superficially love our film!"

 

[G4life98]

I will take cg over the days of crap models and bad blue screens anyday.

its not cg thats the problem, its bad storytelling and a sometimes jaded audience that get so caught up in screaming "hey thats cgi", they cant even enjoy some movies.

and all cg effets are pretty much there to say ,"hey look at what we can do with our computers" and really whats the big fucking deal?

 

[Dan]

and all cg effets are pretty much their to say ,"hey look at what we can do with our computers" and really whats the big fucking deal?

Umm... ever heard of something called suspension of disbelief? If a film's effects are calling out to be noticed and recognized as such, it ruins the film.

After all, how many shots in the original Star Wars were there that served no real purpose but to amaze? Almost everything was in there for a reason related to the story. The latest ones have all kinds of crap thrown in just for the sake of using some CGI tricks. "Ok, so we need Yoda, Mace and Obi-Wan to have a conversaton, so let's throw in a random hover chair for Yoda and camera moves for the live-action stuff that doesn't jive with what our CG artists will produce. Yeah, that's the ticket!" It's just flashy and can, and often does, ruin the mood and atmosphere that should be so important to cinema.

 

[G4life98]

Umm... ever heard of something called suspension of disbelief? If a film's effects are calling out to be noticed and recognized as such, it ruins the film.

After all, how many shots in the original Star Wars were there that served no real purpose but to amaze? Almost everything was in there for a reason related to the story. The latest ones have all kinds of crap thrown in just for the sake of using some CGI tricks. "Ok, so we need Yoda, Mace and Obi-Wan to have a conversaton, so let's throw in a random hover chair for Yoda and camera moves for the live-action stuff that doesn't jive with what our CG artists will produce. Yeah, that's the ticket!" It's just flashy and can, and often does, ruin the mood and atmosphere that should be so important to cinema.

the only reason all those little details were not in the first starwars were because he could not do them and that is the only reason...lucas had to basically figure out the efects as he went along and that didnt leave much time for adding little details to the world they inhabit.

and the whole thing about the suspension of disbelief is that as long as the story is the good or atleast entertaining...the audience is very forgiving of effects.

and a hover chair can in no universe be described as "flashy" and it just seems like your taking movies with some cool little cgi touches and blaming them for the movie not living up to your expectations.

and cg is far down on the list of things that ruin the mood and atmosphere of a movie.

 

[LakeEarth]

This thread reminds me of a scene in Chronicles of Riddick. In one scene, there was an overhead shot where the female character jumped down on a rope and landed on the ground and ran off... but it was all done in CG, and it looked terrible... and I was thinking, "Is it really that hard to just do the stunt with a real person?"

And don't get me started on CG animals. The wolves in Exorcist ... god they looked terrible...

 

[Warm Machine]

CG itself is not the problem. It is the directing. Listen to Ridley's commentary on Alien. He says that the they had to shoot some things in a certain way because the models just were not up to scratch. In the end the clever work around added to the films' atmosphere.

There are directors out there who are very lazy and use CG as a crutch or the writing of a particular scene is just stupid. The ice surfing scene in Die Another Day is a pretty good example. Just reading that on the page is enough to call it as a stupid idea.

I also don't like CG where CG just isn't necessary. The wolves in The Day After Tomorrow is a perfect example of a waste of CG. Real wolves could have been trained for that scene and would have been far scarier.

CG is such a valuable tool though. When it is done well it is incredible, when it is done very lazy it sticks out.

The entirity of Episode II could not have been done any other way. A battle sequence between clones and droids on that scale with those shots would be near impossible to do practically. As well, battles with monsters the size of the ones in the arena had been attempted practically and through compositing before in Return of the Jedi with the Rancor sequence and that has always been a blight on the series.

 

[SKluck]

You'd be surprised how much cg is used, more than half the time you don't notice or realize it.

 

[LakeEarth]

CG has RUINED action movies. Part of the fun used to be the "How the hell did they do that?" factor. There used to be spiffy specials about it on the Discovery channel. The magic is gone. Frown.

Even movies that don't use CG. xXx for example. I remember seeing this show talking about making movies, and they were talking about how a stunt man actually did ride a motorcycle jump and ride the roof of a house as it exploded... but everyone thought it was CG!

 

[AfroLuffy]

A battle sequence between clones and droids on that scale with those shots would be near impossible to do practically.

Yes, we should thank it for sucking all believability and intensity from it as well. It was a cg wank fest; i didnt' give a damn who or what was blowing up-- AND that my freind is unfortunate! Atleast, I cared about those bastard-ass ewoks!

Now, the rancor scene could use some work, but with a few touch ups, good as new! I can't imagine it any other way, besides.

Personally, growing up weened on the action/scifi films of the late 80s/ early 90s and with recent revisits to these films and the old school special effects school they represent, noticable CG completely takes me out of a film. It's true, there were lots of shoddy special effects jobs in those days, but there are plenty that look damn good still and atleast they benefit from being constructed of actual physical materials!

My utmost pet peeve is the replacement of classic man-in-suit, costumes, and prosthetics for a cg replacement. For the love of god, is it really that hard to make a storm trooper outfit these days?

I fear cg will become more and more commonplace with each and every film that utilizes it; the trend doesn't exactly encourage people to learn the old way of doing things, which is a shame.

Jurassic park and LOTR: fotr were good/desirable uses of the medium. That is to say, if all movies pulled it off so well, i'd have no problem with CG. They still had a few hiccups, but you can't expect perfection.

That said..

list of movies from recent memory where CG completely ruined the mood:

Spider man 2--hmm, yeah, paste the faces on and they won't notice the difference between a real person and a strangely warped, blurry rendition of said character. Since this cg malady affected nearly every action scene, i=not very pleased.

matrix 2-erm..afformentioned blurry rubber man effect. (see above)

lotr 2 & 3-i'm being a little harsh here, but while i thought fotr did an excellent job with its cg, the little hobbits in treebeards hands' looked especially bad, and rotk pelenor fields(?) battle was plagued by a tried and true *yawn* worthy cg spectacle of bad direction(helm's deep was the first sign of this illness)--horde vs horde style-- to say nothing of legolas surfing down an oliphaunt's nose!

 

[EekTheKat]

As odd as this might sound, CG artists also "cheat" on certain shots, but depending on the house doing it it's a lot harder to spot.

Sometimes no matter what they do in CG it won't work out right, so they'd have to alter the shot by making little changes to cover transitions + the like.

An example was how they did a transition from Alfred Molina to CGI Doc Ock by making one of his tentacles swipe in front of the camera just as he was turning his head, effectively hiding the transition and making it seem near seemless.

I'll probably burn in star wars hell for saying this but, CGI yoda looks better to me than the puppet. Maybe it's just that the puppet hasn't aged well ( they could've probably made one hell of a great puppet this day + age) but the CGI one serves its purpose pretty well.

 

[Dead]

I think SPider Man 2 had the worst ever "rubber man" CGi effect it was a huge eyesore

 

[AfroLuffy]

I'll probably burn in star wars hell for saying this but, CGI yoda looks better to me than the puppet.

Actually, i agree with you.

The cg yoda looked better, but this newfound tech gave rise to the ridiculous abomination that is the yoda lightsaber fight scene. A scene so gut-wrenchingly obnoxious and out of character, that only a casual or non-star wars fan could appreciate it.

 

[Dan]

I'll probably burn in star wars hell for saying this but, CGI yoda looks better to me than the puppet. Maybe it's just that the puppet hasn't aged well ( they could've probably made one hell of a great puppet this day + age) but the CGI one serves its purpose pretty well.

Well, in TPM's Jedi Council scenes, that was a new Yoda puppet. I didn't really care for it though.

lotr 2 & 3-i'm being a little harsh here, but while i thought fotr did an excellent job with its cg, the little hobbits in treebeards hands' looked especially bad, and rotk pelenor fields(?) battle was plagued by a tried and true *yawn* worthy cg spectacle of bad direction(helm's deep was the first sign of this illness)--horde vs horde style-- to say nothing of legolas surfing down an oliphaunt's nose!

Agreed. The last two flicks especially had a lot of really crappy and halfassed CGI work, and numerous instances of just ridiculous show-offy shots. TTT and ROTK really let me down... I hesitate to even call them good films, let alone great or worthy of awards.

Oh, and I swear, if I see another CGI/enhanced POV shot of an arrow heading towards its target, I'll kill someone. There was enough of that in LOTR, but then King Arthur had another really lame one. That stuff isn't cool, it's just distracting and draws attention to itself.

 

[AfroLuffy]

I think SPider Man 2 had the worst ever "rubber man" CGi effect it was a huge eyesore

Seriously, in a film that stretched the almost endless:rollseyes) possibilities and facets of superhero introspection into an hour long stretch of mundane torment, it'd damn well better offer a big cookie of action.

Unfortunately, I got my cookies with sour milk.

 

[EekTheKat]

Well, in TPM's Jedi Council scenes, that was a new Yoda puppet. I didn't really care for it though.

Heh my bad, haven't seen that movie in ages. But CGI Yoda still looks pretty impressive compared to a puppet though.

 

[border]

Ugggh, yes. Sky Captain is an abomination. Which is a shame since the reviews say it's really great, but I pretty much know I won't be able to get into it since everything will look super-fake.

CG is may be acceptable when you are using it to do things that would be impossible any other way -- but when film makers start using it just to avoid the hassle of building a set or constructing decent models/animatronics, then it's pretty stupid.

 

[Dead]

Also the thing with the whole CG humans thing is a lot of the times they look much more believable closer up than far away full body shots. For example the CG versions Of Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weavings in Matrix 2 may seem fake-ish in the movie but if youve seen the all the head shots and concepts they worked on they look practically flawless, absolutely incredible, when theres no close ups of the characters you wont notice all the intricacies in the skin and body so it will seem a lot more...synthetic

comparison of the real Hugo Weaving and his CG counterpart up close

 

[MetatronM]

Also the thing with the whole CG humans thing is a lot of the times they look much more believable closer up than far away full body shots. For example the CG versions Of Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weavings in Matrix 2 may seem fake-ish in the movie but if youve seen the all the head shots and concepts they worked on they look practically flawless, absolutely incredible, when theres no close ups of the characters you wont notice all the intricacies in the skin and body so it will seem a lot more...synthetic

comparison of the real Hugo Weaving and his CG counterpart up close

Why do they look like two COMPLETELY different people? Honestly, the CG version looks about as much like him as your typical stunt double does.

 

[Dead]

Why do they look like two COMPLETELY different people? Honestly, the CG version looks about as much like him as your typical stunt double does.

Oh please, aside from a slightly thinner bone structure its an almost replica of the real thing.

 

[J2 Cool]

well, problem is using CG is passing off work to others. Directors may be considered lazy but as an overall production team you can't be lazy and create good CG. Its still a lot of work. Its just the directors seemingly saying "its not my problem" when they hand it off to CG departments that disturbs me. A guy like Ang Lee doing the physical motion capturing of The Hulk and working directly with the team was actually more ambitious than lazy. The movie got mixed reviews but that was the best way to do the Hulk and the destruction was pretty damn impressive although minimal. I'd guess it would take a boat load of money to create a full on action movie at that level with The Hulk.

 

[Dead]

And also id like to punch in the face any person who says with a straight face the special effects of the Hulk (Hulk himself) are terrible.

ugh

 

[border]

The Hugo Weaving CG-double is certainly way better than any other stunt double. For real life actors they rarely try and match the face, they just find someone with a similar hairstyle/color and build. I doubt that you would be able to find any stuntman that looks as much like Weaving as the CG pictured here.

I think a lot of the problem with CG doubles is in the animation....it always looks too smooth and rubbery.

 

[SickBoy]

I think one of the biggest drawbacks of intensive CG is the temptation -- which many filmmakers seem unable to resist -- to throw in as much cool stuff as they can possibly imagine. Therefore, a scene that should be a plane dropping a bomb and causing a big explosion becomes:

Couple sits on beach 100 yards from target, enjoying picnic.
Man notices plane flying low.
"What's that?"
Wacky super-pan from extreme closeup of fear in man's eyes to plane, passing by a bird in flight and a sea of airborne dandelion seeds until we see the bomb door.
We see the bomb drop and follow it down...
Blam! A wide shot of the explosion! Thousands of particles fly airborne. In the foreground we see the couple running towards the water while a visible shockwave comes out toward them.
Oh the humanity!

I think CG is great, but I do agree it's abused. I don't think it makes directors lazy, but I think it makes some forget some of the fundamentals.

-SB