posted
I've noticed that there are still a handful of people on various boards who make a point of being down on the extensive use of CGI in movies and TV these days. I tend to be pro-CGI because of comparisons that can be made with earlier SF, and the limitations on HOW ships and scenes were shot. Compare a murky, traditional FX shot from Battlestar Galactica that could very well also be a stock shot, to the static FX of early STNG, to the plastic toy look of B5..and the nearly seamless CGI and expansive shot list of Enteprise..easily the best FX ever seen on a regular TV show in history. Minority Report didn't really emphasize its FX, but they were probably the best I've ever seen in a SF movie AND they were also wonderfully integrated. CGI still has its flaws, there is no doubt of it. One day Geroge Lucas will look back on the early stages of CGI and re-release a director's cut of Episode II. Sometimes the human motion is still off(as in Spiderman), and entire scenes or backgrounds can almost appear to lack life..or that's the best way I can describe it. Still as an advancing technology, I would hope the critics would give it more of a chance.
RAMA
-------------------- Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, we know Major Tom's a junky. Strung out in heaven's high, hitting an all-time low.
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
Absolutely. I do however think that in this particular arena, now more than ever, modesty is a virtue. Less is more.
I think Peter Jackson's LOTR-crew may have found a new balance in adventure filmmaking. As I said in the AOTC-thread, the focus on sets, miniatures, advanced manipulation of light and color, and basic, forgotten camera tricks, impressed me, and I'm not that easy to impress.
Just like they said, the goal wasn't to show off a new effect and splatter it on the screen, but to introduce these subtle changes so that no one even realizes it's been done.
I can't wait to see what "Nemesis" will be like, the community has changed a lot since "Insurrection".
-------------------- "I'm nigh-invulnerable when I'm blasting!" Mel Gibson, X-Men
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Personally, I think the best way to make the CGI ship look real, is make it big. Because if you look at CGI vs. models, you can tell up close and sometimes from far away, what's CGi and what's not. That's why they make the models really big, to get more detail in.
By the way, the reason why Spiderman CGI doesn't have the correct human motion is because Spiderman himself doesn't have correct human motion. He's a spider-man.
-------------------- Matrix If you say so If you want so Then do so
Registered: Jul 2000
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Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
For me it depends on how skilled the CGI artists are. There can be tons of CGI effects in a movie, but the movie will still look real if the artists are top-notch. Inversely the movie might look like a piece of rotting garbage if the artists are poorly trained and have no experience.
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
quote:Originally posted by Matrix: By the way, the reason why Spiderman CGI doesn't have the correct human motion is because Spiderman himself doesn't have correct human motion. He's a spider-man.
I dunno. I always got the impression that he just had really, really, really good flexibility, reflexes and so forth. Some of the stuff he does in the movie doesn't look wrong because it's impossible for a human to do. It looks wrong because it doesn't look natural. Sort of.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Spider-Man. Hyphen. Important. Stan Lee smash.
The first Harry Potter film had the same problems when they did human CGI. It just looked...a bit wrong. Somehow.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
So, there really is a hyphen? When I saw that on the cover of the recent movie, I wondered how it got there. I didn't realize it was actually correct. Crazy, I tell you...
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Well, in one of the earliest comics (number 3, I think) Doc Ock actually called Spidey "Super-Man", so I guess they thought they needed the hyphen badly.
-------------------- The difference between genius and idiocy? Genius has its limits.
Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
It wasn't the CGI of Spider-Man which caused me to hate the movie; it was other things. Things like the newspaper editor. He is the very model of a movie newspaper editor of the 30's and 40's. He is an anachronism in a film set in the late 20th and early 21st century. Oh, another thing I didn't like was the motivating force of the Green Goblin. I don't think he had one, unless you call destruction and mayhem a motivating force which I don't. His character was clearly and severly underwritten. I know he was mentally unstable, so what? My grandmother was mentally unstable, but she didn't go out and kill tens of people. Being mentally unstable is not a motivating force in my tiny book of forces. Control of his company? I don't remember any scene in the movie after his dismissal where he attempted to regain control of his company as himself or as the Green Goblin. This plot point, established with the introduction of the character, was dropped rather quickly. What does that leave us with? Not much and little of a character for the Green Goblin.
Registered: Sep 2002
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
the fault lies in the comics, not in the films. Spider-Man is a student from the 1960s, J Jonah Jameson is a newspaper editor from the 1960s and the Green Goblin is a comic book supervillain from the 1960s. Granted they take steps to try and modernize the characters, settings and concepts some, but if you change too much you betray the source material you are trying to adapt.
Comic books supervillains kill and destroy for no reason (granted, i think later editions of the comic got psychoanalytical as to GG's goals and the nature of his psychosis, around the 80s or later). And unless you know newspaper editors, you dont have a lot of info as to what they are today. I used to think there were a lot of dead stereotypes is the world, that there was something fundamentally different about the new millennium that caused old personality types to die off.. it just aint true. I know several police detectives, all of whom could be straight from the 1940s.. they are good guys but they are just comically stereotyped to a fault, they wear trenchcoats, and questio people with the same kind of bizarre seriousness that i only thought existed on TV.
ew though, CGI sucks.. theyd be better off spending a couple extra bucks filming real people for some of these movies lately
-------------------- "Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
And Spiderhyphenman is a case in point: every trailer and report on the film featured the scene where he swings into the room and removes his hood, and it looks awful.
But then, it was an awful, awful film. The script sucked, the acting sucked, the sets were terrible and the effects atrocious. This, a Spiderman film, was apparently the holy grail of anyone who'd ever read a comic book. My condolences.
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