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Soliloquy
Well, I just saw Avatar on Saturday, and I came out a bit... confused.
I'm pretty picky when it comes to movies. I've always fancied myself a "plot guy," who only likes films whose stories are at least somewhat original. And the plot of Avatar was almost literally a copy and paste of your standard Dances With Wolves-style movie.
I also always have thought that I was anti-cgi. I never find myself impressed by the flashy maneuvers and explosions that are generated entirely in a computer. And Avatar is so full of CGI that I wouldn't be surprised to discover that they only used about half an hour of actual movie footage in the film.
And yet... I loved the hell out of Avatar. I found myself enjoying it in a way I hadn't enjoyed a movie since I was a little kid who only vaguely knew that plots had a beginning, middle, and end. The cynical movie snob in me that wanted to complain that I saw every major plot point coming from a mile away was overwhelmingly silenced by how completely mesmerized I was at the world Cameron had created. It reminded me of seeing the beginning of Jurassic Park, or of the first time I saw Fellowship of the Ring.
When I left the theater, I realized that the standard, predictable plot was really nothing but a frame that Cameron used to show off the magnificently original world that he had cooked up in his brain.
And you'd damn well better believe that it's a world worth seeing.
I'm pretty picky when it comes to movies. I've always fancied myself a "plot guy," who only likes films whose stories are at least somewhat original. And the plot of Avatar was almost literally a copy and paste of your standard Dances With Wolves-style movie.
I also always have thought that I was anti-cgi. I never find myself impressed by the flashy maneuvers and explosions that are generated entirely in a computer. And Avatar is so full of CGI that I wouldn't be surprised to discover that they only used about half an hour of actual movie footage in the film.
And yet... I loved the hell out of Avatar. I found myself enjoying it in a way I hadn't enjoyed a movie since I was a little kid who only vaguely knew that plots had a beginning, middle, and end. The cynical movie snob in me that wanted to complain that I saw every major plot point coming from a mile away was overwhelmingly silenced by how completely mesmerized I was at the world Cameron had created. It reminded me of seeing the beginning of Jurassic Park, or of the first time I saw Fellowship of the Ring.
When I left the theater, I realized that the standard, predictable plot was really nothing but a frame that Cameron used to show off the magnificently original world that he had cooked up in his brain.
And you'd damn well better believe that it's a world worth seeing.
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Soliloquy
Well, it's not just that it was amazing CGI... there were some amazing and creative ideas for what makes up the world of Pandora.
Well, it's not just that it was amazing CGI... there were some amazing and creative ideas for what makes up the world of Pandora.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, great ideas for GCI...
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RocketGirl
I always twitch when I hear something like this. As someone who DOES CGI, it often amazes me how little other folks actually KNOW about computer animation, and the knee-jerk reaction to it. Not saying that's what your aversion is, but, dammit, you hit a trigger of mine.
I remember a friend of mine was kvetching about that while we were watching Attack of the Clones...she was all, "Ugh, I hate how much CGI they use these days! It looks so fake!"
And I was like, "Really?" and paused it on a scene on Geonosis. I asked her, "Awright, which bits of this scene do you think are CGI?"
She looked it it for a minute, and pointed at a vehicle or two, one of the alien beasts someone was riding, that kind of thing: "Those are probably CGI."
An' I just shook my head, and said, "All. Of. It. There'z not one thing in there that isn't computer generated."
People often can't tell the difference, but fancy that they can, and then they whinge about it without a clue how much they're making chowderheads of themselves.
As someone who KNOWS CGI, comments like this just make me want to rant...you may have noticed.
I believe the ratio is about 60-40, CG to live-action.
You sure it wasn't just your friend?People often can't tell the difference, but fancy that they can, and then they whinge about it without a clue how much they're making chowderheads of themselves.
As someone who KNOWS CGI, comments like this just make me want to rant...you may have noticed.
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RocketGirl
You sure it wasn't just your friend?[/QUOTE]People often can't tell the difference, but fancy that they can, and then they whinge about it without a clue how much they're making chowderheads of themselves.
As someone who KNOWS CGI, comments like this just make me want to rant...you may have noticed.
Positive; I've had multiple people render the same opinion about CGI, but when pressed, were unable to actually correctly identify any but the most blatantly obvious examples.
Of course it takes less effort, by definition.
If it took the same amount, or more effort, then film studios would do it the cheaper (ie, less effort) way.
However, it does enable effects that cannot be attained any other way, and the effects can look better/more realistic. In other words, an attempt to create Avatar with traditional SFX or animation with the same level of quality/realism/etc WITHOUT CGI would have been hundreds of times more effort.
So, for the same output/realism/effect the CGI is cheaper (ie, less effort).
That certainly doesn't make it effortless. But in a capitalist economy you can almost always bet that the method they used at the time was the one requiring the least effort with the given output.
Well said. I agree with this 100%.
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RocketGirl
Of course it takes less effort, by definition.
If it took the same amount, or more effort, then film studios would do it the cheaper (ie, less effort) way.[/quote]
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
CGI requires just as much effort, if not more, than traditional FX. The difference is in the results, and in what is possible, what can be accomplished, not in the amount of effort expended. "Cheaper" is not synonymous with "less effort".
Trust me, as someone who has done CGI, the amount of time and effort expended is comparable to traditional FX; you will get just as tired, you will spend just as many hours, to get the same amount of footage. By THAT measure, there is very little difference.
That certain things are possible with CGI which were not with more traditional FX has no bearing on the workload.
Of course it takes less effort, by definition.
If it took the same amount, or more effort, then film studios would do it the cheaper (ie, less effort) way.[/quote]
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
CGI requires just as much effort, if not more, than traditional FX. The difference is in the results, and in what is possible, what can be accomplished, not in the amount of effort expended. "Cheaper" is not synonymous with "less effort".
Trust me, as someone who has done CGI, the amount of time and effort expended is comparable to traditional FX; you will get just as tired, you will spend just as many hours, to get the same amount of footage. By THAT measure, there is very little difference.
That certain things are possible with CGI which were not with more traditional FX has no bearing on the workload.[/QUOTE]
The point I am making is that given the EXACT SAME OUTPUT (ie, the RESULT is indescernible between the two methods) CGI takes LESS EFFORT than other methods.
Tell me how much MORE effort it would have taken to do the "fighting over a lava pit" scene in episode 3 using any method other than CGI. You can't argue that CGI took more effort, unless you also reduce the output quality of the other method.
I'm not arguing that CGI is effortless - far from it. It takes modelers, animators, lighters, environment modelers, programmers, etc hundreds of millions of collective hours to do their work on one blockbuster movie..
Of course it takes significant effort.
But to get the same output quality using any other method, it becomes plainly obvious that it takes less effort using CGI than it takes to do it without computers.
Yes, as you say, if you're willing to compromise on quality, then other methods will take less effort than CGI.
But for the exact same output, for some scenes, CGI is less effort.
Further, as CGI tools mature, it will become less and less effort to do CGI, and it will be used for increasingly more mundane things. When an actor costs $5,000+ an hour on set, it makes sense to skimp on time to apply makup, and do CGI post-processing to get the makeup effect that would take a good makeup artist 2 hours to achieve and maintain over a day of shooting, and furthermore it can be changed later in case the art direction of the movie is modified, giving the director and everyone else a more compressed timeline to make the movie and post-processing editing ability that can save, in aggregate, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I'm certainly not arguing that CGI is 'cheap', 'easy', 'free', or 'effortless.'
I'm pointing out that it's less effort than the alternative.
But I'd be happy to entertain counter-examples. Please show me scenes where the same thing could have been done with less effort using another method and would have achieved the same output quality.
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RocketGirl
Maybe the problem is in the word "effort". Perhaps what you're REALLY trying to say is "resources".
Because the amount of man-hours used to produce a certain amount of film using CGI for the FX is very, very high. The amount of money and computing power required is very, very high. The amount of new technology created is very, very high.
The fact that they're doing a different kind of work, not requiring quite so much in the way of pyrotechnics and carpenters, does not mean that the people involved work any less hard. To say it takes "less effort" is, frankly, insulting.
As I say, it's possible that the word-choice of "effort" is simply a poor one, but if I'D worked my ass off on producing a certain amount of FX-laden film and someone described it as "less effort" because I'd used a computer instead of some other kind of Hollywood hardware, I'd probably deck them, frankly.
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RocketGirl
He probably does...but I still say "less effort" is a VERY poor way to phrase it. "Less logistcal effort," sure...but nobody is working less hard to pull it off.
Then it's semantics. You are talking about individual effort. I'm talking about aggregate effort - ie, the number of skilled people times the number of hours for a given effect.
In other words, I'm assuming that all else being equal (ie, each individual works just as hard, is just as skilled in their technique, the output is exactly the same, etc for all competing techniques) then a CGI version of the scene takes either less people or less time than another technique for scenes that are most commonly done in CGI today.
The aggregate effort is less.
Your contribution in either case may be exactly the same in terms of effort, but it might only take 20 people 200 hours with your skills and work ethic to complete a given scene in CGI where it might take 200 people who are just as skilled as you in their own field 200 hours to complete it using another technique. That's 4,000 hours of total effort using CGI, and 40,000 hours of total effort using another technique.
Each person contributing just as much effort individually as every other person.
However, if you still feel like decking me, give me a moment to - what in the world could that be?!?
/me runs away...
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RocketGirl
Well, I'd say that's a rather important distinction and worth making explicit note of when talking about this sort of thing...for precisely the reasons we've just illustrated.
Well, I'd say that's a rather important distinction and worth making explicit note of when talking about this sort of thing...for precisely the reasons we've just illustrated.[/QUOTE]
I agree.
Yes, letting the computer render something for hours while you do something else is exhausting.
The reason it costs so much is because the skill set isn't something everyone has.
No way that the equipment doesn't get amortized (i have no idea if this is the right word) from one film when the budget is over 200 mil $.
Positive; I've had multiple people render the same opinion about CGI, but when pressed, were unable to actually correctly identify any but the most blatantly obvious examples.[/QUOTE]
Friends then...
The reason it costs so much is because the skill set isn't something everyone has.
No way that the equipment doesn't get amortized (i have no idea if this is the right word) from one film when the budget is over 200 mil $.
You sure it wasn't just your friend?[/quote]People often can't tell the difference, but fancy that they can, and then they whinge about it without a clue how much they're making chowderheads of themselves.
As someone who KNOWS CGI, comments like this just make me want to rant...you may have noticed.
Positive; I've had multiple people render the same opinion about CGI, but when pressed, were unable to actually correctly identify any but the most blatantly obvious examples.[/QUOTE]
Friends then...
(Shrug) I knew what he meant.
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Kitty Sinatra
Well, all I know is that I still prefer the look and feel of the original trilogy over Jar Jar and Friends.
I really do feel that recent movies look bland or stale. It may be the lighting and film (or lack of film) just as much as the special effects - or maybe I'm just old and by instinct must poo-poo all things new.
I really do feel that recent movies look bland or stale. It may be the lighting and film (or lack of film) just as much as the special effects - or maybe I'm just old and by instinct must poo-poo all things new.
That shrug was totally a CGI shrug. I can tell from the lighting and having seen quite a few CGI shrugs in my time.
I'm pretty sure it costs less to produce that shrug using CGI than the normal method of commanding your levator scapula, rhomboids, & upper trapezius muscles to elevate the scapula.
(google still knows everything)
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Kitty Sinatra
Well, that's because it was an epic Jedi shrug. The kind where his shoulders shrug 10 feet in the air and cling to a metal beam before leaping 30 feet onto a platform floating in lava.
Spoilers, man, spoilers! Some people haven't seen Tin shrug in person yet!
Next you'll be telling us the tricks [STRIKE]Ed[/STRIKE] Dave can pull off with his flappy hooties.
(You'll always be Ed to me, Turbo)
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Kitty Sinatra
Did . . . did you just call Dave a whore?
Did . . . did you just call Dave a whore?[/QUOTE]
I have no idea what you're talking about, but if you've played D&D with him you find that he can dual wield two handed weapons.
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Staff member
I know it's your baby, but I'll take almost any "guess which one is CGI" bet. I think your friend probably assumed it was a trick question, like those types of question usually are (as steinman said, by definition). It's not antagonism or mean-spiritedness...it's just most people feel cgi looks like cgi, and they're not doing it to attack CGI artists. Am I going to guess 100%? No, but I can also describe distinctly some of the aspects of cgi that make it look like CGI. The depth of field is weird for example. Film critics have described it as "gauzy", and I think that's perfect. Rather than falling off in a realistic blur curve, background objects kind of have that look, like someone wrapped the camera in gauze. Attack of the clones is an excellent example of that. Motion capture looks like motion capture, partly because the body on screen doesn't match the dimensions or weight of the real person. Things look too plastic and perfect, even when they're dirtied up. Etc., etc. And it's not just CGI. The same problems plagued miniatures and matting.
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RocketGirl
I could just smack George Lucas for Jar Jar; from watching the fandom's reaction to the Prequel Trilogy, I've definitely gotten the impression that Jar Jar hatred ignited pretty much every last scrap of negative criticism over the PT. Had he not had such a goofy-ass mascot in there, I think people would have been a LOT more charitable toward the films.
Maybe they still wouldn't have dug them quite as much as the OT, but...I think without Jar Jar, people would have been much more okay with all the other things they criticized.
I'm exactly the opposite: I embrace the new. I was probably born at least 200 years too early, if not more.
A few weeks ago, I placed my first video Skype call, and for DAYS I was floating on air, having FINALLY acquired an honest-to-goodness video phone!
Now I just need my flying car!
I could just smack George Lucas for Jar Jar; from watching the fandom's reaction to the Prequel Trilogy, I've definitely gotten the impression that Jar Jar hatred ignited pretty much every last scrap of negative criticism over the PT. Had he not had such a goofy-ass mascot in there, I think people would have been a LOT more charitable toward the films.
Maybe they still wouldn't have dug them quite as much as the OT, but...I think without Jar Jar, people would have been much more okay with all the other things they criticized.
I'm exactly the opposite: I embrace the new. I was probably born at least 200 years too early, if not more.
A few weeks ago, I placed my first video Skype call, and for DAYS I was floating on air, having FINALLY acquired an honest-to-goodness video phone!
Now I just need my flying car![/QUOTE]
Nah, if Jar-Jar wasn't there all it would have done is make the rest of the glaring awful flaws in the PT that much more apparent. Jar-Jar is the mascot of hate for the prequels, but he's hardly the sole focus.
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Alucard
Saw it was an okay movie despite the plot and story development.
Felt like I was re watching a different version of 'Aliens' and by that I mean the universe slightly felt familiar with all the equipment they had.
Didn't like how you could automatically from the onset of the film deduce who the bad guys and good guys were.
Seeing Sigourney Weaver on screen again was nice. She's aged rather well than most actresses.
That was a huge ass ship they came to Pandora though.
I'm going to wonder when they release the blu ray version if they'll include those fancy glasses for the '3D' effect.
Slightly spoilerish I guess: What happened to earth though? I'm curious.
Felt like I was re watching a different version of 'Aliens' and by that I mean the universe slightly felt familiar with all the equipment they had.
Didn't like how you could automatically from the onset of the film deduce who the bad guys and good guys were.
Seeing Sigourney Weaver on screen again was nice. She's aged rather well than most actresses.
That was a huge ass ship they came to Pandora though.
I'm going to wonder when they release the blu ray version if they'll include those fancy glasses for the '3D' effect.
Slightly spoilerish I guess: What happened to earth though? I'm curious.
I thought it was a fantastic summer blockbusterish movie. It was the most visually splendiferous movie (and not distractingly terribly so) I've seen in forever. I want to see it again, but I don't really want to without it being an Imax in 3D. The special effects really are a sight to behold.
I don't even care that the whole story was derivative and unoriginal and that everything was very black and white. Everyone did their job fantastically. It clocks in at almost 3 hours but never once was I bored, the pacing was immaculate in my opinion and just goes to show the difference between a James Cameron and a Michael Bay. The acting was exactly what it needed to be.
In fact, the only thing that bothered me (besides the yacking assholes sitting behind me...I swear, it's fucking fate) was that the score to the movie was incredibly generic and boring. The music really was a failing but this is only a minor gripe. I fucking loved Avatar, there I said it.
Here's my little opinion on something else:
I don't even care that the whole story was derivative and unoriginal and that everything was very black and white. Everyone did their job fantastically. It clocks in at almost 3 hours but never once was I bored, the pacing was immaculate in my opinion and just goes to show the difference between a James Cameron and a Michael Bay. The acting was exactly what it needed to be.
In fact, the only thing that bothered me (besides the yacking assholes sitting behind me...I swear, it's fucking fate) was that the score to the movie was incredibly generic and boring. The music really was a failing but this is only a minor gripe. I fucking loved Avatar, there I said it.
Here's my little opinion on something else:
Why are people so surprised when Avatar drivers betray them? Being a Na'vi seems like a hundred billion times more fun than being a human. And you get to hair fuck everything!
After seeing a documentary in IMAX 3D i found that normal 3D just won't do any more.
Of course that means the earliest i can go to Avatar is the 30th, they only had places left at the front for the 29th... man are people flocking to this movie.
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