Star Wars: Episode VII Will Balance CGI and Practical Effects
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This is probably the best reason to have J.J. Abrams on board as he actually loves to use practical effects when they're... well... practical... also his active directing style is very reminiscent of when Spielberg and Lucas were at their best.
Now if only we could do something about his crappy "mystery box" method of writing...
Now if only we could do something about his crappy "mystery box" method of writing...
Are people complaining AGAIN?
We get something that we wanted, that is Less CGI, and you are still complaining? -.-
This is good news! and you are all still trying to find every flaw! ¬_¬
Well let me add something good here, i am very happy with this, and cannot wait to see how this film turns out, honestly all the news that has come for the new SW film has been good, can't think of anything bad that Lucasfilm or Disney have said. Now we just need to know when the film is set and we are dandy
We get something that we wanted, that is Less CGI, and you are still complaining? -.-
This is good news! and you are all still trying to find every flaw! ¬_¬
Well let me add something good here, i am very happy with this, and cannot wait to see how this film turns out, honestly all the news that has come for the new SW film has been good, can't think of anything bad that Lucasfilm or Disney have said. Now we just need to know when the film is set and we are dandy
This is definitely something the fans, especially the old school ones, wanted to hear. The prequels feel like cartoons when compared to the original trilogy, which had a "you can reach out and touch it" feel to it. They can do some insane things today with CGI, true, but the model and stop motion effects of the original trilogy still holds up to todays stuff, and to me personally, surpasses it. Being an insanely hardcore, diehard Star Wars fan, this was music to my ears. Everything just feels.... RIGHT about what they are doing with Ep. VII, and I am sooooo excited! I will be camping out in front of the theater again, for this one.
Ooh ffs, They have Mark Hamil reprising Luke Skywalker. Sorry but there is Jedi in this film, Their always will be! Saying you don't want Jedi is like saying saying you don't want Autobots and Decepticons in a Transformers Film, or Pirates other than Jack Sparrow in a Pirates of the Caribbean film. Like seriously how can you not want Jedi in a Starwars film?! In a game or comic fair enough but not a friggin film!Clive Howlitzer said:
I fully agree. To the point I even prefer mediocre props to CGI sometimes. Having a solid object correctly lit looks a lot better than having a CGI object lit differently to the rest of the scene, even if you can see the injection mold seem on the object. Even some of the best CGI just looks wrong. It triggers the subconscious and says "this isn't real". That said, CGI can make things look loads better. The line is simple - if you can create the effect practically, you should. Only resort to CGI for the impossible or massively impractical. Example film, look at the effects in Ghostbusters. Bar one or two they are all practical effects and they look AWESOME.Clive Howlitzer said:
You think so? Watch this, then go see actual Pacific Rim. Granted, this is meant to look cheap and silly, and it achieves that in spades, but compared directly with its progenitor, there is simply no comparison.Clive Howlitzer said:
Incidentally, also directed by Guillermo del Toro.
...also "go go power rangers". heh.
Animatronics are hardly the only thing involved with practical special effects. The original films made heavy use of real sets and detailed miniatures, much of which actually has held up really well over the years. Meanwhile, the prequels (not so much Ep. 1, but definitely 2 and 3) barely even used real sets. Nearly everything was done with green screen and it shows. Much of it looks absolutely awful and completely fake, especially now several years later.Abomination said:
There was a time when Lucas himself said that a special-effect without a story is a very boring thing. I hope this one piece in many that helps recapture the charm of the original trilogy, if not provides its own.
Are JonTron and EgoRaptor breakin' into tha movies? Icandiggitlol.2xDouble said:
Though I'm inclined to agree more with Clive Howlitzer - to an extent. I know it doesn't affect everybody, but for some people, even the best CGI is completely disengaging. The way I see it, the amount of CGI used in a movie sets a bar of quality that everything else in the film has to meet in order to justify it. This helps me tolerate it quite often, but on the whole, CGI in live-action film is something I'm always making concession for in my mind and never really enjoying.
The most basic way to put it is that a live-action movie is cheating when it uses CGI because the whole point of a live-action fantasy/sci-fi film is to show you what these fantastical, unreal things would look like in real life, but then circumvents the contract by just using almost real looking cartoons. Even though CGI is capable of a lot more than really real things, it feels unearned by reality, the true gatekeeper of the live-action film's logic, so to speak... eh, I'm getting cross-eyed. nvm
OT: Is it too soon to start looping the Endor party music (from ROTJ Special Edition, fuck the haters) in my apartment at full volume?
Why? It's not 1999 anymore and it's not like CGI can't look manifestly real with the enormous budget we know this going to have. The only reason the lack of practical effects in Episode I detracted was the CGI wasn't very good back then - to use those concernes to make business decisions a decade and a half later seems a bit clueless to me at least.
I'm all for it. Just watch these bloopers for Episode II, especially the filming of the Natalie Portman's scenes in the droid factory.
It's ridiculous.
Only tangentially related - but I think it's funny when a film tries to do too much with CG to the point where all the sets are just blue walls, there are arguments that the lack of traditional sets hurts the actor's ability to give a good performance because they aren't "immersed" in the setting. On the flip side you have these newfangled (David Cage) videogames that use a bunch of mo-cap so not only are actors acting without a set, but in skintight suits with white dots all over their faces and bodies, and they're heralded as bring all kinds of "emotion" to the final product.
It's ridiculous.
Only tangentially related - but I think it's funny when a film tries to do too much with CG to the point where all the sets are just blue walls, there are arguments that the lack of traditional sets hurts the actor's ability to give a good performance because they aren't "immersed" in the setting. On the flip side you have these newfangled (David Cage) videogames that use a bunch of mo-cap so not only are actors acting without a set, but in skintight suits with white dots all over their faces and bodies, and they're heralded as bring all kinds of "emotion" to the final product.
I hope for the best but i fear that this movie will be a lot more actionpacked that something i would want to see in a Star Wars movie. Just look at what he did to Star Trek... I have my fingers crossed that the action set pieces will be sparse and effective like in the old movies, but i kinda expect something with lots of explosions and people running around.
Tension, atmosphere and build up? PAH! Who needs it?
Tension, atmosphere and build up? PAH! Who needs it?
yup, heh.Phuctifyno said:
Actually, I completely agree. Poorly-utilized CGI elements are jarring at best. The worst offender, in my opinion, was Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (talk about beating a dead horse...). One scene in particular was so badly rendered and shot, it physically hurt my eyes and I couldn't continue watching. (Incidentally, this was not fixed in the home video releases).
My intent was to refute the notion that in live-action, "real" things are superior to CGI every time. Consider movies, like the aforementioned Pacific Rim or Avatar, that blend the CG effects with live-action by, in essence, not blending them. This technique highlights and accents the unreality of CG effects in order to add that sense of unreality to the scenes. For example, for all its questionable design choices, the Transformers movies' effects tended (with some notable exceptions, of course) to blend with the scene more naturally than, say, certain scenes from Jurassic Park or Jaws simply because the robots weren't supposed to be "real". Consider also the animation overlay techniques from certain Disney classics such as Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, or Pete's Dragon. There, the blatant unreality of the effect serves to highlight the blatant unreality of the action and cause the audience to ponder (internally) whether these animated things are actually in the world or merely imagined by the characters. Simply put, there are good and bad examples of both, and how well either slots into the scene is case-by-case.
Never! That music was awesome. "Yub nub" (the original Endor party song) fit better in the scene in my opinion (why would people on other planets be dancing to the same song?), but that doesn't diminish a really sweet track. (...that could totally have cross-faded in after a break in the first song when they started panning to other worlds to highlight "other stuff is happening too, and it shares the same sentiment" because the tracks are similar enough in theme and backbeat to pass as different parts of the same song, but hey... I'm not a music director yet.)
While that does sound like good news, i'm not going to be seeing this new Star Wars in theaters. I never was particularly nostalgic for Star Wars, my childhood was Silent Hill and Ocarina of Time. Without the nostalgia when i did watch Star Wars with an adult mind and no rose tinted glasses, i found it to be too fucking goofy. Maybe i'm committing a nerd sin by saying this, but i don't like Star Wars as much as i liked the Mass Effect series and think that the franchise should just be allowed to die.