They don’t look real; they look fake. They don’t look alive; they look dead. They don’t look textured; they look smooth with their texture airbrushed on. I am sick to death of them.
They’re cheap though and getting better so get used to them coz they aint going anywhere
And regular animation is realistic? My two biggest problems with CGI is that it seems to me that it’s wasted trying to imitate real people. What’s the point? Either have fantasy creatures (Like Monsters Inc.) Or more cartoon like people (Like The Incredibles.)
The second problem is that they spend so much money on CGI they expect people to be impressed by that alone. How about a good plot, a good script and good acting?
I’ll wager that you’ve seen CGI without even knowing it was CGI. On the other hand does it really matter whether you know it’s CGI or not? The werewolf transformation in American Werewolf in London was obviously special effects but it’s still pretty cool.
Marc
I think the OP is talking about CGI effects in live-action movies, not entirely CGI-animated movies.
My take is that CGI doesn’t look any more realistic than traditional special effects, it just looks unrealistic in ways we are not yet used to.
It all comes down to how well the CGI is implemented. Really, there are precious few movies that don’t use some form of CGI, even the ones that aren’t big budget Summer explosion-fests. When it’s done well, you don’t know it’s being done at all. And, of course, even when poorly done, CGI allows visuals that would be flatly impossible to achieve through older F/X techniques. I got no problem at all with CGI.
CGI people are very difficult to do because our brains are designed to recognize people. CGI animals are easier but still have issues because, again, our brains have a decent chunk reserved for observing animals in general. CGI plants and objects, however, can be dead on as far as we can observe.
Moderator’s Note: Utilizing a mind-blowing “spacewarp” CGI effect, I’m moving this over to Cafe Society.
A recent CGI bit that I found lame was in the sack of Troy in Troy. The swarming Achaean soldiers looked too much like computerized images.
I mostly agree with OP but I thought Gollum was very well done and the Hippogriff in the last Harry Potter movie.
I also saw Hulk and was dumbfounded by how poorly done it was.
I tend to agree that, even when they look sort of cool, CGI effects frequently don’t have the degree of “realness” that a good model does (let alone a full-scale mockup). They apparently are getting better, though. On Firefly there is apparently some CGI where watching it you don’t recognize how good it is because you don’t even notice that it’s CGI. I’m not talking so much about the spaceships here as about some things like street scenes that looked like they must be sets but were (according to the DVD commentary) actually done as CGI.
Also, few people realize that Ron Glass (“Shepherd Book”) left the show after the 2-part pilot; the character of Shepherd Book was entirely CGI thereafter.
OK, I’m lying about that last bit.
You think that CGI stands out and looks unnatural because generally you only notice the CGI that stands out and looks unnatural.
You would be surprised at how much CGI work there is in movies of all kinds these days. I watched ‘Contact’ a while ago with director commentary, and he pointed out dozens of CGI scenes that you would never have guessed had any CGI in them. For example, a scene where Jodi Foster is running through a room, they couldn’t get a good camera angle to show a reflection in a mirror, so they CGI’d it later in post production. In another scene her eyes looked ‘dull’, so they CGI’d her a new pair of eyes with the requisite ‘glint’ in them. They filmed another scene in front of a real radio telescope, but later decided that it didn’t move enough, so they digitally removed it and put in a CGI telescope that was revolving. Then they added a bunch more in the background to form a telescope array.
This kind of work happens in film all the time now. CGI is a standard post-production technique used to correct flaws that might otherwise require a re-shoot or add interest to the background or fix a continuity error. Crowd scenes can be enhanced with CGI humans, or distracting passers-by can be removed with CGI.
I just watched all 13 episodes of Kingdom Hospital, and the CGI giant anteater totally kicked ass, guard hairs moving in and out with the breathing, the whole thing. Looked real to me…
However, the red eyes on the German Shepherd looked totally stupid. Giant step backward, if ya ask me. Maybe it all depends on who’s heading the CGI team?
Right. The truth is, there is no such person as Ron Glass. He was originally invented as an advanced experiment in animatronics, but was so succesful on Barney Miller that they’ve continually upgraded him with the latest in special effects as the tecnology has become available.
More for me.
Where did I put this thread in the first place? I went looking for it, first in CS, and couldn’t even find it with the really crappy search capabilities of the board software that constantly miss stuff so I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Yes, it’s the CGI in live action that I am complaining about. CGI in animation is supposed to look like cartoons. And yes, there are probably times that I missed that something was CGIed but I assume it is usually when the plot and characters keep my eyes off the scenery. Unfortunately, I am too familiar with computer graphics to not notice it unless I’m distracted.
As for “CGI allows visuals that would be flatly impossible to achieve through older F/X techniques,” when the visuals are obviously fake, and I don’t mean the suspension of disbelief required to accept that two spaceships are dogfighting, they stick out like a sore thumb when surrounded by things that look real and that prevents losing myself in the moment.
At the same time, CGI on its own terms can be a huge visual treat. My wife recently got a copy of the second Appleseed movie from Ebay, Awesome 3-D graphics, it’s all CGI and it’s all tasty. What’s more, I think CGI dinosaurs rock. They’ve done a great job with them, even in live action films. Frankly, most of the Sci-fi Channel’s pretty good SF movie originals wouldn’t be possible without cheap CGI.
I’m all for it. And more I say! More!
With full CGI films - like Polar Express, I agree. But many non-creature films incorporate CGI FX seamlessly. Most audiences didn’t catch the fact CGI was used in blockbusters like Forrest Gump (Gary Sinese’s amputated legs), Saving Private Ryan (Normandy Beach invasion) and Gladiator (Oliver Reed’s posthumous scene).
But back to your cartoon-like premise. Even Spielberg was recently quoted as saying within 6 or 8 years, CGI technology will advance to a point where actors can be replaced. He then carefully added the caveat that he, as a director or producer, would never entertain such measures (possibly out of fear of SAG).
For a novelty, If you wanna see really bad (non-PC) CGI Porn - 2Funky4U
And looked totally fake to me. Partly because the head was too wide and the coloring wrong for it to be a giant anteater (and those vast, ravening jaws full of teeth didn’t help) but also because the hair looked like CGI hair. More of it doing more than used to be possible but still CGI.
I’ve mentioned before that something I liked about Titanic was that Cameron seemed to know how fake the CGI would look so he had the sets and models made to look cheesy the same way. It was sometimes hard to tell what was real and what had been brought to the studio on a Memorex CD-ROM.
Very impressive. Looked real to me.
Great Debates.