CGI vs practical effects?

[Tell]

It's not only audio that have marketing that flat out lies you know!
I mean, what do you think about CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) in movies and series nowadays? Are you one of many who are tired of it and want as much practical effects as possible because it always looks so better and believable? Like in movies such as Top Gun, Barbie, Poor Things, Napoleon, Ford V Ferrari, Bladerunner 2049?

Top Gun was marketed as having almost all flight scenes both inside and outside the planes shot entirely for real, but in reality the majority is 100% CGI. Really good CGI if I may say so myself, completely flawless considering how many they managed to fool!

Or like Barbie, which was also heavily marketed as "no CGI," and in the behind-the-scenes footage released on YouTube they even used computers to remove blue screens to hide the fact that they used computers ;\

Or in Napoleon, where director Ridley Scott himself says they used a lot of CGI but not at all in some scenes, yet articles on various websites manage to spin it as if no CGI was used in the film.

Or The Last of Us, where news articles write that "No CGI was used!!11" while simultaneously showing a picture of a 100% computer-rendered zombie. Gaah!

As someone who works with this stuff, I take it a bit personally. Me and thousands of colleagues who work tirelessly for every second rendered and then seen by millions of people. CGI has for some unclear reason gotten a bad reputation in recent years, where people demand practical effects but don't realize how incredibly much CGI is in movies today and it completely slips past them because it's totally invisible so they thought it was done practically.

If you have some time to spare, you might want to check out the film series below, where a guy with a lot of insight delves into this subject.
The truth is out there!

 

[ta240]

A big downside to relatively cheap and easy CGI is they often replace story lines and characters with it. Instead of adding to the story it replaces the story.

3D had the same problem. It seemed like every movie that was in 3D had to have things flying at you or some first person chase or rollercoaster type scene. You couldn't help but go "this was put in for the 3D". Rare movies made good use of it, like despicable Me with the amazing shot where he rises up with the moonlight in the background and it appeared to stream past him off the screen. Megamind had the amazing long shot in the rain. Both of those added to the feeling.

Every time someone calls out for more practical effects is when the CGI looks bad so if they wouldn't try to do things with CGI that are outside of their budget that would solve a lot. All I ask is don't distract me from the movie.

Sometimes I wish they would announce up front that most effects were real. I was more impressed with Need For Speed after finding out that most of the car stunts were done for real. Compare the video game look in other guilty pleasure car movies to it and it shows. And the fun that is added to Hit and Run knowing that not only were the car chases real but they were mostly his cars with him driving.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Like anything, when it is done well I don't mind. When it is done poorly or done instead of making a good story I don't care for it. Same for regular old analog special effects. Remember the Sci-Fi movies from the 1950s and 1960's where you could see strings or had goofy half hearted attempts due to budget?

 

[restorer-john]

CGI is awesome. The skill that goes into each frame is out of this world IMO.

Some of the incredible effects that make modern CGI laden WW2 naval battle films look so real you find it hard to believe they aren't.

Watching movies is all about entertainment and suspension of disbelief for a few hours of fun. CGI is another great tool and as long as it doesn't go too far and look stoopid, I'm all for it.

I also like older movies with busted-ass early graphics/CGI as it shows how far things have come. It makes those early CGI/effects laden movies all the more 'real'. Think of ED209 in Robocop or some of the effects in the original Total Recall, etc. I was pissed when George Lucas "fixed" the space battle scenes of Star Wars where you could see the square transparencies around the fighters in shoot-outs. It was part of the "charm" of the movie I went to see as a child.

 

[kemmler3D]

CGI has for some unclear reason gotten a bad reputation in recent years

It's because of all the notably high-budget movies with bad-looking CGI that have come out in recent years.

I think this is mostly because of Marvel directors abusing the workflow and asking for too many virtual re-shoots and changes, to the point that even thousands of CGI workers can't produce consistently convincing work in the actual time available to them.

So basically, IMO blame Marvel.

Personally I'm all for CGI, I have been a hobbyist for a long time, and I think the backlash is partly against effects that simply look stupid (as opposed to being badly executed) because the directors' visual sense simply runs out of rope. The other part is effects that aren't convincing, probably because they ran out of time to render them properly.

I think the blame really lies with the producers and directors, though. Films like The Creator do more with less than anything Marvel has done in a decade or more. The Mandalorian actually uses UE5 in some of the shots.

 

[Tell]

A big downside to relatively cheap and easy CGI is they often replace story lines and characters with it. Instead of adding to the story it replaces the story.

3D had the same problem. It seemed like every movie that was in 3D had to have things flying at you or some first person chase or rollercoaster type scene. You couldn't help but go "this was put in for the 3D". Rare movies made good use of it, like despicable Me with the amazing shot where he rises up with the moonlight in the background and it appeared to stream past him off the screen. Megamind had the amazing long shot in the rain. Both of those added to the feeling.

Every time someone calls out for more practical effects is when the CGI looks bad so if they wouldn't try to do things with CGI that are outside of their budget that would solve a lot. All I ask is don't distract me from the movie.

Sometimes I wish they would announce up front that most effects were real. I was more impressed with Need For Speed after finding out that most of the car stunts were done for real. Compare the video game look in other guilty pleasure car movies to it and it shows. And the fun that is added to Hit and Run knowing that not only were the car chases real but they were mostly his cars with him driving.

CGI aint cheap and easy though, not at all. Might be cheaper and easier to explode a city with CGI than to do it for real of course, but it's still not an easy task.
Oh and talking about explosions, the big one in Oppenheimer, that practical explosion was just so abstract, disconnected and lame. if they'd done it with CGI instead it would have look so much more believable.

And this whole thing with alk the bad scripts that movies are plagued by today is a big problem yes, but it's not CGIs fault, it's just bad scripts.

Btw are you totally sure that Need for Speed did most car stunts for real? Because as I wrore and as is explained in the video they do lie a lot with the marketing with movies today :/

I was pissed when George Lucas "fixed" the space battle scenes of Star Wars where you could see the square transparencies around the fighters in shoot-outs. It was part of the "charm" of the movie I went to see as a child.

You mean the black outlines from the optical compositing? That's the only fix I really liked about those *remastered", I mean it's just fixes and not additions like so much else in there.

So basically, IMO blame Marvel.

Yeah I gladly blame Marvel! Bad movies all around imo.

 

[kemmler3D]

Yeah I gladly blame Marvel! Bad movies all around imo.

I will give Marvel credit for serving up a steady stream of mediocre-but-acceptable, non-challenging movies I don't really care about to kill time on plane rides.

 

[HoweSound]

Have a look at "The Fall", a 2006 movie by Tarsem Singh. Made without CGI., but with stunning scenes and photography. Here's a wikipedia comment about the production:

Tarsem Singh largely financed the film with his own funds, and paid members of the cast and crew on an equal basis rather than in more typical Hollywood fashion. The film was made over a period of four years and incorporates footage shot in 24 countries,[8] including India, Indonesia (Bali), Italy, France, Spain, Namibia, and China (PRC). Singh stressed the importance of on-location filming and lack of special effects, as he found that modern techniques would not age well in comparison. He only took advertising jobs in places that he wanted to do location scouting for, and flew cast members to shoot scenes for the film using the same crew as he did for commercials.[9] When shooting scenes of the blue city in Jodhpur, Singh provided locals with blue paint to refresh the paint on their houses.[10] This alternative to post-production effects resulted in the vibrant blue of the city in the film. Another location, the contemporary South African mental hospital which represents an early 20th-century Los Angeles hospital (the principal setting throughout the film) remained operational (in a separate wing) during filming.

 

[ta240]

CGI aint cheap and easy though, not at all. Might be cheaper and easier to explode a city with CGI than to do it for real of course, but it's still not an easy task.
Oh and talking about explosions, the big one in Oppenheimer, that practical explosion was just so abstract, disconnected and lame. if they'd done it with CGI instead it would have look so much more believable.

And this whole thing with alk the bad scripts that movies are plagued by today is a big problem yes, but it's not CGIs fault, it's just bad scripts.

Btw are you totally sure that Need for Speed did most car stunts for real? Because as I wrore and as is explained in the video they do lie a lot with the marketing with movies today :/

They went into some pretty detailed information on the cost of building fake supercars, like a Bugatti, on a cheaper chassis to smash up. So if it was a lie it was convincing. Of course they didn't say exactly what was and wasn't real, but all that matters in the end is that it didn't distract from the movie, or Imogen

By 'cheap and easy' I mean cheap and easy enough to be possible. Think San Andreas type with little character development and lots of buildings falling over. There seems to be a point where the balance of story and effects changed and now effects often wins. I haven't watched it in a long time but the big budget disaster movies for yesteryear like Armageddon had bursts of special effects but then long sections of character development. Because back then it would have broke the studio to have it be 2/3 or more huge special effects.

And I do fully realize that movies have to be flashy and loud to compete with people's cell phones.

 

[Blumlein 88]

You do see entertaining stuff like these sub-2 minutes trailers people can make.

 

[MrOtto]

Just don't say "No CGI" or "I did my own stunts". Lies.

 

[Herbert]

Well, Oppenheimer did very likely use CGI, the last take where Armageddon starts in Oppies mind (the launch of nuclear warheads) kooks very CGIish. I was also disappointed of the „real“ explosion from the „gadget“. You could see that it was a lot of gasomine burning up. And also untruthful, as witnesses described the plume turning violet. It would have looked much more realistic with CGI. This being said, as far as I remember, „Close Encounters of the Third Kind“ lost against „Star Wars“ because it had hidden optical special effects in scenes where no one expected them. Like the starry sky. Same with CCI. Reflections on windows, set enhancement, crowd duplication an so on.

 

[voodooless]

I will give Marvel credit for serving up a steady stream of mediocre-but-acceptable, non-challenging movies I don't really care about to kill time on plane rides.

Are you stuck in 2020? The but-acceptable bit is definitely lacking more often than not nowadays. Both in story as well as in CGI. The things they let fake humans (or whatever their supposed to be) do is just so much over the top. It defies both biology as well as physics, and it’s heading towards the wrong end of the uncanny valley.

Practical effects can be awesome, CGI can be awesome, but combinations of both are usually even better! I think the real trick with this is that it needs careful planning and execution to combine both in an excellent way. The pure CGI green-screen shots give way too much leeway to figure it all out afterwards, giving the pretense of flexibility, but in reality is actually limiting and distracting.