Anyone miss practical effects in films?

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Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby Bluecast » Sat Oct 27, 2012 8:36 pm

Don't get me wrong CG works wonders in modern Matte Paintings and Sci fi and other things.

Still go look at Pumpkin,Head The thing,The Howling,Robo Cop,Jurassic Park,Terminator and many more. The old animatronics and suits. When in the hands of of Legends like Rick Baker & Stan WInston and others. To this day they hold up better than any older CGI and even a lot of modern CG creatures. Granted CG you can use them for fast movements. However the look and feel and organic movement is lost. CG has many great uses but I still think practical is betetr for so many things esp creatures

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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby MiTT3NZ » Sat Oct 27, 2012 8:44 pm

Well it's probably much cheaper paying for a few guys to model and animate something on a computer than hire a team to design, construct and build a machine.

I understand that they can look great, but nowadays it doesn't make much sense in most cases, and I respect the fact that directors are directors for a reason. But still, the mechanical dinosaurs in Jurassic Park did look great back in the day.
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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby Bluecast » Sat Oct 27, 2012 8:50 pm

It still would make sense in many cases esp in makeup(films like Star Trek,STar Wars can only benefit form it). It's just being lazy and rather take a bigger check for themselves. During the making of Jurassic park at ILM they showed off some CG (which was used for the herd scene) they said this kind of stuff will make us endangered and another guy said don't you mean extinct?
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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby ShenmueTree » Sat Oct 27, 2012 9:56 pm

I miss it, yes.
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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby Sonikku » Sat Oct 27, 2012 10:48 pm

I miss em'. Practical effects seem to stand the test of time. Star Wars for instance still looks classy. The films hold up significantly better than the early 80's-90's cgi films that just look awful awful awful. Cgi is the kind of think that looks impressive at the time, but awful a year or two down the road. The star wars Special Edition is good example of this. 90's cgi looks woefully out of place at best, and god damned terrible at worst.

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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby Bluecast » Sat Oct 27, 2012 11:20 pm

Sonikku wrote: I miss em'. Practical effects seem to stand the test of time. Star Wars for instance still looks classy. The films hold up significantly better than the early 80's-90's cgi films that just look awful awful awful. Cgi is the kind of think that looks impressive at the time, but awful a year or two down the road. The star wars Special Edition is good example of this. 90's cgi looks woefully out of place at best, and god damned terrible at worst.

Image

1997 so late 90's




Image
1977

:lol:

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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby Kenny » Sat Oct 27, 2012 11:22 pm

^1983

Thing you have to realize is that the animatronics in Jurassic Park, specifically the T-Rex, were breaking down CONSTANTLY. Wasting valuable time for everyone involved. CGI at the time was the simple solution to the pain in the ass work days on the set, never having to worry about whether something looked too fake or broke down. It made alot of people's visions realized (T-1000 in Terminator 2, which was an idea Cameron wanted in the first movie but couldn't do it).

That being said, practical effects have their place. I was on set for the AVGN Movie and I can tell you they were doing alot of practical effect stuff cause James Rolfe loves them too. Hell, i'd love to use robots and things like that too. There's at least one project i'm doing that DEMANDS a real physical little robot to be puppeteered by someone behind the camera. But i'm aware of the limitations of the technology. You can't just have a big puppet organic creature with limited mobility and expect it to look convincing. That's where CG comes in. But even with CG, people tend to overanimate them and risk them looking really fake.

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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby Bluecast » Sat Oct 27, 2012 11:35 pm

T rex onlyhad those issues because they were flooding the poor thing with rain. Still paid off and looks better than just about anything still
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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby KiBa » Sun Oct 28, 2012 12:10 am

CGI is just as contingent on time and talent and therefore $ as the old style. However, all CGI, in my opinion, hasn't been able to achieve a level of showing lighting and shadow in motion in as realistic a way as reality. That's why we can always pick out CGI the instant we see it, or at least just feel uncomfortable because our mind knows something is amiss. We probably detect more subtlety than we realize, as we don't really know exactly everything we see, as we don't know the underlying structure of reality, that is, how deep things may be divided, and how much small details and variations contribute to our sight.

Also, there is something blasphemous about loving perfect artistic detail or reproduction of reality, as if, stunned by beauty, we come to make our art an idol, or really begin worshiping ourselves in awe of the images without substance that we can create. It gives rise to fears that reality itself is illusory, and makes us feel lost and isolated and, quite frankly, it makes me physically ill. I like that things look good as well as fake at the same time. Call it wabi sabi or shibui, but it's the same reason people hate human-looking robots and love old games. The indie genre is more or less a psychological movement representing the yearning of gamers to escape from too realistic graphics. The same applies to movies. Sometimes, I feel like I need to watch a simpler movie after watching a CGI-fest in order to cleanse myself. This is why I prefer animation. It's fantastic, but never looks real. In fact, the rise of popularity in anime corresponds to the rise of more realistic special effects. No doubt this is also a similar reaction against it.

Conclusion: people like being charmed by visions they can understand and easily classify as an illusion with a reasonable explanation. Too much complexity makes people feel sick, like they've spent too much time in a Krell educator.
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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby Kenny » Sun Oct 28, 2012 1:29 am

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Ffh2nbHnE[/youtube]

Davy Jones is one of the best examples of CG done effectively well. Old school animatronics also looked very fake in the beginning and over time they started getting more sophisticated.

Ryudo wrote: T rex onlyhad those issues because they were flooding the poor thing with rain. Still paid off and looks better than just about anything still


But with CG you never have to have to issues along with mobility limitations. It's a balance you have to face.

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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby OL » Sun Oct 28, 2012 1:39 am

Holy shit...
I knew Davy Jones's face was all cg, but I didn't realize that... well, everything on him was cg.
I used to say that Gollum from LotR was the single best use of cg that I'd ever seen, but I think Davy Jones takes the cake now. Really, really impressive.
It's a shame that certain other cgi things in the Pirates movies had to look so... "eh".

The dinosaurs from Jurassic Park are high up there for me too. To this day, there are still some shots where they actually look real, even in computer-generated form. The lighting was just right in most cases. Absolutely insane that a 1993 movie still trumps most stuff you see today.

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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby Bluecast » Sun Oct 28, 2012 3:35 am

Yeah remember that on the DVD. That is excellent use of CG. Now to clarify I don;t hate CG as I know it's amazing as well. I do believe mainly for creatures practical can still be worked in just fine. 1982 The thing still looks fantastic as does T2 practical effects even the fake Arnolds getting shot. I just think many studios rely too heavily on CG and as you mentioned over animate making it look crap. I'm just saying I don't think thy lost any relevance. Also I'm sure they have improved since even 1993. After all back to pirates.. 30 sec mark.

Just a theme park ride and the animation is incredible. Shows that they can put so many servos in now days that would not have that stiff look many 80's films had.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPWrdndJ1G4[/youtube]

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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby Kenny » Sun Oct 28, 2012 3:37 pm

Speaking of which, they also did a great job transforming that one double to look exactly like Arnold in Terminator Salvation. Which was the only noteworthy thing in that shitty film.

But even in films in the 70s and 80s, some practical effects looked like crap or didn't age well. The exceptions are the ones you named and Neverending story & American Werewolf in Paris. But I noticed in recent films like Del Toro's Hellboy movies and Pan's Labyrinth where it sometimes doesn't work too well either. Abe Sapien and Hellboy himself were awesome but a random demon monster looked like he'd be easy to tip over rather than be scared shitless of.

The best films blend the two together like LOTR and Inception. But it all comes down to who uses them and how the use them. Also time to finish everything for filming.

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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby Sonikku » Sun Oct 28, 2012 5:43 pm

Ryudo wrote:
Sonikku wrote: I miss em'. Practical effects seem to stand the test of time. Star Wars for instance still looks classy. The films hold up significantly better than the early 80's-90's cgi films that just look awful awful awful. Cgi is the kind of think that looks impressive at the time, but awful a year or two down the road. The star wars Special Edition is good example of this. 90's cgi looks woefully out of place at best, and god damned terrible at worst.

Image

1997 so late 90's




Image
1977

:lol:


Except that model didn't come until several years later. ;-) (A special edition of the special edition? :P ) Here is a comparison of the 1997 variant that went to theaters on the top compared to the new one they put in with the old trilogy dvd release years later on the bottom.

Image
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Re: Anyone miss practical effects in films?

Postby Bluecast » Sun Oct 28, 2012 5:48 pm

Still looks like a Dreamcast game and the proportion to the puppet is wrong :lol:
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