Originally posted by: Tiptup I doubt you're a very visual person if you're attacking them at that point.
I've been a visual effects supervisor in LA for the last 12 years; most recently commissioned to do work for the upcoming Star Wars Complete Visual Dictionary. These credentials don't mean much, except in that I am intimately familiar with exactly how and what went into the shots for those films, and have plenty of friends who worked on them. They are not masterpieces, they are the result of grossly overworked and overloaded crews producing the best work they can under insane circumstances. As a result, you get extremely spotty work. Some of it is brilliant, lots of it is average, and some of it atrocious. The problem is not CG or practical effects, per se. The problem is when you supplant storytelling for gimmicks, which only gets worse when your gimmicks aren't even consistent. Rather than have 2000 visual effects shots, which will NEVER be of equal quality, films will be best served by returning to 200 - 300 shot count limits, where they can control the quality better. The quality fluctuations take the viewer out of the experience. It ruins the suspension of disbelief. Younger filmgoers actually say things like, "it had good effects". When I started in this business, that would've been considered an insult of the highest order. We don't want you looking at the effects - you're not supposed to see them. You're supposed to be drawn into the story. A couple of decades ago, with less sophisticated audiences, you could get away with a lot more practical effects and models. Now, more than any time in history, effects have the chance to be as "invisible" as one can imagine, when we can literally fool 99% of the people... when we're doing our best work. But the problem is that with the bar set that high, the substandard effects reek like a fart in an elevator and destroy the flow. So the solution is to reduce the shot count. And that is totally possible, because the other thing that has come with all the advantages in technique is a love-affair with over-using them. The fact that some filmgoers are so accustomed to spotty work that they are willing to forgive it is generous, but totally unnecessary.
And if you don't think that letting boring-ass crowd simulations run is part of the reason the LotR stuff is so painful, I've got news for you. WAY too many shots in those films where the filmmakers are admiring what they can do, instead of what's necessary. The Star Wars prequels are a billion times more guilty of this. Do you have any idea how many utterly unnecessary ship flybys are in the prequels? Tons. Each one a pace-robber, and a defocusing agent for the drama. Again, the problem isn't the tool, the problem is the way it is overused, at the expense of that which is of primary importance. Especially when its overuse compromises the very quality it offers in the first place.
_Mike