Practical vs Digital — Page 2

TheBoost said:

I personally have a preference for practical effects, but always reject the notion that CGI is cheaper, lazier, faster, or somehow requires less artistry or craftsmanship.

 Thank you.  As I said I know people who work with computer animation and a lot of hard work goes into it and they are not lazy fools who hate film making,so thank you.

As for Doctor Who i think that is one of the great things about modern film making,that there is no longer a huge divide and that a Tv show can put things that on screen that only movies were able to do.  The big difference is that movies have a lot more shots then any episode of Doctor Who does that is where the time and money comes in and that is why they need CGI. When people go to movies now they want two and a half hours of breath taking fast paced action and like it or not the only way to get that many shots done in two years is to us CGI.  Now if people would start going to shorter movies with fewer action scenes then the films wouldn't need so many shots and they could do more of them practically.

Sorry but ultimately this is on us.  If we want movies to change then we need to stop going to the movies that we don't like,if they lose money then Hollywood will have to change or go out of business.  You don't want films shot at 48fps,that is fine then don't go to the hobbit movies so they bomb.  You think CGI shouldn't be used,again that is fine just refuse to watch any films with CGI and once they start bombing Hollywood will go back to using all practical effects.  We are the ones with the power because Hollywood can't make movies if no one is paying to see them.  Use your buying power to send a message that you don't want CGI in movies any more.

SilverWook said:

A bit hard to know if you'll like a movie until you pay to see it though.

The Hobbit conundrum is easily solved by seeing the 24fps version. There still aren't a whole lot of theaters that can show 48fps yet. If Jackson is the only one pushing to shoot in the format, it will end up an interesting footnote in cinema history.

 So wait for a review from a critic you trust or watch the trailers.

When it comes to CGI if you think it is hurting people and destroying film making that is easy to avoid,if you see any sign of CGI in the trailer just don't go to the movie and soon Hollywood will have to stop using CGI.

SilverWook said:

The only critics I ever paid attention to have sadly joined the choir invisible, and trailers often are misleading.

CGI isn't the problem here. It's that those in charge think it's the only tool in the drawer.

 Then i would say it's time to give some new critics a shot and look beyond the mainstream press.  I had to do that with video games.  When the mainstream press gave several games perfect tens that I ended up having major problems with or found massive bugs in I was about ready to give up on video games since i had no way of knowing if the thing I was paying $60 for would even work for the whole play time.  Then I started searching the web and found people like Angry Joe who shared my view that games should work out of the box and that for $60 there should be more then four hours of single player content and that has been a big help.

Sorry but it just seems to me that if we want Hollywood to stop doing something then the first step is to stop going to movies that do that thing.  That is all I am saying.

I think many of us don't see those big CGI laden shlockfests. You won't find many here who went to see Trans4mers. You are again misinterpreting our issue with CGI. It's not that we hate it, or think that it should never be used, it's just that we are annoyed by its overabundance in mainstream films today.

As for 48fps, I think James Cameron was considering it for the Avatar sequel trilogy, not sure if he's going with it. I think it's an interesting idea and I hope to see the final Hobbit film in the format, as I've missed it with the other two. But I doubt it'll catch on, and that's because there's no reason for it to. The human eye can't process more than 200fps or something like, so any frame rate lower than that is to a degree unrealistic and arbitrary. 24fps has a reason for being because it has become the standard and everyone is so use to it, but 48fps is just random and kind of pointless. If a filmmaker really wants to experiment with "high frame rate," they'd shoot at 200fps (but of course that's rather impractical currently).

doubleofive said:

DominicCobb said:

I think many of us don't see those big CGI laden shlockfests. You won't find many here who went to see Trans4mers. You are again misinterpreting our issue with CGI. It's not that we hate it, or think that it should never be used, it's just that we are annoyed by its overabundance in mainstream films today.

I don't hate the Transformer movies because they used CGI to create robots that change into cars, I hate them because they insult my intelligence.

I think in a world without CGI, we'd still be complaining about practical effect shlockfests. We're blaming the hammer for the carpenter's shoddy work. And I mean the studios/directors are the carpenters, not the VFX artists who work their butts off to try to make whatever it is look good.

 Thank you!  Yes this is my point exactly.  Every form of effects can produce bad movies with fake looking effects.  I don't have anything against either models or CGI,it's the stories they are used to tell that matter to me.  Thank you.

doubleofive said:

DominicCobb said:

I think many of us don't see those big CGI laden shlockfests. You won't find many here who went to see Trans4mers. You are again misinterpreting our issue with CGI. It's not that we hate it, or think that it should never be used, it's just that we are annoyed by its overabundance in mainstream films today.

I don't hate the Transformer movies because they used CGI to create robots that change into cars, I hate them because they insult my intelligence.

I think in a world without CGI, we'd still be complaining about practical effect shlockfests. We're blaming the hammer for the carpenter's shoddy work. And I mean the studios/directors are the carpenters, not the VFX artists who work their butts off to try to make whatever it is look good.

No, I don't blame CGI itself or the people who create those effects - they have all my respect. I completely blame the directors and the studios. My point about TF4 specifically was in response to DrCrow, who said we should stop seeing movies that feature oodles of CGI and stop perpetrating the trend if we don't like it. 

There are two issues here. One is that there are movies that over rely on effects. You're right, there will always be these types of movies and there's nothing we can do about it. My main issue is that there is an over reliance on CGI in particular. This is a problem with both good and bad movies. 

So again your problem is with CGI being used too much and you can get a good idea of how much CGI is in a film based on it's trailer so how is just refusing to pay to see any movie that has too much CGI in it's trailer not a good solution to this problem?

I am not trying to be a smartass I just don't understand what other options we have at this point and why this isn't worth a shot.

Because of the pressure of studios, the amount of CGI in many movies have become a big problem.  It's most certainly not the fact that is the CGI (though I do have a strong practical preference, but that has nothing to do with this) is always bad, it's that the VFX artists don't have enough time..  THIS is the real problem.  These films always end up having to sacrifice the quality and detail of the VFX in one shot/scene to make sure a more crucial shot/scene looks good.  They seem to never have enough time to achieve their fullest and best work on everything they want to.

It's why there should be a balance between CGI and practical, so that you get an optimal quality.  But also, studios need to dedicate much more time to both pre-production AND post-production.  ALSO, they really need to stop announcing release dates so damn early!

Practical effects as much as possible, with digital to supplement and enhance, baby!