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**RUMOR** Original theatrical cut of the OT to be released on blu ray!! — Page 14

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I don't know, have you seen Jurassic Park recently - the CGI in it has aged a lot - the T-Rex scenes still look great, because they are in low light and there's rain and stuff but that first Brontosaurus shot (the CGI model of which they tweaked and re-purposed for the SE's Ronto) looks ultra fake today, yet, in 1993, everyone thought that it looked totally real - the perception of what looks real on screen and what doesn't has always changed over time - when they first showed footage of a train coming towards the camera in the early days of cinema, people were ducking and running out of the way - and that was black-and-white, grainy, 2D projection, likely at 15fps.

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pat man said:

I'm back! I've just been busy.

 How do we know you're the real pat man?

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TV's Frink said:

pat man said:

I'm back! I've just been busy.

 How do we know you're the real pat man?

 Yep I would expect that from you lol! Anyways lets stay on topic.

One day we will have properly restored versions of the Original Unaltered Trilogy (OUT); or 1977, 1980, 1983 Theatrical released versions (Like 4K77,4K80 and 4K83); including Prequels. So that future generations can enjoy these historic films that changed cinema forever.

Yoda: Try not, do or do not, there is no try.

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Harmy said:

I don't know, have you seen Jurassic Park recently - the CGI in it has aged a lot - the T-Rex scenes still look great, because they are in low light and there's rain and stuff but that first Brontosaurus shot (the CGI model of which they tweaked and re-purposed for the SE's Ronto) looks ultra fake today, yet, in 1993, everyone thought that it looked totally real

If it looks ultra fake now it looked ultra fake then. Seeing reality is something that most everyone has done for most every day for their entire lives, so most everyone has a good frame of reference for comparison, and the wiring in the visual system and the parts of the brain which interpret visual information have not changed. However, it didn't actually look "ultra fake", then or now (link). Watch some Asylum movies to see some "ultra fake" looking CGI.

- the perception of what looks real on screen and what doesn't has always changed over time - when they first showed footage of a train coming towards the camera in the early days of cinema, people were ducking and running out of the way - and that was black-and-white, grainy, 2D projection, likely at 15fps.

That's something entirely different, assuming it ever really happened at all. For someone who has never seen motion picture of any kind, you could have an animation of a simple solid-colored black circle coming at the screen at high speed and you'd probably get reflexive reactions out of someone (and not because they are consciously thinking it is e.g. a real bowling ball headed toward them). And if it did happen, do you think it would happen upon an immediate second viewing with anyone? If you questioned people in theater after the show, and asked them, "Was there an actual physical train in the theater?" do you think any of them would say yes? Do you think that anyone of reasonable intelligence ever thought that cartoons were real people?

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The problem with the SEs is that the cgi is there just to show off what cgi can do, not to add anything to the films. Tech demos age because their entire purpose revolves around them being up to date. The SEs are tech demos, therefore they've aged. The SEs are more like a video created to demonstrate the PS1 than they are like a PS1 game.

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I think that people's perception of CGI does change over time. When My dad and I went to see The Two Towers, he came out of that movie thinking that Gollum was a real guy with makeup. I could have been fooled as well, except that I knew he was a digital effect going in. Now I look at Gollum and see the signs of a digital creation, but that's because I've seen so much of it that I have greater awareness for that sort of thing.

It's not that people aren't good at recognizing trickery, it's that we often don't know where to look to find it, at least upon first viewing. To make another Two Towers example, I had watched that movie probably a dozen times before I realized that in Theoden's final cavalry charge down the causeway, the horsemen in the back of the procession are flailing their swords at imaginary orcs. Now I cannot unsee that, if only because I now know where to look to see the seams showing.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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darklordoftech said:

The problem with the SEs is that the cgi is there just to show off what cgi can do, not to add anything to the films. Tech demos age because their entire purpose revolves around them being up to date. The SEs are tech demos, therefore they've aged. The SEs are more like a video created to demonstrate the PS1 than they are like a PS1 game.

Exactly! I can look past the now slightly dated look of the matte paintings in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom because they were there to enhance the environment, or to create necessary visuals for the story. In the SE's, the cartoon dinosaurs are there because Lucas had the ability to put them there, and that's it.

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darklordoftech said:

The problem with the SEs is that the cgi is there just to show off what cgi can do, not to add anything to the films. Tech demos age because their entire purpose revolves around them being up to date. The SEs are tech demos, therefore they've aged. The SEs are more like a video created to demonstrate the PS1 than they are like a PS1 game.

 This post is absolutely perfect.

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@darklordoftech: Yes, exactly.

@MaximRecoil: I simply disagree with this - people weren't used to seing CGI dinosaurs, so they seemed much more real back then, than the seem now - I know this, because I experienced it and my dad said this as well, last time we watched Jurassic Park. I just watched the 1st Harry Potter movie yesterday and I could spot things being obviously CGI, where I never spotted them before. And the LOTR example is a very good one as well - when I first saw those movies, they seemed flawless (visually anyway) and now, I can see all kinds of things looking fake and CGIed, though I can still see less CGI fakeness there than in the Hobbit movies, because there is simply less CGI - like Neverar says, people just learned to recognize the signs of something being CGI but in the early days, most people thought it was photo-realistic. You may be the exception to that but not the rule.

Sure, some CGI always looked bad (CGI Jabba is a great example) but most CGI definitely seems much more fake now, than it did when it was created.

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Harmy said:

@darklordoftech: Yes, exactly.

@MaximRecoil: I simply disagree with this - people weren't used to seing CGI dinosaurs, so they seemed much more real back then, than the seem now - I know this, because I experienced it and my dad said this as well, last time we watched Jurassic Park. I just watched the 1st Harry Potter movie yesterday and I could spot things being obviously CGI, where I never spotted them before. And the LOTR example is a very good one as well - when I first saw those movies, they seemed flawless (visually anyway) and now, I can see all kinds of things looking fake and CGIed, though I can still see less CGI fakeness there than in the Hobbit movies, because there is simply less CGI - like Neverar says, people just learned to recognize the signs of something being CGI but in the early days, most people thought it was photo-realistic. You may be the exception to that but not the rule.

Sure, some CGI always looked bad (CGI Jabba is a great example) but most CGI definitely seems much more fake now, than it did when it was created.

 Anecdotes can't establish anything one way or another. "Confirmation bias" is the biggest potential problem with anecdotes of this nature. A controlled study of some sort could give meaningful results. This would have to involve people who have never seen the CGI in e.g., Jurassic Park and therefore have no preconceived notions about it.

As for "learning to recognize the signs of something being CGI": logically, there should be no learning process required. Those signs are simply differences from reality, and reality is something that pretty much everyone is extremely familiar with.

As for my own anecdotes, I have none where I once thought a certain case of CGI looked real or good but now I think it looks fake or bad. I'm too old to have seen any photorealistic attempts at CGI as a kid, though that could change things (i.e., a child's brain isn't even close to being fully developed yet, and they are inherently more credulous than adults as a general rule). Another thing that can change things is the quality and resolution of the picture and the display, i.e., CGI that looks good on a VHS tape or even a DVD displayed on a 15 kHz CRT isn't necessarily going to look good at far more revealing levels of resolution/quality.

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I'd just like to add I saw Jurassic Park back in '93 several times and was utterly sold on both the practical & cgi effects. Ditto with Terminator 2 (though obviously that cannot really be termed 'realistic' unless one hangs out with shape-shifting cyborgs from the future). Seen today, I think the liquid metal version of the T2 looks pretty bad, and the bronto scene from Jurassic Park still pretty good, but I can now recognise the CGI 'look', and slightly lower resolution levels than its surroundings. Something my eye wasn't trained for back then. Ditto for people who - for example - don't notice film grain, and those that do. Those that don't notice matting lines, and those that do. You can't apply the same sweeping generalisations for everyone. I know what to look for now with cgi (a particular kind of motion blur, texture movements, incorrect darkness levels compared with the surroundings etc), I didn't then. I remember saying to friends it looked totally realistic back then. Today I wouldn't. Don't forget we only had VHS tapes back then too to refer to after the film had left cinemas. Today with HD our eyes are all far more 'fake savvy' than years before.

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I agree with all that is being said about CGI but in it's defense...

CGI can do things today very well like robots / moving mechanical , windows, wood, metal and all sorts of synthetics very well because by it's nature it is synthetic as an effect.

But as soon as you start to try to synthesize biological things animals / monsters / natural environments i.e. trees it falls over.

But it can do repeatable patterns quite well also like fire / smoke / fog / snow / water / rocks / blood and environmental environmental effects.

It just all goes wrong when it comes to trying to create something that is alive because we can feel that it is dead there is no soul or energy transferred by cgi.

But it does do dead things like real dead things

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I think CGI may have finally come of age. I got emotionally invested in a trigger happy raccoon and a talking tree this summer.

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Where were you in '77?

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77FN said:

I'd just like to add I saw Jurassic Park back in '93 several times and was utterly sold on both the practical & cgi effects. Ditto with Terminator 2 (though obviously that cannot really be termed 'realistic' unless one hangs out with shape-shifting cyborgs from the future). Seen today, I think the liquid metal version of the T2 looks pretty bad, and the bronto scene from Jurassic Park still pretty good, but I can now recognise the CGI 'look', and slightly lower resolution levels than its surroundings. Something my eye wasn't trained for back then. Ditto for people who - for example - don't notice film grain, and those that do. Those that don't notice matting lines, and those that do. You can't apply the same sweeping generalisations for everyone. I know what to look for now with cgi (a particular kind of motion blur, texture movements, incorrect darkness levels compared with the surroundings etc), I didn't then. I remember saying to friends it looked totally realistic back then. Today I wouldn't. Don't forget we only had VHS tapes back then too to refer to after the film had left cinemas. Today with HD our eyes are all far more 'fake savvy' than years before.

 *cough* Laserdisc *cough*

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Where were you in '77?

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SilverWook said:

I think CGI may have finally come of age. I got emotionally invested in a trigger happy raccoon and a talking tree this summer.

 Pfft. The state of the art this year was with the chimps.

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Jonno said:

SilverWook said:

I think CGI may have finally come of age. I got emotionally invested in a trigger happy raccoon and a talking tree this summer.

 Pfft. The state of the art this year was with the chimps.

 I didn't go see that, so cannot comment on it. ;)

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Where were you in '77?

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No, it certainly wasn't - the monkeys looked so terribly fake, I had a hard time watching the otherwise pretty good movie.

And yeah, the GotG CGI characters were pretty good but they are kind of cartoony by their nature, so that helps a lot (alongside the great story of course).

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I did see the Rifftrax presentation of the the 1998 Godzilla, and the CGI did not age well! In several shots with the baby G's, they appear to be "floating" over the floors they're supposed to be standing on.

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Where were you in '77?

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Ronster said:

But as soon as you start to try to synthesize biological things animals / monsters / natural environments i.e. trees it falls over.

It just all goes wrong when it comes to trying to create something that is alive because we can feel that it is dead there is no soul or energy transferred by cgi.

But it does do dead things like real dead things

You are correct, the motion is actually far more important than the actual visual representation of the object. However, in case of CGI humanoid creatures, this problem can be solved easily. You just fit the human joints with marker and use real-time motion capture system to obtain the natural motion for CGI model. Dynamics matching will be pretty muach perfect.

On the other hand, this problem is very evident in practical miniature models where they try to produce a feasible motion. It is okay if you have a model of a massive space ship moving through space since the dynamics is really simple. But for example AT-AT motion and interaction with environment looks quite fake to me because the dynamics of the model is completely different from the dynamics of the thing that it tries to model.

真実

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imperialscum said:

 But for example AT-AT motion and interaction with environment looks quite fake to me because the dynamics of the model is completely different from the dynamics of the thing that it tries to model.

You're right. Stop-motion AT-ATs are so unrealistic compared to all those real-life 20-story mechanical walking tanks.

Dboman said:

I don't care about spelling! I just want to find a mirror!

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SilverWook said:

I think CGI may have finally come of age. I got emotionally invested in a trigger happy raccoon and a talking tree this summer.

Have you seen Gravity? That was one where my brothers and I both left the theater wondering what was CGI and what was real sets. That's never happened to us before.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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Harmy said:

No, it certainly wasn't - the monkeys looked so terribly fake, I had a hard time watching the otherwise pretty good movie.

And yeah, the GotG CGI characters were pretty good but they are kind of cartoony by their nature, so that helps a lot (alongside the great story of course).

 They didn't bother me at all. They look fake sure, but not anymore fake than people dressed as apes. To me, it's either fake looking apes played by humans and costumes, or fake looking computer apes. At least the apes in the new movies can move around like apes because of the CGI.

The Person in Question

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WedgeCyan said:

imperialscum said:

 But for example AT-AT motion and interaction with environment looks quite fake to me because the dynamics of the model is completely different from the dynamics of the thing that it tries to model.

You're right. Stop-motion AT-ATs are so unrealistic compared to all those real-life 20-story mechanical walking tanks.

What a childish reply. I was simply stating the physics... If you make a model of something that does not exist in real life and your model does not perform/match in terms of physics, then you can't use an excuse as lame as "the thing I modelled does not exist in real life" to justify its bad performance.

真実

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imperialscum said:

WedgeCyan said:

imperialscum said:

 But for example AT-AT motion and interaction with environment looks quite fake to me because the dynamics of the model is completely different from the dynamics of the thing that it tries to model.

You're right. Stop-motion AT-ATs are so unrealistic compared to all those real-life 20-story mechanical walking tanks.

What a childish reply. I was simply stating the physics... If you make a model of something that does not exist in real life and your model does not perform/match in terms of physics, then you can't use an excuse as lame as "the thing I modelled does not exist in real life" to justify its bad performance.

 Are we really criticizing physics in a discussion of Star Wars? Ships banking in space is certifiably bunk, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest.

In addition, I think AT-ATs are a little more realistic in their movement than, say, a tauntaun, simply due to them being mechanical in nature. They are mechanical, and look so as well.

Dboman said:

I don't care about spelling! I just want to find a mirror!