Spielberg comments on digital alterations to his films — Page 2

Spielberg's smart enough to recognize that he only has a finite number of films left in him and spending time and energy being anal retentive about the old ones is a huge waste of time. I just hope he releases the original cut of DUEL, it's the best one. He even said the extra stuff was just to pad it out for overseas theaters.  

Davnes007 said:

see you auntie said:

I'm not sure where the anti CG sentiment came up...

I think it started happening in early 1997, when some special movies came out. I forget what they where called.

The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down is probably the one you are talking about.

Hell the effects from the OT have aged better than the pt cgi. cgi ages FAST. Every year they come out with more movies with better CGI making older CGI look like shite.

Watched the matrix the other day on cable, caught the scene with the mirror, the one where it goes up Neo's arm and down his throat. Thought it looked like crap. Not nearly as reflective as it should have been, but that was where the tech was at when it came out, and its not that old of a movie...

It's a generational thing though.

Special effects techniques progressed slowly until computers (first in the form of motion control cameras and as the means to compose elements and then as the generator of the effects themselves ) entered the system.

Computational capacity has increased with the rapid shortening of memory and chip generations and the drop in price of both.

The Last Starfighter's computer generated effects which cost $14 Million out of a $15 Million budget look like a really old game cut scene now. This is compounded by the fact that  the computer game featured in the film would have been impossibly un-affordable at the time (especially for a little trailer park) at yet it looks really old hat now.

The Matrix (1999) came out the same year as TPM but in terms of effects techniques (due to CGI usage) many more generations separate it from a film like Transformers (2007) than divide 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which uses almost the same effects techniques as Forbidden Planet (1956) from Star Wars (1977). The over-rated The Matrix is still a much better film than Transformers though.

It's an ok science fiction action film but all the talk of it's philosophical depth and story innovation are really OTT.

Bingowings said:

In Temple Of Doom the whole last act is ruined by terrible special effects and none of them are CGI

Just for clarification, you're talking about Mola Ram's death scene, right?

DuracellEnergizer said:

Bingowings said:

In Temple Of Doom the whole last act is ruined by terrible special effects and none of them are CGI

Just for clarification, you're talking about Mola Ram's death scene, right?

That is a dire sequence but going back a bit the shot of our heroes clinging to the mine shaft cliff entrance as the oversized water shoots out looks like something from which would have embarrassed the makers of the film serials it's meant to be emulating.

Brilliant to read Spielberg's comments, thanks for posting the link/extract.

Just in case you guys didn't see it already, He Who Shot First also took a pop at CG in movies this week...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/8546869/Harrison-Ford-criticises-soulless-action-films.html

I understand the problems with scaling fluids and things that act like fluid like moving sand.

My take is, if an effect is not able to be done without breaking the tonal illusion of reality it should be left out.

The shots of the water shooting through the mine shafts weren't that bad at all.

The establishing matte painting was really good, the shots of the actors responding to real water were good too so it would have been better just not to show the fluffed shot of the water gushing out if they couldn't bring it up to the same level as the rest of the footage.

ROTJ is also cursed by inconsistent effects work, one example the heroes talking on the moving skiff with barge behind them looks awful compared to the stationary one.

If they had manipulated footage shot on location instead of using models and studio footage it might have looked better but it might have been best to have adjusted the script so the actors delivered the lines when the barge and skiff were still or cut the lines altogether.

The low budget television shows of my youth got away with terrible special effects compared to big budget films because they had a consistent look so they weren't questioned just as you wouldn't question the enclosed physicality of a theatrical play or a puppet show.

The effects in Raiders match up pretty well with the action sequences and stunts in that film.

If they didn't it would wreck the work of all the other people on the production in the same way that a terrible script or a wooden performance would in a film with amazing special effects and sets.

This link was so good, I had to post it to savestarwars.com.

Spielberg says Lucas won't "let sleeping dogs lie" and makes people unable to appreciate films in their own context. Cameron calls the SE a "disturbing" "revision of history." How many of Lucas' colleagues have to call him out on this until Lucas wakes up?

Lucas in my eyes sees most things as a means to keep ILM going and pushing technology.  He might be funding behind the scenes some new technology to save film non-digitally.  But everything since the early 90s has been to push funds into the future of media and easing it's creation.  Lucas's dad dies, Lucas moves into the provider role.  Recycled SW (SE, VG, PT) became the advertisements for ILM and the other divisions.  Don't think these statements even by close friends and creative cohorts make an impact.  It's partly a scientific endeavour why take your own time away from promotion of this goal to spend time promoting something old.  Let the public do it if they value the cultural artifact that much.

Matte paintings can be touched but they are flat, two dimensional objects that are designed to trick you into thinking they have depth, same as digital ones, so the fact that they physically exist is more of a technicality, and it becomes especially meaningless when the end result is that they are get photographed and turned into film, the same as everything else. The best old-fashioned matte paintings were very good, but 95% of the time they still look like matte paintings, and most typical examples are obviously not the cream of the crop and they really look like matte paintings. The foreground objects were composited optically too, and they always stood out, whereas digital comping has no edges and no mattes lines. I think theprequelsrule is romanticizing this a bit much.

The only difference between then and now is that they are used more often because they are cheaper to make digitally. In the old days you could afford five matte shots, today you could do eight. They usually looked fake back then, and today they still usually do.

T2 and The Abyss are perfect movies where CGI makes them better, but does not overtake the movie.

The Prequels are loaded with CG and just looks like an animated movie (Episode I isn't that bad as that actually has real environments)  Episode II & III are just animated movies with real life characters and wont age well 20 years from now.

I'm glad that Spielberg has seen the light. It's really sad that even George's 'friend' and other very good filmmakers like Cameron can't convince him that he is wrong for what he's done with the OT.

It really is a crime against film history. It's also a huge disservice to his own legacy and a slight to the people that worked on the films and their accomplishments. I mean Dykstra et al won the oscar for best visual effects for Star Wars in '78. The film that they won for isn't being restored and you can't even buy it on anamorphic DVD!

CO said:

T2 and The Abyss are perfect movies where CGI makes them better, but does not overtake the movie.

The Prequels are loaded with CG and just looks like an animated movie (Episode I isn't that bad as that actually has real environments)  Episode II & III are just animated movies with real life characters and wont age well 20 years from now.

While the CGI makes some of the concepts in those films easier to render I am tempted to think that some of the sequences were built around the ability to make those images rather than to illustrate the story in the best way possible.

The water tendril in The Abyss looks good to this day but is it necessary to the story?

Terminator 2 (putting aside my belief that it wasn't that good and not at all necessary) sometimes used CGI to make core story concepts possible but like The Abyss was often used to tediously show off what was then possible and shoe-horned it into the story.

But isn't that intended, in the first film efforts were made to make real people look computer generated and they weren't anywhere near as successful (even if by all reports I've read it's still the better film).