The Problem With Modern Special Effects aka The WETA Effect

5,800 Views | 38 Replies | Last: 8 yr ago by AgMarauder04
Sex Panther
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AG
This short video talks about how despite the fact that CGI capabilities are getting better, movies are getting less and less realistic when it comes to special effects.





This captures my feelings to a tee. It's the exact reason I don't really care about a movie like Avatar. Yes it's very pretty and nice to look at... but it just doesn't make me suspend disbelief because I know it's not real. I miss some of the grittiness and perceived tangibility that older effects had. Hopefully Hollywood will keep working on this and recognize that shinier isn't always better.
AgMarauder04
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AG
Which is why Fury Road was that much more impressive.
bangobango
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AG
I've thought for a while now that special effects were better twenty years ago than they are today.
Sex Panther
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AG
quote:
Which is why Fury Road was that much more impressive.


Fury Road is the most impressed I've been with special effects in a long, long time. Felt very real indeed.
rhutton125
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AG
I just watched Ghost Rider (for some reason) and I will say that we're much better off now than we were circa 2007. In most ways, at least.
VanZandt92
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quote:
quote:
Which is why Fury Road was that much more impressive.


Fury Road is the most impressed I've been with special effects in a long, long time. Felt very real indeed.


Too bad the plot was so forgettable
PatAg
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AG
It's a giant car chase/escape plot. You saw the previews. I would rule this as user error/idiocy for expecting an in depth plot.
Bruce Almighty
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He doesn't like any movie made after 1980.
AggieJ29
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AG
I was talking to a friend about this earlier. No matter how good CGI gets, it's still a digital image created from nothing. It is entirely fake. It will never look as realistic as an actual real-life model IMO.
VanZandt92
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Not bad for an explanation OP.
FL_Ag1998
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quote:
It's a giant car chase/escape plot. You saw the previews. I would rule this as user error/idiocy for a VanZandt post.


FIFY
30_Days
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AG
The timeframe he highlights is actually really interesting, because there's also something else technologically happening during the same time, the 2K Digital Intermediate.

During the timeframe he's referencing negatively almost every movie has been made using a 2K ID, even the most recent Avengers and Jurassic World had a 2K DI. This means that every computer generated object you see is rendered at exactly the resolution of the display, whether that's a TV or a theater projector.

This just isn't how the human eye works though. The human eye gathers significantly more data that we can process, and downsampled it for you.

Consider the "realism" of a still image. Picture one captured at 2MP (or about 2K) and shown at native resolution, and one captured at 8MP or higher (about 4K) and down sampled to fit a 1080p monitor. The picture shot at the higher resolution and then scaled down will look significantly better than the 2MP image every time.

I think now that 4K is better working its way through the filmmaking process we'll start to shed some of this and end up with higher quality, more realistic CGI effects.


The new Star Wars movie, by all accounts, looks great. At least from the trailer we've seen. As far as I've been able to turn up it appears that it might be the one of the first, if not the first, big budget "CGI fest" that used an end-to-end 4K digital process. The new BvS does as well, and again that trailer looks fantastic.
30_Days
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quote:
I've thought for a while now that special effects were better twenty years ago than they are today.

20 years ago CGI was built in computer, printed onto film, and then photochemically composited with the original 35mm.

That process, of throwing a CGI image (which is orderly by nature) onto a photochemical medium (which is disorderly by nature) was a HUGE factor in what made even poorly rendered CGI look "better."

If you don't believe me go watch Interstellar again. There is **** tons of CGI all over that film, but you'd be hard pressed to pick out where most of the time. Same for all of Christopher Nolan's films recently.

But Nolan still doesn't use a digital intermediate, the medium is photochemical from end to end. Even the digitized versions of the films, for blu ray and digital cinema, are scans of photochemical film that have been exposed to the CGI.
Bruce Almighty
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Well this thread just got all kinds of boring.
30_Days
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and there's one ******* you can blame for pretty much all of it

chase128
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quote:
and there's one ******* you can blame for pretty much all of it




Him and Peter Jackson
The Debt
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The first robocop still looks better than the remake.

Jp raptors 20 years ago >> jurassic world raptors
heddleston
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AG
Watched Ghostbusters last night and on several occasions I commented to myself how good the effects still look.
mid90
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quote:
I just watched Ghost Rider (for some reason) and I will say that we're much better off now than we were circa 2007. In most ways, at least.


Nic Cage movies don't count
G.I.Bro
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I'm surprised shark isn't here defending the holy Trinity of Lucas, Jackson, and avatar
30_Days
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AG
quote:
quote:
and there's one ******* you can blame for pretty much all of it




Him and Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson was converted by Lucas. Lucas is the godfather, the root of all that is disappointing.
Duncan Idaho
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This is why I find Spiderman and Hulk movies to be so f****** boring
Madmarttigan
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AG
quote:
quote:
quote:
and there's one ******* you can blame for pretty much all of it




Him and Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson was converted by Lucas. Lucas is the godfather, the root of all that is disappointing.

I agree with this, Peter Jackson was brilliant with LOTR, and then went full Lucas on the Hobbit movies. They look terrible to me in comparison, aside from the terrible story telling issues.
Ulrich
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LOTR was great partly because they used CGI the way it should be used. As a powerful tool, but not the only tool. For things that are unreal anyway (so that we don't have something to compare it to), things that are far away and moving fast (unreality is concealed), and only for things that they couldn't use real effects.

Because they limited the scope of CGI, they were able to focus on executing those things well (for example, virtually all of Gollum's movements and facial expressions were motion captured, which you couldn't do with whole crowds), and also avoided situations where there were CGI characters talking to other CGI characters in a CGI environment with CGI crowds and actors eating CGI apples CGI CGI CGI CGI.

Just compare the orcs in LOTR to the orcs in Hobbit. If we had never seen the orcs in LOTR, we might have thought that they were ok in Hobbit, but they were ten times better in LOTR because they were real.
R0GUE
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AG
The only reason I'd like to tell some of you to slow your roll, is because no ever gripes about the special fx in Life of Pi. Life of Pi told a great story, but it was just as laden with special fx as any of the movies you are bashing.

Tell a good story, and the fx won't ruin the movie, I garauntee it.
The Debt
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Are you JoS A Bank?
TCTTS
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Just now seeing this. Thanks for posting, SP. Right there with you in that it articulated my feelings in a way I haven't been able to before now.
SJEAg
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In a somewhat realistic setting, CGI can be completely convincing IMO. Gravity for instance....that movie restored my faith in the possibilities of CGI.

Professor Frick
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AG
quote:
Are you JoS A Bank?


George Zimmer.
Brian Earl Spilner
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AG
Just watched Avatar today in 3D. Still amazing.
AgMarauder04
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quote:
Just watched Avatar today in 3D. Still amazing.


Effects or the story?

I mean, Fern Gully/Pocahontas were both OK, I guess.
Waltonloads08
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AG
Jurassic Park > Jurassic World

in terms of realism.

How the eff did they do that in 1993?
AggieMarkSA
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quote:
Just watched Avatar today in 3D. Still amazing.
You mean Dances with Wolves....in space?
The Collective
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quote:
Just watched Avatar today in 3D. Still amazing.


I still have never finished watching Avatar.
R0GUE
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The rebuttal to this video, which is exactly what I was trying to say with my post:



In summary, you only notice the bad visual effects, which make a up a tiny fraction of visual effects across all movies. Visual effects artists are like Offensive Linemen, you only notice them when they do something wrong.

Plus if a movie is good and the story is engaging, you'll even forgive bad VFX.

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