THE THING PREQUEL HAD PRACTICAL EFFECTS AFTER ALL.

I swear to God, what the hell is it with people under 40 who think that practical effects are so amazingly, empirically superior? Dedicated artists and technicians are responsible for both, fer chrissakes. You know the 'You gotta be shitting me' moment in The Thing? We knew back in the '80s that that silly spastic spider sucked, but we didn't care. It kills me how many alleged film fans don't appreciate the artistry and technology of modern cgi, and dismiss it as if some guy just presses a "we need a scary alien" button on a pc and the shit just shows up.

 

CGI may look like CGI, but fucking rubber suits look like fucking rubber suits. 

 

Sheesh.

Why do people think that practical effects are so amazingly, empirically superior?

 

Because sometimes they are:

Ahh, well that settles it.

Most of the CGI in the prequel didn't look that terrible to me. the only ones that really stood out as COMPUTERS was Griggs' "crackdown" and the Sander-Thing at the end. The rest of them were pretty good.

 

I'm a fan of CGI, as long as it's well done CGI. I just wonder why the studio went ahead and paid twice the amount of money to have practical effects done, then use CGI.

 

 

Great proof, Art!

The pilot was blocked out with the 3D Tetris thing because they felt it wasn't scary enough. While it was slimy/creepy I can see their point, and at least it explains her fascination with it, which I thought was incongruous in the film, it wasn't that interesting for her to be so enraptured (I thought)

Looking at that it really looks like a lot of the finished film is actually the practical but augmented probably more heavily than was originally intended.

The director said the reshoots were mainly to do with the changed ending, but who knows. I hope if that's not the case that they'd put together a practical version on the bluray. Would be interesting.

I loved the film so that was great, cheers Rene!

Glad I'm not the only one who loved it, Andy! Thanks!

I didn't know that about The Pilot. Interesting, and the CGI add in does make more sense for that scene.

I dont think it's about the appreciation of the artistry behind both techniques. I think the simple argument is that, practical effects have the gigantic advantage in the fact that they're actually real, they exist in the same reality of the actors on set. It doesn't matter how advanced CG effects are or may become, you'll never be able to say the same thing about them.

 

Sure a lot of times you can tell its some dude or a machine in a shoddy rubber suit, but nonetheless you still know and your eyes know its really there with them. Makes it a fuck of a lot easier to suspend your disbelief.

 

Yeah, there is something tangible there. Imagine if ROTJ Jabba, ET or even the shunting scenes in SOCIETY were replaced by CG. It wouldn't be the same.

I've never bought into that.  Something that looks fake will always look fake, regardless of whether or not it's tangibly on set or not.  Star Wars: Episode III Yoda looks more 'real' than physically there Episode I Yoda.  The CGI Tyrannosaur shots in Jurassic Park look more believable than a number of physical Spinosaur shots in Jurassic Park III.  Hell, I thought the CGI Alien Queen in Alien vs. Predator looked more real than the actual Predator once its mask came off to reveal its plastic face.

Big difference between looking real, and being real. Clearly for many people the latter is more important.

 

 

 

I just need it to FEEL real.  

 

I thought most of the CG FX in The Thing 2011 were actually quite strong.  The real problem was that CG or not, the monster just tears through everything and screams all the time.  But what a waste of such great looking practical FX.  I mean, seriously!  What was wrong with that stuff?  It looked great on video.  Did it not look great on film?  Could they not light it convincingly?

If they can actually tell, of course.  I've seen a number of morons who think models look like CGI.

Yeah, I remember actually being surprised when I found out that the Nubian fighters in the Phantom Menace were actually models.  They were just so clean and smooth in design that I assumed all of them were CG.

 

Even a lot of Mustafar in Sith was practical.  Amazing work.

Funny how every time this argument comes up, nobody mentions Gollum.

I have to agree with the posters that have noted that practical effects simply have more "presence" to them in most cases, and quite frankly, when properly painted up, shot, and lit well look FAR more real on-screen than almost any CGI creation.  Yeah, your brain will tell you "it's not real" because it's a movie, but a good practical effect has a "heft" and "weight" to it that CGI just seems to lack. 

 

Put another way, even the best CGI always seems to have that "CGI sheen" that makes it stand out -just- enough from its' surroundings that it does in fact seem "less real."

 

This has nothing to do with the artistry and craftsmanship that goes into good CGI.  It's very much an exacting labor to make "good" CGI, even with whatever "shortcuts" have cropped up over the years to make the animators' jobs easier, and those folks that work in the field are deserving of respect and accolades.  I think what many people lament is that it often seems as though the art of practical effects is being marginalized/pushed aside/cast off solely in favor of CGI (Heck, how many movies have been using CGI blood instead of good old fashioned red colored corn syrup these days?), and I don't think anyone here can argue that that would be a good thing.

Repeating myself from Joon's wall, but most of that stuff seemed to be in the film. And the green rods and coverings indicate they knew it would be cgi assisted from the design stage. Unless the FX team thought that merging face shot was just meant to be some sort of menacing snuggle. The practical team and the digital team were collaborators (or conspirators, if your cgi disdain runs to the hyperbolic).

 

As has also been said, the problems with Another Thing were conceptual, not digital.

I still love the artistry that goes into practical make-up effects but I have to say that CGI, when done well, has more fluidity. Also, you don't have to worry about the rods, wires of puppeteers not to mention that you can take parts away from an actor while all you can do with Make-up is add to a person. Two-face is an example of make-up and CGI merged to perfection.

I actually have an extreme dislike for Nolan's TWOFACE. It's an absurd design. The human eye cannot endure having no lid, and if your bones are exposed to open air? You get blood poisoning and die. It was so 'extreme' that it was disconnected from anything resembling a realistic injury. It looked like a cartoon, as if he were wearing a skeleton mask

 

And while CGI has plenty of uses (and I'll concede that certain THING TRANSFORMATIONS would benefit from that fluidity), in the end the eye knows what's real and what isn't. It's why the ROBOT REX from JP still inspires awe, as if Spielberg had brought a living dinosaur to the set, while the CGI REX gets at best a golf clap for the sense of weight in it's animation. One held up, one didn't. What is real will always be real, where as a computer simulation will look outdated as soon as more accurate modeling algorithms are devised

Come on, Kate.  The CGI Rex in the first Jurassic Park is amazing.  I prefer Winston's practical Rex, but the CG one still holds up today.   

Agreed. The CGI Rex still holds up.

I would actually say that, to this day the T-Rex from the first Jurassic Park remains the best and most convincing CG creation ever put to screen.

Really? I just do not get this. It's stiff, and has nowhere near the fluidity and sense of physical motion that the cgi version has.

 

I feel so weird, being the old fart in the thread, championing the newer technology.

 

It's good, great in fact, but it's no Gollum.

I'm still amazed at how real he looks. That, for me, is still the high water mark. You could argue that Caesar is better (yay Serkis!) and technically more difficult, but there's just something about Gollum.

As gut-wrenchingly awful as the Transformers movies are, the CGI realization & integration in those films is truly magnificent. Particularly the jaw-dropping, crazy intricate designs of the transformations themselves.

 

Why ILM never won is an Oscar for the first Transformers is a crime, those films are amazing works in the art of CGI.  When it comes to piratical effects I believe that they can co-exist together.  Whenever there is human interaction with something I always believe it should be piratical.  

The Golden Compass beating Transformers for VFX was just SO WEIRD.

Yeah, that was totally a Jethro Tull/Metallica moment.

 

"Never mind the photo realism of those giant robots destroying live action locales & turning into cars, that little girl is riding a fucking polar bear!"

 

Speaking as a HUGE Tull fan, yeah, we were all bewidered by that choice. As was Ian Anderson, as I recall.

 

And no matter what one may think of the Transformer films, they are without a doubt state of the art cgi.

 

As is a film like Zodiac.

 

 

Sigh... Zodiac.  I was shocked by the amount of invisible CG in that film.  The fact that such work like that rarely gets recognition is a shame.

The best CGI is always the stuff that you had no clue was CGI. I was utterly gobsmacked to discover just how much of HBO's John Adams was CGI:

That is INSANE.

 

Politics I'm sure. ILM has won, and rightfully so, a lot of oscars. Why not give it to Rhythm & Hues.  This is nothing against the people at R&H, I'm friends with a lot of talented people who work there and well, R&H pays me well. But come on..

Not just Transformers, but also Pirates: At World's End which looked amazing.  The only way I can rationalize that is Transformers and Pirates split voters.

 

If we're talking photo-real CGI, I'm tossing Davy Jones into the mix.  I can't think of a bad shot involving him.

 

Oh come on people... It was well animated (has a sense of weight) but its a blurry mess now. The idea it stands up to more modern cgi effects is a fantasy. I'm sorry, but I'm sick of hearing it still stands up. I will do some comparison shots in the coming days with modern CGI

 

As for the robot rex, it's hands down one of the most amazing things I've seen in a film. Sill inspires awe, not for one second does it look like anything other than a living creature

 

Gollum also does not look real. He didn't even stand the test of time for more than a few years. He never looks lit correctly, and his skin is undetailed, reflecting light all wrong. He rarely looks like he even exists in the frame with Sam and Frodo 

 

 

The genuine sense of weight it has is exactly what sets it apart from everything that came after it. No other fully CG character has replicated that. Not the dinosaurs in the sequels, not the Transformers, nothing as far as I'm concerned.

 

It's well animated, but the actual CGI does not hold up. It does not look photo real. It does not reflect light properly. It does not have skin that is detailed enough. The people who claim it's still better than today's CGI are wrong. It's better than much of the animation that is used today, but it's far from some sort of miracle effect. It's a fanciful notion, that the first big CGI creature is still the best one, but it's just not true. There have been plenty of more artfully realized creations in the time since

 

Pictured below: a stunning effect that still looks photo real. It interacts with water properly and looks almost as real as the robot rex

 

 

I've seen that piece of shit. The Smilodon looks fine in a still photo, but is absolutely unconvincing as anything but a thing of pixels in movement.

 

I'd disagree. In the pit scene (the effect doesn't work in daylight) it has a wonderful sense of movement, at least as good as the rex. I've seen plenty of tiger documentaries in my time, and it moves just the same way. His fur ripples, water dripping off. It's stunning

 

Also, before they start running around like crazy, the mammoths in the opening sequence are photo real and move with a wonderful sense of weight

 

Anyway, animation and computer generated imagery are two different things

 

The people who say the CG of JP still holds up are what I take issue with

Plenty of T - REX shots are not even animated well, such as the stiff body movements in this shot (and look at the CGI here, you're telling me this holds up?)

 

 

The most realistic CGI of all time, even more than 15 years later? I don't think so:

 

Yeah, because tiny still shots really do a big favor for your argument.

 

The fact that you're using any of the CGI from 10,000 BC as a counter, says a lot.

 

Thanks for playing. Goodbye.

 

I showed photos that were as high quality as I could find. I'm not going to throw up blurry youtube films in an argument about well rendered CGI

 

I showed photos of a primitive looking CGI rex. It's not even close to photo real, and in the shot where it eats the lawyer it's animation is very stiff

 

I also showed a stunning photo of a wet cgi sabertooth, which you dismissed out of hand. Goodbye indeed

A youtube video would've shown things in motion. If you're arguing about animation, wouldn't posting a video be the smart thing to do?

 

You chose to show small compressed photos, which again will do no favors for the image quality of anything,  including the cartoon and the caveman. If those were the best pictures you could find, you clearly didn't look hard enough at all.

 

You're not very intelligent, are you?

Actually, I'm having some trouble finding a clip of a T-Rex sequence from the first film on Youtube.  Weird.  But I found this!  Fun!

 

 

 

Ah, here is a clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=v5Co3A3fLBo

That shit holds up well...very well.

Wow, the weight distribution on the T-rex is astonishing. Better even than alot of contemporary beast FX.

It might not be technically the best, but the lighting, the weight, is all terribly important and although it might not have as textured a surface as stuff now, I'd argue that's what helps it. I look at something like Avatar;  I know if I watch it on a screen big enough I can see the skin pores, but on my 42" TV its just getting crushed into a blue CGI mess. Modern FX houses have a dendancy to over texture. If an actor is 4ft from the camera, I can't make out much of the texture of his skin, but I know its there. 

 

The T-Rex is 'shot' as if were there, it's not in the center of shots, it feels like it could pass off screen and still exist. There is never a big deal made of it. Even its first reveal is a wide. What really makes it work, more than anything since, is the way it was animated, by hand, using rod-puppets hooked up to a computer feed. The animators had the ability to add tiny character moments, get a feel for it, rather than clicking away on the PC. 

Sean's comment about over-texturing reminds me of something I've read/heard about matte painting; they're actually not very detailed.  Too much detail will end up making it look fake when seen in a movie.

 

BROAD STROKES MAN!