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I'm not sure if anyone claimed that cinematography in the physical world is more pure. My argument is that the two are different and should not be judged together in the same award category.

 

I would imagine their are some type of rules set up for how light reacts the different surfaes in CGI, the same way it acts in real life. The difference being the CGI surfaces don't actually exist so you are free to adjust how the surface reacts to light so you end up with the result that you want. While the options are much more limited for changing how a real surface reacts to light. It is possible to diffuse shiny surfaces or you could change a fabric or carpeting if its not reacting to light the way you want.

 

I think if you look at the difference between the filmmakers who had to live in Antarctica to film "March of the Penguins" vs the filmmakers who were working in a production office Santa Monica to make "Happy Feet". There is a clear difference in challenges between the way those two movies were made.

 

I'm not saying one way is more valid than the other. My point is that they are too different to be judged equally.

 

 

 

While there are things that you can only do in an animated environment, like making lights invisible and even having negative lights, they are much harder to work with and get looking right. The surfaces in a 3D world all behave differently, so a lighting setup that works for one element, won't always look good for another element.

 

The idea that just because you work in a real environment with weather somehow makes it a more pure form is pretty narrow. I found it's much harder to light and get the result you want in a CG environment than a real one. Like any filmmaking endeavour, there are huge challenges to overcome. Sometimes throwing money at them is a way to solve the issues (aka the Hollywood solution) but there are plenty of indie animation films out there as well, using much smaller teams of people, that are just as resource and time restricted as a small indie live action.

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I'm not sure if anyone claimed that cinematography in the physical world is more pure. My argument is that the two are different and should not be judged together in the same award category.

 

 

Agreed...

 

I would imagine their are some type of rules set up for how light reacts the different surfaes in CGI, the same way it acts in real life. The difference being the CGI surfaces don't actually exist so you are free to adjust how the surface reacts to light so you end up with the result that you want. While the options are much more limited for changing how a real surface reacts to light.

 

Well you're assuming it's easy to get the result you want in a CG environment because you can so precisely change the lighting and surface textures. Well I can tell you it's far far more complex than that because things behave MORE unpredictably than in the real world. To actually get the result you want and that looks great is far more fiddly than a simple adjustment slider in an interface. This is not photoshop. So when you can actually achieve a visually beautiful and story appropriate result, it's a significant achievement.

 

 

I think if you look at the difference between the filmmakers who had to live in Antarctica to film "March of the Penguins" vs the filmmakers who were working in a production office Santa Monica to make "Happy Feet". There is a clear difference in challenges between the way those two movies were made.

 

I'm not saying one way is more valid than the other. My point is that they are too different to be judged equally.

 

It's not as different as you are suggesting....

 

I happen to know that Happy Feet commissioned a vessel at great cost to travel to Antarctica to film most of the wildlife and environment for reference material. My good friend and cinematographer Tom Gleeson, traveled as DP and shot thousands of feet of 35mm of penguins, icebergs etc for 4 months. There was a crew of 14, including animators. He also shot live action reference material of tap dancers for the animators to work from...

 

The fact that you've made this comparison leads me to think you assume that happy feet was made by a bunch of people sitting in an office. Clearly it's not the case. And while his reference work is not strictly photography that makes it into the production, it reveals a commonly held assumption that animated films, especially CG based ones are all done in the sterile vacuum of an office rather than out in the *real world*

 

And Happy Feet was made as a collaboration of hundreds of animators working in different locations all over the world, not just Santa Monica. The production office was in fact based in Sydney. What about the challenge of co-ordinating all those individual animators to get something looking like a visually consistent film ?

 

Im not trying to pick a fight. I too once thought imagery generated from a virtual environment was cheating until I tried to do it myself.

 

I'd invite anyone who's sceptical to try lighting and framing a virtual scene.

 

jb

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Let's say elaborate Disney multiplane animation.

 

I was referring to the total artificiality of CGI.

 

You say that CGI uses lighting, but it's not really lighting but a simulation of lighting.

& there has been CGI without lighting.

'Roger Rabbit' had lighting added to its cel work.

 

 

Well Roger rabbit was probably pre CG anything so it would have all been hand drawn, lighting included. Roger Rabbit is not CGI. It is 2d composited animation over live action.

 

Are we not talking about an extension of extensive bluescreen work ? What about a film like the recent Star Wars or LOTR which uses extensive bluescreen and CG based imagery ? I wonder how many viewers realise how much of LOTR was photorealistic CG generated ? Most of the battle's in LOTR were with CG armies. How is that different ? Avatar uses perhaps a higher percentage of CG based imagery but because you're in an alien environment, the threshold for believability is different.....and half of the cast have had their motions *digitised* in order to animate a CG character.

 

jb

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Well Roger rabbit was probably pre CG anything so it would have all been hand drawn, lighting included. Roger Rabbit is not CGI. It is 2d composited animation over live action.

 

Are we not talking about an extension of extensive bluescreen work ? What about a film like the recent Star Wars or LOTR which uses extensive bluescreen and CG based imagery ? I wonder how many viewers realise how much of LOTR was photorealistic CG generated ? Most of the battle's in LOTR were with CG armies. How is that different ? Avatar uses perhaps a higher percentage of CG based imagery but because you're in an alien environment, the threshold for believability is different.....and half of the cast have had their motions *digitised* in order to animate a CG character.

 

jb

 

All I know for certainty is that Jessica Rabbit is... VA-VOOM!

 

She's not bad, you know. She's just drawn that way.

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Come on, George, "Tron" didn't have any real CGI in it, they were frame-animated 8x10" (200x250mm) lithos hand-drawn into the film. the 65mm stock more-easily facilitated the hand-drawing process, nothing more.

 

 

While I disagree with your assertion of "CGI" in "Tron," I agree with the point you make about DPs being given all the credit for areas they shouldn't be given credit (like SFX) in the photography of movies.

Well, there was actually a mix of animation styles being used. But make no mistake, TRON had actual CGI in it. The light cycles, the tanks, the carrier and the computer land scape and a few other things. I think even the "Master Control" computer dude was CGI.

 

Things that weren't CGI were the little highlights that the artists put on the less important stuff. Like when Jeff Bridges character gets zapped and digitized, that's traditional animation. That verse the tunnel he travels through after getting zapped; that's CGI.

 

Back in my younger days I'd work for a day or two as a SFX assistant or PA on various stuff, and would see some guy on stage peering through camera who wasn't the DP. Then you'd see the film get praised by some critic on TV, and they'd say how well the film was shot totally ignoring the fact that more than one guy was lensing the thing. Oh well.

 

Me, I tend to ignore awards. There's so many of them now that I can't imagine one award being more important than the other. That, and there's so much good stuff out there that gets ignored anyway. I think TRON was one to get snubbed by most of the mainstream industry. It's not just a great looking film with a fun plot, but it's also pretty deep too, though most people don't realize it.

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Well you're assuming it's easy to get the result you want in a CG environment because you can so precisely change the lighting and surface textures. Well I can tell you it's far far more complex than that because things behave MORE unpredictably than in the real world. To actually get the result you want and that looks great is far more fiddly than a simple adjustment slider in an interface. This is not photoshop. So when you can actually achieve a visually beautiful and story appropriate result, it's a significant achievement.

 

No I don't understand how its more unpredictable. The objects you are working with don't exist. They are a collection of binary code written by a programmer. The rules under which CG objects operate were created by a person. These rules can be changed simply by manipulating variables in the code

 

There is nothing wrong with that. The whole purpose and advantage of computer generated imagery is that the artist is not limited by the laws of the physical world. That is an incredible advantage.

 

 

It's not as different as you are suggesting....

 

I happen to know that Happy Feet commissioned a vessel at great cost to travel to Antarctica to film most of the wildlife and environment for reference material. My good friend and cinematographer Tom Gleeson, traveled as DP and shot thousands of feet of 35mm of penguins, icebergs etc for 4 months. There was a crew of 14, including animators. He also shot live action reference material of tap dancers for the animators to work from...

 

 

Yeah that was just reference material, it was not directly vital to the telling of the story. With the "March of the Penguins" filmmakers, what they shot is what they got. They had to stay out there shooting until they had a complete story.

 

 

The fact that you've made this comparison leads me to think you assume that happy feet was made by a bunch of people sitting in an office. Clearly it's not the case. And while his reference work is not strictly photography that makes it into the production, it reveals a commonly held assumption that animated films, especially CG based ones are all done in the sterile vacuum of an office rather than out in the *real world*

 

Im not trying to pick a fight. I too once thought imagery generated from a virtual environment was cheating until I tried to do it myself.

 

 

Seems you keep trying to veer the conversation into one vs the other. That's not my point at all. My point is that they are different and should be judged as so. An actor doesn't win a Tony for acting in a motion picture, nor does an actor win an Oscar for acting in theater. These two awards recognize the aesthetics of both mediums.

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I bet my last dollar that phonelines around the globe are on fire with conversations between directors, DPs and producers about how to convert their current pre-production projects into 3D -- maybe even some in-production films.

 

Also, consider the impact of 3D on piracy. Does anyone really want to watch a non-3D, VHS-quality "cam" copy off bit torrent of AVATAR?? No way

 

 

To the first point, that's part of why I hate what this movie stands for. The story these people were going to tell hasn't changed since before Avatar came out, 3D capabilities have been around since the 30's when Edwin Land and Co. at Polaroid invented them. If they wanted to shoot 3D so badly, they could of had that in the works long before now. As to this movie, I was full open to it before I saw the trailer, then I was thinking eh, I reserved final judgement until I saw it. The more I learn and hear about this movie the more I dislike it and what affect it's having. This movie is merely a gimmicky vehicle for Cameron and cohorts to get rich off of. Who is that? well considering about 3 weeks after the release we have IMAX, Discovery, and ESPN announcing 3D channels coming this year, and that Samsung and others already have TV's ready for it? Like that isn't a coincidence. They made a movie and gave it the perfect hype so that everyone would want to at least see it, so it makes lots of money, and regardless of what people are saying coming out of the theater, or how much better of an actual film it could have been, the BO speaks for itself, and to everyone who makes decisions based on trends. Whatever happened to the days when the studios used to pay technicians to come up with new filming systems in attempts to out do the others? That's how we got into the 65mm and 70mm world. Today it feels like the push for digital is sending us backwards....like doesn't even match to 16mm sometimes. It boggles my mind.

 

Had Cameron gone with the IMAX 3D Solido camera...you know, actual IMAX 3D of duel 15-perf 65mm....then I'd be impressed. It's not like he can say he didn't have enough money. Instead he brags how they did 'new' things, when really they just took the next step from where we were already at, took a story and elements from a bunch of different films etc. That's why people were initially calling it a mix of 5 things, not because it was unclassifiable, but because it was SO derivative. And sure, lots of stories get recycled all the time, even the best and most original can't help but have elements shared by others, but the best do it in a way that you never notice it until you've watched it a ton of times, or make you forget it. This felt more like they were smacking me in the face with it the whole way through. I actually laughed out loud when I saw the 'warrior' who doesn't like Jake, because aside from being tall, blue, and feline-esque, he looks identical to the warrior who didn't like Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves....then there's Pocahontas.

 

Oh...and as for that 'piracy-proof' theory everyone on the business end was loving about the idea of 3D films? I think that's out the window too. The NY Times has already reported on how it's the fastest pirated film ever....er...video....maybe non-interactive video game?

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/movies/0...COMMAN_BRF.html

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No I don't understand how its more unpredictable. The objects you are working with don't exist. They are a collection of binary code written by a programmer. The rules under which CG objects operate were created by a person. These rules can be changed simply by manipulating variables in the code.

 

 

You're correct that all the rules have been written by people, and that they can be changed at will, but that doesn't make it easy or predictable.

 

Even simple rules can have very complicated results when applied to many things at once and for many repetitions. There's a whole branch of mathematics that addresses the problem, from wikipedia:

 

"Chaos theory is an area of inquiry in mathematics, physics, and philosophy studying the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. This sensitivity is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos."

 

 

What that means practically in the case of CGI is that it can be very hard to know the outcome of any changes you make will be before you make them.

 

The same is true to an extent in the real world, but there at least we can have an intuitive sense of how light works and what's practical, because we're exposed to it so much and there are only a limited number of possibilities.

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... aside from being tall, blue, and feline-esque, he looks identical to the warrior who didn't like Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves....

 

Aha -- So that's why one of the early negative reviews called it "Dances With Smurfs" ;-)

 

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

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Come on, George, "Tron" didn't have any real CGI in it, they were frame-animated 8x10" (200x250mm) lithos hand-drawn into the film. the 65mm stock more-easily facilitated the hand-drawing process, nothing more.

 

There was real CGI in it. Not for the "live action", that was shot on 65mm DXN, copied onto kodaliths, rephotographed through color filters onto VistaVision.

 

But vehiciles like the racing 'cycles and the flying ship were CGI, out put onto VistaVision.

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Well Roger rabbit was probably pre CG anything so it would have all been hand drawn, lighting included. Roger Rabbit is not CGI. It is 2d composited animation over live action.

 

Sure Roger rabbit is cel animation. My computer time was running out and was unable to finish the post pproperly.

But the point is the "lighting" on the toons is like the "lighting" in CGI, in that neither uses real light, but basically use drawn on lighting which is not intrinsic to either process.

Admittedly we're getting perilously close to Plato's damnaable cave.

 

But the real deal is that CGI usuaally looks like a painting rather than photorealism.

I've yet to see 'Avatar' or 'Sherlock Holmes' in a theatre, but the CGI in the TV spots sure looklike paintings and video games.

Al Whitlock was capable of producing photorealistic matte paintings.

 

OOps, 5 minute warning!

 

 

Are we not talking about an extension of extensive bluescreen work ? What about a film like the recent Star Wars or LOTR which uses extensive bluescreen and CG based imagery ? I wonder how many viewers realise how much of LOTR was photorealistic CG generated ? Most of the battle's in LOTR were with CG armies. How is that different ? Avatar uses perhaps a higher percentage of CG based imagery but because you're in an alien environment, the threshold for believability is different.....and half of the cast have had their motions *digitised* in order to animate a CG character.
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Sure Roger rabbit is cel animation. My computer time was running out and was unable to finish the post pproperly.

But the point is the "lighting" on the toons is like the "lighting" in CGI, in that neither uses real light, but basically use drawn on lighting which is not intrinsic to either process.

Admittedly we're getting perilously close to Plato's damnaable cave.

 

But the real deal is that CGI usuaally looks like a painting rather than photorealism.

I've yet to see 'Avatar' or 'Sherlock Holmes' in a theatre, but the CGI in the TV spots sure looklike paintings and video games.

Al Whitlock was capable of producing photorealistic matte paintings.

 

OOps, 5 minute warning!

Albert Whitlocks work on Mel Brooks "History of the World", and some other bits and pieces.

 

 

I remember back in 1988 or thereabouts I was watching some computer engineer of Chinese decent say "You can do anything in computers now", meaning photo-realistic images. I don't know about anybody else, but to me CGI still looks like CGI, and it now seems to be more expensive than hiring actors and/or locations for the shot a director or DP wants to get.

 

Which I think is ironic, because that defeats the whole purpose of CGI in the first place; cheap and otherwise impossible shots.

 

I liked Albert Whitlock's work (and some of the guys who trained under him) not because I always thought their images looked absolutely real (because they didn't always), but because they gave a real scope and authenticity that modern CGI just simply lacks. Whitlock's paintings add a kind of artistic scope that, to me at least, the best CGI today can't quite mimmic.

 

For me, Whitlock, and other matte artists, were able to marry the unreality of the world the audience was looking at, to the reality of the world the audience needed to be witnessing.

 

I think CGI, effectively used, could be just as emotionally provocative and visually dazzling as Whitlock's stuff, but I've yet to see that. Then again I'm not a teenager anymore, but I'd put the SFX in a classic film like "Spartacus" or "Ben Hur" any day against something like "Avatar" or "Transformers".

 

Just my two bits.

 

Back to writing.

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Albert Whitlocks work on Mel Brooks "History of the World", and some other bits and pieces.

 

 

I remember back in 1988 or thereabouts I was watching some computer engineer of Chinese decent say "You can do anything in computers now", meaning photo-realistic images. I don't know about anybody else, but to me CGI still looks like CGI, and it now seems to be more expensive than hiring actors and/or locations for the shot a director or DP wants to get.

 

Which I think is ironic, because that defeats the whole purpose of CGI in the first place; cheap and otherwise impossible shots.

 

I liked Albert Whitlock's work (and some of the guys who trained under him) not because I always thought their images looked absolutely real (because they didn't always), but because they gave a real scope and authenticity that modern CGI just simply lacks. Whitlock's paintings add a kind of artistic scope that, to me at least, the best CGI today can't quite mimmic.

 

For me, Whitlock, and other matte artists, were able to marry the unreality of the world the audience was looking at, to the reality of the world the audience needed to be witnessing.

 

I think CGI, effectively used, could be just as emotionally provocative and visually dazzling as Whitlock's stuff, but I've yet to see that. Then again I'm not a teenager anymore, but I'd put the SFX in a classic film like "Spartacus" or "Ben Hur" any day against something like "Avatar" or "Transformers".

 

Just my two bits.

 

Back to writing.

 

Of course, you aren't referring to the many, many shots in many many films that were CG, but you didn't know it. You are of course referring to BAD CGI. Right?

 

Or are you going to claim you can ALWAYS tell.

 

R.

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To me CGI in general looks like CGI. Admittedly I can't always tell what is CGI and what isn't, but SFX in general (CGI, minis, paintings or what have you) tend to stand out more when they don't work. It goes for any kind of SFX shot.

 

To get back to my post you quoted, like I said the old matte paintings weren't always convincing in terms of realism. That piece on Whitlock shows some stunning work, but it doesn't always look real. That verse subtle CGI, which I've seen, and not so subtle CGI which really stands out. Just my opinion.

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To me CGI in general looks like CGI. Admittedly I can't always tell what is CGI and what isn't, but SFX in general (CGI, minis, paintings or what have you) tend to stand out more when they don't work. It goes for any kind of SFX shot.

 

To get back to my post you quoted, like I said the old matte paintings weren't always convincing in terms of realism. That piece on Whitlock shows some stunning work, but it doesn't always look real. That verse subtle CGI, which I've seen, and not so subtle CGI which really stands out. Just my opinion.

 

 

What did you think of the CGI work in United 93?

 

There were 483 VFX shots in that film. Which ones stand out?

 

R.

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I agree, I wasn't sure if JC went nuts and became another George Lucas after seeing the first teasers of Avatar...

 

But in the IMAX, in 3D, on the big screen, within the story all these concerns were simply blown away. I'm not sure how close to "perfection" ("photo-reality") the CGI actually was, you propably cannot even tell how it would look like if it would be real. But that wasn't the point, it felt alive and true in a storytelling-way - cig-characters actually transported emotion with acting!? JC likes many kinds of SFX-work, not just CGI, Stan Winston (and his studio) still played a major role in "Avatar" and about 40% of the film was shot with real people, cameras and sets - I think it could have been cheaper to "melt" this two worlds together by doing it all CGI. But for me this was the trick, how "fluently" real shots and CGI worked together and in the end the CGI-world of Pandora and it's characters felt more welcoming and real than "our" real-world! I don't think much of the CGI-work in Avatar could have been achieved in this quality with make-up, puppets or other "conventional" effects, I think it was a conscious decision. If I understood JC correctly, "Battle Angel" might have mostly real sets with CGI-characters interacting with real actors.

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I agree, I wasn't sure if JC went nuts and became another George Lucas after seeing the first teasers of Avatar...

 

But in the IMAX, in 3D, on the big screen, within the story all these concerns were simply blown away. I'm not sure how close to "perfection" ("photo-reality") the CGI actually was, you propably cannot even tell how it would look like if it would be real. But that wasn't the point, it felt alive and true in a storytelling-way - cig-characters actually transported emotion with acting!? JC likes many kinds of SFX-work, not just CGI,...

 

*snip*

 

... how "fluently" real shots and CGI worked together and in the end the CGI-world of Pandora and it's characters felt more welcoming and real than "our" real-world!

That's a great couple of points. Part of it is that I didn't see it in IMAX, so I think I missed some "awe-factor" in the viewing experience. The other notion that completely slipped passed me is the notion that the CGI "beauty" is supposed to be more appealing than the real world. Kids (or adults) who get addicted to drugs, computer games or whatnot and forsake real life is turned on its head. The addiction is always seen as bad, but in this case it's turned on its head and made to be a positive. I totally missed that.

 

Now, having said that, and having a greater appreciation for what younger audiences are seeing in this film, ... I dunno, I guess I'm just not a CGI kind of guy when it comes to this kind of film. Just me. :)

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@George Ebersole

I don't know what changed my perception, I only saw parts of it on my TV and the whole thing in IMAX 3D 70mm - nothing in between. Maybe it's my age and I'm unable to realize my "addiction/adaption to CGI" ;) but I would say that's not the case. I HATED the new green-screen Star Wars - stuff, I prefer the ones made before I was even born, I love big "real" sets like in "Titanic" or Dante Ferretis' work for "Gangs of New York", I even blame JC for using HD instead of 35/65mm film - but for me, Avatar was really a major breakthrough in CGI. Not just the technical aspect, but the artistic aspect of it and the implementation within the storytelling - my "old" :rolleyes: father saw it with me and agreed - he never played a single computer games besides sokoban :lol:

I don't think it's always the best solution (and that seems to be the opinion of JC himself).

 

It makes me a bit sad to see that everybody is just talking about the CGI-effects as some kind of gimmick, the box-office-results and why a movie which is seen by so many people cannot be good otherwise... :unsure:

 

I think because of the newer robotic technology better special effects can be achieved than with CGI.

 

I don't know much about the exact limitations and possibilities of todays robotic sfx-technology, but since Stan Winston (see what he has done in JCs previous movies :blink: ) himself (and his Studio) worked on Avatar but nearly all FX we see in the final film is CGI it's hard to believe that it could have been achieved with "puppets"/"robots". Maybwe it's a trade-off, giving an Ikran (the dragons) the last touch of real-world structure by using a real puppet but taking away it's movability!?

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