Special effects section.

[James Erd]

I just have a bigger problem with the notion of "improving" old movies -- they are artifacts of their time and should reflect that, mistakes and all.

 

I agree, and for the same reason I don't like to see B&W films being colorized, though in the case of Star Wars, at least it wasn't done without the consent of the artist. I enjoyed the original and I just want to keep that memory intact.

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm more speaking from an artistic point of view, not a business point of view. I understand how repackaging can allow you to resell something old... Cleaning and polishing up an old classic for re-release theatrically or on DVD is a great thing, but replacing shots in a classic movie with brand new "improved" ones just to help you resell it is crossing a line in my book, not that everyone would agree. Has nothing to do with whether the new shots are any good or not.

 

Of course it's a greyer area when it's the original artist who is making the changes...

[James Steven Beverly]

Not so silly financially...time & money into recreating visual efx = re-release to make more money, new dvd's to make more money, and double-new dvd's to make more money. Yeah, they're laughing, but not because it's silly! They basically released three films with only the costs of post. It's the same reason they're going back to rocky, die hard, bond, batman, and indiana jones; established franchises make big money.

 

I actually think that may be a bit cynical. If you take a look at Star Wars: Empire of Dreams, a doc about the Star Wars franchise, what it said was that Lucas felt at the time that technology had finally reached the point where he could put his original vision on screen. I believe this, because earlier in the Doc, it had told of the massive problems he had, had trying to make the movie with 1970's technology and how he had to started ILM and create the FX for Star Wars because at the time there was no one doing it. Computer controlled cameras were all scratch built at the time. Towards the end of filming, according to Alan Ladd Jr., HE (Alan Ladd Jr.) was given an ultimatum by the board of directors to shut the movie down because of time and cost overruns due to trying effects never before attempted. He told lucas the the movie had to finish shooting before the next board meeting. Lucas broke his crew up into 3 seperate camera units and managed to finish principal photography within I believe it was one week. During the shoot he was under so much pressure that he was diagnosed with exaustion and hyper-tension.

 

Also, with the new prequils coming out and his fasination with technology, I have no doubt there were multiple reasons for Lucas to re-vamp Star Wars, The continuity between it and the earlier films, as David nemtioned, the fact that there was no doubt he had to compromise on his earlier films due to technological and budgetary constraints and as a way to generate interest in and remind people of Star Wars, which in my opinion is just plain good business. I am ALSO sure he knew he would make money on revamped versions but I don't believe that was his primary modivation. ILM was not doing to badly prior to the enhanced versions and I don't think he needed to worry about money all that much.

[Hal Smith]

Of course it's a greyer area when it's the original artist who is making the changes...

How true.

 

In the fine art world it usually is considered exciting to have different versions of an artist's work. I'll put up with George Lucas refining his thoughts - he's privileged. He sure as heck blew my socks off when I saw "Star Wars" first run when it came out.

 

PS: Lucas also revolutionized sound editing, the ILM (Sprocket/Skywalker Sound) SoundDroid was the one of the first, if not the first, sound editors that were 100% in software. The SoundDroid software was eventually bought by Avid - it's called Pro Tools now! When Chief Engineer at WSSH, Boston in 1985 and while planning a new studio construction project, I tried to talk management into buying a SoundDroid rather than spending $150,000 or so on a new analog multi-track studio. They thought I was nuts.

[Mark Duckworth]

It is very interesting to read this thread and see all the vitriol being sprayed at VFX artists and people who work in the "Digital" side of that world. The lack of respect shown towards those people with comments like "cut and paste" is appalling. To belittle any trained professionals job as being so simplistic is unbelievably insulting (ie. He's the gaffer, he just hangs the lights). As Mr.Mullen has so elequently put talking about the "Digital" effects side that it is another tool to use to help out and in some films it is just as an integral part of the storytelling process as "hanging the lights" or figuring out which ones to turn on ;) . I made a short film a little while ago, a scene took place in San Francisco International. I live in Japan. I was not going to San Francisco. I hung a green screen, lit it , lit the talent, shot, and composited it in post on the computer using off the shelf software. It was simple, neat and helped tell the story I wanted to tell. The three criteria I go by for a shot are looks, cost, and time. If it looks good, is cheap, and quick I don't care if its a Maya model, a paper mache model, or a potato on a string. Filmmakers almost always in my experience try to balance those three criteria of looks, cost and time. Using Mr.Boddington's example of 20,000 extras. To pay 20,000 of them for 1 hour would be about $140,000 at $7 an hour at the current wage for extras in Ontario (they were trying to form a union last I heard so maybe it is more now). Filming big crowds scenes is (i have heard and read about) not a quick process. Quite possibly Mr. Boddington has 20,000 friends who will take the day off work to show up for his filming, I don't really know. But I do know I can film 20 people, use off the shelf software and create a crowd of 20,000 for my films if I decided that the story needed it. But for example say I decided that maybe a crowd of 20,000 looks a little overly large and ridiculous in the setting I am going for I now have the flexibilty to scale that back to only 10,000. However, If I hired 20,000 real people I have essentially thrown away 70,000 dollars per hour and extras which I ultimately didn't need. I realize that a lot of the time you do and film things that you may never use in the film but for things like the crowd example, it makes more sense from a　fiscal stand point to go with Digital or painted match sticks that you wave in front of the camera, which ever looks better ;) . Whatever works, Baby.

[Mark Allen]

I wonder if it would be illegal to instead of paying the $50 / person fee that many low budget movies get away with and therefore paying $100,0000 for your 20,000 extras if you could get 20,000 people to show up with the hopes of winning $10,000. Basically a lottery. Probably illegal.

 

I think even Wilt Chamberlin would have had trouble getting 20,000.... or... maybe not.

[Sam Wells]

PS: Lucas also revolutionized sound editing, the ILM (Sprocket/Skywalker Sound) SoundDroid was the one of the first, if not the first, sound editors that were 100% in software. The SoundDroid software was eventually bought by Avid - it's called Pro Tools now! When Chief Engineer at WSSH, Boston in 1985 and while planning a new studio construction project, I tried to talk management into buying a SoundDroid rather than spending $150,000 or so on a new analog multi-track studio. They thought I was nuts.

 

It sort of became IMS Dyaxis, although Dyaxis ended up using software developed at IRCAM in Paris.

 

ProTools was a combination of Digidesign's own Sound Tools plus third party developers' sw called DECK.

 

ProTools was an existing product when Avid bought Digidesign.

 

It's possible the guys who wrote DECK were involved with SoundDroid I don't know --- a lot of stuff came out of that Stanford University / Palo Alto neighborhood.

 

Studer bought IMS and ran Dyaxis - a potentially very interesting product into the ground (too much expensive proprietary hardware). Same fate as New Englend Digital. Digidesign clobbered 'em both in the marketplace.

 

-Sam

 

If the cinematographer can't conjure up the thought of 10000 camels in the viewers minds by using 100 camels then the film is probably not worth watching anyway

 

I'm not sure I'd put the heavy burden of 10,000 camels entirely on the cinematographer "OK now just make these hundred camels look like 10,000" :D

 

But it's a good point. How do you convey the, you know, IDEA of camels, WHAT is the idea here....

 

-Sam

[Guest Tim Partridge]

I just spent a little time comparing the old and new versions of the final battle over the Death Star on the new DVD release, and ignoring the basic problem I have with altering something from its original form, I have to say that the new effects are an improvement; the only problem is just that they go beyond what was really possible in the 1970's. But otherwise, the fighters move more fluidly, more dynamically, there are some interesting uses of near to far movement and compositions, etc. And the other thing is that they aren't altered THAT much -- the cuts still match the music cues, there is still the famous jump cut during the plunge into the trenches between the two different scale models of the Death Star, etc. It all goes back to the notion of what is "real" -- a model is "real" because it is actually in front of a movie camera, but does that mean it is more realistic in matching a full-scale version compared to a CGI version that may look less solid like a model but move more realistically or have elements that scale more realistically like smoke, fire, water, ice, etc.?

 

The biggest problem is that it cancels out a milestone VFX sequence that is largely, historically responsible for Hollywood's renewed interest in VFX spectacle. After that original 1977 motion control space assault, time and money got pumped into VFX research and development from then on. In this respect it's directly responsible for today's infactuation and progress regarding computer generated imagery an digital techniques.

 

The Special Edition replacement sequence is the VFX equivalent of taking the original Mesopotamian wheel and replacing it with the latest Pirrelli tyre. Totally pointless, and a giant insult to an influential innovation, and everyone originally involved with it.

[John Holland]

My main problem with CGI is its over use , if used to add a touch to scene that would not possible to do in real time or life thats fine with me , my teenage children "say thats done on a computer " all the time now without any prompting from me , so we have lost the "Magic , which is very sad . John Holland, London.

[Guest]

Quite possibly Mr. Boddington has 20,000 friends who will take the day off work to show up for his filming, I don't really know. But I do know I can film 20 people, use off the shelf software and create a crowd of 20,000 for my films if I decided that the story needed it. But for example say I decided that maybe a crowd of 20,000 looks a little overly large and ridiculous in the setting I am going for I now have the flexibilty to scale that back to only 10,000. However, If I hired 20,000 real people I have essentially thrown away 70,000 dollars per hour and extras which I ultimately didn't need. I realize that a lot of the time you do and film things that you may never use in the film but for things like the crowd example, it makes more sense from a?fiscal stand point to go with Digital or painted match sticks that you wave in front of the camera, which ever looks better ;) . Whatever works, Baby.

 

Ok well....judging by the number of people who offered to work on my last feature film for free, I actually do believe I could get 20,000 extras for a scene!! And quite cheaply as well.

 

There is a huge pool of people out there who would love to be an extra in a big crowd scene for a movie, just to be able to tell their friends, "I was in that movie." (The unions can stick their heads in a toilet, it's a free country, I can do as I please.)

 

I'm not sure there is any law that says I have to pay any one for a crowd scene? People are allowed to give their labour away for free if they so choose, there's no law against it. If I'm shooting an outdoor crowd scene, and 20,000 extras show up, well then I've got my shot.

 

I was just watching Spielberg's "Empire Of The Sun", they have some pretty big crowd scenes in the opening of that movie when the Japanese invade China. From seeing the behind the scenes footage it appears they where all extras and they handed out packets of period costumes to every one to boot! If they used any CG crowds for that scene then I guess I'm eating some crow, but it didn't appear that they did. I was reading an article about this by the DOP, he says that one big shot was "modified" but he didn't give any more details than that.

 

Granted there are limits to what one can do in camera. I was watching "Reign Of Fire" last night and in the final scene where they battle the dragon the CG dragon was very good indeed. I doubt a minature or puppet would have been any where near as good.

 

However, the fire, still looked fake :)

 

R,

[Keith Mottram]

My main problem with CGI is its over use , if used to add a touch to scene that would not possible to do in real time or life thats fine with me , my teenage children "say thats done on a computer " all the time now without any prompting from me , so we have lost the "Magic , which is very sad . John Holland, London.

 

 

I dont buy this losing of magic of argument, would your teenage children say "wow that stop motion is so realistic?". the fact is that media literacy has arrived at a place where cack handed effects will be spotted and children (as well as teenagers) can spot a shoddy effect a mile away. this is nothing to do with losing the magic and everything to do with the vast improvements in technology which means that we expect a high standard. this is a good thing. the actual problem is a poop special effect is cheaper than a good practical effect. and i should know i've edited enough of them

 

keith

[James Erd]

--- a lot of stuff came out of that Stanford University / Palo Alto neighborhood.

 

Yeah CCRMA! It looks like CCRMA has a bright future these days. Stanford had neglected the program for years and the facilities were really beginning to show their age. The main building on the knoll was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and the upper floors were condemned. It appeared for a long time that Stanford was not interested in making the necessary repairs or any other improvements. Finally in 2006 the the upper floors have been reopened and all the facilities have been updated. Considering the quality of research and innovation that has out of CCRMA in spite of Stanford's neglect, we can expect even more.

[Matthew Buick]

George Lucas is a Buisnessman, not a Filmaker, ruining the film that got him where he is today proves he is interested solely in the money, he didn't direct another film until 1999, true filmaker are supposed to love what they do, not sit on their arse for 20 years twiddling their thumbs and getting fat, he always tries to take the credit for the many great acheivment ILM has accomplished over the years, George Lucas is a man who could get blood from a Turnip, and if he couldn't do that, he'd find some spiffy way to do it in post, 25 years later he'd come back and recolour the blood, and maybe add in an Explosion or two for good measure, saying all that, though, Star Wars has given me untold happiness over a pretty crap period in my life.

 

-Matthew Buick.

[Mark Duckworth]

Ok well....judging by the number of people who offered to work on my last feature film for free, I actually do believe I could get 20,000 extras for a scene!! And quite cheaply as well.

 

There is a huge pool of people out there who would love to be an extra in a big crowd scene for a movie, just to be able to tell their friends, "I was in that movie." (The unions can stick their heads in a toilet, it's a free country, I can do as I please.)

 

I'm not sure there is any law that says I have to pay any one for a crowd scene? People are allowed to give their labour away for free if they so choose, there's no law against it. If I'm shooting an outdoor crowd scene, and 20,000 extras show up, well then I've got my shot.

 

I was just watching Spielberg's "Empire Of The Sun", they have some pretty big crowd scenes in the opening of that movie when the Japanese invade China. From seeing the behind the scenes footage it appears they where all extras and they handed out packets of period costumes to every one to boot! If they used any CG crowds for that scene then I guess I'm eating some crow, but it didn't appear that they did. I was reading an article about this by the DOP, he says that one big shot was "modified" but he didn't give any more details than that.

 

Granted there are limits to what one can do in camera. I was watching "Reign Of Fire" last night and in the final scene where they battle the dragon the CG dragon was very good indeed. I doubt a minature or puppet would have been any where near as good.

 

However, the fire, still looked fake :)

 

R,

 

Wow, if you can get 20,000 thousand people to show up for a film, give them no monetary compensation or even give them a sandwich or drink for lunch, then you must have a messiah like personality. You should run for PM. However, The difference between STEVEN SPIELBERG on a HOLLYWOOD feature with a Hollywood support system in place having 20,000 extras showing up and being a smaller production with a budget of say 1-2 million is huge. How are you going to control that crowd? Do you have places set up for people to change into their costumes? What about bathrooms? Permits? Medical services? Go see a Leafs game, look in the stands at the 20,000 people there and honestly ask yourself the question of if you can control that crowd by yourself who, by your account, have no attachment to the production other than being your friend. But I guess you will have your multitude of AD's, PA's, costumers, make-up artists, wranglers to help you organize them. All unpaid, of course, doing it for the love of film and paying for their own lunch. Now that truly would be a special effect.

Edited November 28, 2006 by Mark Duckworth

[David Mullen ASC]

How are you going to control that crowd? Do you have places set up for people to change into their costumes? What about bathrooms? Permits? Medical services? Go see a Leafs game, look in the stands at the 20,000 people there and honestly ask yourself the question of if you can control that crowd by yourself who, by your account, have no attachment to the production other than being your friend. But I guess you will have your multitude of AD's, PA's, costumers, make-up artists, wranglers to help you organize them. All unpaid, of course, doing it for the love of film and paying for their own lunch. Now that truly would be a special effect.

 

Not to mention what if the location is distant and you either have to provide busing or a parking lot for all those cars, and probably parking lot attendants / security, especially if the shoot goes into nighttime? Plus transpo from crew park to base camp, from base camp to set, etc.

 

Not providing some sort of security and organization for crowd control and you put yourself at risk for a lawsuit if some extra gets hurt or is the victim of a crime.

 

"Empire of the Sun" was pre-CGI more or less. Better question is whether there are any CGI people in the battle scene of "Saving Private Ryan" (at least probably in the last wide shot of the whole beach after the D-Day battle is over.)

 

Like I said, pre-CGI, there were no decent options for faking MOVING crowds of people using special effects, not if you also wanted to move the camera too, so it really isn't fair or accurate to look at pre-CGI films because filmmakers didn't have much choice but to do it for real anyway, so they shot it as best as they could, either using a shitload of extras or faking the number with selective camera angles & editing.

 

It's all well and good to boast about how you could get 20,000 extras to show-up for your feature for free, but it might be easier to swallow if you actually did it first before you boasted about it. After shooting thirty features, small to medium in budget, I can tell you that getting large numbers of extras for scenes is always a challenge (and on a union shoot, the first thirty or so have to be paid and members of the Screen Extras Guild.)

 

All the spelling bee matches in "Akeelah and the Bee" were a pain to get extras for, despite flyers and phone calls and emails to friends and families to show up. And many would not hang around long enough for all the shots needed.

 

And if you've invested any serious money into a feature project, do you really want your "big" scene to be entirely dependent on the whims of a group of people that may or may not show-up to work for free? It's quite a nightmare for a director, wondering if enough people are going to show up. If you planned on 20,000 and only 5,000 show up, you may be reaching for those CGI tools in post to fill-in the visible gaps or empty areas in the frame.

 

Even in "Akeelah and the Bee" where we had no budget really for many post effects, we ultimately had to augment our biggest crowd scene shot -- 1,000 adult extras and 200 kids in a 360 degree camera move -- when it was too obvious after editing that the far corners of the room and the second-floor balconey were too empty. Luckily all we had to do was add dark, blurry figures back there in post. The main problem was the bouncy 360 degree dolly move with a zoom-out on an anamorphic lens, and tracking the CGI to that.

[Guest]

"It's all well and good to boast about how you could get 20,000 extras to show-up for your feature for free, but it might be easier to swallow if you actually did it first before you boasted about it. After shooting thirty features, small to medium in budget, I can tell you that getting large numbers of extras for scenes is always a challenge (and on a union shoot, the first thirty or so have to be paid and members of the Screen Extras Guild.)"

 

You haven't done it, so it can't be done....how many times have I heard that? (Good thing I've never paid any attention to that philosophy or I'd be in a homeless shelter instead of driving my Audi A6 and living in my 5,000 square foot home.)

 

Good thing David Lean never listened to any one tell him the big shots with hundreds of camels could not be done or Lawrence Of Arabia would have needed to wait until now to be made.

 

I'm not saying there are not logistical issues when one uses a large crowd, but these issues can be over come. Lots of people have done it, I see no reason to simply use CG just because it's available for crowd shots.

 

Screen Extras Guild be damed who are these useless idiots that sit around collecting dues from people that work and offering nothing in return? All the union actors I talk to go on and on about how the union makes their life very difficult, collecting dues, and giving them nothing in return. What a racket!!

 

As for my friend who suggests I see a Leafs game, FYI the plural of Leaf in Leaves, but I digress. Do you remember the Terry Fox Story from the 80s? They shot a scene in Nathan Phillips Square with thousands of extras where Terry addresses the crowd. This was a low budget movie and the people just turned up to be in the shot and the movie. No one got paid, no lunch was provided, guess what no riot broke out. It's amazing what can be done by people with vision.

 

R,

[Mark Duckworth]

"It's all well and good to boast about how you could get 20,000 extras to show-up for your feature for free, but it might be easier to swallow if you actually did it first before you boasted about it. After shooting thirty features, small to medium in budget, I can tell you that getting large numbers of extras for scenes is always a challenge (and on a union shoot, the first thirty or so have to be paid and members of the Screen Extras Guild.)"

 

You haven't done it, so it can't be done....how many times have I heard that? (Good thing I've never paid any attention to that philosophy or I'd be in a homeless shelter instead of driving my Audi A6 and living in my 5,000 square foot home.)

 

Good thing David Lean never listened to any one tell him the big shots with hundreds of camels could not be done or Lawrence Of Arabia would have needed to wait until now to be made.

 

I'm not saying there are not logistical issues when one uses a large crowd, but these issues can be over come. Lots of people have done it, I see no reason to simply use CG just because it's available for crowd shots.

 

Screen Extras Guild be damed who are these useless idiots that sit around collecting dues from people that work and offering nothing in return? All the union actors I talk to go on and on about how the union makes their life very difficult, collecting dues, and giving them nothing in return. What a racket!!

 

As for my friend who suggests I see a Leafs game, FYI the plural of Leaf in Leaves, but I digress. Do you remember the Terry Fox Story from the 80s? They shot a scene in Nathan Phillips Square with thousands of extras where Terry addresses the crowd. This was a low budget movie and the people just turned up to be in the shot and the movie. No one got paid, no lunch was provided, guess what no riot broke out. It's amazing what can be done by people with vision.

 

R,

 

Of course any logistical problems can be overcome with two very important things, time and money. Both of which are usually in short supply on a film set of lower budget (and sometimes towards the end on large budget projects), but if you work for free and have no outside life it is not a problem :) . So if you take your idea of 20,000 extras, who you don't pay or feed, show up to your set at the exact time on the call sheet (let's say its a park, nothing to difficult like a town square or city street), arriving by public transportation in 30 buses (provided by the city at no charge) all shuttling back and forth for about 2 hours to get everyone there, everyone is already dressed appropriately for the scene (wearing modern clothes or the costume that they have hand sewn to the directors specifications), the extras who are going to be seen in the shot have the appropriate make-up touch-ups that your 5 friends who are make up artists do. You got your shooting permits from your buddy at city hall who greased them through on the sly for no fee. The hospital has sent an ambulance over for you to use and a couple of EMT's. The head constable at the police station has graciously arranged for all off-duty officers to assist in your security as part of some "crowd control training". Hydro One has sent out an electrician free of charge to help you tap into the power to light your scene (if its at night) or to make sure that everything is up to spec if you are tapping into the power for any reason. A couple of hours later all your free AD's and wranglers have got everyone in place for your shot. You put your principles in place and just as you are about to say action the skies open up and it starts raining. Well i guess you'll just have to call everyone back tomorrow.

 

And it is the Toronto Maple Leafs.

[Guest]

Stick to your computer Mark, location filmmaking isn't for you. Guess what dealing with rain, and the other elements is a part of location work whether you have 20,000 extras or three, your point is moot.

 

Leafs? Leaves? Doesn't matter, they are losers who have not won the cup in 450 years.

 

R,

[Mark Duckworth]

Stick to your computer Mark, location filmmaking isn't for you. Guess what dealing with rain, and the other elements is a part of location work whether you have 20,000 extras or three, your point is moot.

 

Leafs? Leaves? Doesn't matter, they are losers who have not won the cup in 450 years.

 

R,

 

My point wasn't about the rain it was about the fact that you had all of these unbelievable fortunes come into play in order to shoot your scene and you had to do it all over again because of matters out of your (although it seems limitless from what you have written) control. Your method of "friends" filmaking in this particular instance are neither repeatable or controllable (two things I believe are important in filmaking) and would make me very wary to be an investor in your project when I was told about your method of aquiring this money shot in the pitch phase. I would give you the same amount of money you pay your extras.

 

As for Leafs or Leaves, if it didn't matter enough to mention the spelling in the first place then why mention it at all. Unless it was supposed to be directed as a backhanded insult?

[David Mullen ASC]

Most feature films with big crowd scenes hire production managers, AD's, etc. who have dealt with them before on many other features and generally they try and get as many as they can afford -- they don't just say "oh, we'll just use CGI extras." They know what the production can handle in terms of transportation, costuming, traffic, security, water, food, toliets, whatever. They know about how many to expect when doing scenes like a basball game where you just ask people to show up for free and offer a raffle or door prize, etc. They've done it before - that's why you hire them.

 

I'm sure even David Lean on "Lawrence of Arabia" got a budget breakdown from his line producer and department heads on how many extras with how many costumes and horses, etc. would cost at different levels and had to make a decision on how much he could afford and what it would do to his overall budget.

 

And it will be the same thing when Richard finally makes a movie with a big crowd scene. He will be told by the people he hires what the logistics are, how much it will cost, etc. He will have to decide whether he really needs 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, whatever, or how many people he can expect to show up for free, and he will plan accordingly. But if his script calls for the recreation of a World Series Baseball Game and he can only fill-up one-quarter of a stadium with free extras on the day when he is shooting his widest establishing shots, he will have to make the decision every filmmaker has to make as to how to fake the rest of it -- by limiting his shots, by using cardboard cutouts, inflatable dummies, stock footage of a real game, CGI, whatever. Probably a combination of tricks.

 

But other than a few people like George Lucas, most studio directors making "big" movies basically get as many extras as they can afford because they would rather shoot the real thing in 99% of the shots and only have to fake the widest stuff.

 

At some point, you just have to deal with the budget, and if you need 50,000 extras to create the shot you want, and you basically are told that 50,000 extras in period costumes and armor on horseback for your medieval epic will cost you $100,000, you might be tempted to spend $50,000 on 25,000 extras in costume, another $10,000 on a visual effect to double the crowd, and apply the $40,000 in savings on some other epic scene you need money for locations, crowds, stunts, etc. Or you can be pendantic about it and blow all $100,000 on that one scene and lose some other important scene or end up shooting that other scene more cheaply than perhaps you should.

 

It's all a matter of priorities -- is your main priority spending money efficiently to get maximum production value for your budget and telling your story... or is your priority spending as much money as you can on one crowd scene and screwing over the rest of your movie because you're trying to prove something about how you don't need visual effects.

 

It's all well and good to take one of the most expensive films made in that year -- "Lawrence of Arabia" -- as a role model for shooting crowd scenes (it's a great film) but only if you're working with a similar budget. Even Lean had to compromise on his films; he got booted out of Jordan by the producer and was moved to Spain when he ran over budget on "Lawrence", he wasn't allowed to shoot 65mm for "Doctor Zhivago" like he wanted to, he had to shoot "Passage to India" in 35mm 1.85 because HBO was financing the movie, etc.

 

This has nothing to do with being a naysayer, just an explanation as to how movies normally get made and why.

 

Some types of crowd scenes are easier than others. You do a biopic of some well-loved sports figure and I'm sure a lot of fans will show up gratis at a stadium at least once for the big scene, but if you need 5,000' zombies to walk the streets of Toronto in uncomfortable make-up on a day with bad weather, you may not be as lucky in finding free labor...

 

As for professional union extras, you should at least have the courtesy to talk to some about what they do for a living and how they support themselves before you condemn them. There are films made where you need the same extras to show up everyday for a number of months of filming (for example, the crew in a submarine movie, most of whom don't have speaking parts but may be seen many times throughout the course of a movie.) In the TV series I am shooting, we have office scenes, a boardroom, and other repeated locations where we generally see the same faces everytime we cut to those locations. This way everytime you go to the "big board of directors" for example, you at least see some of the same people everytime. But since they don't ever speak or act in a dramatic moment, the production doesn't have to pay the same rates as they would a SAG actor, so they can use Screen Extras Guild people (at least as far as I understand the situation.)

[James Steven Beverly]

This whole argument reminds me of the scene in Back to the Future II when the Marty sees the giant holographic shark from a future Jaws movie coming at him and screams, covering his head with his arms as it chomps down then disappears. He then straightens up as says" The Shark still looks fake." By their very nature, movies are fake. Poeple arn't really married in them, No one ACTUALLY gets shot to death (well with exception of Brandon Lee), There is no such thing as a Klingon, no one rolls a car 14 times then jumps out with guns blazing and if someone is really shooting at you with a machine gun, they're not going to miss because you duck, they're gonna cut you in half with it which will in all likelihood KILL you! So the augument of something being "fake" in a mivie is kinda aberd. If the effect works and doesn't jar the audience out of it's suspention of belief, it's valid.

 

CGI allows anything a filmmaker can imagine to be put on the screen. Like it or not before the advent of CGI this simply was not the case. Take a look at the original King Kong. The stop motion was inpressive but do you think for one moment anyone even at the time thought it was real? There are however things I have seen done in cgi that I litterally would not have known where computer genterated unless someone had told me they were. You want to get 20K extras and put 'em in your movie in order to get more realism, more power to ya. After seeing Kingdom of Heaven, I really can't see the point except for giving the poeple who do background a little more work. If you can GET 20k people to work for free, Great! If not , you better think about having a digital based back-up plan because if you put the word out and nobody shows your kinda screwed. B)

[David Mullen ASC]

Was Clint Eastwood being lazy because he didn't manage to drag 800 period warships and 70,000 extras to his Iceland location to accurately recreate the Battle of Iwo Jima, let alone just convert the modern island of Iwo Jima back to its blasted, defoliated WW2 look? I mean, if he just tried a little harder, I'm sure he could have done it. Lazy bastard, using visual effects to help him recreate one of the largest battles of WW2...

[Mark Allen]

...

ProTools was a combination of Digidesign's own Sound Tools plus third party developers' sw called DECK.

...

ProTools was an existing product when Avid bought Digidesign.

...

It's possible the guys who wrote DECK were involved with SoundDroid I don't know --- a lot of stuff came out of that Stanford University / Palo Alto neighborhood.

 

There was actually the cyberframe (i THINK that's the name) which ran on a room full of laser disks which was a contemporary of the editdroid. It was not a matter of cheaper editing at the point, it was having the luxury of non-linear. I think people who have never edited linear will never truly appreciate the glory of non-linear until they have. (And if you've never edited celludloid, you may never appreciate the glory of not cutting your fingers to shreds.)

 

There was even ANOTHER edit machine which Coppola had a great interest in which was being invented by Larry Seahorn (I think that is his name). My brother was one of the programmers on it (before he went to work on Quicktime at Apple. It just never got the publicity that edit-droid had. (Remember what Ted Turner says... if you want to make money at something, be the second.... (or in this case, the fifth or so).

 

Digidesign made protools by internally developing "Edit" and the contractng out "Mix" - in protools version 1, you would switch between these two applications.... yeah, really... it was fun... especially when it crashed which it did a lot before version 2.0. When they combined the two, the folks who wrote the "mix" portion went on to create "Deck" as their own application.

 

AVID used digidesign's audio interfaces for their own audio application which was really super great for ADR and perhaps foley and really sucky for just about everything else. They realized this and that digidesign was going to rule the world of audio and bought them.

 

And when i tried to do a search to find the spelling of Larry's name... I came upon a site that I think a lot of people in this discussion will think is "neat."

 

http://www.sssm.com/editing/museum/index.html

 

 

Me: Born and raised in "Palo Alto" pre-tech boom when it was just a bunch of really interesting people doing really interesting things and I thought it was odd that our family friend was a programmer who would spend all day at the "PARC."

[Guest]

Well you guys can do it your way, I'll do it my way.

 

The big movies from the 70s will always be 1000 times more inspiring to me than the CG world of 2006.

 

The most depressing thing about this thread was learning that there is no such thing as a Klingon.

 

R,

[David Mullen ASC]

The big movies from the 70s will always be 1000 times more inspiring to me than the CG world of 2006.

 

I don't necessarily disagree with you... but I don't see the need to beat-up on modern tools just because some filmmakers use them indiscriminately.

 

It's not a virtue in itself when an old movie has thousands of extras in a shot -- there are some pretty awful epics of the 1950's that do that. What makes "Lawrence of Arabia" a great piece of directing goes way beyond putting a lot of people in costume in front of the camera; it's the attention to detail that invades every aspect of production, from photography to editing, all in the service of a great script and a cast of great actors.

 

There have been plenty of real crowd scenes in modern movies, but that isn't enough to make them into masterpieces.

 

I think you're taking the wrong lesson from David Lean's example if you think the avoidence of visual effects is what made him a great director. Look at Kubrick's "2001", another epic made with great attention to deal that couldn't exist without visual effects. If David Lean were alive, healthy, and still making movies today, I'm sure he would seriously consider all modern tools of production, and if he decided he needed some CGI effects, he would have fought to make sure that they were the best possible and used most effectively, not as a crutch but as an enhancement.