The Great CGI Debate

[Cpt Kirks 2pay]

For your information, it's not he CGI tat I'm interested in regarding Avatar, it's the story, and character,s the theme and the dilemna, about being alone, not belonging, about not having a place in God's universe.

Now....

The fact that you talk about Avatar flamingly and you haven't even seen it makes you null and void.

You don't even watch Bergman or Woody Allen or any decent European movies hardly. All you watch are stupid Martial arts or Asian crap. Don't talk to me like you're an authority not just on movies, FX crappy ones (Benjamin Button - DESTROYED ME FOR 3 HOURS!!!!!) especially, but then talk like you're an authority on MY OWN FARKING OPINIONS!!!!!!!

Everyone listen!!! - You're reading Papa's opinions. You're reading the rants of someone who said in person regarding the Greedo Shoots First awful CGI moment - that Spielberg was behind the SW Special Editions and that exact scene!!! You're a total douche sometimes, how can anyone take your authority on another's opinion seriously when you clearly don't have the facts to back your own up?

[papalazeru]

For your information, it's not he CGI tat I'm interested in regarding Avatar, it's the story, and character,s the theme and the dilemna, about being alone, not belonging, about not having a place in God's universe.

Now....

The fact that you talk about Avatar flamingly and you haven't even seen it makes you null and void.

You don't even watch Bergman or Woody Allen or any decent European movies hardly. All you watch are stupid Martial arts or Asian crap. Don't talk to me like you're an authority not just on movies, FX crappy ones (Benjamin Button - DESTROYED ME FOR 3 HOURS!!!!!) especially, but then talk like you're an authority on MY OWN FARKING OPINIONS!!!!!!!

Everyone listen!!! - You're reading Papa's opinions. You're reading the rants of someone who said in person regarding the Greedo Shoots First awful CGI moment - that Spielberg was behind the SW Special Editions and that exact scene!!! You're a total douche sometimes, how can anyone take your authority on another's opinion seriously when you clearly don't have the facts to back your own up?

I can admit I'm not infallible. I'm happy to, whereas all you seem to do is be able to regurgitate some vomit that you found on Chud, then puke it over here like you're the master of all you sruvey.

Well, from where you're sitting on your sick throne, the isn't much taller and it stinks to high heaven. Why don't you try watching some Asian or Martial Arts films, or are you such a Struggling Background Artist that you can't fathom that some of them have real depth and art.

[Cpt Kirks 2pay]

For your information, it's not he CGI tat I'm interested in regarding Avatar, it's the story, and character,s the theme and the dilemna, about being alone, not belonging, about not having a place in God's universe.

Now....

The fact that you talk about Avatar flamingly and you haven't even seen it makes you null and void.

You don't even watch Bergman or Woody Allen or any decent European movies hardly. All you watch are stupid Martial arts or Asian crap. Don't talk to me like you're an authority not just on movies, FX crappy ones (Benjamin Button - DESTROYED ME FOR 3 HOURS!!!!!) especially, but then talk like you're an authority on MY OWN FARKING OPINIONS!!!!!!!

Everyone listen!!! - You're reading Papa's opinions. You're reading the rants of someone who said in person regarding the Greedo Shoots First awful CGI moment - that Spielberg was behind the SW Special Editions and that exact scene!!! You're a total douche sometimes, how can anyone take your authority on another's opinion seriously when you clearly don't have the facts to back your own up?

I can admit I'm not infallible. I'm happy to, whereas all you seem to do is be able to regurgitate some vomit that you found on Chud, then puke it over here like you're the master of all you sruvey.

Well, from where you're sitting on your sick throne, the isn't much taller and it stinks to high heaven. Why don't you try watching some Asian or Martial Arts films, or are you such a Struggling Background Artist that you can't fathom that some of them have real depth and art.

Don't act like you're a critic connesiur of Asian film and you're an expert, that's bullshit. We all know that the only reason you watch amrtial art films is 'cos you study it and the rest of the Asian movies, that you fancy young Japanese girls. Take them out of the equation, your interest in them goes down by like 70%.

FilmFour is doing Asian cinema this week. From what I see they all look dull boring films. I'm not gonna wank off over Oldboy and all those poxy Vengeance moves just like you all did just 'cos some over analytical movie critic did just 'cos the movies ticked the right boxes regarding the craft. At the end of the day, these movies I have seen have been BORING. No, I was not scared by The Grudge, Oldboy whatever, despised Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Meaning to the films? Who cares? They're boring. And at the end f the day, that's all that matters.

House of the Flying Daggers I dig though. One good exceptional example of CGI technology being woven into films to create a poetic effect that not only can excuse the violence (one thing I hate in films) but makes for one of the mos beautiful looking movies I've seen in recent years.

Again that's the exception. As to the argument as to whether CGI is good or bad for movies, I give you one answer....


Lee Tamahori.

[TheButcher]

Oscar winner & Kenosha native Jim Rygiel gets UWM award

Jim Rygiel’s road to winning three Oscars started at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which the Kenosha native attended between 1973 and 1977.

Rygiel said he intended to be an architecture major while at UWM, but was interested in “a more intimate style of architecture” than the urban planning the school was known for.

So he switched to fine arts, where one of his professors - sculptor Adolph Rosenblatt, now professor emeritus - taught him how to “think alternatively. One of the exercises we did were one second sketches, in which you literally drew a human figure in one second."

"And it was interesting to see how you honed" that skill.

At the same time, Rygiel had "an early interest in technology" and took a few computer courses "when they still used punch cards. I would literally walk around with thousands of punch cards and bring them to the data center."

Four short years after graduating from UWM, "I was doing my first computer animation."

While getting his master's degree at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, he saw an ad on the job board that said, "If you like computers and art, come see us." He did, and ended up working at Pacific Electric Pictures one of the first computer animation companies.

The text-based computers then had no graphic monitor and "you couldn’t see what you were doing. You typed code" into "a black box and you didn’t see what you got until two days later, and then it would be wrong."

While there, he worked on the first computer-generated commercial for Pentel pens and Ray Bradbury spoke at its premiere. Later, he worked with "Star Wars" special-effects Oscar winner Richard Edlund, on the 1984 film "The Last Starfighter."

"We were all shocked at how you could make something so real out of a computer," said Rygiel. Looking back on it now, he said, "it looks worse than PlayStation."

In 1989, he founded the computer animation department at Boss Film Studios and supervisied effects on countless films including "Starship Troopers," "Air Force One," "Batman Returns," "The Parent Trap" and "Star Trek: Insurrection."

Interview: Jim Rygiel (Three times Academy Award winner for LOTR)
The Lord of Visual Effects on VFX!

3-time Oscar winner Jim Rygiel comes home for high school reunion

Rygiel’s latest project: ‘Godzilla’!

Kenosha native Jim Rygiel is working on the special effects for the film “Godzilla,” the latest reboot of this storied sci-fi monster movie film franchise.The film — a co-production of Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures — retells the origin of Godzilla in contemporary times. The film is directed by Gareth Edwards and stars Bryan Cranston, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen,Juliette Binoche, David Strathairn, Sally Hawkins and Ken Watanabe.Legendary Pictures describes the film as: “An epic rebirth to Toho’s iconic Godzilla, this spectacular adventure pits the world’s most famous monster against malevolent creatures who, bolstered by humanity’s scientific arrogance, threaten our very existence.”The film is scheduled to be released on May 16, 2014.

[TheButcher]

Watch a Bizarre Version of Jurassic Park Without the CGI

[TheButcher]

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ And A Thought on The Hyper-Grotesque

With the entire Internet already yakking about the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trailer, it hardly seemed necessary to bring it up here. But for the sake of posterity, here is the trailer for the Jonathan Liebesman-directed film, which will open on August 8th:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trailer

Unlike many online commenters, I wasn’t bothered by the visual appearance of the Turtles, nor did it even merit an eyebrow-raise because they look and feel similar to most every other creature that has appeared in films and videogames over the past decade. I haven’t found any good term to describe this new aesthetic, but I personally refer to it as the hyper-grotesque:

Filmmakers and game producers are still learning to harness the vast (and ever-increasing) possibilities of digital technology, and in many cases, their creative instincts are overwhelmed by the abundance of choice. Whether it’s CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Peanuts, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, or even an original idea, these projects are guaranteed to be slathered in an unwieldy amount of rendered detail.

It’s hard to view the hyper-grotesque as anything more than a novelty act with each producer attempting to outdo the other by adding as much detail as allowed by their budget and the current state of technology. At some point, audiences may tire of the illusion, though the consistent decades-long financial success of this entertainment style suggests that hyper-grotesque digital art is unlikely to peak anytime soon.

[TheButcher]

io9:
Everything You Never Knew About The Making Of Last Starfighter

For a whole generation of video-game-playing kids, The Last Starfighter represents a special kind of wish-fulfillment: a down-on-his-luck kid becomes a video-game champ, only to find himself recruited to fight in an interplanetary war. How did something so perfect get made? Here's the whole, fascinating story.

In The Last Starfighter, Alex is stuck in his trailer park, and his only escape is mastering an arcade game called Starfighter. In fact, the inhabitants of the Starlite Starbrite park all gather around as he decimates the enemy. But, this is no ordinary arcade game: after Alex hits the high score, a signal gets sent out, and an alien named Centauri finds Alex and whisks him off to fight real space battles, in an attempt the stave off the invasion of the galaxy.

So how did this movie come to be? Here's the complete rundown...

[TheButcher]

Numbing the imagination
CGI has become wearingly dull and cliched. Can its deep weirdness be recovered and filmgoers’ minds stretched again?

With digital spectacle now so prevalent, it is less likely to impress. Each year, the studios visibly strain to ignite ever more dazzling CGI firecrackers to attract young target audiences. The commercial imperative is to make it better, more novel, more thrilling – or, failing that, just bigger. Viewers might justifiably feel jaded when exposed to the same sights over and again, with ever more coercive intensity. Writing on the website RogerEbert.com in May, the US critic Matt Zoller Seitz lamented ‘the enervating sight of huge things crashing into other huge things’. Blockbusters, such as Man of Steel (2013) and Pacific Rim (2013), operate to a formula of permanent apocalypse, routinely, repetitively, staging the massive total destruction of cities and spaceships.

[TheButcher]

Video breaks down why special effects in movies peaked in the 90's

Here’s an interesting video explainer that details why special effects and fancy CGI has ruined movies (or at least, made them less enjoyable). It all feels too fake! Story Brain breaks down how as technology for CGI improved and allowed movie makers to do more with visual effects, our brains interpret it negatively.

[TheButcher]

Jurassic World's CGI PROBLEMS Revealed! Why 1993 Jurassic Park Old Effects are MORE REALISTIC

[TheButcher]

Wired: The Untold Story of ILM
In the early 1980s, a teenager named Michael Bay had a summer job at Lucasfilm, filing artwork. Two decades later he would become ILM’s most … hands-on collaborator.

[TheButcher]

BMD:
Real Live Orcs: The Performance Capture Of WARCRAFT
How ILM is changing the performance capture landscape.

THR:
How 'Warcraft's' Visual Effects Wizards Brought Thousands of Orcs To Life
VFX supervisor Bill Westenhofer talks about the movie's advances in motion capture — and why he insisted on including Murloc.

[TheButcher]

New ‘Rogue One’ Video Spotlights Lush, Real-Life Locations as Box Office Surpasses $200 Million
Let’s talk about those gorgeous filming locations, and those domestic and worldwide box office totals to date.

[so sorry]

New ‘Rogue One’ Video Spotlights Lush, Real-Life Locations as Box Office Surpasses $200 Million
Let’s talk about those gorgeous filming locations, and those domestic and worldwide box office totals to date.

Wow, some real gems in that mashup...

[Fried Gold]

As has been pointed out in the past with that video:

- some of that footage is taken from trailers, not footage that actually appeared in the final movie.
- not all of the clips even feature CG visual effects, some of it should be pointing out the awkward elderly years of optical/photochemical effects.

[Cpt Kirks 2pay]

You know I'm so fucking sick of people excusing bad fx in trailer by saying "Duh it's only the trailer, it probably won't be finished until in the film".

Bollox! I've seen so much shit fx in trailers that are EXACTLY the same as in the film. The Phantom Menace, Indy 4 to name just 2.

You gotta be a bit thick to think that film studios will put unfinished fx into a trailer knowing how detrimental this will be to the film by making it look bad.

People STOP saying this crap.