The Wolf of Green Screen
January 20, 2014 5:45 PM Subscribe
The Wolf of Wallstreet isn't a movie one would necessarily expect to be filled with computer generated imagery, but this video shows some amazing VFX work used in the movie.
A VFX artist from the comments chimes in on why one might want to use these techniques instead of shooting on location:
A VFX artist from the comments chimes in on why one might want to use these techniques instead of shooting on location:
Hi Jason Im a VFX artist and yes it is cheaper.
to move actors, and a entire team to another country just because one location that will be used for a week or two is way too expensive, besides it also depend on the time of the year you film sometimes you move to the place, and rain for a week can you image how much money would that cost and also would delay the production.
also many places don't give you good deals or don't allow you to film(because you gotta close the place for a week or more), so unfortunately we many times have to rely on cheating hehe but sure directors would love to go there and film (if the budget allow ) :)
edit* ow one more thing many times actors are working in multiple projects so they can't move around that easy, so yea there are too many things to consider.
All your favorite tv shows are filmed just like this.
And have been for a while now.
posted by tzikeh at 6:10 PM on January 20, 2014 [7 favorites]
And have been for a while now.
posted by tzikeh at 6:10 PM on January 20, 2014 [7 favorites]
This is just another vfx reel, no more special than any I've seen in the past two years.
posted by Catblack at 6:15 PM on January 20, 2014
posted by Catblack at 6:15 PM on January 20, 2014
I expect soon you'll be hearing actors say they look forward to someday meeting some actor that they've actually been in several films with -- except they were shot separately in blank green rooms in different countries at different times to accommodate everyone's schedules, and then composited together in all their scenes.
About a week after that they won't even need actors anymore: they'll just pay DiCaprioCorp to use his ageless, approved, computer generated model likeness, in every movie forever.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:18 PM on January 20, 2014 [9 favorites]
About a week after that they won't even need actors anymore: they'll just pay DiCaprioCorp to use his ageless, approved, computer generated model likeness, in every movie forever.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:18 PM on January 20, 2014 [9 favorites]
Pretty cool. I remember thinking during a couple of the giant crowded office scenes that they had to have been digitally extended. That many people would have so hard to manage.
posted by brundlefly at 6:20 PM on January 20, 2014
posted by brundlefly at 6:20 PM on January 20, 2014
About a week after that they won't even need actors anymore: they'll just pay DiCaprioCorp to use his ageless, approved, computer generated model likeness, in every movie forever.
This idea is sort of what I thought Holy Motors was all about.
posted by codacorolla at 6:25 PM on January 20, 2014 [6 favorites]
This idea is sort of what I thought Holy Motors was all about.
posted by codacorolla at 6:25 PM on January 20, 2014 [6 favorites]
I had no idea. Thanks for posting.
posted by etaoin at 6:25 PM on January 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by etaoin at 6:25 PM on January 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
1980s: Assemble a huge production team in Malta with mountains of coke to bring life to a children's cartoon character.
2010s: Assemble a huge production team in Maya with mountains of Adderall to bring life to a children's cartoon character.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:33 PM on January 20, 2014 [12 favorites]
2010s: Assemble a huge production team in Maya with mountains of Adderall to bring life to a children's cartoon character.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:33 PM on January 20, 2014 [12 favorites]
Seems like a bit of a bummer for actors and crew. Twenty years ago they've have gotten to spend a few months in some foreign locale shooting on location and now they just spend their whole time in LA shooting against blank green walls.
posted by octothorpe at 6:34 PM on January 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 6:34 PM on January 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
I don't think this is standing in for locations so much as standing in for what used to be studio backlots. Why build anything when you can just greenscreen it? And it frees up writers to use locations that would otherwise be tough to do. But this kind of thing is as old as the movies. It's always been about using the cheapest plausible fake.
posted by rikschell at 6:38 PM on January 20, 2014 [8 favorites]
posted by rikschell at 6:38 PM on January 20, 2014 [8 favorites]
On the other hand, they didn't do too badly 50 years ago when all the computing power in the world probably added up to what your refrigerator has now, in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World:
Fire escape scene (Good part starts around 1:12)
Ladder rescue scene (Pretty much all of it.)
They've just taken the fun out of it now.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:39 PM on January 20, 2014
Fire escape scene (Good part starts around 1:12)
Ladder rescue scene (Pretty much all of it.)
They've just taken the fun out of it now.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:39 PM on January 20, 2014
This is essentially just a slight update on an effect from the pre-digital world: matte painting
posted by Sys Rq at 6:42 PM on January 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by Sys Rq at 6:42 PM on January 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
Also
“The Wolf of Wall Street would seem an unlikely choice for the industry's first all-digital wide release," the Times wrote. "The movie was partially shot on film, and its director, Martin Scorsese, is a passionate advocate for film preservation.”posted by unliteral at 6:46 PM on January 20, 2014
In case it's not clear why I linked those "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" scenes, it's because the film used pre-digital compositing effects, with some scenes requiring as many as 21 exposures.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:53 PM on January 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:53 PM on January 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
And people don't even notice these "impossible" shots at all, and this is going on almost all the time in modern film, especially action movies.
which is the point, I guess. If folks are noticing the sleight of hand, then it's not successful magic. Except, of course, I find if something is too impossible, it distracts me. I'm suddenly more concerned with how they did that amazing thing than the drama it's theoretically supporting.
posted by philip-random at 6:56 PM on January 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
Similar reel for The Great Gatsby.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:01 PM on January 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:01 PM on January 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
and speaking of the old days, I love the first two-thirds of this sequence from Brazil. Two (maybe three) long tracking shots and then a simple cut/on/action which, in its way, is every bit as seamless as the preceding ... because it works dramatically. It senses where the audience is already going and thus is barely noticed.
Which speaks to my concern of what so often gets lost in big deal modern cgi moviemaking. It's not that they aren't pulling off insanely cool stuff (they are), but a certain amount of baby is going out with the bathwater. And that's always a tragic thing.
posted by philip-random at 7:05 PM on January 20, 2014 [6 favorites]
Which speaks to my concern of what so often gets lost in big deal modern cgi moviemaking. It's not that they aren't pulling off insanely cool stuff (they are), but a certain amount of baby is going out with the bathwater. And that's always a tragic thing.
posted by philip-random at 7:05 PM on January 20, 2014 [6 favorites]
I was on set when they were filming some of the battle scenes from 300, huge green screen room with a contoured floor. The actors weren't even carrying weapons, they might have had sticks in their hands, but no spears or swords. As you watch the filming, there is absolutely no way to imagine that there will be any sense of reality in the final product, but, there it is in the end, everything is added in post production.
Sound is the same way. I was in the theater as they were editing sound for that scene where all the arrows come at the Spartans ("we'll fight in the shade!"), of course every single arrow hitting the ground or a shield was given it's own sound... show the scene, add a sound, back it up, listen, change the sound to another arrow hit sound, back it up, listen, change it again.. It took a couple of days to sound edit those few minutes. The editing theater was fantastic... a full size theater with a row of about 20 computer stations across the room right in the middle...each one controlling some small aspect of what's happening on the screen.
Post production is a substantially larger portion of each film then it ever has been in the past...and I suspect, as the lines between real and CGI overlap, it will only become a larger aspect of every movie.
posted by HuronBob at 7:22 PM on January 20, 2014 [8 favorites]
Sound is the same way. I was in the theater as they were editing sound for that scene where all the arrows come at the Spartans ("we'll fight in the shade!"), of course every single arrow hitting the ground or a shield was given it's own sound... show the scene, add a sound, back it up, listen, change the sound to another arrow hit sound, back it up, listen, change it again.. It took a couple of days to sound edit those few minutes. The editing theater was fantastic... a full size theater with a row of about 20 computer stations across the room right in the middle...each one controlling some small aspect of what's happening on the screen.
Post production is a substantially larger portion of each film then it ever has been in the past...and I suspect, as the lines between real and CGI overlap, it will only become a larger aspect of every movie.
posted by HuronBob at 7:22 PM on January 20, 2014 [8 favorites]
And people don't even notice these "impossible" shots at all, and this is going on almost all the time in modern film, especially action movies.
I notice them but just figure that it's done with computers and then don't think about it again. On the other hand, I just watched Raging Bull this weekend and it's got this one and a half minute steady-cam shot that somehow turns into a crane shot at the end without any visible cuts and I can't stop thinking about it.
posted by octothorpe at 7:25 PM on January 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
I notice them but just figure that it's done with computers and then don't think about it again. On the other hand, I just watched Raging Bull this weekend and it's got this one and a half minute steady-cam shot that somehow turns into a crane shot at the end without any visible cuts and I can't stop thinking about it.
posted by octothorpe at 7:25 PM on January 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
It's not that they aren't pulling off insanely cool stuff (they are), but a certain amount of baby is going out with the bathwater. And that's always a tragic thing.
Clearly you've never been to Aleina.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:28 PM on January 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
Clearly you've never been to Aleina.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:28 PM on January 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
How far away from not needing human actors at all are we? When that happens, whatever will the newspapers write about?
posted by dg at 7:55 PM on January 20, 2014
posted by dg at 7:55 PM on January 20, 2014
This kind of tech is really the only hope for us fans of the Patrick O'Brian books who want to see more of them on screen. Yes, Master and Commander was a great movie, but it was expensive and insufficiently lucrative to merit a theatrical sequel. But this kind of digital-effects wizardry makes an extended cable (Netflix?) series more feasible.
Not that there wasn't plenty of CGI in M&C: FSOTW.
posted by stargell at 8:17 PM on January 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
Not that there wasn't plenty of CGI in M&C: FSOTW.
posted by stargell at 8:17 PM on January 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
How far away from not needing human actors at all are we?
Arguably they need human actors now more than ever. Much of the reason CG is so convincing nowadays is due to performance/motion capture, which mostly mitigates the uncanny-valley effect you used to get with hand-animated CG humans. Heck, they even use performance capture in video games.
posted by neckro23 at 8:22 PM on January 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
Arguably they need human actors now more than ever. Much of the reason CG is so convincing nowadays is due to performance/motion capture, which mostly mitigates the uncanny-valley effect you used to get with hand-animated CG humans. Heck, they even use performance capture in video games.
posted by neckro23 at 8:22 PM on January 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
What grabs me is that at the same time that this sort of quiet digital trickery was born and grew, the last twenty-odd years have also seen this burst of really pretty EXTREME! stunts where they just went ahead and really did the thing.
T2? When there's a shot of a helicopter flying under a freeway overpass? They did that by writing a helo pilot a big check to fly his ship under an overpass.
Or Apollo 13's fuck it, we'll just shoot in microgravity when we have to.
Or Ronin, where Frankenheimer decided that the best way to get shots of his actors driving through Paris at 100 mph was to put them in a half-a-car, strap it to a fuck-you big Merc, and drive through Paris at 100 mph.
Or whichever Batman movie it was where they flipped a semi... by flipping a semi.
I dunno. I'm kinda hopeful that where we're going is an era where getting the vision right is the thing, and that the tools to do it are getting cheaper and cheaper and the skills to do it more widely available. Kinda like how it seems that you've been seeing good cinematography in cheaper and cheaper movies the past couple decades.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:32 PM on January 20, 2014 [6 favorites]
T2? When there's a shot of a helicopter flying under a freeway overpass? They did that by writing a helo pilot a big check to fly his ship under an overpass.
Or Apollo 13's fuck it, we'll just shoot in microgravity when we have to.
Or Ronin, where Frankenheimer decided that the best way to get shots of his actors driving through Paris at 100 mph was to put them in a half-a-car, strap it to a fuck-you big Merc, and drive through Paris at 100 mph.
Or whichever Batman movie it was where they flipped a semi... by flipping a semi.
I dunno. I'm kinda hopeful that where we're going is an era where getting the vision right is the thing, and that the tools to do it are getting cheaper and cheaper and the skills to do it more widely available. Kinda like how it seems that you've been seeing good cinematography in cheaper and cheaper movies the past couple decades.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:32 PM on January 20, 2014 [6 favorites]
On the other hand, I just watched Raging Bull this weekend and it's got this one and a half minute steady-cam shot that somehow turns into a crane shot at the end without any visible cuts and I can't stop thinking about it.
I think what happened is that at about 1:15 the steadicam operator is backing up onto a crane platform (or manlift or something) that had been hidden in the crowd, which leads to him swaying a little bit, and then he's lifted up.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:36 PM on January 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
I think what happened is that at about 1:15 the steadicam operator is backing up onto a crane platform (or manlift or something) that had been hidden in the crowd, which leads to him swaying a little bit, and then he's lifted up.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:36 PM on January 20, 2014 [4 favorites]
I do think there tends to be a sort of exaggerated foreground/background effect with this kind of thing. With a green screen it's much easier to paint out a relatively simple foreground and add a flat-ish background like a landscape. But I think this does tend to restrict the composition choices.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:05 PM on January 20, 2014
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:05 PM on January 20, 2014
My biggest concern about the prevalence of CGI is the sameness it creates in far too many movies. I'm not talking about action extravaganzas (which is a whole different type of sameness), but about a much more basic loss of interest in what's on the screen.
When filmmakers digitally composite even the most basic shots, the elements that are incorporated tend to feel like they're all coming from a pool of stock photography; everything's too composed. It feels ever-so-subtly like watching a catalog come to life. I have no experience with that sort of work at all, but my intuition is that there are a combination of factors at work.
1. There are so many elements to be created that a lot of things get reused or at least repeatedly mined as the base for new elements.
2. There's only so much time and money for hand-work, so a lot of texture and noise is added to background elements automatically. In isolation, that's fine, but when you keep seeing the results of the same computer algorithms in every film, it starts to register.
3. No one wants to make anything intentionally ugly or boring, so every element ends up being idealized even when it's unimportant. (Few movies seem to have anyone walking or driving down a basic, plain street or alley anymore, for example.)
I may be way off the mark, but that's what current movie-making feels like to me.
posted by Ickster at 9:12 PM on January 20, 2014 [8 favorites]
When filmmakers digitally composite even the most basic shots, the elements that are incorporated tend to feel like they're all coming from a pool of stock photography; everything's too composed. It feels ever-so-subtly like watching a catalog come to life. I have no experience with that sort of work at all, but my intuition is that there are a combination of factors at work.
1. There are so many elements to be created that a lot of things get reused or at least repeatedly mined as the base for new elements.
2. There's only so much time and money for hand-work, so a lot of texture and noise is added to background elements automatically. In isolation, that's fine, but when you keep seeing the results of the same computer algorithms in every film, it starts to register.
3. No one wants to make anything intentionally ugly or boring, so every element ends up being idealized even when it's unimportant. (Few movies seem to have anyone walking or driving down a basic, plain street or alley anymore, for example.)
I may be way off the mark, but that's what current movie-making feels like to me.
posted by Ickster at 9:12 PM on January 20, 2014 [8 favorites]
There are so many elements to be created that a lot of things get reused or at least repeatedly mined as the base for new elements.
I immediately thought of this.
posted by stargell at 9:21 PM on January 20, 2014
I immediately thought of this.
posted by stargell at 9:21 PM on January 20, 2014
All the compositing in the world and still they can barely touch the hem of Touch Of Evil's astonishing single shot opening.
posted by sonascope at 9:34 PM on January 20, 2014 [9 favorites]
posted by sonascope at 9:34 PM on January 20, 2014 [9 favorites]
I watch Star Wars recently and the fact that those were really models being manipulated and filmed and not CGI made a shitload of difference. The difference between that kind of filmmaking and CGI is that CGI is unlimited which makes it boring. Real life has limits. Every movie made these days has unlimited ability to be a perfect vision. When you give a filmmaker that kind of ability - real creativity - the kind of creativity forced on a filmmaker due to limited time and limited budgets goes right out the window.
posted by any major dude at 9:48 PM on January 20, 2014
posted by any major dude at 9:48 PM on January 20, 2014
All the compositing in the world and still they can barely touch the hem of Touch Of Evil's astonishing single shot opening.
Holy crap. That's an insanely long tracking shot. There has to be not only a dolly but a crane with a gimbal mount all being navigated through choreographed street traffic and what the fuck...!?
That said, I would love to see Hitchcock or Kubrick or other masters able to use modern tools. Hitchcock probably would have actually loved green screen and motion capture, given his known propensity for basically loathing having to work with actors and fallible hu-mon meatbots and such.
posted by loquacious at 10:01 PM on January 20, 2014
Holy crap. That's an insanely long tracking shot. There has to be not only a dolly but a crane with a gimbal mount all being navigated through choreographed street traffic and what the fuck...!?
That said, I would love to see Hitchcock or Kubrick or other masters able to use modern tools. Hitchcock probably would have actually loved green screen and motion capture, given his known propensity for basically loathing having to work with actors and fallible hu-mon meatbots and such.
posted by loquacious at 10:01 PM on January 20, 2014
This is essentially just a slight update on an effect from the pre-digital world: matte painting
Or, what young Ghidorah had wanted to do when he was young, until one day, I realized I couldn't paint nearly well enough. Then, I set my sites on getting a job and making models and animatronics for ILM, and you can probably see where this is going.
Especially with the prequels vs. the good Star Wars movies, the actual weight, dinginess, and inertia of the models and puppets stands out to me, vs. the weightless, floaty, overly lit newness of the prequels. It's always bothered me that they got so much right in Jurrasic Park, but so much CG since then has been sub-standard compared to a film made in the early 90s.
posted by Ghidorah at 10:35 PM on January 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
Or, what young Ghidorah had wanted to do when he was young, until one day, I realized I couldn't paint nearly well enough. Then, I set my sites on getting a job and making models and animatronics for ILM, and you can probably see where this is going.
Especially with the prequels vs. the good Star Wars movies, the actual weight, dinginess, and inertia of the models and puppets stands out to me, vs. the weightless, floaty, overly lit newness of the prequels. It's always bothered me that they got so much right in Jurrasic Park, but so much CG since then has been sub-standard compared to a film made in the early 90s.
posted by Ghidorah at 10:35 PM on January 20, 2014 [2 favorites]
I watch Star Wars recently and the fact that those were really models being manipulated and filmed and not CGI made a shitload of difference.
I know what you're getting at, but I think it's kind of cool that a lot of the giant budget action extravaganzas these days still use miniatures. The pod race arena from Phantom Menace was a miniature, the stands populated by q-tips. The Lord of the Rings films had plenty of them, of course. Pirates of the Caribbean. I just read the Cinefex article on Elysium and, yep... miniatures. Scroll down to "Crash of the Raven".
It's interesting how things have changed. Anyone can afford CG these days, but it seems like you can only break out the big toys when you have a lot of money to throw around.
posted by brundlefly at 11:22 PM on January 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
I know what you're getting at, but I think it's kind of cool that a lot of the giant budget action extravaganzas these days still use miniatures. The pod race arena from Phantom Menace was a miniature, the stands populated by q-tips. The Lord of the Rings films had plenty of them, of course. Pirates of the Caribbean. I just read the Cinefex article on Elysium and, yep... miniatures. Scroll down to "Crash of the Raven".
It's interesting how things have changed. Anyone can afford CG these days, but it seems like you can only break out the big toys when you have a lot of money to throw around.
posted by brundlefly at 11:22 PM on January 20, 2014 [1 favorite]
3 things, randomly..
1. Chroma key (green screen / compositing)
2. I'm just watching the local tv news : I wonder if vfx is on its way there (or am I naive & it's tricking me already?)
3. If you chart the rise in gfx use in movies against torrent download #s over time, is it a proportional relationship I wonder??
Thanks for the post codacorolla! Mostbewildering .err.. enlightening!!
posted by peacay at 12:12 AM on January 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
1. Chroma key (green screen / compositing)
2. I'm just watching the local tv news : I wonder if vfx is on its way there (or am I naive & it's tricking me already?)
3. If you chart the rise in gfx use in movies against torrent download #s over time, is it a proportional relationship I wonder??
Thanks for the post codacorolla! Most
posted by peacay at 12:12 AM on January 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
... still they can barely touch the hem of Touch Of Evil's astonishing single shot opening.
Wow, that's a single shot? Very impressive. I was trying to figure out where they'd mount a single camera to do that, but got dizzy and nearly fell off my chair!
posted by dg at 12:43 AM on January 21, 2014
Wow, that's a single shot? Very impressive. I was trying to figure out where they'd mount a single camera to do that, but got dizzy and nearly fell off my chair!
posted by dg at 12:43 AM on January 21, 2014
I remembering being stoned and watching some movie with friends and, after a time of glassed eyed staring, frantically explaining to them HOW EVERY BACKDROP WAS A GREEN SCREEN CAN YOU SEE IT
I never thought I might've been right
posted by litleozy at 2:25 AM on January 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
I never thought I might've been right
posted by litleozy at 2:25 AM on January 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
It's one thing in say Boardwalk Empire when you're expecting it (and even them some of their shots have caught me out) but well... that scene were DiCaprio talks with English Aunt Lumley in the park, there's The Albert Memorial in the background so it's obviously Hyde Park. And last summer I was in the park and walked past the Memorial but, as I watched the film, for the life of me I could not think of where they could have shot that scene from for it to match. Felt a bit of an idiot when I saw the sfx reel.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:55 AM on January 21, 2014
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:55 AM on January 21, 2014
I'm just watching the local tv news : I wonder if vfx is on its way there (or am I naive & it's tricking me already?)
Not necessarily local news, but a lot, if not most, syndicated "news" or sports shows use greenscreen and CG sets for the hosts to stand in or, minimally, sit behind a tabletop. They used to be pretty easy to see because the "sets" were ridiculously huge and shiny and reflective and it was all outsized to reality. It's gotten far better these days, with synthetic sets being far more in-scale to reality.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:58 AM on January 21, 2014
Not necessarily local news, but a lot, if not most, syndicated "news" or sports shows use greenscreen and CG sets for the hosts to stand in or, minimally, sit behind a tabletop. They used to be pretty easy to see because the "sets" were ridiculously huge and shiny and reflective and it was all outsized to reality. It's gotten far better these days, with synthetic sets being far more in-scale to reality.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:58 AM on January 21, 2014
See, commentary about this kind of thing pisses me the hell off. Yea, i've ragged on this before in other threads... but it still bugs me for exactly the same reasons.
And to be clear on what i'm talking about here, i mean the arguments that either CGI has ruined the "film experience", or that miniatures and practical effects are far superior.
To get at the second one first, the examples given of Phantom Menace, Pirates, and Elysium are awesome in that i bet you could show any staunch advocate of models and practical stuff the relevant sequences from any of those films and they'd argue til they turned purple that it was "ugly CGI".
Similarly, stuff gets really hilarious when the same people argue that CGI has ruined films and site films, or scenes in films with subtle CGI like this stuff as examples of "the good stuff". They sound dumber than audio nuts trying to justify overpriced interconnect cables or wine snobs claiming they can really tell the difference, man.
Ickster: My biggest concern about the prevalence of CGI is the sameness it creates in far too many movies. I'm not talking about action extravaganzas (which is a whole different type of sameness), but about a much more basic loss of interest in what's on the screen.
When filmmakers digitally composite even the most basic shots, the elements that are incorporated tend to feel like they're all coming from a pool of stock photography; everything's too composed. It feels ever-so-subtly like watching a catalog come to life. I have no experience with that sort of work at all, but my intuition is that there are a combination of factors at work.
You know, i think this is todays equivalent of terrible round/bulbous low res CGI of the 90s, or dare i say some of the awful mattes and such in the original star wars. It's not necessarily a limitation of the tech(as some movies really go all out and just look solid), but the work being rushed or blasted through on a budget like you hit at your bullet points.
I'm going to make a prediction and say in 20 years a lot of stuff in these movies will look laughably bad the way stuff in a lot of 80s and early 90s movies does now.
A few movies that really stuck the landing, or used it in minimal ways will still look solid. A lot like say, the going all out models in star trek II still look pretty damn good even at 1080p, or a lot of stuff in alien or the first matrix movie just looks pretty great still(shoutout to the cell also, but the limitations play right into the suspension of disbelief because it's supposed to be a dream being translated by a computer).
Tons of stuff is going to look goddamn cheesy though, and it's not just the fault of the technology.
peacay: 2. I'm just watching the local tv news : I wonder if vfx is on its way there (or am I naive & it's tricking me already?)
It's pretty much unobtanium online, but theres an awesome sequence in the netflix produced "House of Cards" in which they show the CNN set for a debate. nearly HALF of the set is green screens, and then it's all composited in real time live on air. Basically the only real parts of the set were the table, the chairs, and the wood frame around the "wall of screens" behind them. The screens, and the expansive area of the rest of the set were entirely greenscreen.
It looked like one of the real CNN sets to me that i've seen before, so i'd assume that's really how they do it.
3. If you chart the rise in gfx use in movies against torrent download #s over time, is it a proportional relationship I wonder??
I wouldn't believe anyone who said they were making less money on movies now than in say, 1995. I would laugh in their face. Hollywood accounting could pretend that's the case, but pay to play streaming services, stuff like itunes and its movie rentals, "early release" expensive digital rentals on stuff like comcast on demand, and a boatload of other stuff including physical media sales and redbox and shit are raking in money as fast as they can print it.
I would argue they're making more money than ever, and spending less too. It's so easy to imagine some rented office space, a UPS truck full of mac pros, and a few racks of servers costing less than a few fancy on-site shoots for one movie.
posted by emptythought at 4:04 AM on January 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
And to be clear on what i'm talking about here, i mean the arguments that either CGI has ruined the "film experience", or that miniatures and practical effects are far superior.
To get at the second one first, the examples given of Phantom Menace, Pirates, and Elysium are awesome in that i bet you could show any staunch advocate of models and practical stuff the relevant sequences from any of those films and they'd argue til they turned purple that it was "ugly CGI".
Similarly, stuff gets really hilarious when the same people argue that CGI has ruined films and site films, or scenes in films with subtle CGI like this stuff as examples of "the good stuff". They sound dumber than audio nuts trying to justify overpriced interconnect cables or wine snobs claiming they can really tell the difference, man.
Ickster: My biggest concern about the prevalence of CGI is the sameness it creates in far too many movies. I'm not talking about action extravaganzas (which is a whole different type of sameness), but about a much more basic loss of interest in what's on the screen.
When filmmakers digitally composite even the most basic shots, the elements that are incorporated tend to feel like they're all coming from a pool of stock photography; everything's too composed. It feels ever-so-subtly like watching a catalog come to life. I have no experience with that sort of work at all, but my intuition is that there are a combination of factors at work.
You know, i think this is todays equivalent of terrible round/bulbous low res CGI of the 90s, or dare i say some of the awful mattes and such in the original star wars. It's not necessarily a limitation of the tech(as some movies really go all out and just look solid), but the work being rushed or blasted through on a budget like you hit at your bullet points.
I'm going to make a prediction and say in 20 years a lot of stuff in these movies will look laughably bad the way stuff in a lot of 80s and early 90s movies does now.
A few movies that really stuck the landing, or used it in minimal ways will still look solid. A lot like say, the going all out models in star trek II still look pretty damn good even at 1080p, or a lot of stuff in alien or the first matrix movie just looks pretty great still(shoutout to the cell also, but the limitations play right into the suspension of disbelief because it's supposed to be a dream being translated by a computer).
Tons of stuff is going to look goddamn cheesy though, and it's not just the fault of the technology.
peacay: 2. I'm just watching the local tv news : I wonder if vfx is on its way there (or am I naive & it's tricking me already?)
It's pretty much unobtanium online, but theres an awesome sequence in the netflix produced "House of Cards" in which they show the CNN set for a debate. nearly HALF of the set is green screens, and then it's all composited in real time live on air. Basically the only real parts of the set were the table, the chairs, and the wood frame around the "wall of screens" behind them. The screens, and the expansive area of the rest of the set were entirely greenscreen.
It looked like one of the real CNN sets to me that i've seen before, so i'd assume that's really how they do it.
3. If you chart the rise in gfx use in movies against torrent download #s over time, is it a proportional relationship I wonder??
I wouldn't believe anyone who said they were making less money on movies now than in say, 1995. I would laugh in their face. Hollywood accounting could pretend that's the case, but pay to play streaming services, stuff like itunes and its movie rentals, "early release" expensive digital rentals on stuff like comcast on demand, and a boatload of other stuff including physical media sales and redbox and shit are raking in money as fast as they can print it.
I would argue they're making more money than ever, and spending less too. It's so easy to imagine some rented office space, a UPS truck full of mac pros, and a few racks of servers costing less than a few fancy on-site shoots for one movie.
posted by emptythought at 4:04 AM on January 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
It was about 15 minutes into Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby that I realized how much I missed the movies of the 1970's.
posted by R. Mutt at 4:24 AM on January 21, 2014
posted by R. Mutt at 4:24 AM on January 21, 2014
I can't help feeling that it would be easier to enjoy these sumptuous cartoons that have been prepared to sharpen my appetite for consumption if I wasn't trapped on a rapidly heating ball of increasingly poisonous, jellyfish-choked water.
posted by nanojath at 6:36 AM on January 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by nanojath at 6:36 AM on January 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
I lament the reduction of happy accidents that happens with a completely non-linear editing and compositing process (this applies to music, too), in which everything is intentional. It's an aesthetic, to be sure, and can be astonishing and wonderfully immersive (See: Gravity), but when we're just shoving buildings around and making everything just so perfect, I dunno. It's like the whole world's a fussy dream wedding and we're all just hapless guests slotting into our assigned seats to appreciate the meticulous flower arrangements and choreographed fake flashmob dance sequences, warned against snickering that the planner has once again given us kitschy mason jars tied with twine and handwritten name tags at the reception.
You can composite everyday life till the cows get modeled and composited in, but you'll never, ever get the same joyous natural effect you'd get if you just unleashed a fat, insane-looking, wildly vamping drag queen with no coat on in winter on a Baltimore Street in the early seventies.
On the other hand, it all leaves a nice big opening for the next kid with a camera who's shooting in laundromats because they have great lighting to revive us once we all get tired of the whole world looking like a slightly more professional version of the worst-looking Doctor Who episode of them all.
posted by sonascope at 7:09 AM on January 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
You can composite everyday life till the cows get modeled and composited in, but you'll never, ever get the same joyous natural effect you'd get if you just unleashed a fat, insane-looking, wildly vamping drag queen with no coat on in winter on a Baltimore Street in the early seventies.
On the other hand, it all leaves a nice big opening for the next kid with a camera who's shooting in laundromats because they have great lighting to revive us once we all get tired of the whole world looking like a slightly more professional version of the worst-looking Doctor Who episode of them all.
posted by sonascope at 7:09 AM on January 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
I watched Wolf of Wall Street last night and thought that some elements (mostly the helicopter) were intentionally CGI for humor or something, because it was so obvious and bad. But in that same movie I zoned out several times because the quality of the image made the actors look so fake and luminescent and almost pop out of the screen.
In conclusion, my visual experience of that film was a land of contrasts.
posted by Night_owl at 7:46 AM on January 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
In conclusion, my visual experience of that film was a land of contrasts.
posted by Night_owl at 7:46 AM on January 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
they'll just pay DiCaprioCorp to use his ageless, approved, computer generated model likeness, in every movie forever
Just by the way, that's the plot of the 2013 film The Congress. Loosely based on The Futurulogical Congress by Stanislaw Lem. Halfway through it turns from film into a Steamboat Willie on mushrooms animation fest.
posted by yoHighness at 10:32 AM on January 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
Just by the way, that's the plot of the 2013 film The Congress. Loosely based on The Futurulogical Congress by Stanislaw Lem. Halfway through it turns from film into a Steamboat Willie on mushrooms animation fest.
posted by yoHighness at 10:32 AM on January 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
I lament the reduction of happy accidents that happens with a completely non-linear editing and compositing process (this applies to music, too), in which everything is intentional.
Do you find this to be a shortcoming in other media? Paintings? Literature? Short of doing some sort of William S. Burroughs cut-up thing, every word on the printed page is intentional.
posted by brundlefly at 1:43 PM on January 21, 2014
Do you find this to be a shortcoming in other media? Paintings? Literature? Short of doing some sort of William S. Burroughs cut-up thing, every word on the printed page is intentional.
posted by brundlefly at 1:43 PM on January 21, 2014
Painters I know LOVE the accidental. It's choosing to keep the accidental that is intentional.
posted by R. Mutt at 5:01 PM on January 21, 2014
posted by R. Mutt at 5:01 PM on January 21, 2014
as a writer, my best accidents come in the form of stuff I worked on for a while, gave up on for some reason, forgot about, then rediscovered and ... wow! why did I give up on that?
posted by philip-random at 5:34 PM on January 21, 2014
posted by philip-random at 5:34 PM on January 21, 2014
Painters I know LOVE the accidental. It's choosing to keep the accidental that is intentional
Yeah, totally. Although I think that same sort of accidental comes into play with digital effects as well. It's just part of the creative process, no matter the medium. You try things. They work or the don't. Or they work in a way that you didn't expect.
as a writer, my best accidents come in the form of stuff I worked on for a while, gave up on for some reason, forgot about, then rediscovered and ... wow! why did I give up on that?
Yeah, it's too bad that sort of thing isn't really possible on a film schedule. Beyond writing that is.
posted by brundlefly at 1:37 AM on January 22, 2014
Yeah, totally. Although I think that same sort of accidental comes into play with digital effects as well. It's just part of the creative process, no matter the medium. You try things. They work or the don't. Or they work in a way that you didn't expect.
as a writer, my best accidents come in the form of stuff I worked on for a while, gave up on for some reason, forgot about, then rediscovered and ... wow! why did I give up on that?
Yeah, it's too bad that sort of thing isn't really possible on a film schedule. Beyond writing that is.
posted by brundlefly at 1:37 AM on January 22, 2014
Seems like a bit of a bummer for actors and crew. Twenty years ago they've have gotten to spend a few months in some foreign locale shooting on location and now they just spend their whole time in LA shooting against blank green walls.
Hollywood memoirs are full of horror stories about disaster-plagued location shoots. Even top tier stars and technicians can recognize the value of working regular hours and going home for dinner every night.
posted by Flexagon at 7:16 AM on January 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
Hollywood memoirs are full of horror stories about disaster-plagued location shoots. Even top tier stars and technicians can recognize the value of working regular hours and going home for dinner every night.
posted by Flexagon at 7:16 AM on January 22, 2014 [1 favorite]
How Leonardo DiCaprio Cost New York Taxpayers $30 Million via VFX Soldier
posted by unliteral at 8:23 PM on January 22, 2014
posted by unliteral at 8:23 PM on January 22, 2014
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Everything is suspect of being a VFX/composite shot these days. Outdoor street scenes? Chances are it's a composite/VFX shot these days. Almost all of them, in any A-list Hollywood release.
It's just much, much cheaper to shoot a bunch of stock footage and do your scenes offline in front of a green screen where you can do takes over and over again, and the director doesn't have to worry about some extra missing their movement cues in the background, or the chaos of actually filming in the street.
Same goes for historic locations, outdoor scenes (See The Hobbit, LoTR) and much more where it's all perfectly normal looking on film and isn't some VFX-heavy action scene. It's easy to just shoot the background scenery once and then composite the actors in later.
Most people today don't even notice the intense amount of digital compositing going on. Remember the movie Contact? There's the scene where they pan out of Jodi Foster's character in her bedroom as a child out through a reflective glass window like it was one shot, and it was a big huge deal to do when that movie came out.
Now look at Gravity. There are "continuous" tracking shots that pass from inside a spacesuit helmet to outside the suit, inside a Soyuz capsule, then out through the window portal of a Soyuz, then back in again like the camera was moving fluidly through many different panes of glass on one single crane shot. But it's not, obviously, because you can't fit a production-ready movie camera inside a spacesuit helmet - or even a Soyuz capsule! - much less have it pass through glass.
And this doesn't even begin to address the intense amount of digital VFX and compositing they did in Gravity from stock and existing Imax footage from Shuttle and ISS missions. In true Imax 3D, no less. While compositing and shooting new footage to match it, also in Imax 3D.
And people don't even notice these "impossible" shots at all, and this is going on almost all the time in modern film, especially action movies.
TV shows are doing this in large quantities, too, because modern TV "teleplays" now have basically the same workflow as movies - digital everything, mainly. Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead use tons of these low-weight, invisible composite shots.
There was some new horror movie I just watched at a friend's place and there's a scene where it's not even a digital composite on a crane or dolly shot, the camera simply flies away and orbits the house and the entire scene is synthetic - the moving actors, the house, the trees, the cars around the house, the mud and water on the ground, everything.
The only reason why I noticed is because it was on Blu-ray and I could barely tell that the entire scene was 3D, and even then I had to have him rewind it half a dozen times before I realized the camera and boom would have to have been passing directly through the branches and trunks of a tree. That tree was somehow accurately synthetically recreated close enough to the real thing that twigs and branches at the field edges of the camera view mainly matched up with the real tree in front of the real house.
It's intense what they're doing with digital VFX now. If you know the technical side of film at all it can be jarring - if exciting - to watch.
posted by loquacious at 6:08 PM on January 20, 2014 [26 favorites]