Really CGI
December 7, 2023 4:03 PM Subscribe
"No CGI is really just INVISIBLE CGI" part 2 [SLYT] The first part took apart Top Gun Maverick (among other things). This part focuses on Christopher Nolan's Inception (among other things). The point about invisibility is a generous way of saying that it's just outright lying.
It's amazing how determined the film industry is to erase the work of the armies of people who make their films look good.
posted by clawsoon at 4:25 PM on December 7, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 4:25 PM on December 7, 2023 [13 favorites]
Is it a product of the Marvel era that "no CGI" means "we filmed a part of what you might see in camera" compared to "we've grafted the actors' faces into a giant videogame cut scene"?
posted by hippybear at 4:39 PM on December 7, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 4:39 PM on December 7, 2023 [5 favorites]
Related: a blog from a former co-worker of mine discussing this (he mentions this video): http://fxrant.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-most-egregious-example-of-we-didnt.html
posted by riotnrrd at 4:53 PM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by riotnrrd at 4:53 PM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Surely there's no one who doesn't realize that Inception has CGI in it.
posted by subdee at 5:13 PM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by subdee at 5:13 PM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Like, I get how they can bring a camera into people's dreams, but how do they bring the film back out afterwards?
posted by Phssthpok at 5:17 PM on December 7, 2023 [27 favorites]
posted by Phssthpok at 5:17 PM on December 7, 2023 [27 favorites]
I wonder if there was a market for "no printing press!" books in the 1500s that was happily served by owners of printing presses.
posted by clawsoon at 5:50 PM on December 7, 2023
posted by clawsoon at 5:50 PM on December 7, 2023
No, but you bet there's a market for, say, letters or documents that look like they've been handwritten even though they were printed on a machine.
posted by hippybear at 6:04 PM on December 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 6:04 PM on December 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
This video, part 2, is doing a good job of explaining why even people who were at the shoot are convinced that there was no CGI: The tools have gotten good enough (and the budgets for manual rotoscoping have gotten large enough) that you don't need green screens anymore. You can film with a realistic background and realistic props, and then replace them with better CGI backgrounds and props.
posted by clawsoon at 6:16 PM on December 7, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 6:16 PM on December 7, 2023 [4 favorites]
I wonder if there was a market for "no printing press!" books in the 1500s that was happily served by owners of printing presses.
Gutenberg tried very hard to make his print Bible look like what buyers of manuscripts were used to seeing. You can put one next to a German folio manuscript Bible of the 1450s when he was printing his and see how similar they are in lettering, layout, and decoration. He initially tried to print the red lettering in a second pass, but it required such precise alignment with the black printing that it was unfeasible at that early stage of development and it had to be added by hand, as were large initial letters and running heads.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:18 PM on December 7, 2023 [15 favorites]
Gutenberg tried very hard to make his print Bible look like what buyers of manuscripts were used to seeing. You can put one next to a German folio manuscript Bible of the 1450s when he was printing his and see how similar they are in lettering, layout, and decoration. He initially tried to print the red lettering in a second pass, but it required such precise alignment with the black printing that it was unfeasible at that early stage of development and it had to be added by hand, as were large initial letters and running heads.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:18 PM on December 7, 2023 [15 favorites]
"There is so much CG work in this movie, it’s hard to fathom. Miller succeeds at what I would have considered an impossible task. He made a movie FOR people who worship practical effects. . .and he did it all with CGI. And the audience is going INSANE for the results. They believe. He told them “It’s all real,” he lied to them, and they believed it.
He knew he could lie to them, because he knew what his audience wants. They want to know; when that truck goes flying up in the air, it’s real. When that truck smashed into that rock, it’s real.
Well, that part is. They really built all those trucks, and they really launched them into the air and they really smashed them into each other. But that’s only about 30%-40% of the film. The launching and smashing. The rest is driving. And almost none of that is real.
The vehicles you see in the movie are almost never moving. They’re sitting still, propped up on what are essentially airbags. The airbags allow the crew to bounce the trucks around, they are so severely agitated, they can literally throw people off the truck with the force. But the truck is always sitting in one place.
You never notice it because they matted moving backgrounds in and they used CGI to make the wheels move. They used CGI to make the wheels move. 60% of the movie, those wheels weren’t moving on the set, that’s CGI."
posted by mhoye at 7:00 PM on December 7, 2023 [15 favorites]
He knew he could lie to them, because he knew what his audience wants. They want to know; when that truck goes flying up in the air, it’s real. When that truck smashed into that rock, it’s real.
Well, that part is. They really built all those trucks, and they really launched them into the air and they really smashed them into each other. But that’s only about 30%-40% of the film. The launching and smashing. The rest is driving. And almost none of that is real.
The vehicles you see in the movie are almost never moving. They’re sitting still, propped up on what are essentially airbags. The airbags allow the crew to bounce the trucks around, they are so severely agitated, they can literally throw people off the truck with the force. But the truck is always sitting in one place.
You never notice it because they matted moving backgrounds in and they used CGI to make the wheels move. They used CGI to make the wheels move. 60% of the movie, those wheels weren’t moving on the set, that’s CGI."
posted by mhoye at 7:00 PM on December 7, 2023 [15 favorites]
Of course Fury Road had CGI, after all Charlize Theron didn't actually cut her left arm off.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:37 PM on December 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:37 PM on December 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Charlize Theron didn't actually cut her left arm off.
Are you sure? Because modern medicine is amazing enough to have reattached Gary Sinise's legs after filming Forrest Gump and that was like 30 years ago.
posted by Literaryhero at 7:49 PM on December 7, 2023 [12 favorites]
Are you sure? Because modern medicine is amazing enough to have reattached Gary Sinise's legs after filming Forrest Gump and that was like 30 years ago.
posted by Literaryhero at 7:49 PM on December 7, 2023 [12 favorites]
I guess sometime around March of next year we'll finally have the final part in this series.
I'm really okay with that. These have been really well made, and I do like that he's peeling back the curtain.
I remember when I was a kid, there would be an entire hour of television about how they did the special effects of some movie. Star Wars, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, E.T. ... Those sort of DVD Bonus Feature things used to be shown on one of the three major networks in prime time as featured viewing.
What I don't like about this is how it all feels like ripping off a band aid. It should feel like we've had a magic trick explained to us and it still feels really cool. Like when they explained the melting heads at the end of Raiders and the reaction was "wow, they really worked hard on that, thanks". The problem with this is none of it feels like that. Instead it feels like you've been deceived, been played for a fool.
Audiences really love when they see something on a screen and they think "holy shit, how did they do that???" and then you show them how you did it and they are still thrilled. When audiences feel like they know how you did a thing but you were completely lying to them the whole time and then you show them you were lying and that miracle shot, which in Keaton's day would have been done in camera or in the Seventies might have taken 100 set ups to get one or two useable shots on film, was entirely cheated from beginning to end... At that point you're not revealing movie magic, you're showing the audience that they're rubes.
It's a weird, fine line to walk, but I think everyone knows the emotional difference.
posted by hippybear at 7:49 PM on December 7, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm really okay with that. These have been really well made, and I do like that he's peeling back the curtain.
I remember when I was a kid, there would be an entire hour of television about how they did the special effects of some movie. Star Wars, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, E.T. ... Those sort of DVD Bonus Feature things used to be shown on one of the three major networks in prime time as featured viewing.
What I don't like about this is how it all feels like ripping off a band aid. It should feel like we've had a magic trick explained to us and it still feels really cool. Like when they explained the melting heads at the end of Raiders and the reaction was "wow, they really worked hard on that, thanks". The problem with this is none of it feels like that. Instead it feels like you've been deceived, been played for a fool.
Audiences really love when they see something on a screen and they think "holy shit, how did they do that???" and then you show them how you did it and they are still thrilled. When audiences feel like they know how you did a thing but you were completely lying to them the whole time and then you show them you were lying and that miracle shot, which in Keaton's day would have been done in camera or in the Seventies might have taken 100 set ups to get one or two useable shots on film, was entirely cheated from beginning to end... At that point you're not revealing movie magic, you're showing the audience that they're rubes.
It's a weird, fine line to walk, but I think everyone knows the emotional difference.
posted by hippybear at 7:49 PM on December 7, 2023 [5 favorites]
If you listen very closely, you can hear a bunch of industry nerds scream "VFX is not CGI you fuckwits" through gritted teeth.
Also, didn't we just have this discussion (equally wrong about VFX and CGI) like a month ago? Yeah, there is in down in Related Posts, we did the same horseshit back on Oct 30th. Guess we'll need a few more to really drive home the (wrong) opinion that all VFX is CGI.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:08 PM on December 7, 2023 [4 favorites]
Also, didn't we just have this discussion (equally wrong about VFX and CGI) like a month ago? Yeah, there is in down in Related Posts, we did the same horseshit back on Oct 30th. Guess we'll need a few more to really drive home the (wrong) opinion that all VFX is CGI.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:08 PM on December 7, 2023 [4 favorites]
Whenever this topic comes up I want to link to this video I once saw (link forever lost to the ether) showing the compositing work that goes into a scene of the television show Monk. It's particularly impressive because you expect it to be a relatively low budget operation compared to an action movie and it's not for any spectacular stunt or anything, it's just to make something shot on a backlot look like San Francisco.
posted by juv3nal at 10:25 PM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by juv3nal at 10:25 PM on December 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think anyone who thinks they’re being cheated because something was done with CGI should get behind a computer and try to make some CGI effects, and make it look realistic, and make it blend into the shot footage seamlessly.
posted by antinomia at 11:20 PM on December 7, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by antinomia at 11:20 PM on December 7, 2023 [9 favorites]
Oh Dear LORD! I am a computer nerd and (was) an industry nerd. and "VFX is not CGI you fuckwits" is Exactly what I am screaming through gritted teeth. The presenter sounds so smugly self-righteous and whiny on top of it. Props to Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme for putting it so eloquently.
posted by techSupp0rt at 12:31 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by techSupp0rt at 12:31 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
I saw a film called One Ranger recently and they were so fucking lazy that when the main characters stayed in a 'hotel' in London that was actually Suffolk County Hall in Ipswich they didn't bother to CGI out the 4' high letters "Suffolk County Council ' on the glass behind them.
posted by biffa at 1:30 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by biffa at 1:30 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
the main characters stayed in a 'hotel' in London that was actually Suffolk County Hall in Ipswich they didn't bother to CGI out the 4' high letters "Suffolk County Council ' on the glass behind them.Was it by any chance made by that subset of Americans who don't seem able to comprehend that a large number of places in England - most of the places in England really - are in fact not in London?
posted by mathw at 2:34 AM on December 8, 2023
I've linked to it before but this half hour YouTube Why Does Attack of the Clones Look Like a Video Game? is a good primer on why bad CGI looks so bad. As these videos point out, without a real-life reference it's very hard to get shadows, textures and fabrics to look right. And while that's pretty old, bad modern CGI isn't much better.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:49 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:49 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
In the movie The Velocipastor, they didn't have the budget for much cgi, or vfx in general, so there's one scene with an empty street and the words "[VFX: CAR ON FIRE]" instead.
It really took nothing away from the majesty of that film.
posted by mrgoat at 5:06 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
It really took nothing away from the majesty of that film.
posted by mrgoat at 5:06 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
(what is the difference between VFX and CGI? somebody who knows things, please explain.)
posted by mittens at 5:08 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 5:08 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
If you listen very closely, you can hear a bunch of industry nerds scream "VFX is not CGI you fuckwits" through gritted teeth.
You realize that the presenter is an industry professional, right? And that all of the examples he's giving are of real objects being replaced by computer-generated objects, or of a whole bunch of CGI objects being added to a scene?
He's not talking about painting out wires, he's talking about replacing a real jet fighter with a CGI jet fighter, or a real giant rolling ball of metal with a CGI giant rolling ball of metal, or adding thousands of CGI soldiers to a battle scene, or putting a bunch of extra CGI cardboard boxes and tables and chairs into an explosion.
The line between what VFX shops do and what CGI shops do got completely blurred a long time ago. There's a lot more scene information going back and forth between 3D tools and 2D tools than there was back in the day. And that's how it has to be if you want the lighting of your CGI world to seamlessly match the lighting that was captured by the camera.
posted by clawsoon at 5:47 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
You realize that the presenter is an industry professional, right? And that all of the examples he's giving are of real objects being replaced by computer-generated objects, or of a whole bunch of CGI objects being added to a scene?
He's not talking about painting out wires, he's talking about replacing a real jet fighter with a CGI jet fighter, or a real giant rolling ball of metal with a CGI giant rolling ball of metal, or adding thousands of CGI soldiers to a battle scene, or putting a bunch of extra CGI cardboard boxes and tables and chairs into an explosion.
The line between what VFX shops do and what CGI shops do got completely blurred a long time ago. There's a lot more scene information going back and forth between 3D tools and 2D tools than there was back in the day. And that's how it has to be if you want the lighting of your CGI world to seamlessly match the lighting that was captured by the camera.
posted by clawsoon at 5:47 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
(what is the difference between VFX and CGI? somebody who knows things, please explain.)
Traditionally...
- CGI: Computer-generated imagery - 3D characters/props/sets produced entirely on a computer. Done primarily by modelers and animators.
- VFX: Visual effects - 2D modifications to what was shot in the camera. Painting out things like wires and ladders, combining actors that were shot in front of a green screen with an explosion that was filmed separately, adding some sparkles, that sort of thing. Done primarily by compositors.
(I'm skipping a bunch of job roles involved in those tasks, but that should get you started.)
Now...
- The camera shoots a bunch of shots on a physical set. CGI artists create a matching world on the computer. Compositors blend the real world and the CGI world into the final product.
posted by clawsoon at 6:00 AM on December 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
Traditionally...
- CGI: Computer-generated imagery - 3D characters/props/sets produced entirely on a computer. Done primarily by modelers and animators.
- VFX: Visual effects - 2D modifications to what was shot in the camera. Painting out things like wires and ladders, combining actors that were shot in front of a green screen with an explosion that was filmed separately, adding some sparkles, that sort of thing. Done primarily by compositors.
(I'm skipping a bunch of job roles involved in those tasks, but that should get you started.)
Now...
- The camera shoots a bunch of shots on a physical set. CGI artists create a matching world on the computer. Compositors blend the real world and the CGI world into the final product.
posted by clawsoon at 6:00 AM on December 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
(The last time I worked at a primarily VFX shop - horrible places to work, do not recommend, find a 2D shop that does kids cartoons instead - it was 2010 and they were replacing the real cathedral interior in The Borgias with a CGI cathedral interior that they had created. That was already 13 years ago, and blended VFX/CGI/physical-camera worlds have come a long way since then.)
posted by clawsoon at 6:08 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 6:08 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
You realize that the presenter is an industry professional, right? And that all of the examples he's giving are of real objects being replaced by computer-generated objects, or of a whole bunch of CGI objects being added to a scene?
He's not talking about painting out wires, he's talking about replacing a real jet fighter with a CGI jet fighter, or a real giant rolling ball of metal with a CGI giant rolling ball of metal, or adding thousands of CGI soldiers to a battle scene, or putting a bunch of extra CGI cardboard boxes and tables and chairs into an explosion.
The line between what VFX shops do and what CGI shops do got completely blurred a long time ago. There's a lot more scene information going back and forth between 3D tools and 2D tools than there was back in the day. And that's how it has to be if you want the lighting of your CGI world to seamlessly match the lighting that was captured by the camera.
Yeah I'm dumbfounded here, he's clearly talking about CGI. Is this other stuff just drive by nerd snark?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:19 AM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
He's not talking about painting out wires, he's talking about replacing a real jet fighter with a CGI jet fighter, or a real giant rolling ball of metal with a CGI giant rolling ball of metal, or adding thousands of CGI soldiers to a battle scene, or putting a bunch of extra CGI cardboard boxes and tables and chairs into an explosion.
The line between what VFX shops do and what CGI shops do got completely blurred a long time ago. There's a lot more scene information going back and forth between 3D tools and 2D tools than there was back in the day. And that's how it has to be if you want the lighting of your CGI world to seamlessly match the lighting that was captured by the camera.
Yeah I'm dumbfounded here, he's clearly talking about CGI. Is this other stuff just drive by nerd snark?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:19 AM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
mittens -- the short answer: VFX is generally refers to manipulating an image that was captured with a camera, e.g. combining an actor over a background that is different from what they were shot over, retouching / correcting errors in the image or adjusting the lighting and feel of the shot. "Computer Graphics Imagery" (CGI) generally refers to creating an image from scratch via computers, i.e. without shooting with a real world camera. This is typically done to create images that are impossible to capture with real camera, e.g. a talking raccoon in space or images that are too dangerous to physically create, e.g. blowing up a bunch of buildings.
The long answer:
Historically, VFX was the art of combining different film elements together to make a single image. A very early example of this is Georges Melies' 1902 film A Trip To The Moon. Melies, who was an experienced magician, would shoot something, wind the film back in the camera and the expose the same strip of film again with his actors or props in a different part of the frame.
By 1930 the Optical Printer was developed, which was essentially one or more film projectors connected to a film camera. This allowed multiple strips of files to be played to gather and recorded on a single piece of film with great precision. "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" was the last major film to be created with optical printers at Industrial Light and Magic.
Sometime in the 1990s the ability to scan film at very high resolution into digital format, process the images and then record it back out to film was developed. Today all compositing of images is done digitally via scanned film images (or from digital cameras) using programs like Flame, Nuke and After Effects. There is a vast array of image manipulation tricks that can be accomplished with these tools, all referred to as VFX, not CGI.
"Computer Graphics Imagery" (CGI) was historically used to create images from scratch with a computer i.e., without capturing images by a camera in the real world. This began at the University Of Utah in 1963 where Ivan Sutherland wrote a program called Sketchpad for his PhD thesis. Sketchpad allowed one to create a simple line drawing on a CRT and then move the elements -- massively revolutionary at the time.
By the mid 1980s the creation of moving images with CGI evolved into a five step process: Modeling - defining the geometry of an object; Material Section - covering the geometry with a surface or texture; Coreography - defining how the object moved over time, Lighting; illuminating the object and the related background and the Rendering out the images. For some reason this was often done to nerpy synthesizer tracks, but that's another story.
Modern CGI was started at the New York Institute of Technology by a group of brilliant image scientists and engineers. In 1979 many of these folks went to Lucas Film where they became the Pixar group -- competing with ILM. Robert Able and Associates was an earlier pioneer in applying CGI to commercials, several of us began using CGI for abstract experimental art work and then in 1984 the Pixar group at Industrial Light and Magic released Andre and Wally Bee, the first all CGI character driven cartoon. George Lucas was not impressed, and sold off the Pixar to Steve Jobs.
Pixar spent decades developing Renderman, to make the output of their work more and more 100% photoreal. Many companies developed tools for all the steps in the CGI process to mimic reality. Today CGI images can be created which are indistinguishable from images captured with a camera. CGI has replaced miniature model work, e.g. the way the cities were created in Blade Runner.
Which leads us back to to the confusion of CGI and VFX. CGI has become associated with space ships, creatures and comic book movies. Good VFX is often "invisible" i.e., compositing together a shot that looks like it was all captured in a single take but is impossible / crazy dangerous / etc. But as others have pointed out, the two are now so linked in post production they very much overlap.
Many directors want to brag about how their films have no CGI or VFXin them. Nonsense. The CGI and VFX composites are just so good the audience can't tell they're not real.
posted by Dean358 at 7:11 AM on December 8, 2023 [9 favorites]
The long answer:
Historically, VFX was the art of combining different film elements together to make a single image. A very early example of this is Georges Melies' 1902 film A Trip To The Moon. Melies, who was an experienced magician, would shoot something, wind the film back in the camera and the expose the same strip of film again with his actors or props in a different part of the frame.
By 1930 the Optical Printer was developed, which was essentially one or more film projectors connected to a film camera. This allowed multiple strips of files to be played to gather and recorded on a single piece of film with great precision. "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" was the last major film to be created with optical printers at Industrial Light and Magic.
Sometime in the 1990s the ability to scan film at very high resolution into digital format, process the images and then record it back out to film was developed. Today all compositing of images is done digitally via scanned film images (or from digital cameras) using programs like Flame, Nuke and After Effects. There is a vast array of image manipulation tricks that can be accomplished with these tools, all referred to as VFX, not CGI.
"Computer Graphics Imagery" (CGI) was historically used to create images from scratch with a computer i.e., without capturing images by a camera in the real world. This began at the University Of Utah in 1963 where Ivan Sutherland wrote a program called Sketchpad for his PhD thesis. Sketchpad allowed one to create a simple line drawing on a CRT and then move the elements -- massively revolutionary at the time.
By the mid 1980s the creation of moving images with CGI evolved into a five step process: Modeling - defining the geometry of an object; Material Section - covering the geometry with a surface or texture; Coreography - defining how the object moved over time, Lighting; illuminating the object and the related background and the Rendering out the images. For some reason this was often done to nerpy synthesizer tracks, but that's another story.
Modern CGI was started at the New York Institute of Technology by a group of brilliant image scientists and engineers. In 1979 many of these folks went to Lucas Film where they became the Pixar group -- competing with ILM. Robert Able and Associates was an earlier pioneer in applying CGI to commercials, several of us began using CGI for abstract experimental art work and then in 1984 the Pixar group at Industrial Light and Magic released Andre and Wally Bee, the first all CGI character driven cartoon. George Lucas was not impressed, and sold off the Pixar to Steve Jobs.
Pixar spent decades developing Renderman, to make the output of their work more and more 100% photoreal. Many companies developed tools for all the steps in the CGI process to mimic reality. Today CGI images can be created which are indistinguishable from images captured with a camera. CGI has replaced miniature model work, e.g. the way the cities were created in Blade Runner.
Which leads us back to to the confusion of CGI and VFX. CGI has become associated with space ships, creatures and comic book movies. Good VFX is often "invisible" i.e., compositing together a shot that looks like it was all captured in a single take but is impossible / crazy dangerous / etc. But as others have pointed out, the two are now so linked in post production they very much overlap.
Many directors want to brag about how their films have no CGI or VFXin them. Nonsense. The CGI and VFX composites are just so good the audience can't tell they're not real.
posted by Dean358 at 7:11 AM on December 8, 2023 [9 favorites]
Given that many of the earliest examples of computer imagery in film were composited (for example, Young Sherlock Holmes) I think that trying to create a dichotomy here is perhaps tilting at windmills.
posted by q*ben at 8:38 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 8:38 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
but you bet there's a market for, say, letters or documents that look like they've been handwritten even though they were printed on a machine.
Hence the autopen.
posted by Mitheral at 9:29 AM on December 8, 2023
Hence the autopen.
posted by Mitheral at 9:29 AM on December 8, 2023
I'm hung up on the notion that "Invisible CGI (or FX) is lying".
As a statement it feels akin to the idea that magicians are no-good liars. (Maybe back in the day when they all pretended to have mystical powers from communing with demons and what not, but today?) Invisible CGI is another tool in storytelling toolbox.
Now, someone one saying "we used nothing but practical effects" when they didn't is lying, but I guess I can't get worked up over it as it's a snobbery burnishing of facts to tell what they think is a better story for their target audience. ooohhh... meta narrative. :)
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:39 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
As a statement it feels akin to the idea that magicians are no-good liars. (Maybe back in the day when they all pretended to have mystical powers from communing with demons and what not, but today?) Invisible CGI is another tool in storytelling toolbox.
Now, someone one saying "we used nothing but practical effects" when they didn't is lying, but I guess I can't get worked up over it as it's a snobbery burnishing of facts to tell what they think is a better story for their target audience. ooohhh... meta narrative. :)
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:39 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think its more that saying "This film has no CGI" when it in fact, does have CGI, is lying.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:45 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:45 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
...but that line is blurry.
I mean, technically-in-the-Futurama-bureaucracy-sense, almost every film is entirely CGI because of color correction and grading -- the final images that you see were in fact generated by a computer. Likewise, if the movie was shot digitally on cameras with Bayer filters, every frame is CGI from the get-go because every frame was constructed by a computer as an extrapolation of data from its sensor.
But that's not what people mean by CGI or not-CGI.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:09 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I mean, technically-in-the-Futurama-bureaucracy-sense, almost every film is entirely CGI because of color correction and grading -- the final images that you see were in fact generated by a computer. Likewise, if the movie was shot digitally on cameras with Bayer filters, every frame is CGI from the get-go because every frame was constructed by a computer as an extrapolation of data from its sensor.
But that's not what people mean by CGI or not-CGI.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:09 AM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
The video is much more specific than that though. The beef is that media coverage of the film industry, specifically blockbusters, often loves to lead with “NO CGI” in situations where that is clearly false. This is pretty disrespectful to the artists who are often overworked, underpaid, and whose invisible work is a huge part of what you see on the screen. I don’t love the way that this video is put together, but agree with the idea presented that the discourse on VFX and CGI is extremely off base in a lot of reporting, and it must be incredibly galling if it’s your job.
Feels kind of like the general purity quest we see in a lot of viral marketing these days - authentic, real, no chemicals in x, raw, etc.
posted by q*ben at 10:20 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
Feels kind of like the general purity quest we see in a lot of viral marketing these days - authentic, real, no chemicals in x, raw, etc.
posted by q*ben at 10:20 AM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I can get the beef with the "No CGI/VFX" marketing and you're right, it's a bit of purity nostalgia. Although I do think that a lot of CGI effects have a certain unrealness/weightlessness to them that's not matched by practical effects, you'd have to be almost obtuse to not realize there's a ton of computer manipulation in everything from processing/timing/stunts/sets/etc. Even when a director might not want to use CG, $$ and safety concerns make it a necessity.
I've been watching "The Gilded Age" recently. On the face of it, it doesn't strike you as the sort of project needing CGI work, but then you look at it and if you watch carefully, you'll notice that everything above the first story and a half is just slightly off. Sometimes it's more noticeable than others. (They did a great fake train wreck site for instance). In that program it's all about saving money and recreating the world without having to create overly massive sets that would cost too much. But they don't claim "NO CGI" - largely because I don't think the audience would even think it's a thing needed. (Gilded Age CGI/VFX Breakdown Reel)
I think I just chafe at the pull line of "it's lying!" but that's the nature of sound bites.
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:16 AM on December 8, 2023
I've been watching "The Gilded Age" recently. On the face of it, it doesn't strike you as the sort of project needing CGI work, but then you look at it and if you watch carefully, you'll notice that everything above the first story and a half is just slightly off. Sometimes it's more noticeable than others. (They did a great fake train wreck site for instance). In that program it's all about saving money and recreating the world without having to create overly massive sets that would cost too much. But they don't claim "NO CGI" - largely because I don't think the audience would even think it's a thing needed. (Gilded Age CGI/VFX Breakdown Reel)
I think I just chafe at the pull line of "it's lying!" but that's the nature of sound bites.
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:16 AM on December 8, 2023
Yeah, I feel like this distinction between CGI and VFX is not presented as well as it maybe could be in the video - but in many many cases that they are showing in the video it is in fact CGI, not just vfx or compositing. like, the crowd shots in napoleon are a pile of CGI for the background actors, not just copy paste of video cards (I'm not a vfx artist so I don't know the actual terminology here). Or in the inception scene, its all VFX up to the point where they start doing flying boxes at which point it flips to CGI. But this distinction in the context of the marketing issues that the video is covering maybe doesn't matter, because the offending marketing videos aren't really making that distinction either.
posted by jonbro at 11:41 AM on December 8, 2023
posted by jonbro at 11:41 AM on December 8, 2023
Given that many of the earliest examples of computer imagery in film were composited (for example, Young Sherlock Holmes) I think that trying to create a dichotomy here is perhaps tilting at windmills.
Wasn't it optically composited to make matters even more confusing ;)
Way back when digital compositing took off capacities were quite limited compared to what have now and was often used to integrate together sources of images that were filmed. So in a sense, it's a computer manipulated image.
During the same time 3d modeling/animation/rendering was being used for compositing elements , but also for entire movies (pixar!) and cut scenes for games, and was already called CGI.
So early CGI was not often great, and early digital compositing could be awesome from the get go. This distinction probably cemented the difference in the people's mind and why we distinguish between those.
You wouldn't think Desperado from Robert Rodriguez as a CGI heavy movie, but it absolutely has a ton a digital effects in it, to save money or time and there were mostly simple add-ons or smart use of compositing.
In the same vein, Robert Zemeckis did a ton of those things in Forest Gump, but it's a bit more noticeable since we know Gary Sinise still has 2 legs and and that Tom Hanks never met Nixon or Kennedy. Or in Contact, the mirror scene is a great use of compositing to achieve an effect.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:55 AM on December 8, 2023
Wasn't it optically composited to make matters even more confusing ;)
Way back when digital compositing took off capacities were quite limited compared to what have now and was often used to integrate together sources of images that were filmed. So in a sense, it's a computer manipulated image.
During the same time 3d modeling/animation/rendering was being used for compositing elements , but also for entire movies (pixar!) and cut scenes for games, and was already called CGI.
So early CGI was not often great, and early digital compositing could be awesome from the get go. This distinction probably cemented the difference in the people's mind and why we distinguish between those.
You wouldn't think Desperado from Robert Rodriguez as a CGI heavy movie, but it absolutely has a ton a digital effects in it, to save money or time and there were mostly simple add-ons or smart use of compositing.
In the same vein, Robert Zemeckis did a ton of those things in Forest Gump, but it's a bit more noticeable since we know Gary Sinise still has 2 legs and and that Tom Hanks never met Nixon or Kennedy. Or in Contact, the mirror scene is a great use of compositing to achieve an effect.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:55 AM on December 8, 2023
Now the wording of VFX vs CGI is not really good, and since it all ends-up chewed out by a computer nowadays, it really looks like you're splitting hairs if you try to make the distinction.
Mostly it's used as a signal that they put actors on an actual set, with actual objects & costumes they could react to, and even if the image was changed afterwards the performance is usually better and things looks more realistic on many levels (lighting integration, weight/physicality of things, .... ).
Now actors should remember what they saw on set and be able to notice that a whole lot of things were added and not say dumb things during interviews, but I'll give em the benefit of the doubt that and assume they were fed some marketing lines to use.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 12:04 PM on December 8, 2023
Mostly it's used as a signal that they put actors on an actual set, with actual objects & costumes they could react to, and even if the image was changed afterwards the performance is usually better and things looks more realistic on many levels (lighting integration, weight/physicality of things, .... ).
Now actors should remember what they saw on set and be able to notice that a whole lot of things were added and not say dumb things during interviews, but I'll give em the benefit of the doubt that and assume they were fed some marketing lines to use.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 12:04 PM on December 8, 2023
It seems like the core point that is very hard to dispute is that the line is extremely, irreparably blurred, because computers are ubiquitous and powerful.
Which means that “no CGI” is generally a marketing gimmick, but makes some of the specific counterexamples also feel like a bit of a stretch because, like, it’s stuff that’s been done forever, but done with computers.
posted by atoxyl at 12:07 PM on December 8, 2023
Which means that “no CGI” is generally a marketing gimmick, but makes some of the specific counterexamples also feel like a bit of a stretch because, like, it’s stuff that’s been done forever, but done with computers.
posted by atoxyl at 12:07 PM on December 8, 2023
Yeah I'm dumbfounded here, he's clearly talking about CGI. Is this other stuff just drive by nerd snark?
It is a distinction may have mattered more when the cameras - and the backgrounds! - were not also computers.
posted by mhoye at 1:36 PM on December 8, 2023
It is a distinction may have mattered more when the cameras - and the backgrounds! - were not also computers.
posted by mhoye at 1:36 PM on December 8, 2023
it must be incredibly galling if it’s your job.
it really is!!! we work so hard!
I think another reason artists get annoyed by the use of the term CGI, and want it to represent less of the industry, is that the actual term "computer generated imagery" feels pretty dismissive. It sounds like the computer is doing all the work. Admittedly, the software we use is amazing and super complex, but the artists are the ones really making it happen. It's like, if you paint a beautiful picture using acrylic paint, and someone calls it "acrylic generated imagery" as if it's the paint that arranged itself on your canvas without much help from you.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 2:08 PM on December 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
it really is!!! we work so hard!
I think another reason artists get annoyed by the use of the term CGI, and want it to represent less of the industry, is that the actual term "computer generated imagery" feels pretty dismissive. It sounds like the computer is doing all the work. Admittedly, the software we use is amazing and super complex, but the artists are the ones really making it happen. It's like, if you paint a beautiful picture using acrylic paint, and someone calls it "acrylic generated imagery" as if it's the paint that arranged itself on your canvas without much help from you.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 2:08 PM on December 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
It's like, if you paint a beautiful picture using acrylic paint, and someone calls it "acrylic generated imagery"
Some people might not appreciate OGI, but I can't wait to experience the oil generated imagery at the Sistine Chapel.
posted by clawsoon at 3:04 PM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
Some people might not appreciate OGI, but I can't wait to experience the oil generated imagery at the Sistine Chapel.
posted by clawsoon at 3:04 PM on December 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
if it's painted in egg tempera paint is it again CGI? (chicken generated imagery)
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 3:30 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 3:30 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
This term was coined in the 80s (or earlier) and made much more sense back then when your mr scene consisted of a plane and a few boxes and spheres. The computer did most of the work :)
I’ve written game and rendering engines and I’ll stick to what I used to say, our game looks good because we have great artists and support them, the tech enables but the real beauty comes from our artists.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 3:37 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’ve written game and rendering engines and I’ll stick to what I used to say, our game looks good because we have great artists and support them, the tech enables but the real beauty comes from our artists.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 3:37 PM on December 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
The real question is, are these workflows and lines distinct enough that IATSE can't represent everyone in VFX
Because really I only want to watch UGI, Union Generated Imagery
posted by eustatic at 5:26 PM on December 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
Because really I only want to watch UGI, Union Generated Imagery
posted by eustatic at 5:26 PM on December 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
Because really I only want to watch UGI, Union Generated Imagery
I can only imagine the psychopathic rage of VFX shop owners in this town if workers ever tried to unionize.
(I generated some of that psychopathic rage once, when I sent out an anonymous email telling all the employees how to report labour law violations, but that's a story for another day. The company tasked me with figuring out who the email sender was, and I regretted to report that the sender did a very good job of covering their tracks...)
posted by clawsoon at 6:14 PM on December 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
I can only imagine the psychopathic rage of VFX shop owners in this town if workers ever tried to unionize.
(I generated some of that psychopathic rage once, when I sent out an anonymous email telling all the employees how to report labour law violations, but that's a story for another day. The company tasked me with figuring out who the email sender was, and I regretted to report that the sender did a very good job of covering their tracks...)
posted by clawsoon at 6:14 PM on December 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
It's terrifying how so much journalism is (and always has been) in lock-step with business PR.
posted by brachiopod at 8:21 PM on December 8, 2023
posted by brachiopod at 8:21 PM on December 8, 2023
…my preceding comment was aimed at entertainment and business journalism.
posted by brachiopod at 9:17 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by brachiopod at 9:17 PM on December 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think another reason artists get annoyed by the use of the term CGI, and want it to represent less of the industry, is that the actual term "computer generated imagery" feels pretty dismissive.
It's funny... we now have truly computer-generated imagery, in the form of AI art, but the CGI company I'm working for recently set a policy that absolutely none of it should be used in our workflow except as reference. All of our art *must* be produced by humans, as a result of legal decisions that AI-produced art can't be copyrighted.
posted by clawsoon at 5:03 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's funny... we now have truly computer-generated imagery, in the form of AI art, but the CGI company I'm working for recently set a policy that absolutely none of it should be used in our workflow except as reference. All of our art *must* be produced by humans, as a result of legal decisions that AI-produced art can't be copyrighted.
posted by clawsoon at 5:03 AM on December 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
that's really interesting!
but that's a story for another day
clawsoon, I reeeeeeeeally want to hear that story
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 10:53 AM on December 9, 2023
but that's a story for another day
clawsoon, I reeeeeeeeally want to hear that story
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 10:53 AM on December 9, 2023
Wonka had very little green screen according to Hugh Grant and Timothée Chalamet. (Hilarious interview, by the way.)
posted by bbrown at 8:40 AM on December 15, 2023
posted by bbrown at 8:40 AM on December 15, 2023
bbrown: Wonka had very little green screen according to Hugh Grant and Timothée Chalamet. (Hilarious interview, by the way.)
Part of the point of the OP, though, is that modern CGI and VFX methods mean that you don't need green screen.
The actor can be on a set where they're interacting with all real stuff, and the viewer might end up seeing very little of that real stuff because it all gets seamlessly replaced with slightly better-looking CGI stuff.
Looking at the credits for Wonka, I counted 216 VFX artists. It's the biggest single group of people who worked on the film.
posted by clawsoon at 2:28 PM on December 15, 2023
Part of the point of the OP, though, is that modern CGI and VFX methods mean that you don't need green screen.
The actor can be on a set where they're interacting with all real stuff, and the viewer might end up seeing very little of that real stuff because it all gets seamlessly replaced with slightly better-looking CGI stuff.
Looking at the credits for Wonka, I counted 216 VFX artists. It's the biggest single group of people who worked on the film.
posted by clawsoon at 2:28 PM on December 15, 2023
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