How do you feel about CGI and why?

[bassman]

The only dodgy bit that stands out for me is when the T-1000 is in the walking shiny shop dummy form,and he's walking like he's shat himself I thought the CG T-1000 walked exactly like Robert Patrick. (Hrmm.....after checking IMDB for that dude's name, I found out that he's the brother of Richard Patrick, the former NIN guitarist, singer of Filter, and singer of Army of Anyone. Imdb sure does teach ya useless sh*t, doesn't it?)

[coma]

I thought the CG T-1000 walked exactly like Robert Patrick. He did, probably because they rotoscoped it. I forgot T2,CGI was in its infancy then,yet on the whole it looks so much better than todays efforts despite todays technology being light years ahead of T2! There may have been earlier examples but that was the first one I was aware of. I think it's pretty much perfect. All SFX have moments of imperfection, if you can only pick a couple of small things they did a good job. Also CGI allows one to make films that just would never get made without it. LOTR wouldn't have been made without CGI. Star Wars sucks not because of CGI but because od truly bad writing and truly bad taste. If the writing was at the level of the original trilogy and the same good taste no one would be complaining. Movies like 300 bother me because every single thing is generated and artificial. The colors, shadow, everything is totally fake and I find that extremely distracting. Its not a space movie, its about Earth. And being I am familiar with Earth I know what it's supposed to look like. Blood CGI is lame. You can always tell the difference . I think it's just laziness. Alot of CGI use is anal retentive geeks using it when they can like a kid with a new toy, they dont care if it's appropriate becasue they lack taste.

[MinionZombie]

The Abyss - that had a CGI water thingy in it, not sure if there was any CGI prior to that...

[EvilNed]

Tron.

[DjfunkmasterG]

Didn't ghostbusters use a little CGI for some stuff. I mean nothing like we have today, but some of that was CG. Also lets not forget even in 1977 Star Wars was shot against Green Screens.

[bassman]

Nah, I think "Ghostbusters" was all done the old school way. At least, I don't remember seeing anything about them using CGI and I've read through "Making Ghostbusters" several times.(by the way, see if you can find that book on Ebay. It covers just about every aspect of the creation of the film. It's also a valuable collector's item. Cool stuff.)

[7feet]

Deej- Star Wars was blue screen, worked better on film, as that was all strictly old choll optical printing. No computers whatsoever. The only computers used in the FX were the old first of the line PCs, probably running at about 4 MHz, on the motion control cameras. Green screen was just for TV news backgrounds and such at the time, and even that was an analog video process. Pretty much the same deal for Ghostbusters. I'm really torn about CGI. It can look great in the right hands, under the right circumstances. But a lot of films are going to age really badly. I bloody hate it for the fact that it's killed vast swaths of my possibilities for doing cool work. In the 80's and early 90's I got to do a lot of pretty cool makeup FX and animatronic work for films, TV, commercials. These days, 99% of the potential work is automatically CGI. At least in NY, there isn't really any major FX shops. What's left is almost all in LA, and since I can't tolerate that town, from my own selfish little POV I think it sucks a big sloppy knob. It's progress, I know, everything changes. But it seems to be the lazy solution for most producers, and mad cheap too. Why pay someone who spent years honing their skills when you can hire an intern with 6 months of experience on their bootleg copy of 3DS Max to bust it out for a pittance. Yeah sure, theres a wee bit o' bitterness there, but whatever, theres no going back. That said, computers are a straight up boon to a lot of areas of makin' movies. Never again having to use a badly maintained Steenbeck to edit is fine by me. Same for digital compositing, you can do stuff in 5 minutes that would take you weeks on an optical printer. It's just the massive, gratuitous use of CGI that sticks in my craw.

[DVW5150]

I couldnt tell there was CGI blood in Land , only after hearing the commentary by GAR . I thought the blood spatters were a good addition myself . They added a wound to Darios daughter after she had gotten scathed . But I appreciate 7feets POV ... Jabba the Donut looked sooo bloody lousy talking to Han in the (re)damaging of Star Wars . Also , Lucas released a new version of THX-1138 , added some GCI and ruined it ! MY God there is nothing sacred ... BTW , I love rotoscope ... Scanner Darkly . They might as well GCI "Logans Run" ... my God , whats happened to practical effects?

[DjfunkmasterG]

like 7 feet said why should they pay him $10K when they could get it for $1K. However, 7 feet, you know you will always have a job in the cheapo indie community. Those of us prefer the real thing. We only use CG for small stuff like muzzle flash.

[coma]

We only use CG for small stuff like muzzle flash. which is awesome cause you can go Guerilla style with Fake guns and no premits/Insurance. Just dont get shot by cops who are unaware

[Danny]

now i dont know about you but the yoda puppet form empire looks way more realistic than that modly haggis in a bathrobe from episode 2

[coma]

now i dont know about you but the yoda puppet form empire looks way more realistic than that modly haggis in a bathrobe from episode 2 I Loves me a puppet! I say throw the prequels in the goddamn toilet and just pretend they dont exist.

[capncnut]

God wasn't Attack of the Clones just the most mindnumbingly boring load of old pigs bollocks that you've ever seen? Who the hell gave Haydn Christensen the job man? "Lousy acting is ruining saga."

[7feet]

Hehe, he said 10 grand... Yeah, if it wasn't for indies I probably wouldn't get my fix of blowin' sh*t up real good. And in a lot of cases (like if I think the project would actually turn out good and be seen), I'd probably go for what some of the CGI folks would charge, and give 'em something with 8 pounds of solid brass balls just to get my fix. Then I have to go back to whorin', but as long as I get to do some mad cool stuff on occasion, I'm all right with it. With Yoda, it wasn't just the puppet (which was well done), it was the puppeteer. Frank Oz is great, and there's a big difference between a master puppeteer behind the gear and a mathematical transformations on a motion captured human form. An example of using old school techniques to give CGI some life is Phil Tippet. He did the stop motion on Star Wars and Empire. When he started doing CGI, one of their primary ways of getting the characters to move was to build the equivalent of stop motion armatures with digital encoders at all the joints, and have really good stop motion animators come in and animate the movement they gave to the CGI. Killed the sterility you can often find in computer animated movement.

[MinionZombie]

Aye I don't remember hearing anything about GB being CG, all old school style. And while the effects are dated today (while some are still pretty nifty), it's the spirit, acting, story and over all greatness of the film that brings that now-a-bit-dodgy special effects to life and allow you to still believe in them. Mind you, some cretinous young'uns would probably just call it "gay" and piss off to play a game wildly too violent for their single digit age range...