Author: Lee Medcalf
Posted by: Root Rot
In Defense Of CGI. – Don’t Blame The Tools Blame The Workman
Hands up, how many of you have been deep in a discussion about your favourite movie only to be presented with an opposing view that runs along the lines of “But the special FX were rubbish! The CGI was so bad!”
I’d guess 100% of you have had this conversation or a variation of it. But is CGI really that bad? Is it really the bane of modern film making and more pertinently is it really worse than some of the visual FX we were subjected to prior to its arrival in the 90s?
Now before I start, full disclosure from the off, I am a VFX artist and have worked with some big companies such as Lucas film, Cartoon Network and some not so big, anyone remember the British publicly funded 1999 SF movie Legionnaires that never saw the light of day? No, thought not. However, my job does not bias my view that CGI is a truly fantastic film making tool and unfairly derided as the reason films are, for the most part, bland and uninteresting eye candy.
Since it exploded on to the cinematic landscape with some extremely high profile tests in quick succession (The Abyss in 1989, Terminator 2 in 1991 and Jurassic Park in 1993) CGI has enhanced the world of movies, presenting us with imagery that is, frankly, impossible to recreate convincingly by physical means. But like any tool, it can be over used and more than anything I believe it’s this ubiquity that is the actual problem for most movie audiences.
Let us take a look at the standard arguments;
CGI is unconvincing.
This is such a subjective argument and one that relies on a number of factors, least of all your emersion in the film itself, if you’re not convinced by the story line, the characters, the poor plotting, the editing, the script, the acting, its fair to say the CGI moments aren’t going to win you over no matter what they show. Also let’s think about this for a second, if someone shows you a 500ft monster like the beasts in Cloverfield or the upcoming Skyline, you’re never going to be convinced ever. After all, subconsciously you know such a thing couldn’t possibly exist. But on a purely technical level and removing the rose tinted specs for a moment be honest and ask yourself one thing. How convinced have you ever been about any monster you’ve seen on screen? Sure Willis Obrien’s King Kong was a fantastic achievement for the time, but more convincing than Peter Jackson’s version? Seriously, if you find someone who can legitimately back that opinion up, then get them into a rehab clinic because they’re on crack!
CGI is easy to spot.
Well is it really? Referring to point 1, it’s never going to be hard to spot the big CGI monster nor is it particularly tough to point out that gargantuan spaceship rolling overhead is CGI… I mean really, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to divine these from the pictures on screen. But, then look at something like Sex and the City 2! There were twenty six visual FX people on that job and a further nine special FX technicians, but where was the obvious CGI there? Similarly, Children of Men’s dystopian future used was created by two visual FX companies, Framestore and Double Negative and I defy you to spot even 50% of the shots they worked on and yes the baby is fully CG.
So ultimately, my point here is a comment like “CGI is easy to spot” is as patently obvious as saying, animatronic creatures or matte paintings are easy to spot. Hell, look at the first forty minutes of Return of the Jedi which looks like a hellish version of the Muppet Show. Pointing at that and saying “Hey I can see the puppets” its clearly a ridiculous statement and no more a valid criticism of the medium than looking at the T-Rex in Jurassic Park and saying “Hey that’s CG look how obvious it is!”
CGI is badly done.
Okay this one is a particular bugbear of mine; How, precisely is it badly done? The “badly done” comment is one that baffles me, because last time I looked most people who make those comments wouldn’t know one end of a copy of Autodesk Maya from another. In fairness, I understand when a shot is so obviously unfinished that it stands out like a sore thumb, but the question at this point becomes one of semantics. You see, CGI in this case is 3D visual FX and as already discussed, the shot can just be plain obviously not real by dint of the fact you’re seeing something that couldn’t possibly be real. However, there are a number of other factors that will make a shot stand out as badly done which have little baring on the quality of the CG itself. Colour grading, a process which effectively ensures, things like darker colours are all the same tone can heavily affect the look of a shot. Compositing, the gathering of all the shot elements and sticking them together in one frame also can affect the shot. There are a thousand little things that can make that CG monster stand out in the wrong way, but for the most part it is not actually the CG itself that is at fault. If your object has shadows that have a tint of green in them and the director changes the shot to a sunny day in the desert then of course the object is going to stand out like a sore thumb.
That said, none of this is taken into account by Joe Public, they just notice the shot and instantly its “badly done” which is a lazy catch all sweeping statement and by that measure, the Blaine creature at the end of The Thing is also “badly done” because the stop motion was easily spotted and the colour grade suddenly makes all the snow become a weird shade of gray.
CG lacks the “soul” of older visual FX work
One word for you; Gollum.
More words? Okay, there is a theory that the closer visual FX comes to reality the more the mind subconsciously rebels against the image on screen. It’s a theory called “the uncanny valley”. So when you see something clearly unreal in a real setting, your mind rejects the image as being fake or somehow dead inside. Our brains perceive billions of tiny nuances that CG is slowly replicating and getting better at it, but until that day, you’ll see a CG human and reject it as an effect because of that lack of subtlety. But before you jump up and shout “Aha! And that’s why CGI is bobbins” lets just stop you there. Take a look at the notorious chestburster scene from Alien, sure the acting from John Hurt was amazingly convincing, as was Veronica Cartrights scream at a face full of blood, but the creature itself? Once it scooted across the Nostromos dinner table it was clearly an unconvincing sock puppet. Similarly Gigers adult creature in the same film only succeeded in not looking like “a bloke in a suit” thanks to Ridley Scotts efforts to keep it hidden and filmed close up. Another example is the “eye repair” scene from The Terminator when Arnie is checking out his terminator eye in the mirror after plopping out his human eye, the T800’s head is about as real as a shop dummy. Arnie pops up again in Total Recall in the shot when he removes the fat lady mask in Mars airport customs, if you think that lumpy wonky thing looked anything like Schwartzenegger or portrayed any kind of life in those eyes I would like a hit of whatever you’re smoking there.
All of his nitpicking amounts to one very big point, that CGI is not better or worse than physical effects. Like anything, it is a tool, one that is prone to over use or misuse but is not the cinematic boogyman everyone would have you believe. For every awful Jar Jar Binks or Licker from Resident Evil crapping on the CGI world, there is an equivalent physical effect that proves animatronics can be just as bad, if not worse, when similarly abused. Yet, what gives physical models and animatronics a pass is their place in history and the accompanied rose tinted specs of the viewer.
For example, to this day there are millions of fans of Toho’s Godzilla, which is clearly a man in suit rampaging around a model village, who will swear night is day that the creature is more convincing than the one in the US remake. Something that is almost entirely down to the fans perception of the lacklustre film, rather than the quality of the effects which, when looked at objectively, are infinitely superior to the original which was something that has the production values of an average YouTube clip. And in many ways it’s this lack of objective standpoint, which remains CGI biggest downfall, the modern day equivalent of your parents or grandparents wistfully reminiscing how things were better in their day, yet ignoring the all the negative things of their time.
As a film goer, I am constantly astounded by the FX work in modern films and TV, regardless of the final product and feel that there is no difference between sitting there in the theatre gawping at something emotionally hollow yet visually spectacular as, say, Michael Bay’s Transformers and sitting there mouth agape at John Carpenters The Thing. The true difference in those films comes down to the utilisation of the tools at hand and the quality of the film making.
In the final analysis, who cares how these images are created as long as they work well and are used for a reason of storytelling instead of the only reason for the films existence.
CGI is not the death knell of creative film making, quite the opposite. Its empowering film makers to work without constraint, and without the technology, some of the finest films in the past 15 years could not have been realised so strikingly, all it needs now is some maturity to utilise it effectively.
Related Witch’s Hat links
Special Effects (Pro Physical FX) post
Other The Great Debates of Horror post
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