Project Hail Mary and not CG-stuffed? WHAT??? So they actually flew to the sun and found an actual rock alien in a huge space ship to film with? Because no, Rocky isn’t an actual puppet in every single scene. It’s mostly CG and so is the bubble around the guy. I despise this type of sensationalism so much because it spits and pisses on the work of dozens, if not hundreds of VFX artists doing heavy lifting to make movie magic happen. I haven’t watched Odyssey but I’ve seen all his other movies and Nolan himself said he’s heavily reliant on VFX in his acceptance speech at the VES awards 2011. This is a bunch of BS.
Rocky… Isn’t real? 🥺
Yeah Project Hail Mary was a good film but its bursting at the seems with computer generated graphics. The ship interiors, space, the planet, Rocky, Rocky’s ship, hell the fruit bowl is probably cg.
They had the full interior and most of the exterior as sets, but half the time walls and ceilings are removed to give space for the camera, lights, puppeteers, etc. It is full of CGI, but it all blends together seamlessly.
They CGI-d all the actor’s balls. For whatever reason that was important for the message.
“No CGI” is primarily dishonest marketing hype that actively minimizes the work of talented artists. Yes, they had a puppeteer steering a plastic ball around for Project Hail Mary, but they also replaced 100% of the practical ball with CG. Especially at a time when people are so opposed to AI because it devalues human art, I think it’s important to be aware of the other ways we devalue art that have nothing to do with AI.
This fantastic YouTube series done by a career FX artist does an excellent job of dispelling the marketing hype and recalibrating the conversation around CGI in movies.
Counterpoint, Godzilla Minus One was very well received and it’s 100% CGI. People aren’t against CGI, they are against shoddy work, which includes bad CGI.
Exactly. A great movie with a lot of CGI is still a great movie and a shit movie made entirely without CGI is still a shit movie.
A great movie with a lot of CGI is also great when you barely notice the CGI.
More like 60/40 CGI. There were still a lot of practical things in that movie.
Yeah, like actors. It’s definitely not as CGI as Shrek or Toy Story. I find it honestly really weird to call a live action movie “100% CGI” when there clearly are human actors on screen.
One of the shoddy things that audiences really don’t like (even if they struggle to put a name to it) is flat, boring lighting that’s super nice for post. All of these movies don’t have that.
Yeah. Most of the public simply doesn’t care. They just want a good movie\story.
100% CGI
Godzilla isn’t real? 😰
Yeah his name is Gojira
Of course Godzilla is, it just wasn’t available for filming because it had to pillage some east Pacific cities.
“they”, please.
Maybe it’s because I’m a non native speaker, but I thought this was only used for sentient beings?
Or I just don’t get the joke, possible as well.
I’m being somewhat silly, though possibly Godzilla identifies as enby.
Same and agreed, but possible that I’m Godzilla and I know better.
Not probable. Just not completely impossible.
That said, my tummy hurts, that last village had some sort of disease I think.
What makes you think Godzilla isn’t sentient?
I know almost nothing about it.
And it behaves like the rooster my granddad had.
Except the fire breath.
Hail Mary had a ton of CGI too. You can’t tell because enough is real that the actor behaves like it is, the camera moves as if it is, and the artists know what real looks like.
A major reason the first Transformers looks and feels as good as it does, even so long after it came out, is that the director has an incredible ability to imagine where something will be after the CGI pass. He could shoot entire action scenes with the camera behaving as if it was reacting to what actors did, not an empty street.
Godzilla Minus One was directed by someone with a background in CGI. We don’t want movies made by people who care about the movie. We want movies made by people who care about how the movie is made.
Yes and no. Correlation is not causation. Movies cost so much that consumers have to be picky. As a cost/benefit are you more likely to get your money’s worth from the Odyssey or Moana 2? If Moana 2 had more practical effects would it be a better movie?
A theater trip for a family of 4 can be ~$100. It is for my family where we live. That’s 1/3 the cost of a 55 inch TV, or a 65 inch TV at Black Friday, plus a big box of microwave popcorn.
If you want people to see the poorly written, phone-it-in, low effort remakes these studios are intent on putting out, you have to price it accordingly, or everyone walking out of the theater says the same thing: “Wow. That wasn’t worth it.”
People are still very willing to see well crafted, thought out, intentional pieces from direrectors or studios they trust to do a good job. It’s worth it.
They really took the wrong message.
What movie goers want to see is Matt Damon get lost and then find a way back.
In fact. Let’s just do this for real. Drop Matt Damon off in the remote wilderness with a backpack of supplies and a video camera. If he finds is way back to civilization, we can cut a movie from the footage he records.
We’ll let him take Les Stroud with him.
Pretty sure the people want to see Matt Damon get on his knees for a sexy transmasc twink
Por que no los dos?
Spoiler – Interstellar proves he doesn’t have to come back. Just getting lost is enough.
Hi, cinema nerd here. Both are hard work, and both are still art. What I think it really comes down to is the art style, and the actors’ response and training.
CG-effects tend to force actors to imagine two very different things when they interact, leading them to ignore or otherwise misinterpret things the audience will see. While for some, depending on their training, this can be fairly natural (stage players have to interact with imaginary scenery all the time), film actors tend to expect costars and sets they can see and touch, and this does affect the way they act in small ways.
What CG really helps with is it alleviates the burden on suited actors. Wearing a big bulky monster costume is a thing of the past for many lucky stunt actors, now that complex and difficult scenes that might require multiple takes can be done by a dude in a leotard and stilts instead of 80 lbs of yak hair.
I will say, I am absolutely thrilled to see movies like the Mandalorian and Project Hail Mary making puppetry mainstream again. I love love love puppets.
I love love love puppets.
On a completely unrelated side note. If you enjoy TT RPGS. There is a game called Sock Puppets. You have to create your sock puppet and then act out an episode of a failing kids tv show. 10/10 game.
Just waiting for the behind the scenes material on The Odyssey showing how they recreated the real longship entirely in CGI because it didn’t look right on the waves, and also added CGI dolphins while they were at it.
Also, I’m pretty sure the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea were turned grayish-brown with a computer.
Wine dark sea is historically accurate though.
Backrooms deserves a nod on this point too, at very least. It’s got truly brilliant set design and execution, among many other really strong points.
This is just ridiculous. Movie goers don’t give a shit how hard it is to make a movie.
Agree even the puppets that are made for practical filming often get fully replaced with CGI anyway. Its just people like to hear practical even if it is not true.
The inputs affect the outputs.
Practical effects generally need to be planned before filming and that planning seems to both force restraint on the director and planning of the shot, which forces the director to decide on the visuals early in the process.
Practical effects also generally helps the actors give better performances since there are more visual cues informing emotional states.
There is also an uncanny valley that CGI can still fall in.
I agree that audiences likely don’t care about the difficulty of the shot, but it seems to affect how audiences receive the output.
I know you’re using hyperbole, but that’s just factually untrue. I know many avid moviegoers who care about the craft just as much as the final product itself. Is it every one of my friends? No, absolutely not, some will still go see whatever Disney or MCU schlock is being put out now simply because of the brand label, but that’s far from the general consensus. I’m aware that this is all anecdotal, but still, please try to overgeneralize a little less; the more frequently half-true opinions like that are spouted, the more likely it is that they become the truth (at least in the eyes of the big studios)
Not delivering some Disney or Marvel schlock doesn’t have to mean the movie has to be hard to make.
As long as
a) it works as a whole movie
b) tells a compelling story
c) doesn’t look like someone vomited on the screen
I don’t care if it was made with practical effects or CGI.I don’t disagree with anything you said, and even if I did, you didn’t present your case with any unnecessary aggression, unlike that other guy. Good job buddy, you earn an A+ in “Talking respectfully to people” today 🙂
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Wow, wasn’t expecting that. You need any help removing that rose bush from your asshole? Because it’s clearly setting off some nerves and causing any rational parts of your brain to be replaced with unwarranted bouts of vitriol and rage. You should probably see a doctor before you lose any chance of becoming a respectable person ever again
Who pissed in your coffee this morning? This is a conversation about movies. It’s not a big deal.
The bean counters don’t seem to comprehend that the effort and work that goes into practical effects is part of the draw for people. Sure they go for the movie itself, but if it’s nothing but green screen the whole time, nothing feels truly at stake or at risk. You can’t convey the same intensity in CGI battles as you can in practical stunt work battles.
It’s similar to how I hate my job as a programmer now that we’re all forced to use AI. “But your job is easier now” - in ways maybe, but part of why I liked my job was because I had to solve problems myself hands-on. I didn’t need a robot trying to solve all of the problems. When you remove those stakes and the learning through building, you remove the essence of what made it appealing for people.
This describes why I love Lord of the Rings but hate The Hobbit.
Except, you know, LotR was had biggest CG battles in movie history up until that point and still ranks pretty high today. They definitely didn’t take the easy route by actually filming a lot of scenes outside while innovating on the CG front dramatically to make huge battles possible the likes of which were deemed nearly impossible at the time, though. There were some large innovations in the Hobbit movies too but they didn’t land. And yeah, too much green screens. They should’ve done it the hard way while still using just as much CG.
LOTR has tons of green screen and CGI. The Hobbit didn’t have the prep time that LOTR did, which meant they were figuring out what things looked like after shooting instead of before.
Basically every great effect film had tons of pre-production. You can’t figure it out in post and have it land.
You can’t convey the same intensity in CGI battles as you can in practical stunt work battles.
For this, I would contrast the space battles in older Star Trek series vs new ones. Back in the days when ships had to be physically modeled, space battles, except for the real series-defining ones, would have just a few space ships. You would probably know each ship by name and have seen some of its crew. They meant something. They seemed real. When you see a ship get destroyed, you’re just watching characters you saw earlier in the episode die. It makes the stakes feel real, as if these are real space ships crewed by actual people. But compare that to the battles seen in a show like Discovery. They’ll have massive space battles with giant armadas of nameless ships, none of which the audience cares at all about.
I think there was a time when CGI was new and novel, and the ability to depict massive battles without hiring and costuming thousands of extras was truly revolutionary. But the novelty has worn off. Big still has its place, but battles shouldn’t be big just for the sake of being big.
It probably has more to do with the director and people wanting to see good movies in general.
Watch this guy. Every modern movie you think was done practically probably has hundreds or thousands of CGI shots. Including moments where not a single practical thing is on screen. https://youtu.be/AFLcP-t0-kI
Of course, as your video points out: the general public can’t tell it’s cgi.
That’s a conclusion you could draw but it’s hardly proof! The other cited were a film-length conclusion to a tv series, an unnecessary live action remake of an animated movie, and another superhero movie. Another conclusion one could draw is that people don’t want derivative crap and don’t care how it’s made or what the budget is if it’s a good film. Or you could conclude it’s a success of viral marketing, or…
Yeah, I would rather say audiences are a little tired of the usual franchise stuff and unnecessary remakes.
This entire thread can be summed up with:
Art is art regardless of medium
More likely, folks just wanna see Nolan films
Well if you’ve got no LAN, gotta get out of the house for entertainment. /dadjoke
I have passed this joke on to the nearest parent. They scrutinized it for 7 seconds, pulled a firearm from their pocket and shot themselves on the head…
10/10 dad joke
This is also a good reason why I say late 80s/early 90s was peak cinema. Unique stories, practical effects and memorable music. I mean take 1993 alone: Jurassic Park, Schindlers List, The Fugative just to name a few.
That is a lot. And they’re still good for new viewers 30+ years later.
Well he could have made it a lot easier and cheaper by not doing it in 70mm imax, which adds absolutely fuck all for 99% of the audience. (Most people will see half he screen cause it is not even possible to watch it like he intends it). And I really doubt people go see the movie because of it, it’s a bonus if they can. He can do whatever the fuck he wants ofcourse but I find it a bit too much work for neglectable results.
The imax thing is more a “symptom” of Nolan’s dedication to his craft, which shows up in many other ways in his movies. A tiny fraction care he filmed it that way, but many more care about his general level of attention to quality.
Yeah and I appreciate attention to quality just fine. It’s just that most people will see half the screen.
The idea that you won’t see half the screen is a bit misleading. You’re making it sound like a movie that was designed to only work in IMAX and was then crudely cropped to fit a regular screen.
That’s absolutely not how this is done. Instead, they design each shot to work just fine on a regular screen. The IMAX just adds extra space and spectacle at the edges. You get a broader vista, but the actual scene and characters will be the same in both.
There are definitely a bunch of shots where the chop is pretty obvious. But they were shots where you are meant to feel a bit claustrophobic anyway so it was mostly fine. I think the only scene where it felt off was at the very end where the combat choreography felt like it was lacking some scale.
It’s just that most people will see half the screen.
OOOOHHHHH are you upset that the 70mm IMAX version isn’t available in your country?
Good job, you can read. I am saying that most people will be not be able to even choose that option in the world. So all that extra effort that makes it so much more expensive and slow is wasted on most of the audience. But apparently it’s a big nono to say something about it.
No, I’m linking your pissy attitude in here with your inability to see it in 70mm IMAX. It just makes sense now why you’re lashing out at people.
I’m sorry you can’t see it in the original format in your country.
Have fun. Now stop being an annoying cunt.
Go get a cup of coffee and chill the fuck out.
Well he could have made it a lot easier and cheaper
who cares?
Yeah exactly! So why make it so difficult?
Because the artists and the audience cares. Clearly.
and the audience cares
All the people who aren’t going to an Imax obviously don’t and that’s most of the audience in the world. Stop being a dick.
There’s still millions paying to see it.
I’m not the one out here calling people cunts.
I doubt the actors enjoyed working next to a very loud camera that can only record 3 minute takes max.
You don’t represent them either way.
You don’t represent nolan either, so stfu.
Like anything, I’d bet all of the actors involved have differing opinions on how the film was made. I’m sure there are quite a few that were excited to work on a project like this.
Have you had a cup of coffee yet this morning? You’re being quite grumpy.
I have no skin in this game, but I do know that they actually built special sound insulated cameras to be able to film dialog scenes in the format without soundstage problems.
Having seen it in 70mm imax, I probably agree with you.
So even the few people that could see the whole screen don’t care? I don’t even have the option in this country.
That’s one person, not everyone who saw it in IMAX.
Christ you’re annoying. Can’t I just criticise a pretentious asswipe in peace?
It’s Velma, so no. That person needs some serious mental help.
Over 23,000 tickets for the 70mm IMAX showings have sold.
Criticize him with accurate criticisms and you won’t get comments back haha
Is that more or less than the 1% I mentioned? I am not sure what you’re trying to say here. I don’t think I said anything inaccurate. He could have easily done it without.
Taking one person’s comment and extrapolating it to every person who saw the film in 70mm IMAX is so totally inaccurate haha.
He could have easily done it without, but he didn’t. He chose to film this way for a reason. You can call him pretentious and that’s fine, he might agree with you, but he still had artistic reasons to do so.
It’s ok if you personally don’t appreciate it. But other people DO appreciate it.
