Steve Crook

Good call, especially if you compare the crowd scenes in Gladiator to those in older films like A Matter of Life and Death and Ben-Hur and see which is the most convincing for the audience and which is the most cost-effective.

Steve

Johnny Rico

Have to agree :) That man was instrumental in moulding my Childhood Dreams with the fantastic machines of Gerry Anderson - Who can forget the Thunderbirds,Stingray....one of my favourites was the Fireflash( The Airliner that is steered by the Crew sitting in the Tail! )

Top Derek Meddings moment for me was from Stingray, where a " World Navy " Ship is hit and is literally Blown out of the Water!

Re - CGI v Models. I've never liked using the same plane lots of times - it always looks fake.

CGI if used subtly is fantastic. ( The flypasts of Titanic with hundreds of CGI people ) It allows Crowd scenes that would not be possible unless you had an army of extras...and yet , you can tell. A few more years and it will be impossible to spot the CGI

Couldn't You just try acting , Old Boy...It's so much easier

Steve Crook

"if used subtly"
So that eliminates the vast majority of it :)

It is an art as well as a technology

Steve

Cheeky Bob

He knew exactly why - he'd signed a lucrative contract with Universal, and felt that a cast-iron hit was the best way to show that he was a good investment.

It's one of the only examples of Scorsese deliberately making a film with an eye on the box office - and it worked, as it's still his second-biggest hit to date (probably still the most profitable, as THE AVIATOR cost infinitely more to make). This is a pretty big deal when you consider that every Scorsese film between TAXI DRIVER and THE COLOR OF MONEY had lost money - for all the critical acclaim, he was a financial risk, and he knew it.

And CAPE FEAR's success meant that it was that much easier to greenlight THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, a far more personal but less lucrative project.

So that's why!

PolarFred

As a CGI Artist, and new to the forum here, thought I'd best put in my two penny worth.
CGI environments can be, to put it simply, stunning !!!
And I notice that you are restricting yourselves to models, there are many many forms of CGI, matte painting, digital compositing, digital colour grading to name but a few.

There will be very very few films that do not contain CGI, even if they don't look like they contain CGI, because thats the paradox, the best CGI wil go un-noticed.

It is an interesting argument though, CGI-Miniatures v Real-Miniatures, and reaslistically it will depend on time, money, and practicability. If there is an older way of doing something, that hasn't yet been bettered, well then do it that way.

But also rememeber that the CG film industy is still very very young, not even 30 years old yet !!!

Anyway, I've had my little rant...now how about talking about some Brit-Movie-ANIMATIONS ???? We're pretty damm good at those too you know )

drunk_punk

i think in some cases models have more charm than c.g.i and give more character. For example the models of red dwarf and starbug used in red dwarf looked great even though you could tell that the light at the back of the model was a standard light bulb, it made me love it even more. The new c.g.i.red dwarf and starbug however looked ok but lacked the charm of the old models.

drunk_punk

can anyone recommend any good books or articles on the internet etc that deal with the topic miniatures vs c.g.i. ?? thanks

Steve Crook

When I mentioned matte painting like in Black Narcissus, that was before computers were used. It was all done by hand, the painting and editing it in.

Steve

PolarFred

This is true , matte paintings on glass have always fascinated me, however matte painting today is a totally different animal, thanks to CGI, background mattes can now be animated, have an element of depth to them (2.5d & moving cameras) and add much more to a shot, in fact bring it alive. The art of matte painting has simply evolved thanks to CGI.

ChristineCB

I have been impressed more with inanimate GCI objects than their model counterparts. The cartoonish Spiderman, Jurassic Park and Kong images do pretty well, though.

I think "insertion" is still a problem for my judgement system.

When I see something like TOY STORY (all GCI) or the Tim Burton/Ray Harryhausen stop-motions, I enjoy both, probably because I've suspended judgements of reality and I'm willing to 'play along' in whatever field they use.

Inserting cartoonishness into live action, though, has been problematic. The filmmakers that want us to pretend the Cartoon fits into the Real World but can't accomplish the feat deserve criticism for their failed choices.

In the next few months, I see that LOOKER is being released on DVD, a film which deals with replacing human actors with models, 20 years before Pacino's pretty-fun S1MONE took on that subject. LOOKER is a bit more film-noir than S1MONE, but one of those closet favorites of mine.

Trough

Whether it's a Harryhausen Harpy or a CGI Spidey, chances are you can usually tell it's still an effect. In that sense, nothing's changed: they're still used to tell a story, still an artform put to commercial use, still completed in a rush to reach deadline and budget, and still ultimately make the audience say, "Ooh, how clever they are for making that!" when really they should be saying, "Hmm, what an interesting twist in the plotline", or, better, nothing at all because they didn't know they'd seen the effect in the first place.

The best effects, they say, are the ones nobody notices. My favourite one has to be the shot of people boarding the seaplane in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. It was years before I discovered the sea was matted in and the plane was actually in the California desert.

:eek:

Steve Crook

Hear, hear.
One of my favourites is in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, in the First World War segment, there's a scene where he is driven up to a wooden bridge and there are the husks of bombed and shelled buildings on the other side of the river.

I've got some stills that show that that was the River Colne in the back lot of Pinewood studios and that really on the other side of the river was a nice field with some cows grazing in it.

Steve

barrington bond

With True Lies there were no CGI Harriers. All shots were created with two miniatures and a full size mockup (I believe by taking molds off a real Harrier). They may have been composited together on computer - the mockup live action shots were against greenscreen - and I think things like heat exhaust may have been CGI created.

Also I didn't think a real tanker was used in any shots for Spy Who Loved Me though I could be wrong about that.

Regards,
Barry

ChristineCB

This is great news - "no CGI Harriers" - because it's been one of my dreams to leap from an unfinished skyscraper onto Guv Ahnold's Harrier and clamber around the fuselage in-flight as he shot up Miami, LA or most other American cities. I wonder if this would be considered a re-election opportunity for him?

Who wouldn't want to participate in that?

Face it, it'd be a lot better than being Hank Azaria standing between Godzilla's toes on Lexington Avenue.

Johnny Rico

I notice that STAR TREK is having a revamp with CGI replacing some of the ropey old effects shots. I'm not sure that this will add to the enjoyment and may actually lessen it. After all the shonky effects were part of the charm;)

I wonder if other TV series or films will be revamped ? After all there are plenty of films with poor effects.

Perhaps they will CGI in more greasy hair for William Shatner ( as they had to for Kevin Costner in Waterworld! )

Couldn't You just try acting , Old Boy...It's so much easier