The good CG/bad CG thread.

[Cheebs]

I think we can all agree that CG can really ruin a scene. I'm going to go further and say it can ruin a scene in a way that cheesy models/stop motion/blue screen never could. I just can't put my finger on the "why". Why is an obviously unrealistic effect so much more tolerable and maybe even charming when pulled off with a muppet, corn syrup, and a model airplane?

Part of me wants to say it's just us wanting what we can't have. Maybe if CG came first in some bizzarro universe we'd be bitching about cheesy animatronics when they took over for good in bizzarro 1995.

But then the larger part of me thinks that the pre-CG stuff genuinely did look better. And again I'm back to the "why" because on all accounts CG is way more flexible in its movement and appearance.



I guess I'll start by breaking down "good CG" and "bad CG".

The easiest place to find good (great) CG is in a Pixar film. From inorganics in "Toys" and "Cars" to cartoon people in "The Increadibles" and organics of all sorts in "Monsters Inc". Those movies are 100% awesome and I would never trade them for cell animated equivalents. So... Is all-CG the answer instead of a CG/live mix? Beowulf says "no".

Then there are the "traditional" movies that pull it off. As many have said in the Indy 4 thread, "The Matrix" is a great example. The rippling window in the helicopter crash scene stands out in my mind as particularly awesome. But I think the key here is that the effects "The Matrix" became known for are strictly based on tricky photography with an army of real cameras. There's no way "bullet time" would have been anywhere near as impressive if it were done in CG.

But what about movies where CG is the signature effect? How 'bout the granddaddy of them all: "T2". The CG in "T2" is primitive and shoved in the audience's face to boot. But to this day I think it's awesome. Sure it was pure effects show-boating, but it also drove the story. The T-1000 just isn't the T-1000 without it. And T2 was also nice enough to give us the makeup, prosthetics, crashes, and explosions the rest of the time.

But then here comes "T3". Without getting into the merits of the movie itself (I love it personally (damn, I just got into the merits of the movie)), the CG contained within is more offensive while being less "in your face". I think the giant crane truck crashing is the prime offender. It pulls you out of the scene despite trying to not look like CG while the T-1000 in all of it's obvious CG glory sucked you into the scene. So, is the answer that CG should stick to things that "look like" CG and leave the real stuff to real stuff?

Forrest Gump has something to say about that. The amputation effects, ping pong balls, and digitized crowds never once pulled me out of a scene.

So I'm left scratching my head. Why does CG fail so badly when it does fail? What should it be used for? Why does it work when it does work?

[George]

The CG Clone Wars series I've been seeing previews for it pretty failtastic. The stylized physical traits of the characters are just awful. I have nothing against it in principle but the execution in this case is just awful.

[Dolemite]

CG, with rare exceptions (say, Iron Man), always stands out as being very obvious and affects my suspension of disbelief. I'm a fan of using live-action, physical effects as often as possible and merely accentuating it with CG. Of course, certain things can only be achieved with CG, and I'm all for that, but whenever you can have an actor interacting with and playing off of a real live prop, it only serves to enhance the realism. If you can tell the actor was just stating into a blank space during filming it's just not the same.

That said, the best CG I've ever seen was probably in Iron Man. I honestly had trouble telling where the live-action props started and the CG ended, it was that good. Transformers was pretty great in that respect as well. And it still blows my fucking mind how well T2 still holds up after all these years.

Pixar does amazing CG, but their films are all-CG cartoons so I can't say how good they are at doing truly photo-realistic stuff. It's still impressive how expressive their characters are, however.

Worst CG that comes to mind was probably John Carpenter's Escape from L.A. That was embarrassingly bad.

As many have said in the Indy 4 thread, "The Matrix" is a great example. The rippling window in the helicopter crash scene stands out in my mind as particularly awesome. But I think the key here is that the effects "The Matrix" became known for are strictly based on tricky photography with an army of real cameras. There's no way "bullet time" would have been anywhere near as impressive if it were done in CG.

Agreed 150%. I'll take jury-rigged real effects and tricky camera work over excessive CG any day.

[Dyne]

So... Is all-CG the answer instead of a CG/live mix? Beowulf says "no".

god, i HATED Beowulf for exactly the reason you liked it (or did you say it didn't work? i couldn't understand what you meant). the animation at times was more jarring than Polar Express. times of beauty paired with times of the Madden games for the PS2. alien eyes, fake looking faces, stilted and wooden facial expressions/movements. i forced myself through that movie.

i will say that for whatever reason, T2 is still an awesome movie and considering how long ago it came out, the liquid metal effect is still impressive and believable.

[YellerDog]

I think by and large, CG in Live Action that is really good is also used sparingly, to connect the dots between physical effects that just flat-out can't be done any other way.

Where CG often fails is when the director decides to use it gratuitiously and attempts a digital hail-mary with every sequence. This is happening a LOT lately.

Even Iron Man's cg fell apart when it tried to go beyond the set limits for that particular film. Remember how fake-as-hell Tony Stark's exposed arm was in that last fight? If the script has you doing things that your effects team can't handle, change the script.

[Mr-K]

I think CG takes away the wonder of "How'd they do that??" because the answer is always "Some dude did it with a computer."

I don't really mind CG, but I think for the most part it... just looks like CG. I think it is best used to clean up practical effects rather than just relying on it completely. I thought the cleaned up practical effects in the TOS Special Editions looked pretty good, at least the space scenes.

Human modeling with CG have always looked like shit, it never looks fucking real at all.

And as for practical effects looking bad but being okay, I think it's because it seems like there's more effort involved. Take the mine car scene in Temple of Doom. Those are straight up fucking dolls in that mine car, but holy shit look at the detail in the model! It looks bad because it's limited technology, with CG looking bad it just seems lazy.

Then there's the whole "feeling like watching a video game" problem. It simply adds up to the fact that's there's nothing organic to hold on to which makes it lose it's wow factor. I haven't had a wow factor with a movie's special effects in forever.

Jurassic Park for example. The dinosaurs in that movie still have wow factor, because holy shit they were actually there. They were kick ass, realistic puppet things with questionable CG in between.

But maybe it's just because every special effects company isn't WETA. LOTR was crammed with CG and I didn't have a problem with it. Same thing with Iron Man, the only time I questioned the CG in that movie was when RDJ had his mask lifted and was interacting with other CG elemenets.

[Advocate]

To piggy back off of what Dole said. Iron Man looked so good, cause the suits that were used were real. They then overlayed the CG on top. Thereby making the suit more real and the add on CG not look so out of place. If films are to make CG heavy movies, they need to still use the old fashioned prostectics(sp?).

[Dolemite]

Even Iron Man's cg fell apart when it tried to go beyond the set limits for that particular film. Remember how fake-as-hell Tony Stark's exposed arm was in that last fight?

I didn't notice this, and I've seen the movie 4 times. I thought the arm looked fine.

[YellerDog]

Maybe it just looked fake-as-hell to me. I'm supposed to look for that shit.

No it didn't look fine. Which is what the thread's about, yes?

[Ryan]

To piggy back off of what Dole said. Iron Man looked so good, cause the suits that were used were real. They then overlayed the CG on top. Thereby making the suit more real and the add on CG not look so out of place. If films are to make CG heavy movies, they need to still use the old fashioned prostectics(sp?).

Not all the time.

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_...?story_id=4510

CG is just a tool. If something looks like shit, it looks like shit, it doesn't matter how it was done.