{"id":3659,"date":"2013-11-06T00:00:39","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T05:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=3659"},"modified":"2013-11-08T01:56:44","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T06:56:44","slug":"special-effects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/special-effects\/","title":{"rendered":"Special Effects: Why They Look Right When They Look Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JAS001CA\"
\nThe late, great Ray Harryhausen. (1920-2013)<\/em><\/p>\n

When I was a little kid my grandpa showed me King Kong<\/a>, the 1933 one.\u00a0 King Kong doesn’t look real, but it looks good, because it looks right.\u00a0<\/i> Looking \u2018right\u2019 is the key.<\/p>\n

Special effects are perhaps film\u2019s biggest point of separation from the other arts.\u00a0 In literature, if you want a monster in your story, you just describe it.\u00a0 But a movie has to convince you what you’re looking at is real, even when you\u2019re looking at the most not real things humans can dream up.\u00a0 This takes a perfect synthesis of human imagination, technology, and innovation.
\n
\nThere’s this big controversy of Practical Effects vs CGI.\u00a0 For those unfamiliar with the lingo, practical effects are filmed objects and\/or actual effects created on set.\u00a0 CGI stands for Computer Generated Images, and makes up much of what you see on screen these days.<\/p>\n

On the Citizen Kane<\/a> commentary, the late great Roger Ebert loved to point out that Kane boasts as many effects shots as Star Wars<\/a>.\u00a0 And he’s right, and this is neat.\u00a0 Star Wars is synonymous with effects because George Lucas has literally built an empire that changed the way movies are made.\u00a0 Ironically, he did so to better serve movies like Citizen Kane where effects need to be inconspicuous.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example: Lucas used the Young Indiana Jones<\/a> series as a proving ground for many of the effects concepts he trail-blazed, for instance, the modern crowd shot.\u00a0 In the olden days, if you needed a large crowd you had to hire a thousand extras and put them in costumes and feed and direct them all day.\u00a0 (In fact, there’s a famous story of Kubrick giving direction on a bullhorn to an extra in a crowd in Spartacus<\/a>\u2014the extra turned out to be a dummy which they rigged with wires to achieve the movement Kubrick wanted.)\u00a0 To avoid all that wasted time and money, Lucas and his team (mostly his team) figured out that you could generate a crowd in the computer and multiply them in any way you like.\u00a0 It’s a simple effect, and completely unnoticeable since those characters are out of focus in the deep background.\u00a0 Little, imperceptible effects like this make up Citizen Kane, and are the nuts and bolts of everyday filmmaking, whereas the big flashy stuff is just for fun.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, almost everything except the actors is fake.\u00a0 In Titanic<\/a>, the puffs of breath coming from the actors mouths in the cold were fake. (Orson Welles shot The Magnificent Ambersons<\/a> on a cold soundstage to achieve the same effect.) In Forrest Gump<\/a>, the gun flashes <\/b>were fake. Hell, pretty much every<\/i> gun flash in every<\/i> movie is fake.\u00a0 But they don’t look fake, they look real, and nowadays, any kid in their basement can make ones that look just as real on any over-the-counter editing program.\u00a0 These types of simple effects look fine because they’re small things that occur naturally in real life.\u00a0 We really do have guns and they really do make a flash when they shoot.\u00a0 Not seeing it happen on screen would look fake.<\/p>\n

But what about stuff that isn\u2019t real, like an alien or a dinosaur?\u00a0 In the olden days, they built these things, and to get them to move they used stop-motion animation, and it looked awesome.\u00a0 Ray Harryhausen was a fucking genius.\u00a0 The skeleton sword fight scene in Jason and the Argonauts<\/a> really does look great.\u00a0 It doesn’t look real<\/i>, but that’s ok, because it’s not real anyway.\u00a0 It only has to look right<\/i>.<\/p>\n

When they started making Jurassic Park<\/a>, they were using stop motion, and it looked awesome.\u00a0 They show test footage on the DVD, and it looks awesome.\u00a0 But then they developed CGI that could be used to make a dinosaur. The movie is a combination of that, as well as animatronics, and in several scenes the integration is seamless and looks completely real.\u00a0 The T-Rex eating the car scene looks insane.\u00a0 There\u2019s basically a dinosaur walking around for real, and you can tell which shots are robotic and which are CGI, but it doesn’t matter.\u00a0 The angles, editing, and lighting just make it look real.<\/p>\n

However, later in the movie when the Brontosaurus sneezes on Lex, they are again using a combo of robotics and CGI, but they both look fake.\u00a0 When the dinosaur head is seen from over the shoulder coming into the frame and eating the leaves, it looks like a big fake head being pushed into the shot.\u00a0 Then, on the reverse, in the close up, it looks like a big computer-generated dinosaur head.\u00a0 However, you’re never \u2018taken out of the scene\u2019 as is the phrase when effects become distracting.\u00a0 It’s because good dialogue lets you watch what’s happening and not be concerned with the realness of dino heads.<\/p>\n

The idea here is that the argument of CGI vs. animatronics and practical effects is moot when you have a good story.\u00a0 Star Wars is the perfect example.\u00a0 People were mad to see a CGI Yoda in the new ones, but Lucas had a great point when he said (and I’m paraphrasing) \u2018I don’t get the argument that puppets are better when they’re both fake?\u2019.<\/p>\n

There are puppets and model shots in the original Star Wars films that look awful, and there are ones that look 100% real.\u00a0 In the 1997 special edition, there are shots that look 1000% better after being cleaned up, and there are shots that look way, way worse.\u00a0 As I said before, the ultimate problem with any special effect that has to do with a spaceship or an alien or whatever is that these things are not real.\u00a0 By inventing them, you are already at a disadvantage because you have to convince somebody that the fake thing they’re looking at is real.\u00a0 In the olden days of 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/a> and Star Wars, they filmed models.\u00a0 Since the models themselves are real objects, they tend to look real.\u00a0 But sometimes you’ll see model shots in crappier movies that look terribly fake. Basically, if you only remember the best examples, then practical effects look great.<\/p>\n

A lot of times a computer-generated spaceship looks fake simply because <\/i>there is no object there.\u00a0 Without an actual object to photograph, you lose all semblance of reality, and the object just looks flat or like some kind of video game hologram thing.\u00a0 Certainly between 1933 and 2007, there have been incredible advances in effects.\u00a0 By sheer lines of resolution, 2007’s King Kong<\/a> looks leagues better.\u00a0 But, sometimes it doesn’t.\u00a0 Sometimes it still looks comically bad, in the same way that it sometimes did back in 1933.<\/p>\n

I’ve heard people say the effects in Terminator 2<\/a> look dated.\u00a0 But who’s to say exactly what a person made of liquid metal would look like when they morphed into a human?\u00a0 It looks pretty fucking good to me.\u00a0 I think the coolest and most effective shot in the movie is when the Terminator cuts into his own arm and peels the skin off to reveal the robot arm.\u00a0 As the shot begins, it’s a very simple makeup gag, but it\u2019s effective because what’s happening is dramatically interesting.\u00a0 And that’s really the most important thing.<\/p>\n

Yoda was a compelling character in Empire because he carried a lot with him, and said cool things.\u00a0 You didn’t notice that he was a goofy looking muppet thing because Frank Oz made him believable.\u00a0 The reason people didn\u2019t like Yoda in the new movies wasn\u2019t because he was CGI, it was because he was less fun and the movie was less fun too.<\/p>\n

Things can look right by virtue of a good story or good photographic techniques.\u00a0 However, there is a margin of error.\u00a0 Some great movies have some less-than-stellar effects, and some shitty movies have kick-ass effects shots.\u00a0 But we’re all much more ready to forgive a good movie with bad effects than the other way around.\u00a0 If Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull<\/a> were good, nobody would care that the CGI monkeys looked stupid.\u00a0 And since Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/a> is awesome, we all love the crazy looking melting head at the end where they obviously just have a dummy with some shit pouring down its face.<\/p>\n

Basically, the people clamoring for practical effects are nostalgia junkies who need everything to be the way it was when they were six because it was \u2018all so much better\u2019.\u00a0 And the people blindly dashing toward a future where actors are replaced by hologram things that follow key-framed notations by Mac computers are also missing the point.\u00a0 As with most things, salvation lies somewhere in the middle.<\/p>\n

P.S. – The effects in Avatar<\/a> were actually so great that people had to nitpick the story, which they would’ve praised in a less good looking movie.\u00a0 And, the truth is, spectacle sells tickets.\u00a0 Titanic wasn’t just beloved because it was a great love story, it was beloved because it looked fucking awesome.\u00a0 Most of the highest grossing movies ever made are effects-heavy because with whimsy and adventure comes ghosts and goblins and aliens and explosions.\u00a0 Jaws<\/a>, Star Wars, ET<\/a>, Jurassic Park, Titanic, Avatar\u2014all movies that broke box office records.<\/p>\n

P.P.S. – The alien in Signs<\/a> doesn’t look great, and Shaymalan was never happy with it, but when I’m bawling my eyes out because I’m so engrossed in the best movie ever put on screen, I don\u2019t care.\u00a0 The scene is great, and that\u2019s all that matters.<\/p>\n

P.P.P.S – There’s a shot in The Gate<\/a> that looks really fucking cool.\u00a0 If you’ve seen it, you know the shot I’m talking about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"JAS001CA\"
\nThe late, great Ray Harryhausen. (1920-2013)<\/em><\/p>\n

When I was a little kid my grandpa showed me King Kong<\/a>, the 1933 one.\u00a0 King Kong doesn’t look real, but it looks good, because it looks right.\u00a0<\/i> Looking \u2018right\u2019 is the key.<\/p>\n

Special effects are perhaps film\u2019s biggest point of separation from the other arts.\u00a0 In literature, if you want a monster in your story, you just describe it.\u00a0 But a movie has to convince you what you’re looking at is real, even when you\u2019re looking at the most not real things humans can dream up.\u00a0 This takes a perfect synthesis of human imagination, technology, and innovation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,17],"tags":[1864,3096,2394,3098,566,1914,1915,2673,996,576,3104,3106,668,70,660,3103,3102,3105,1839,3097,1880,71,835,3100,124,836,588,3095,709,3101,496,3099],"class_list":["post-3659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-gregsessays","tag-2001-a-space-odyssey","tag-animatronics","tag-avatar","tag-cgi","tag-citizen-kane","tag-e-t","tag-et","tag-forrest-gump","tag-george-lucas","tag-indiana-jones","tag-indiana-jones-4","tag-indiana-jones-and-the-kingdom-of-the-crystal-skull","tag-jason-and-the-argonauts","tag-jaws","tag-king-kong","tag-king-kong-2007","tag-king-kong-remake","tag-kingdom-of-the-crystal-skull","tag-orson-welles","tag-practical-effects","tag-raiders-of-the-lost-ark","tag-ray-harryhausen","tag-roger-ebert","tag-spartacus","tag-special-effects","tag-stanley-kubrick","tag-star-wars","tag-stop-motion-animation","tag-terminator-2","tag-the-magnificent-ambersons","tag-titanic","tag-young-indiana-jones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3659"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3677,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3659\/revisions\/3677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}