To all you who claim that special effects were better before CGI

[Smygskytt]

The internet has the opinion that special effects were better without computers. I also hate bad CGI, but I also hate bad practical effects. To me. it seems the internet has forgotten just how stupid most practical effects were before computers, so I will remind it now.

Here is the big showdown with the dragon from the Swedish comedy Appelkriget, from 1971. The plot is about a how German tycoon, Volkswagner, wants to turn an idyllic little Swedish town into "Deutshneyland", a big holiday attraction for German tourists. The comedy is about how the locals all try to stop it (it involves witchcraft and dragons gold). And boy are the special effects terrible, I mean just watch it. And then hit yourselves with a big stick to the forehead:

Spoiler: Behold the glorious dragon!!!

I love how the hero has his shirt ripped open and blood all over his chest. It may even have been exciting, had the dragon not made me want to kill myself seconds earlier.

 

[Saelune]

It was mostly due to the transitional period of CG, which I feel we are quite past at this point. There certainly is a stigma though, but most stuff will look silly decades from now, even most of the good stuff. Sometimes its charming though, like in TOS Star Trek and the original Star Wars Trilogy.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Are you really going to point to a Swedish comedy as the typical standard for practical effects? That's... laughable.

Practical effects and CGI are both best when they work together. Each has their strength. Perhaps one of the better examples of this, classically, is Terminator 2, where both were used to fantastic effect.

...I cannot find a good youtube video it seems. Oh well.

 

[Smygskytt]

It was mostly due to the transitional period of CG, which I feel we are quite past at this point. There certainly is a stigma though, but most stuff will look silly decades from now, even most of the good stuff. Sometimes its charming though, like in TOS Star Trek and the original Star Wars Trilogy.

I think you can very well use use CGI for scenery, but uing it for stunts should be banned. Watching fighting scenes in hollywood movies is boring, and I believe the CGI made directors forget how to create a dramatic fight. Duelling in spaghetti westerns consisted of two blokes staring at each other for five minutes, and then one shot went off. The duels had a real tension though. This tension was entirely created through camerawork, and that made them "cinematic".

The problem for me is how people conflicts the use of CGI to create background, and to clutter up action scenes. What then happens is that to much focus is given to animation, too little to cinematography

 

[Smygskytt]

Are you really going to point to a Swedish comedy as the typical standard for practical effects? That's... laughable.

No, I used it to show just how bad practical effects could end up. There are certainly more horrible effects in hollywood movies (and my mind always play a Wilhelm scream when I see one of them). Take a look at the fall of the doll in the finale of Robocop, those arms belong on an alien in Xcom, not on a human. https://youtu.be/8mD5jhOD6qY?t=158 (let's hope I posted the correct timestamp).

 

[tippy2k2]

Practical effects and CGI are both best when they work together. Each has their strength. Perhaps one of the better examples of this, classically, is Terminator 2, where both were used to fantastic effect.

Good news everyone! We can all go home with this answer. /thread

...that's not how this works? Well it should because this absolutely nails it.

Things that are purely CGI don't look right. Whether it is because the actors still need something to react to (see Star Wars Ep I-III and how many great award winning actors sound like high school kids in their first drama class) or because animators just can't 100% mimic real life movement (see Hobbit: Longest Journey [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE8KPmBYRrA] when they're running away in the mine; everything looks rubbery with unnatural movements).

Practical effects are much harder but they look real because...well....they are. Sure, it CAN go badly, just like everything else but I would take "Mad Max Fury Road" over just about every CGI-filled blockbuster out there. Practical effects blended with CGI is the way to go.

 

[Smygskytt]

Practical effects are much harder but they look real because...well....they are. Sure, it CAN go badly, just like everything else but I would take "Mad Max Fury Road" over just about every CGI-filled blockbuster out there. Practical effects blended with CGI is the way to go.

The question then becomes whether practical effects themselves are inherently better looking, or they just become better through the way it force cinematographists to think about how to stage the action.

 

[Musou Tensei]

Compare the old and real Ghostbusters to the parody and see how superior the old technology looks.

 

[Saelune]

CG and practical effects are both simply tools. Its up to the people using them to use them well. Either can be used poorly or skillfully.

 

[HybridChangeling]

CGI and Practical Effects are a perfect match, making the stuff that can be made realistically more real, while giving the solid foundation for the films effects and enhances peoples suspension of disbelief. Jurassic Park is considered one of the best, along with T2, because the practical effects are so good and mix so well with each other, that dated looking effects like some of the makeup or T-1000 morphs don't even matter because you barely notice.

We complain when CGI overtakes everything so much it looks super fake. Like Jurassic World, the CG was so bad, and they even CG'ed the puppets, further destroying the point. Now there are some CG films where the effects have an artistic style and therefore are more timeless. For all it's flaws, Scott Pilgrim probably is one of the best nearly CGI only movies to incorporate this design. Even the new Godzilla looks so cool with it's design the CGI-ness barely doesn't matter.

Are you really going to point to a Swedish comedy as the typical standard for practical effects? That's... laughable.

Thank you by the way, I wanted so hard to rip into the post for that, but respect, respect.

 

[Something Amyss]

The major benefit to practical effects is they're there for the actors (and even other objects) to work off of. Even if it's a shitty dragon, at least it's there.

Which brings me to the other problem. That clip? It's more the fact that they're splicing clips of an iguana and clips of an actor together. The practical effects are pretty limited and not really worth complaining about. This is closer to "blue/green screen" vs CGI.

The other thing I'd add, on top of what I've already said and in addition to mostly agreeing with AccursedTheory, is that it can also make a huge difference the style you're going for.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

It really depends on what exactly we're looking at. Yes, sometimes CGI does allow you to do more stuff, but is anyone going to tell me that the creature effects of John Carpenter's 1982 "The Thing" weren't vastly creepier and more effective than the almost fully CGI effects of the 2011 prequel?

Likewise, as many have already said, the problem is that they've simply become too reliant on it. They now use it to substitute for old-school stunts, explosions, etc. One of the big reasons why "Fury Road" got so much praise as an action movie (as well as "The Raid" movies) is because of the fact that they actually went out of their way to avoid using CGI in lieu of having actual stunts be done, with actual pyrotechnic effects, actual vehicles get annihilated, etc.

 

[Leg End]

Are you really going to point to a Swedish comedy as the typical standard for practical effects? That's... laughable.

Practical effects and CGI are both best when they work together. Each has their strength. Perhaps one of the better examples of this, classically, is Terminator 2, where both were used to fantastic effect.

...I cannot find a good youtube video it seems. Oh well.

No see, I think the kicker here is that(in my opinion of what I've seen) the CG from Terminator 2 looks better than what Genisys had of the same Terminator model. That's just fucking sad.

Spoiler: Or am I just crazy? Oh and the T-800 looks like ass too.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Practical effects are much harder but they look real because...well....they are. Sure, it CAN go badly, just like everything else but I would take "Mad Max Fury Road" over just about every CGI-filled blockbuster out there. Practical effects blended with CGI is the way to go.

The question then becomes whether practical effects themselves are inherently better looking, or they just become better through the way it force cinematographists to think about how to stage the action.

Um... you just answered your own question there. No, practical effects don't "inherently" look better. Look up James Rolfe's (the Angry Video Game Nerd) Monster Madness review series for proof of this: many, many, MANY cheap monster movies from the 50s and 60s used practical costumes, and guess what? They look like shit. Yes, practical effects do look better when the people know how to film it. How is this even a question? When people making a movie know what they're doing, the film will look better. Seems kind of a "duh" to me. Just for relevancy's sake I'll post this here.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Are you really going to point to a Swedish comedy as the typical standard for practical effects? That's... laughable.

Practical effects and CGI are both best when they work together. Each has their strength. Perhaps one of the better examples of this, classically, is Terminator 2, where both were used to fantastic effect.

...I cannot find a good youtube video it seems. Oh well.

Spoiler

No see, I think the kicker here is that(in my opinion of what I've seen) the CG from Terminator 2 looks better than what Genisys had of the same Terminator model. That's just fucking sad.

Spoiler: Or am I just crazy? Oh and the T-800 looks like ass too.

The problem with Genisys's CGI is that it's in your face, non-stop. In T2, persistent, long term affects were practical (Real), and CGI was used for short term, but high impact, scenes. For example, the scene where the T-1000 is thrown into a wall and instead of turning around, simply remorphs to be facing a different directions. The CGI from this move is, without a doubt, technically worse then anything in Genisys, including that scene. But the scene looks absolutely amazing and yoi don't notice how primitive the CGI is. Its short, so you don't end up staring at it for several minutes, allowing your brain to pick at every little flaw until it just looks silly.

 

[madwarper]

Bad effects are simply bad. It doesn't matter whether they're practical or CGI.

The difference is that CGI has to be spot on, else it can easily fall into an uncanny valley.
And, with CGI becoming all the more prevalent, there's just a much larger amount of drek to pull examples from.

 

[Zen Bard]

I'll see your Swedish 70's comedy and raise you the 80's film Dragonslayer. The dragon was created with nothing but practical effects.

"Behold, the glorious dragon:"



By the way, no one's saying special effects were better before CGI. The common consensus is that CGI is so now overused, the effects are no longer "special". It's like watching a bunch of actors walking in front of a video game. It also leads to lazy filmmaking where the director can just have the actors jump around and composite some CGI baddies in later. Just watch the new Clash of the Titans or Transformers movies. It just gets old after awhile.

In contrast, in the pre-CGI days, the effects team had to get more creative. In the case of Dragonslayer, Vermithrax (the dragon) was created using a combination of stop-motion animation, "go-motion" puppets, and full scale models. The results carry a little more weight than if it was just rendered in post production.

 

[Orga777]

No, I used it to show just how bad practical effects could end up. There are certainly more horrible effects in hollywood movies (and my mind always play a Wilhelm scream when I see one of them). Take a look at the fall of the doll in the finale of Robocop, those arms belong on an alien in Xcom, not on a human. httpd://youtu.be/8mD5jhOD6qY?t=158 (let's hope I posted the correct timestamp).

The original Robocop had a budget of only $13 Million. What do you even expect effect wise from something like that? So some of the effects look wonky. It still looks better than the trashy remake with its $100 Million budget.

Also, it isn't that practical effects are inherently better than CGI. It is that they work better TOGETHER than not. Look at The Force Awakens as a perfect example of that. It is the same reason why the original Jurassic Park looks better (most of the time) than the obviously cartoony and fake looking video game in Jurassic World.

 

[Saltyk]

CG and practical effects are both simply tools. Its up to the people using them to use them well. Either can be used poorly or skillfully.

Gonna agree with this.

Look at Jurassic Park. It used CG and practical effects. And it looks good even today. This is because they knew when to use each tool.

Also, really bad quality CG is distracting. While I loved The Revenant, the CG was very distracting. All the animals looked "shinny" to me. Even in the excellent and brutal scene with the bear I was well aware that it was a CG bear.

Generally speaking I think CG works best at a distance and practical effects are better when we're close to the subject.

In the end, budget is probably the biggest hurdle to both. Poor budgets often mean that the effects look less than convincing, even if they are being used to their strengths.

 

[Smygskytt]

I always thought there was a sense of realism to practical effects that always felt more real simply because it is something that exists, and therefore has a tangible quality that is hard to replicate.

I remember someone once said though, if you look at a scene and say "Boy, that was some amazing CGI", you failed. If you don't spot it was CGI at all, you're winner.

As said, the bear in The Revenant is a good example of failing. In The Force Awakens on the other hand, the thought CGI never entered my head.