Martian

Would you be referring to The Nightmare Before Christmas, Tim Burton's stop motion holiday film that, as far as I'm aware, made no use of CGI whatsoever?

...

Obvious troll is obvious.

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YaWhateva

Ever watch District 9? Their use of CGI is amazing.

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boink

Burtons Nightmare was actual stop motion puppets I thought ? it sucked but that was due to that suck ass Oingo Boingo guy.

Wyodiver33

Yup, what godspeed said. CGI is only used to save money. And studios know that there are a lot of mouth-breathers out there who are happy with loud noise and CGI. No story needed. "It was loud! And had lots of fast-moving stuff going on! I wanna see it again! Why do I have bubblegum in my hair? Where do I live? Wait, what?"

Good luck, Earth. If I could, I would leave.

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oliver9184

great stuff.

80 years ago there were grumblers saying that films in which people spoke (the "talkies") sucked. Saying CGI sucks is like that.

Baraka_Guru

I'd like to see the makeup, costuming, and the pyrotechnics involved to make "the guy in a Balrog suit" happen.

But, hey, if the Muppet Show can have an actual actor for Sweetums...why didn't they do that for the Balrog?

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telekinetic

Newsflash: You see plenty of CGI effects. You just aren't informed enough to notice them. How would you detect a CGI effect if it looked photo realistic? It's like the fake boob arguement. Noone thinks fake boobs look natural because we don't know that the ones that look natural are fake.


Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot Demo on Vimeo

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Baraka_Guru

Thanks for the link, telekinetic.

Stargate Studios, ftw!


...I mean...I could totally tell those scenes were fake..... FAIL, miserable fail!

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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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Xerxys

This was awesome!

MSD

Would you like me to get off your lawn while you have my attention, or do I have to wait a few years to hear that?

Cynthetiq

that's just incredible!

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MexicanOnABike

I agree: that was really cool!
Reminds me of 2012: some scenes seemed like real with CGI but most was PURE CGI. see video below:

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pan6467

CGI is what it is. I think it is sad that even movies that have no need for it are doing it to keep budgets down and "add to the film", when just better supporting actors and writing probably would have been much better.

I also think it's in a way scary that now there can be no boundaries. Just the right computer clicks and we can have ANYTHING we want, but it also gives false ideas of what is possible, especially in a drama or comedy. Movies I don't think need to be so "fake". Give me old time special FX like those used in the original Star Wars or Superman or Close Encounters or ET. Where FX men had to be truly creative and thins done were "human" and not computerized.

In Sci-Fi tho, CGI is great, but I truly believe that should be it's only use.

In 10-20 years I see Hollywood barely existing. I see technology becoming so great people will be able to sit at home and put in any actor into any movie or even crate movies and then sharing them via the net

You mean Danny Elfman. He wrote a lot of movie and TV themes (the Simpsons, Tales From The Crypt, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Just about every Tim Burton and Marvel movie).

He's married to Bridget Fonda and his brother is divorced from Jenna Elfman.

He's also almost deaf.

I'm a big fan but the man can't sing, OIngo Boingo could have been a bigger band with their style of music if they'd have had a better singer.

Danny Elfman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sorry to threadjack.

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Lasereth

Avatar deleted this thread.

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Glory's Sun

this thread trips me out..

if people knew how much CGI they really saw on a daily basis, the "CGI sucks" bandwagon would be empty.

Yes, all your precious sitcoms have CGI in them as well.. those sets that look like they're in the woods? CGI. Aerial shots? Most of them are CGI.

CGI != animation

it can be used for animation, but modeling, set building and scene extension are the more widely used aspects of CGI.

Baraka_Guru

And I would have to say that television shows look much better than they did 20 or 30 years ago.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Jinn

I was going to respond again to this thread, but gucci entirely summed it up for me. The CGI you 'detect' is not the totality of the CGI in use. Far from it.

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Glory's Sun

I'm all for live action shots, but when you're working through 70+hours of footage to put out 5 30 minutes shows a week, it's just more realistic to use CGI for scene extensions and scene building as well. Pushing that number up over 100+hours of footage doesn't make good sense in the editing sense or the monetary sense..and damn sure not in the visual sense.

you can triple those numbers (or even more) when you're talking feature film or long format shows.

Bones is a great example, I would guesstimate that over 50% of the scenes are CGI. Add the props and modeling to that and you'll get to 60%. Most people think the sets are real.

godspeed2048

It was my understanding that the stop-motion claymation in Nightmare was augmented with CGI enhancements, but perhaps I was mistaken... Either way, the point still stands.

...And no, I am not here to troll.
I just think CGI is lame and wanted to vent about it.

You mean that Alien Nation ripoff with the giant cockroaches?
That movie was terrible.

---------- Post added at 11:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:02 PM ----------

Danny Elfman rulez!

pan6467

I don't know. I look at Heroes and it is cool the things they can do AND keep a storyline but those are very few and far between. But I also look at shows like the old Twilight Zone, Lost in Space, Star Trek (the Original), Wild Wild West and so on. They relied on visual effects but they relied more on storylines. Today it seems the opposite is true.

Plus, in my opinion, I enjoyed the art form that was special effects. I remember as a kid watching a documentary on how shows like Gone With the Wind had created their scenes and to me the way they came up with them and breathed air into those ideas and made those scenes memorable is far greater than anything that can be done on a computer.

When the 3-D eye wear and sensors that affect all human senses become available to the public, then maybe I'll buy into CGI. In other words, I wish the money spent on developing CGI was spent on finding ways to use technology to help people walk, talk, see and hear. Maybe allow people who are in hospice or bedridden be able to put on a helmet and relive their memories and make new ones using computer tech.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Glory's Sun

special effects is alive and well..

I use it every fucking day.

fresnelly

You want bad CGI? YOU WANT BAD CGI!!

You got it:

(about 1:35 in but the watching the whole trailer is totally worth it)

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blahblah454

Birdemic!!! YES!!! That looks absolutely amazing!!

I want to see that now!

NelsonJames

I was watching a trailer for some movie that had a scene of a car flipping over another car with someone firing through the sun roof, and I began to think again how CGI is a two-edged sword. I've loved the CGI in films like Inception, and Moon. The best CGI is often so subtle you don't even realize that it is CGI. Where it becomes offensive is when it breaks the bounds of my suspension of disbelief. Of course a film doesn't have to employ CGI effects to do this. Someone mentioned the Indiana Jones franchise. People tended to dislike the second movie because it was too far over the top. The minute someone jumps from a plane and uses an inflatable raft to escape certain doom (let's not forget the two waterfalls), you've lost me. The biggest complaint I hear on the last was the episode of the refrigerator and the atomic blast.

What CGI has done is to make anything one can dream about possible to achieve, whereas before, you were limited to stunt men and practicals. The problem with that is that you shouldn't necessarily be able to do everything you can dream of. Somethings are downright silly and idiotic, and we see a lot of that in film today. Even if the technology was flawless there are some things you are not going to get me to believe and when I see them in your film, I'm going to sigh and roll my eyes. That's bad storytelling, and it seems to be in abundance in the Hollywood writers of this era. CGI has made for lazy writers, because whether they realize it or not CGI has become the new Deus ex machina.