I have goosebumps.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Salem's Lot 1979 and Salem's Lot 2024
Happy Halloween everybody! Julie's working late and the boy doesn't have school tomorrow so he's heading to one of those crazy f...
-
(2007) * First of all let me say that as far as I could tell there are absolutely no dead teenagers in this entire film. Every year just ...
9 comments:
Yeah, that's pretty good. Indy doesn't look old and cranky in that picture. Cool giant skull, too.
Funny to think this is the first Indiana Jones flick to enjoy the miracle of modern CG effects. That could be cool.
I don't believe that the others suffered because of a lack of CG!
1) You're both just wrong. Remember the bridge of faith in Last Crusade. Entire sequence full of CGI.
2) Spielberg has said publicly that he won't be filling the movie with CGI, because he wants it to look like the other movies.
3) That being said, Spielberg and ILM work together these days to do CGI that most people can't even see. For example, both Munich and Saving Private Ryan have several CGI-filled sequences. You just can't tell because they're so carefully integrated into the grainy film look.
Wow, that's interesting. What's the earliest use of CG in film? Tron?
No, The Wrath of Khan.
But only by three and a half weeks! (I'm not kidding.)
The "Genesis" sequence in Wrath of Khan is the real breakout. It's vastly superior to anything in Tron, in my opinion. Note, however, that it is supposed to be fake animation ("the lifeless moon simulated here") and not part of the actual fabric of the story as in Tron. However Tron takes place "inside the computer" rather than in the real world, which is how they solve the same problem (e.g. it doesn't look real).
Milestone CGI movies include Young Sherlock Holmes along with Terminator 2, The Abyss, and Titanic.
It's interesting to note that the big "T-1000" sequences in Terminator 2 are breakthroughs because of the animated character placed into the action -- but, if you compare the equivalent sequences in Terminator 3 (TX chases them through culverts etc.) the art has developed to the point that in most cases the entire environment is CGI, including the trucks that blow up, the debris, the tumbling wheels, the snapped-in-half phone poles etc. as well as the "old school" chrome Terminator chasing them.
(God, I'm tired of typing "italic" tags...)
Oh yeah! I totally forgot about that bridge sequence.
That Genesis sequence is on an early Pixar reel that I've seen. From back when they needed a reel.
One of my favorite recent CGI sequences is in War of the Worlds (which is full of them). It's an example of the "unobtrusive" CGI that I love: when Cruise, Fanning and Chatwin first leave Newark and start driving on the freeway (right after "Manny the mechanic" gets fried and the elevated freeway blows up), watch for this incredible shot. Cruise drives, having a conversation with the kids, and the camera orbits around the car, passing directly through the glass of the back windows, circling behind them, then melting out through the opposite window and passing around in front of the car etc. without any cuts. All shot in the studio in a car with all the glass removed and put together out of several cuts (the struts of the car passing over the image disguise the cuts); the rain-streaked window glass, the passing traffic, the reflected sky and cars and really everything around the car is CGI. It's incredible, and most people just sit there not even noticing (although there's absolutely no way you could film it with a real camera). Pablo Helman, who did this shot (at ILM), also was the lead visual effects director on Terminator 3.
That shot ends with the camera floating like sixty feed upwards into the air as the car drives away, still without a cut.
Pablo Helman revealed that, in Terminator 3, when that huge truck flips over and comes apart, "there are more wheels bouncing away than originally were on the truck." You have to dig this guy.
Other great "you can't know it's CGI until you think about it" include Zemekis' fantastic wide shot of Tom Hanks climbing the pinnacle of the island in Cast Away and standing there gazing out at the endless sea while the camera glides in a 180° arc around him. Shot on a set in a parking lot in Los Angeles. They had to do this because the actual island they shot on was about a quarter of a mile from the mainland.
I love those idiot movie critics who talk about Troy or whatever and whine, "at this point we all know what CGI looks like" etc. No you don't.
Post a Comment