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anonymous

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Following on from comments in the Jurassic Park 4 thread, I thought it might be interesting to discuss CGI effects. For truly outstanding CGI animation there are 4 movies that come to my mind:

Starship Troopers
Phil Tippett's CGI insects are just great. I think he was also one of the prime movers in the development of the matchmove CGI effects in the original Jurassic Park movie - please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2
The CGI dinosaurs were first rate in this. I thought that in the first JP film they looked a bit cartoony in places - especially that first shot, but in LW they were totally convincing all the time.

Peter Jackson's King Kong
Kong himself was excellent - mainly thanks to being animated with a motion-capture technique using an actor. But the CGI dinosaurs were superb as well - the brontosaurus stampede was particularly impressive I thought; the animals had real weight and realistic movement, and were integrated totally convincingly into the film.

Spielberg's War of the WorlRAB
The tripoRAB were just great. The movement was perfectly convincing, and the attention to detail in the animation was fantastic. The long shots of the rotating ground scene when the first tripod appears was also mainly CGI - very convincing.

For examples of very bad CGI - look at Van Helsing and especially the first of the Exorcist 4 films - the hyenas were so bad!

Anyone got anything to add, good or bad?
 
To me hollywood relies way to heavily on CGI and when you watch movies like american werewolf in london/the fly you see how convincing prosthetics in paticular can look.A movie like The Fly would not work using CGI as it can take some emotion away from movies at time so I think they should mix it up a little.

Watching bad CGI feel like your playing a computer game,The Mummy 2 comes to my mind as one.
 
I agree - but there's some stuff you just can't do without CGI these days - the 4 films I mentioned above for instance.

David Cronenberg (of The Fly fame) famously dislikes CGI - he likes his actors to be able to relate to something real on set. I think the only time he has used CGI was for the little lizard thing in eXistenZ.
There's something about animatronics and puppetry that give horror films something special - for example John Carpenter's The Thing or Cronenberg's The Fly and Videodrome - it just wouldn't be the same with CGI. I think ET was spoiled to some extent by the CGI updates in the anniversary edition - you stop believing quite so much that ET is real! Also, the most effective scenes from the Jurassic Park films - the T Rex attacks - were largely done with full size animatronic dinosaurs. But for long shots of big monsters such as in the films I mentioned CGI is great.
I just remembered a 5th film I could add - Roland Emerich's Godzilla.

I'm looking forward with interest to seeing Transformers, which is just starting at our local cinema this weekend.
 
Thats really good CGI....

For bad, you can't beat the Rock as the scorpion king in the 'The mummy returns'. That was really poor. Also some of the Matrix scenes, where you have multiple agent smiths it shows as well.
 
I was actually going to start a thread about CGI Vs Models so if this is OT let me know and i'll start a new thread.

I saw 2001 the other week and that was made in 69. I was thinking about that if it was done now, instead of using NASA space footage of the Sun, Moon, Earth etc all in a line they would just CGI it. All the models would be done with CGI rather than the models they used and I feel if they CGI'd that film i think it would be worse than with the models they used.

It's the same with the Star Wars films, the first three films done with models and stop motion filming and all that had far better effects then the latest three with all the CGI stuff.

Sometimes they go over the top with CGI too,, watch some of the Spiderman films and the fight scenes and sure it looks good with the fights going through buildings and this that and the other but while the fight is going on they move the camera and do so much CGI stuff you can't always tell who is winning or losing the fight
 
actually the stampede in king kong is AWFUL - it looks unreal and like a video game. that sequence was picked out by critics as the one which looked worst in the film
 
When I see overuse of CGI in trailers, It often puts me off watching the film, I can't stand the way it gets used in a lot of films.
I remember when they digitally remastered the Star Wars films and they had a scene where they put a CGI version of Jabba the Hutt meeting Han Solo, it looked absolute shite and out of place, I don't know why they bother.
 
interesting becuase although I thought the dinosaurs were fine in the stampede sequence form what I remember in terms of texture, shifting weight etc, the main problem with that scene was the compositing of the actors with the dinoasurs, the lighting did not look quite right, when they ran beneath his legs ad alongside them, other than that I though the dinos were fine and dandy in King Kong, it was just that scene and some of the model integration shots that did not look right,
 
I thought it was excellent. Anyway...



I didn't notice that about the compositing of the actors. But the modelling, texture and animation of the animals is superb.



The GCI is pretty poor, but the film has real charm despite that.
The most common problem with poor CGI animation IMO is the figures moving too fast and appearing to have no weight. This is very noticable in Van Helsing. But I still like that film - it's got other qualities, so I'll forgive the poor animation.



I think the first 3 Star Wars films were "upgraded" so that they would sit comfortably with the next 3 (which could take advantage of modern CGI techniques) as a complete set. I reckon that was the only reason George Lucas did it.
However, Steven Spielberg's justification for tinkering with ET - that he would have done it that way had the technology been available at the time - is a poor reason. (IMO).

How about CGI that is deliberately "arty" - such as in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow? I thought that was really successful, but I wouldn't want to see too many films using that technique. It worked wonderfully as a tribute to early 20th Century modernism, using 21st Century technology.
 
Was that the Titanic? I thought it was the ship that brought King Kong back from Skull Island - didn't it have a cage on it? I'll have to have another viewing. King Kong is visible on the Empire State Building in the background of one of the NYC shots near the beginning.

I've just seen Transformers this afternoon. The CGI animation is very good.
 
it's def the titanic, yes, although this version is intact, I will see if i can find a pic

king kong is visible in sky captain ????
 
I know wikipedia is not the most reliable but this seems reasonable, still have not found a pic though

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a film that was written and directed by Kerry Conran. The film stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Michael Gambon, Giovanni Ribisi, and Angelina Jolie. It is set in New York City in an alternative 1939 and is a steampunk style science fiction adventure film.

Conran incorporated many elements of classic genre films into his own. Here is a partial list.

Metropolis (1927) — There are many skyline shots of New York which recall Metropolis

King Kong (1933) — The Venture (the ship from the film) is seen at the bottom of the sea in one scene — with a giant cage on top; and, on the DVD extras, it is pointed out that King Kong is on the Empire State Building in the far background.

Lost Horizon (1937) - The Sky Captain and Polly visit Shangri-La.

The War of the WorlRAB (1938) — The dialog used to describe the approach of the Martian war machines is used word-for-word for Polly's dialog describing the approach of the giant robots.

The Wizard of Oz (1939) — Part of the movie is seen at Radio City Music Hall.

Q Planes (1939) - Jude Law's character 'Sky Captain' bears much resemblance to Laurence Olivier's character and action hero pilot Tony McVane from the 1939 film.

Superman (1941) — the metal monsters' design comes from one of the 1940s Superman cartoons and actually, many shots in the movie are exact copies of shots from the 1940 Max Fleischer serials.

Godzilla (1954) During the telegram reel early on in the movie after the robots attack, Godzilla is visible in the background of the photo showing Tokyo under attack.

The War of the WorlRAB (1953) — The sound of the beam weapon used by the giant robots is the same as that of the Martian heat ray.

Dr. Strangelove (1964) Polly recites part of the introduction of the film.

Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back (1980) - Landing Pad 327. Also, the number 1138 seen on the door to a scientist's laboratory is a reference to its appearance in many movies by George Lucas. This in turn is a reference to his movie THX 1138.

Forbidden Planet (1956) — Some of the interiors of Dr. Totenkopf's island resemble those of the innarRAB of Altair IV.

Titanic (1997) - A sunken Olympic/Titanic class passenger liner is visible during the underwater dogfight sequence.

The name of the lead heroine is Conran's reference to the famous British song Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green.

The line of poetry "... all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by ...", quoted by the hero, is from the famous poem "Sea-Fever" by John Masefield.
 
Didn't Kirk or Picard use that line in one of the Star Trek movies?

Wow. There's a lot of stuff to look out for. I didn't notice Godzilla. Seems we were both right about the ships.
 
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