The reality of Visual Effects or CGI in a movie

GaryinCalifornia

GaryinCalifornia

Veteran
There's a film critic who I seldom agreed with. But that changed somewhat when he wrote about the first Mission Impossible film. Where Tom Cruise is hanging off the fake CGI train and it was pretty cheesy.

What the critic wrote was something like this.

We knew John Wayne didn't jump off the stagecoach onto the horses pulling it. But we knew it was Yakima Canutt putting himself into real danger by doing the stunt.

So it made it more exciting. Because it was real.

Maybe that's why I really enjoyed the first Fast and the Furious because most of the car stunts scenes where shot like the old westerns that I love. Real men or women doing the stunts. Not someone doing it in a computer.

I understand the reasoning as a producer to do CGI, but as a viewer I've never been much of a fan. Now I'll buy it more in fantasies, superhero or space operas. But sometimes in an action film. It just pulls me out of the film sometimes.

I'm not picking on this film. Just using it as an example. I guess what I'm asking is the CGI in this trailer acceptable to you as a viewer.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/olympushasfallen/
 
I think the CGI in this trailer is acceptable as a viewer. You are usually in the moment too. Some of the helo shots looked a little less than ideal in the trailer at least. Sometimes they will release the vfx prematurely, go back and tweak these up a bit before final release. //edit: Actually the CGI looked okay. Maybe a tiny tweek in the compositing department is what I was noticing. And that's being super critical.)

It is a little over the top to be believable but I guess that's the story. I think it's fine.

One movie where it looked great was in one of the Die Hard movies where the jet was attacking them on the bridge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0OhRLU7wp4
 
Last edited:
There are two separate issues here:
- does the effect look cheesy (which can happen just as much with in-camera effects as with CGI)
- and the critic's point, does the effect create extra drama by making the viewer think there was genuine risk to the performers. This is an interesting one, as it's almost an indirect 'breaking the fourth wall' (intentional or not), but it's still just a psychological trick with little relationship to any real risk to the performers. (Plenty of stunties have been injured or even killed on boring looking stunts.) Admittedly, the viewer knows that a CGI stunt is of zero risk to anyone, but then I'd equally say that a well-done stunt/effect should be so seamless that the viewer can't tell how 'real' or 'risky' it really was.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top