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^^^ hahah I love going back and reading posts that are 100% wrong.DevilOnYourShoulder posted:There's a brief flashback scene in the bar where it shows him being whipped, presumably by SS. I interpreted Stiglitz's torture scene as Stiglitz feeling like he is being tortured when he is forced to suppress this murderous nature and listen to the Nazi babble on.
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Jan 26, 2010 17:24
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Ortsacras posted:There should be a thread for "old posts that are now seen as hilariously wrong." The Star Trek thread, the Avatar thread(s), and the Transformers 2 thread would be absolute gold mines for that kind of thing. Hahaha, the OP in the Star Trek thread is an idiot and hilariously off-base.
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Jan 26, 2010 18:11
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hog wizard posted:^^^ hahah I love going back and reading posts that are 100% wrong. I thought Creation would get some awards heat in the awards thread, and boy, has it not. That's probably my biggest error.
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Jan 26, 2010 18:50
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Creature posted:I was watching Aliens on the weekend and was wondering about why it looks the way it does. The way it's filmed and lit, it looked more like a low-budget TV movie than an actual film released in cinemas. Especially an early scene where that armoured tank thing is revealed, it looked more like a prop than an actual functional vehicle. I know this is kinda beaten to death, but part of this too is a 80's attempt to make Sci-Fi more gritty and dirty. Not everything in the space station is new. The armor shows signs of use. Things don't always work right. Its more of an attempt of making the setting more believable. Most (not all) Sci-Fi in the last 10 years has not followed this trend, instead going for a more impressive look. James Cameron specifically was great at the more believable settings in the 80s. Terminator did this well too. Kyle Reese was filthy, made crappy looking pipe bombs, and got really hurt. The T-800 had to wear glasses when his eye got damaged, you saw scenes of him repairing himself, etc.
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Jan 26, 2010 23:04
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hog wizard posted:^^^ Some people are either too young to have even seen sfx in Aliens as good at the time or they've just been spoiled by movies like Avatar and District 9. Speaking of which... Modern CG effects---particularly in big-budget Hollywood science fiction films---tend to be radically overdetailed and elaborately lit in ways that don't look any more natural than a guy in a rubber suit trampling a cardboard Tokyo in the '50s. The difference is that we know and expect CG effects in our films, and the more fiddly details we see in the effects the better we react to them as effects. If that makes sense. Effects seem to be moving in the direction of being better looking effects rather than looking more seamless or more `real'. So someone who's grown up with elaborate CG effects who thinks Aliens (1986) looks bad isn't reacting to the effects not looking `real'---he's reacting to them not looking like CG effects. In the case of Aliens this is particularly illuminating, as most of the `big' effects are in fact actual physical objects being gaffer lit rather than 3d models being lit by a lighting algorithm and so forth. Many of the effects are as `real' as a fictional thing can be---a full-sized xenomorph puppet looks as much as a `real' xenomorph as anything could---and that is exactly what a modern audience doesn't expect to see.
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Jan 26, 2010 23:40
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I don't know if I agree with this. I recall a great deal of praise for the practical effects of Davy Jones in the first Pirates sequel when in fact it was almost all CG. I think people enjoy both practical effects and there's also aims to make them seamless and integrated. District 9 also got some praise for how the prawns were integrated into the backgrounds even if they were clearly animated figures. And of course there are the legions of unsung special effects that don't go noticed at all which make period films seem appropriately period without people realizing it. There are clearly CG epics which revel in big amoebas or dragons and don't put as much effort but they're not so different from the creature features of the 80s which didn't have the same aims as Cameron did to weather and make his special effects more mundane and realistic. I don't think it's cut and dried with some change in the special effects community wholesale losing the interest in making seamless special effects or modern audiences appreciating said effects. Just like with all things there are some that do and some that don't.
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Jan 27, 2010 05:45
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Ortsacras posted:There should be a thread for "old posts that are now seen as hilariously wrong." The Star Trek thread, the Avatar thread(s), and the Transformers 2 thread would be absolute gold mines for that kind of thing. RIP Helldump As for Aliens, I watched it for the first time about a week ago and thought it looked goddamn amazing. The only complaint I could have with the visuals is that sometimes the compositing of spaceships against the background was fairly noticeable, but to me it's just a technical limitation of the era. It's like complaining about using stock gunshot noises in a spaghetti western.
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Jan 27, 2010 06:01
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Ape Agitator posted:I don't think it's cut and dried with some change in the special effects community wholesale losing the interest in making seamless special effects or modern audiences appreciating said effects. I think the models used for the xenomorphs in the Alien franchise are actually a great example of this. Compare the original models and suits used in Scott's film that started the franchise with the full-sized models used in Alien vs. Predator (2004). There's a distinctly different style to each incarnation of the xenomorphs, and there aren't any technological limitations to explain it (it's not like Stan Winston couldn't have added all the fiddly stippling and so forth to the original models). My contention is that it's the audience sensibilities that changed, and one of the primary motivators for this change was the prevalence of CGI in film (and video games and so forth). Edit: Winston worked on Cameron's film, not Scott's. But my point's the same. SubG fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Jan 27, 2010 |
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Jan 27, 2010 06:12
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SubG posted:I think the models used for the xenomorphs in the Alien franchise are actually a great example of this. I don't think that's a particularly good example as every film in the Alien and Alien v P franchise has introduced radical modifications to the Xenomorph, often without narrative support and happening both before and after the CG revolution. Cameron's are substantially different from Scott's, owing to them being commoditized rather than being a singular star in the film so it's half practical and half aesthetic. Fincher's is also different, but with a narrative reason for it as it comes from a dog/ox rather than a human. Jeunet's are very different, often both CG and practical and that's a stylistic choice. And then they change up in the AvP 1 and again in AvP 2, being closer to Camerons but still quite different. In all of those cases, the changes aren't lending themselves to CG but rather just to the director putting their stamp on it. You may also want to check out the changes in dinosaurs between Jurassic Park 1/2 and Jurassic Park 3, where in the latter most of the dinosaurs have acquired stripes and colorations of some kind. Most of these differences aren't so much exploiting CG as they are the director and/or special effects houses trying to carve out some individualizing stamp on the look of the creature feature. The "show me something new" desire in sequels often drives this. Also, as my own entry to the hilariously wrong-headed prerelease posts about a movie, I remarked how big a trainwreck the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was going to be when the teaser was almost 100% terrible stock footage. A movie based on a ride and they aren't brave enough to show anything, this is going to be lovely! 
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Jan 27, 2010 06:40
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Ape Agitator posted:Also, as my own entry to the hilariously wrong-headed prerelease posts about a movie, I remarked how big a trainwreck the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was going to be when the teaser was almost 100% terrible stock footage. A movie based on a ride and they aren't brave enough to show anything, this is going to be lovely! I was totally surprised by this as well. All the trailers I saw seemed to really focus on that unfunny "You think you know pain? Try wearing a corset." joke. I thought there was no way that movie would be good. I find a lot of tv trailers make movies look pretty awful, then I end up changing my mind when I see the red band trailer on the internet.
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Jan 27, 2010 15:19
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I wouldn't personally laugh at people who thought the first Pirates looked and sounded like a lovely idea - I know I was completely shocked when some friends who saw it opening night just gushed about it. How the gently caress could a drat theme park ride turn into an even watchable movie, much less a great one? I cannot ever imagine being so surprised by how good a movie was again. Not even if the 2037 remake of Attack of the Clones turns out to be as intricate and moving as The Godfather.
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Jan 27, 2010 18:07
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Ape Agitator posted:I don't think that's a particularly good example as every film in the Alien and Alien v P franchise has introduced radical modifications to the Xenomorph, often without narrative support and happening both before and after the CG revolution. Cameron's are substantially different from Scott's, owing to them being commoditized rather than being a singular star in the film so it's half practical and half aesthetic. Fincher's is also different, but with a narrative reason for it as it comes from a dog/ox rather than a human. Jeunet's are very different, often both CG and practical and that's a stylistic choice. And then they change up in the AvP 1 and again in AvP 2, being closer to Camerons but still quite different. In all of those cases, the changes aren't lending themselves to CG but rather just to the director putting their stamp on it. The overall design of the aliens was the same in Fincher's film, and the suits used were in fact designed around the suits used by Cameron, only modified to allow movement on all fours. Alien Resurrection (1997) was the first of the films to include CGI xenomorphs, but Jeunet wanted to be able to use both the models and suits created for the previous film as well as CGI effects, so Blue Sky's computer models were based entirely on the physical models created previously by ADI (Amalgamated Dynamics) for Alien3 (1992). The first time the xenomorphs were redesigned more or less from scratch was for Alien Vs. Predator (2004), where ADI and the visual effects producers redesigned both the xenomorphs and the predators. This is a lot of  about the aliens, but I'm just going over it to outline the comparative lack of change in overall visual sensibility in the design of the aliens themselves. The films certainly look different from each other; I'm just talking about the composition of the xenomorphs themselves, as an exemplar of the overall visual effects design.Anyway, it's worth pointing out that most of the creature effects in both AvP films were done with 1/3 scale models, not with CGI. So if you're looking for support for your argument, I think that's a stronger point than anything about the changes between each of the films (which I've just discussed). But my point isn't (as it seems like you might think) that I'm saying that the changes in look of the visual effects is due to the limitations of CGI or something like that. I'm saying that the visual effects changed substantially, that these changes reflect differences in audience (and therefore filmmaker) sensibilities concerning visual effects, and that the prevalence of CGI effects is one of the main factors in this change of sensibilities. To approach the question in slightly different terms: Alien Vs. Predator was released in the same year as Doom 3, and they have very much the same visual sensibilities---I won't attempt to catalogue all of the characteristics, because I think most of us are familiar with the shiny, bumpy plastic look---and I don't think this is a coincidence, despite the fact that neither could be based on the other.
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Jan 27, 2010 22:16
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SubG posted:To approach the question in slightly different terms: Alien Vs. Predator was released in the same year as Doom 3, and they have very much the same visual sensibilities---I won't attempt to catalogue all of the characteristics, because I think most of us are familiar with the shiny, bumpy plastic look---and I don't think this is a coincidence I think it is, since the reasons are completely unrelated- AvP was a purely aesthetic decision strongly influenced by the franchise history, whereas Doom 3 did it to show off the fact that the technology to produce that effect in a video game had only just been developed.
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Jan 27, 2010 23:21
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SubG posted:I disagree. The main changes to the look of the xenomorph between Scott's film and Cameron's were purely functional---Cameron wanted the actors in the suits to run around more, and the suits were designed to accommodate this requirement; as far as I know there were no deliberate changes made purely for aesthetics (I'd be willing to be demonstrated wrong here; I'm just going from information remembered from interviews here).
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Jan 27, 2010 23:46
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Akuma posted:Nah, the most noticeable change is that the heads were very prominently ridged instead of smooth. That can't be for any reason other than aesthetics. haveblue posted:I think it is, since the reasons are completely unrelated- AvP was a purely aesthetic decision strongly influenced by the franchise history, whereas Doom 3 did it to show off the fact that the technology to produce that effect in a video game had only just been developed. Bringing it back to the original point, would anyone actually argue that the difference between these two versions of a UFO are that one is more `realistic' than the other?  
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Jan 28, 2010 00:26
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To me the second one is more realistic because if I'm going to see a UFO, I want to see something that doesn't make sense, not a god drat flying saucer.
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Jan 28, 2010 01:12
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Trying to identify a movie for my coworkers who will not shut up about it. This movie has some sort of lab or secret lair where the entrance is a fotomat booth. Apparently its not Get Smart.
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Jan 28, 2010 01:40
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I must be looking at this from totally different eyes but I can't see how Alien Resurrection's aliens are supposed to be identical to FIncher's. I can't see it at all.SubG posted:Bringing it back to the original point, would anyone actually argue that the difference between these two versions of a UFO are that one is more `realistic' than the other? Again, this is an aesthetic choice. A saucer is a valid aesthetic choice for a serious sci-fi in the 50s but it wouldn't be now. An orb matches an aesthetic choice we'd be able to take with the same level of seriousness. Similarly, GORT can fly as a big metal man but you couldn't do that now because it would be regarded as humorous. Now is there one-upsmanship in effects going on? Sure, all the time. Everyone wants to make their stamp and wants to wow them. But you seem to discount that conceptual design choices step in before the effects houses work to match modern audience effects expectations. They want to give their film a unique look and from a concept standpoint they do that. Cameron had a design aesthetic in mind and applied it to his spaceships. Fincher did as well. There's no special effects reason that Fincher would have made the escape pod look decidedly unaerodynamic (despite most of the craft in the previous two films being quasi-conventional) other than to reinforce his design and narrative choices. Practical effects still get play today and aren't an albatross that sinks a film's special effects. There's no reason Aliens wouldn't be regarded by a modern viewer. It's not like a Harryhausen film where the special effects technique has been functionally retired. Miniatures and full size mockups still get a lot of play in a wide range of movies, from the LOTRish epics to all kinds of horror films. To illustrate my point, can you point me to even a handful of posts that echo what kicked off this whole debate: that Aliens looks like a low budget TV movie? If what you say is correct, such a sentiment should reverb in the younger elements of the internet echoed by all the young'uns who don't appreciate that our Xenomorphs had to walk around in 100lb suits uphill, both ways. As I remarked, he's the only person I've come across to say such a thing. The most negative response I've ever heard is just a "whatever" as the film is deemed average in someone's eyes. Arwox posted:Trying to identify a movie for my coworkers who will not shut up about it. Dedicated thread with practiced eyes. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2177344 Ape Agitator fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Jan 28, 2010 |
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Jan 28, 2010 04:40
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SubG posted:Not according to the designers; the ridges were added for, well, rigidity. The actors kept banging their heads into things, and this damaged the old smooth alien costume heads. The ridges were actually always part of the costume. They're underneath the smooth exterior of the Alien head (which is actually supposed to be semi-translucent). Cameron saw the creature being put together and told the team not to add the outer layer because he thought it looked interesting. In fact, many of the crew of these movies have point-blank stated that much of the changes of the Alien design in each movie was done for aesthetic reasons. Alien Ressurection in particular had the Aliens with more refined heads and raptor-inspired legs because it was thought the creatures would look more menacing. It may have indeed been inspired by Jurassic Park but I don't think that counts a special effects fad.
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Jan 28, 2010 06:44
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Actually before the guy complaining about Aliens mentioned the special effects I thought he was talking about the film quality. Honestly if not for the fashion I would have guessed the original Alien to be a newer movie just looking at it. Am I just crazy or is this true with a lot of 1985/86 movies? They seem grainier and with poorer contrast, etc. than even movies from earlier in the decade. Movies suddenly looked a LOT better starting 1987. What was up with that? [/Seinfeld]
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Jan 28, 2010 06:54
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gxen posted:I'm looking for the name of a movie, or maybe a TV show. It's a cartoon, I remember watching it when I was very young. I believe it was either a Thanksgiving or Christmas movie. There were dancing salt and pepper shakers. Maybe a cooked turkey dancing or something stupid like that. Like all the food in the kitchen was suddenly animated and started dancing... This sounds an awful lot like part of the Nickelodeon Thanksgiving special they played for a few years. Skip to halfway through the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hniz6BQu-Mk
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Jan 28, 2010 07:02
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Ape Agitator posted:Again, this is an aesthetic choice. I can talk about specific examples or elements of visual style, but it's not like I can prove anything here, and I'm not trying to. And I'm not sure exactly what you'd want proven anyway. E.g., do you believe that there are different, recognisable effects sensibilities or aesthetics at all? Your comments the effects in the different versions of The Day the Earth Stood Still appears to suggest you do. If so, why is it so difficult to credit the idea that (contemporary) film effects themselves are one of the primary influences on what audiences expect/accept in film effects? Ape Agitator posted:Practical effects still get play today and aren't an albatross that sinks a film's special effects. lizardman posted:Cameron saw the creature being put together and told the team not to add the outer layer because he thought it looked interesting.
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Jan 28, 2010 07:31
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I suppose this would go in the identify a movie thread, but I'll pose it here first: What is the movie where there is a scene of a snooty waiter who keeps getting hit by people running by? He gets more and more disheveled, but still tries to deliver his tray of food. My friend said RATATOUILLE, as it sounds like something wacky that might happen in that restaurant, but I can't really picture the scene in that movie. Does anyone have any idea what I am talking about? I know it happens in a SOUTH PARK episode, but is it from a movie first?
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Jan 28, 2010 09:38
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SubG posted:I agree; that's my point. I'm just saying that one of the main things which is driving aesthetic choices in visual effects these days is the prevalence of CGI. Sure there are some special effects which aim to be unreal, like making everyone a realdoll in Surrogates, but by and large I'm hard pressed to think of a movie that approaches special effects in a way substantially different from the 80s, which was how do I put what's on the page or storyboard on a film (or film equivalent) in a cohesive and seamless way as possible. quote:And because popular films end up being stylemakers and trendsetters, you find later films adopting elements of the looks of the visual effects of popular films. I'm not saying that anyone would sit down and say, `we need something that looks more like high-end CGI'. On the other hand I do think people might look at films like District 9 or Avatar and decide that they want something that looks like that, or is as good or better than that, and so the elements of visual style that they use will get incorporated into the visual lexicon of contemporary filmmaking. quote:
lizardman posted:Actually before the guy complaining about Aliens mentioned the special effects I thought he was talking about the film quality. Honestly if not for the fashion I would have guessed the original Alien to be a newer movie just looking at it. At least specific to Cameron, this is related to his love affair with Super35 film. It was grainy but he liked that gritty look because, I believe, he felt it was evocative of vietnam-era footage which aided the military feel he had. Film stock, shooting methods, lensing, and post production processes seem, at least to me, to be very generational so you'll often have a look that is representative of the technology and general thrust of the cinema movement of the time. It's also segmented so even though they're of the same period, 70s US films look markedly different from european films of the 70s and not just for technological reasons. I'm certainly not well versed enough to say what happened in the late 80s to suggest the change you're seeing but it's as likely related to cameras, film, and budget. There are some geniuses here that likely can educate us on that.
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Jan 28, 2010 09:57
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Ortsacras posted:There should be a thread for "old posts that are now seen as hilariously wrong." The Star Trek thread, the Avatar thread(s), and the Transformers 2 thread would be absolute gold mines for that kind of thing. Hey, I admitted I was wrong about Piece of the Action!
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Jan 28, 2010 14:20
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So my all-time favorite Godard movie is My Life to Live. What's the best quality DVD release to get? Does it matter? Is there even more than one?
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Jan 28, 2010 21:32
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the Bunt posted:So my all-time favorite Godard movie is My Life to Live. What's the best quality DVD release to get? Does it matter? Is there even more than one? There's an OOP one from Fox Lorber, but I can't remember how the quality is. You're undoubtedly better off getting the Criterion on April 20th (also on Blu-Ray).
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Jan 28, 2010 21:35
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I watched Barton Fink the other day but I really don't get what the ending was supposed to be about, basically from the return of John Goodman on. So could someone please enlighten me?
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Jan 28, 2010 21:49
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muscles like this? posted:I watched Barton Fink the other day but I really don't get what the ending was supposed to be about, basically from the return of John Goodman on. So could someone please enlighten me? I think it's supposed to be a metaphor for hell with Goodman as Satan and Turturro as someone who doesn't belong there. It's been forever since I've seen it, so I could be completely wrong.
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Jan 29, 2010 00:01
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muscles like this? posted:I watched Barton Fink the other day but I really don't get what the ending was supposed to be about, basically from the return of John Goodman on. So could someone please enlighten me? Well, it's obviously all open to interpretation. But here's a few thoughts. I'm assuming your question starts with the hotel bursting into flames. The easiest figurative assumption is that Barton is in hell. I saw someone argue once that Barton dies halfway through the film, after going to bed with Judy Davis's character; when he wakes up, everything starts to go horribly wrong. One way or the other, it seems to me that the Hotel clearly is a life in hell. Charlie/Mundt is a miserable human being - he is devoid of true human connection, makes a living being abused and mistreated by people, and kills out of range and anger out of the world he's so out of place in. Then he meets Barton, a snooty, condescending prick who views himself as "in touch with the common man" when he couldn't give two shits about what real common people are like. And Charlie snaps the rest of the way, killing Judy Davis's character and showing Barton a taste of what truly common and horrible life really is. The fire, it seems to me, is Barton finally realizing what the hotel is, or you could view it as Charlie/Mundt showing Barton the realities of life in a living hell. Whether you want to view Charlie/Mundt as the devil or just a lost soul (and maybe Chet as the devil), the hotel is the home of the lost and the damned - a home which Barton is destined to join. His career is "dead" at the studio - his script is seen as the phony garbage it is, and the studio basically puts him into purgatory. As for the final shot...well, you got me there. I do know that the crashing bird was a complete accident, though. I think part of why Barton Fink is one of my favorite movies is that you're not really sure exactly what is going on. What I put up is some theories, but the movie remains stubbornly elusive, and I love that about it. Hell, you don't even know what's "real" or not at certain points.
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Jan 29, 2010 00:06
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Ape Agitator posted:I really wish you would because I'm having a hard time conceptualizing what you're saying. I can think of dozens of examples of movies which try to emulate the overall look of a movie (goddamn how many "looks like The Matrix" movies have we all seen?) but I can't think of ones that aim to match only the special effect system of another movie. Help me out. So a specific example: the design of the aliens in District 9. More specifically: they have all kinds of squiggly poo poo going on in their mouths. Squiggly writhing poo poo is one of the things that CGI does pretty well, and so you see designs with all kinds of squiggly writhing poo poo. Davy Jones from the Pirates of the Caribbean is another example. Another interesting case of this is seen in the additions to the 2004 re-release of the Star Wars films with the additional CGI effects. In, for example, the cantina sequence there's a shot where a latex-masked alien is replaced with an obviously CGI critter with a bunch of face tentacles. The 2004 Lucas tweaks illustrate another common example of the sort of `CGI-ism' I'm commenting on---poo poo that's just too hyperactive. If you look at the Jabba sequence inserted into the first film one of the things that stands out (to me) is how ridiculously over-animated Jabba is. He's always twiddling his eyebrows and undulating and wobbling around. Obviously Lucas could have done a pixel-perfect rendering of the version of Jabba we were already familiar with from Return of the Jedi (1983). But that's not what a creature effect looks like now---it looks like the spastic blancmange that the 2004 edits give us. Does that make more sense? And my point is that although this sort of thing is initially driven by CGI effects (in Lucas' case), even if you were doing something like Jabba via puppetry or whatever now it would exhibit the same stylistic cues---because that's what an effects sequence looks like now.
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Jan 29, 2010 00:24
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Ape Agitator posted:Dedicated thread with practiced eyes. Thank you.
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Jan 29, 2010 02:43
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ClydeUmney posted:Well, it's obviously all open to interpretation. But here's a few thoughts. Thanks for this. I saw it awhile ago and was kinda dumbfounded about the end. I was confused: I liked what I saw, but I wasn't sure what I just saw. My poor roommate walked in for the last ten minutes or so and was just kinda like, "What the gently caress are you watching why is John Goodman lighting poo poo on fire????" so that was pretty funny, cause I didn't know either.
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Jan 29, 2010 03:29
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SubG posted:Does that make more sense? And my point is that although this sort of thing is initially driven by CGI effects (in Lucas' case), even if you were doing something like Jabba via puppetry or whatever now it would exhibit the same stylistic cues---because that's what an effects sequence looks like now. I believe I understand you but in this I don't totally agree. I will say you're dead right that doing those details in CG is popular but I think that has a long lineage. Harryhausen quite often had his creations doing twitchy personalized behavior or fiddling. It gave his creations life and went beyond what was necessary and in turn gave his work a long-term appreciation because it gave them a sense of life and performance. The tremendously detailed animatronic body and faces Stan Winston worked on were the same way. It wasn't just about making a creature roar, which was technically all that was on the page, it was about giving it that living performance that helped audiences buy into it. The CG embellishments you're talking about are part of that lineage but I don't think they represent the barriers to modern appreciation that you mean. I think they're just part of the creative team putting life to their creations to the limits of their technology and creativity. And I don't think the method of the embellishment really changes things just the skill in the execution. A dude in a rubber suit can either look like a rubber suit or a scary living monster. A CG creature can be Christopher Johnson or that retarded bear from Narnia. I just don't think there's a wholesale rejection of old special effects driven movie which would support your premise. Lucas didn't revisit his movies because his movies had been forgotten he did it because, ostensibly, he didn't get as far as he wanted with the technology at the time. CG can technically add fiddly poo poo but you don't see it as prevalently as you'd expect if it represented a barrier to modern appreciation. Everyone noticed and recognized District 9 for those details because they were superlative, not commonplace.
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Jan 29, 2010 04:36
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I just watched Spoorloos (MOTM from a while back) and one thing confused me. Why exactly did that one woman recommend to the sociopath to go to the local gas stations?
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Jan 29, 2010 06:42
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Ape Agitator posted:I just don't think there's a wholesale rejection of old special effects driven movie which would support your premise. And if we look at this as an example there's a certain sort of very obvious progression: once all films were shot and presented in black and white (although some were of course hand-tinted); now all effectively all films are shot and presentend in colour. But while this is the broad, obvious effect of the introduction of colour film, there are a lot of other influences the introduction of colour had on the visual `language' of narrative film: a film presented in black and white may now have an anachronistic or historical connotation, an association that would not have been carried by a black and white film made when all films were black and white; a film can identify particularly important elements by shifting from colour to black and white or vice versa or by selectively colouring certain objects or sequences; the use of contrast in composition is less prevalent in colour film than it was in black and white film, and is often used to connote different moods; and so forth. You seem to think I'm talking about the former sort of change---it all used to be one way and now is another. I'm not. I'm saying that we're seeing---and to some extent already have seen---a shift in the visual grammar of narrative film, specifically involving certain kinds of cues which are---not necessarily intentionally---being used to convey information to the audience about how they should be reacting to what they're seeing on the screen. This sounds very dry and academic, but I really think it's something that's really straightforward and simple, it's just difficult to talk about. And sometimes it's difficult to even recognise, because we're so familiar with the elements of style that they're transparent to us. Carrying this again back to the original comments, I think when a lot of modern viewers comment on how `dated' effects look in older films---not just the Alien films, but also more broadly in general---we (generic `we') tend to parse this in terms of whether or not the effects are seamless or `realistic'. My observation is that this really has nothing to do with it; what we (generic `we') tend to react to in effects sequences is how well they conform to what our notions of what an effects sequence looks like. Earlier hog wizard responded to the ship screenshots from the two versions of The Day The Earth Stood Still by commenting that a `realistic' UFO is `something that doesn't make sense, not a god drat flying saucer'. This is entirely a modern expectation; in 1951 everybody knew that UFOs looked exactly like flying saucers. My observation is that hog wizard's reaction to the effects of the first film have nothing to do with how plausibly presented the effects are, it's that the visual style of the thing being presented that he finds `unrealistic'. My further contention is that our expectation that advanced technology looks like swirly mist and beams of light and sizzly electricity is something that appears to be motivated by (or at least is coincident with) the rising prevalence of CGI effects in film. In the same way the institutional version of a super-advanced computer keyboard is now the floaty glowing stuff we first saw in (as far as I can recall) Minority Report (2002)---as seen in, for example, District 9.
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Jan 30, 2010 00:48
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See when I hear of dated special effects I see the "haze" caused by double printing, the barely visible masking box (corrected in the Star Wars SEs), lighting problems compositing live action footage to special effects footage, that kind of thing. I don't see it related to technique. I don't recall complaints about Hellboy 2's Troll Market despite not being many steps removed from the technology used to breathe life in the Cantina from SW4. I just can't get past the way you mix aesthetic preferences with special effects, which I don't think is right. Sure audiences expect computers from THE FUTURE to have floaty keyboards and holo displays but we also expect televisions to be 50 inch monstrosities. What dates a film is someone typing in a 14" rounded CRT with green on black text, no the "special effects" needed to make that same computer monitor be flatscreen and 24". Again, Lucas was doing floaty displays back in A New Hope too. I think the expectations modern people have relate more to the design side than the special effects. Del Toro didn't feel the need to make everything CG but instead chose to merge it with animatronics. Lucas opted to go more the full CG route. Are the Star Wars prequels better regarded than the HellBoys? I think it's a tossup when you exclude the internet bias against the Prequels. I just don't perceive the special effects bias towards CG that you do. I mean how can people praise Davy Jones's animatronics when in fact it was CG if such a bias exists? I just don't see an effects house having a sit down meeting discussing how to make their effects look more CG. I can see them discussing how to make them more seamless and realistic, showy and awe inspiring, or ironic and obvious(like I imagine Tron will aim for). When they sat down to discuss making Clash of the Titans do you really think they were so different from 1981 to 2010? I would believe they both said something along the lines of "We can make an incredible creature using stop motion/CG" and some enterprising effects wunderkind said "I can really push the envelope by making an internal structure and making it realistically heave its chest while breathing/model some amazing fluid dynamics so the saliva falls from its maw very realistically". The only thing I think that's changed is their ability to succeed in bringing their vision to reality because their tools have expanded. Audiences have changed to be sure, as they've been exposed to special effects their whole lives and can see the cracks and seams in the attempt to present a convincing and involving world. Audiences now won't be convinced by Hitchcock's The Birds but not because they reject optical printing just that the method limits the execution from being as convincing. Optical printing still gets used in the form of digital compositing but the fundamentals and results are the same, only with fewer flaws. Audiences evolved with regards to plot as well. We're no longer fooled by basic plot twists but we didn't stop using plot twists, just continued to evolve them in intricate ways. A doublecross stays a doublecross, it just can no longer be the only other big name actor in the cast. Red Herrings must abound but they still keep the doublecross because the same goal is to surprise the audience. I should say, this has been a good and productive discussion so thanks thus far.
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Jan 30, 2010 03:15
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Ape Agitator posted:the barely visible masking box (corrected in the Star Wars SEs) Was that the annoying ghost blip that goes up in the background when the Millennium Falcon flips over into the worm cave in the asteroid belt in ESB? Because that always pissed me the hell off.
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Jan 30, 2010 03:31
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Ape Agitator posted:See when I hear of dated special effects I see the "haze" caused by double printing, the barely visible masking box This is especially noticeable in Alien 3 IIRC
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Jan 30, 2010 05:10
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muscles like this? posted:I watched Barton Fink the other day but I really don't get what the ending was supposed to be about, basically from the return of John Goodman on. So could someone please enlighten me? Another really neat layer of the movie is the WWII motif. The dance, the Hollywood Exec becoming a Colonel, the general state of fear during that time period. This is all brought to a head with the reappearance of John Goodman. The noted scene with the fiery hallway is a brief synopsis of the European theater of WWII. Bear with me. The two detectives are named Mastrionotti and Deutsch, blatantly Italian and German, respectively. Throughout the movie, they hound and harass the very Jewish Fink until it looks like they are about to close in on him when out of nowhere Mundt, what we have come to know as the American common man, blind sides the Italian and briefly gives chase with the German before executing him mockingly saying "Heil Hitler!" The Coen's have stated that they wanted to really reinforce the idea of Fink as an intelligent but ultimately useless intellectual and the two strong arm facists pursuing him was put in for that purpose alone. The WWII analogy is just a neat little bit that they put in to gently caress with critics. I still like it though. Also the Coens are waiting for Tuturro to age a little bit more but they are very interested in making a sequel about Fink dealing with the red scare in the 60's.
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Jan 30, 2010 06:05
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