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Femur posted:I just saw Contact... I think this might have been brought up before (maybe even by me), but the way the government sees it there are two options: A - The woman wasted a billion dollars looking for alien life, boo on her. Or B - Aliens exist. Aliens exist, and they have super advanced technology. Far beyond anything we can even think of. If the general populace hears about that it will be bedlam. They'll panic, and demand to meet with these aliens and we can do nothing if these aliens decide to go hostile.
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Jan 27, 2014 18:01
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Contact is literally "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" the story. The entire thing is convoluted set up to put scientists in the position of asking other people to take their universe-altering revelation on faith. It's an allegory for religion.
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Jan 27, 2014 21:05
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Snak posted:Contact is literally "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" the story. The entire thing is convoluted set up to put scientists in the position of asking other people to take their universe-altering revelation on faith. It's an allegory for religion. Which, unfortunately, doesn't really hold up, as it depends on everyone believing that Hadden secretly developed the ability to fake an interstellar signal and manipulate gravity, but silenced everyone involved in both projects. The return to the status quo at the end of the movie where it's an open question whether extraterrestrial life exists doesn't work at all. Fun movie outside of the very ending, though.
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Jan 27, 2014 21:31
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Sir Kodiak posted:Which, unfortunately, doesn't really hold up, as it depends on everyone believing that Hadden secretly developed the ability to fake an interstellar signal and manipulate gravity, but silenced everyone involved in both projects. The return to the status quo at the end of the movie where it's an open question whether extraterrestrial life exists doesn't work at all. Fun movie outside of the very ending, though. It's true, the signal has to have been real, but I'm not sure what you mean about manipulating gravity. it's also entirely possible that the data in the signal could have been faked in the sense that they received a signal which, on the surface appeared to just be a signal from earth bouncing back. Then they "deciphered" it and it lead to all this wonderful technology which turned out to do nothing. In the book, a lot of the technology is clearly super advanced, but in the movie it's kind of a giant paperweight. We live in a society where we can't convince people that evolution exists, despite the fact it can be observed in action. It is entirely plausible that at the end of the movie almost everyone on the planet would just figure it was a hoax and move on to the next big thing. There will still be an inner circle of true believers, just like with religions.
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Jan 27, 2014 21:38
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More Contact discussion. This bit of Snak's post put in spoiler tags by me.Snak posted:It's true, the signal has to have been real, but I'm not sure what you mean about manipulating gravity. When they activate the machine that actually gets a chance to work, once the bright white light starts being produced, the ocean gets pulled towards it and the all the nearby ships tilt to something like a 45° angle (the wrong way, actually, but I assume that's a simple production mistake). Being able to produce a gravity field strong enough to drag a fleet of ships at least a few hundred yards away is an astonishing achievement for a hoax.
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Jan 27, 2014 21:44
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Sir Kodiak posted:More Contact discussion. This bit of Snak's post put in spoiler tags by me. Which is covered by Woods' line "or a chance to test out experimental technology." So the hoax reasoning goes that Hadden discovered a potential technology that could manipulate gravity but no one was ever going to let him test it out. Therefore, he invents a fake alien signal which (among making him a ton of money by also being a contractor on the project) allows him to test it because it's easier to say yes to an alien than a corporate CEO who's made plenty of enemies.
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Jan 27, 2014 22:04
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Contact is one of my favorite movies, which means I can cite every little flaw and inconsistency. Sir Kodiak is right, the plot doesn't cohere together at the end since they made the technology clearly flashy and advanced but retained the "maybe it was all a hoax!" plotline from the book. Even if it was a hoax Hadden clearly just advanced engineering and scientific knowledge by decades or centuries singlehandedly but the movie just treats it as "eh no one cares about that". The movie also purports to be a meditation on the interrelated nature of faith, knowledge, and belief but again the ending undermines its own point. It goes out of its way to make sure Ellie's story can't be corroborated except oops! 18 hours of static. Turns out it wasn't a matter of faith vs knowledge; it's that James Woods's evil plotting is a universal constant. You can probably find that in pi.
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Jan 27, 2014 22:08
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Thwomp posted:Which is covered by Woods' line "or a chance to test out experimental technology." So the hoax reasoning goes that Hadden discovered a potential technology that could manipulate gravity but no one was ever going to let him test it out. Therefore, he invents a fake alien signal which (among making him a ton of money by also being a contractor on the project) allows him to test it because it's easier to say yes to an alien than a corporate CEO who's made plenty of enemies. That line isn't sufficient to excuse it. Within the context of the film it's too big and involved too many scientific institutions for a single US Secretary to be able to just wave it off like that. There's a fundamental tension in Contact's storytelling: it's a very personal and intimate film but it paints using these grand, sci-fi effects strokes. It's like the screenwriters and the FX teams were working on different movies. All the characters' motivations and the plot themes make sense if the story is about what's going on in Ellie's head but it doesn't fit with the summer blockbuster spectacle of the actual device.
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Jan 27, 2014 22:13
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Thwomp posted:Which is covered by Woods' line "or a chance to test out experimental technology." So the hoax reasoning goes that Hadden discovered a potential technology that could manipulate gravity but no one was ever going to let him test it out. Therefore, he invents a fake alien signal which (among making him a ton of money by also being a contractor on the project) allows him to test it because it's easier to say yes to an alien than a corporate CEO who's made plenty of enemies. Yeah, I get that that's how James Woods's character tries to frame it, I just don't think it's a particularly plausible argument. A machine that bends gravity on that scale isn't just some expensive experimental technology, it would be one of the most important technological achievements of the century. Which Hadden would have to know would work without any tinkering based purely on an untested design. I really like the movie, I'm not trying to nitpick, but it undercuts the "it's a matter of faith" element by making the operation of the machine so extraordinary. Particularly when it presents the wormhole as being a lesser piece of evidence of legitimacy than the possibility that Hadden could somehow put eighteen hours of static on a video camera. edit: Apparently Monkeyseesaw covered this well already while I was writing, but gently caress it, it's here now. Sir Kodiak fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jan 27, 2014 |
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Jan 27, 2014 22:19
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Monkeyseesaw posted:All the characters' motivations and the plot themes make sense if the story is about what's going on in Ellie's head but it doesn't fit with the summer blockbuster spectacle of the actual device. That's exactly what happened. Exec 1: We've got the rights to this really famous book written by this famous science guy. It could be this year's big blockbuster! Exec 2: Have you read the script though? There's no creatures or aliens. I mean, there kinda is but it looks like her dead father. It's boring! Exec 1: She's gotta go and meet this guy right? In space? Let's make the craziest looking machine ever and then her trip should be this crazy journey. It'll amaze people and pack theaters!
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Jan 27, 2014 22:26
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Sir Kodiak posted:More Contact discussion. This bit of Snak's post put in spoiler tags by me. Sorry I didn't feel the need to spoiler tag that since the film makes no attempt to make the audience unsure as to what happens. It's been many years since I've seen the film, but I have seen it probably three times. So if I'm wrong about these things I'm really sorry: First of all, when the device turns on that has the gravity effects, don't all of the cameras cut out? I don't remember is there is recorded evidence of the gravity effects. If that evidence doesn't exist, then all they have is a bunch of anecdotal "religious experiences". Secondly, despite the "verdict" at the end of the film, I never once got the impression that the people involved in the project where going to dismiss everything they learned and give up and go home. The project had to be publicly denounced because laypeople don't understand the importance of scientific advances that are the result of huge public failures. Due to lack of evidence they were never going officially declare that the device worked as Ellie said that it did. The fact that someone knows there's 18 hours of footage in defiance of spacetime means that that there is every chance the government will keep working on it. Scientists involved in the project are also going to continue to use what they learned about advanced electronics and metallurgy. I get that the story is a ludicrous concept to make a simple point, but I also think that, given the inability of scientists to convince the common people that global warming, evolution, etc are real things, I think it's totally plausible that a government would in all official capacity denounce the thing as a mistake and a failure. I also think that it's reactionary to assume that every person involved except Ellie would not believe and understand the significance of everything they do have. For all intents and purposes, Ellie is now the prophet of a new religion with lots of physical and anecdotal evidence of miracles, but not proof of the hand of a higher power at work. edit: To be clear I definitely thing the execution of these ideas is botched in the film, and the 18 hours of static is a dumb hollywood gotcha that sabotages the overall message quite a bit.
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Jan 28, 2014 00:44
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Snak posted:First of all, when the device turns on that has the gravity effects, don't all of the cameras cut out? I don't remember is there is recorded evidence of the gravity effects. If that evidence doesn't exist, then all they have is a bunch of anecdotal "religious experiences". I don't think they indicate either way. The electronics in general keep working on the ships, but it's not like they show footage of the event at the hearing later. Considering it's the sort of monumental event where you'd want the belt-and-suspenders of both digital and film cameras recording things, I have trouble believing that the electronics to release and monitor the pod were still functioning while every recording device failed (at least without the movie specifically telling us that happened). Further, even if they did, this is the simultaneous anecdotal religious experiences of multiple ships filled with military, government, and scientific personnel. Snak posted:edit: To be clear I definitely thing the execution of these ideas is botched in the film Honestly, I don't think our opinions are that far apart. I get what they're going for, I just think the way things are presented makes it hard to believe.
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Jan 28, 2014 00:56
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Monkeyseesaw posted:That line isn't sufficient to excuse it. Within the context of the film it's too big and involved too many scientific institutions for a single US Secretary to be able to just wave it off like that. There's a fundamental tension in Contact's storytelling: it's a very personal and intimate film but it paints using these grand, sci-fi effects strokes. It's like the screenwriters and the FX teams were working on different movies. All the characters' motivations and the plot themes make sense if the story is about what's going on in Ellie's head but it doesn't fit with the summer blockbuster spectacle of the actual device. Yes, like the dad scene, I kept wondering why is he touching her but I knew that plot point before going in, so maybe I just wasn't expecting that. I just didn't get it, because it was obvious that it happened, and there is tangible "proof." And Wood's speech just made me think that the Government just gave Hayden credit, and I assume profits, from alien technology. Femur fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Jan 28, 2014 |
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Jan 28, 2014 01:38
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There's not a good answer. It's just sloppy writing. But I can watch it over and over and over 
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Jan 28, 2014 05:48
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Why does the Alien puppet in Alien 3 look so fake, and is usually thought to be CG? Bad green-screen? What? Ugh. It looks like poo poo.
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Jan 29, 2014 14:36
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Alien 3 suffered from a very troubled production process, had minimal preparation time to test out effects before needing to shoot them, and ran out of budget early and fast. Crap optical compositing (no CGI or digital compositing back then!) of the blue screened puppet is one of the more highly visible consequences.
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Jan 29, 2014 14:46
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BisonDollah posted:Why does the Alien puppet in Alien 3 look so fake, and is usually thought to be CG? Bad green-screen? What? Ugh. It looks like poo poo. People who aren't familiar with VFX tend to think anything that looks out of place or poorly greenscreened is CGI. And that's basically the problem: The lighting on the puppet doesn't close to match and the "border" (I don't know the industry term) around the edge of the puppet is super obvious.
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Jan 29, 2014 15:07
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I'd love a David Fincher cut with upgraded puppetry work on blu-ray. This is my dream, I love Alien 3.
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Jan 29, 2014 15:45
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Snak posted:People who aren't familiar with VFX tend to think anything that looks out of place or poorly greenscreened is CGI. There's also the opposite, where good CGI is effectively indistinguishable from reality and therefore people aren't aware of it. Which leads to the "all CGI is terrible and fake, practical effects just feel more real maaaan" feat of confirmation bias.
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Jan 29, 2014 15:48
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BisonDollah posted:I'd love a David Fincher cut with upgraded puppetry work on blu-ray. This is my dream, I love Alien 3. Isn't Alien 3 the one where they dropped Giger from the credits? That's some bad hoodoo and Fox deserved their terrible looking puppets. fake edit: I guess he was mis-credited on 3 and then left entirely out of the credits for Resurrection?
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Jan 29, 2014 15:58
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I still want to see the Alien 3 wooden planet script made.
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Jan 29, 2014 16:40
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...of SCIENCE! posted:There's also the opposite, where good CGI is effectively indistinguishable from reality and therefore people aren't aware of it. Which leads to the "all CGI is terrible and fake, practical effects just feel more real maaaan" feat of confirmation bias. In conclusion: burn everyone
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Jan 29, 2014 16:53
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foodfight posted:I still want to see the Alien 3 wooden planet script made.
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Jan 29, 2014 17:09
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Alien 3's effects are bad because David Fincher is a hack. I joke - although the alien puppet itself looks pretty good and the puppeteers do a good job, the composition completely ruins it. Real shame. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi7aQ8f7oyw Here's some of the behind the scenes stuff up on YouTube, for anyone interested.
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Jan 29, 2014 19:12
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BisonDollah posted:Why does the Alien puppet in Alien 3 look so fake, and is usually thought to be CG? Bad green-screen? What? Ugh. It looks like poo poo. You can see the green bounced back onto the puppet from over-keying, a major giveaway that it wasn't CG. But yeah someone said earlier, lovely optic compositing.
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Jan 30, 2014 00:18
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Slim Killington posted:You can see the green bounced back onto the puppet from over-keying, a major giveaway that it wasn't CG. But yeah someone said earlier, lovely optic compositing. I was reading in the blu-ray thread the X-Files series may be converted and all the old effects could be improved if they still had an original source - I wonder how hard it would be to fix the dog Alien, if the original stuff was still lying around, obviously.
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Jan 30, 2014 17:48
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BisonDollah posted:I was reading in the blu-ray thread the X-Files series may be converted and all the old effects could be improved if they still had an original source - I wonder how hard it would be to fix the dog Alien, if the original stuff was still lying around, obviously. I would bet money that Fox has the OCN for the VFX elements packed up in a vault. Even if they weren't in great shape they could be scanned and recomposited digitally. The results would be greatly improved over the original opticals. Even without going back to the OCN though, they could scan the final composited shots and clean them up quite a bit.
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Jan 30, 2014 22:18
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Five Cent Deposit posted:I would bet money that Fox has the OCN for the VFX elements packed up in a vault. Even if they weren't in great shape they could be scanned and recomposited digitally. The results would be greatly improved over the original opticals. Even without going back to the OCN though, they could scan the final composited shots and clean them up quite a bit. Slim Killington posted:You can see the green bounced back onto the puppet from over-keying, a major giveaway that it wasn't CG. It's kind of funny though how they screwed up a 'traditional' special effect badly enough that everyone thinks it's CG. Is there any other major effect in movie history that has mistakenly been attributed to CG like that? david_a fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 00:23
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david_a posted:
Well, basically any older movie watched by kids today... People only mistake the alien for CG because they're watching the movie now. It's pretty unlikely that many people mistook it for CG when it came out, because bad CG in 1992 looked very different. It's also pretty common in modern movies that don't use CG for people to assume that bad special effects are because they were lazy and just used CG. People who aren't familiar with SFX and VFX at all generally jump to the dumbest conclusions and have all these wrong assumptions about film-making. This is true for most aspects of film-making. There are loads of people to whom it never occurs that scenes aren't shot in chronological order, for example.
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Jan 31, 2014 01:46
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david_a posted:If they didn't do it for the 'Director's Cut' they never will. They even added a CGI bambi-burster; I would think if it was Oh, I don't think it will happen. I also didn't say it would be cheap or easy. But it could certainly be done. FWIW, the green you see on the Alien in that screenshot up there is called "spill".
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Jan 31, 2014 04:05
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It's difficult to tell when people actually mistaken anything for CG because CG is rapidly becoming a synonym for "visual effects", especially for people under 30.
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Jan 31, 2014 07:07
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The green tint on the alien is not spill from a green screen. The puppet was shot against a blue screen. I think Bugblatter went into detail about exactly what was going on with those shots. Likely something inherent in the optical compositing method they used.
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Jan 31, 2014 07:56
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Monkeyseesaw posted:It's difficult to tell when people actually mistaken anything for CG because CG is rapidly becoming a synonym for "visual effects", especially for people under 30. And visual effects are pretty advanced these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebv53RZBdDw (especially the last 30 seconds of this video)
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Jan 31, 2014 14:13
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There's also the fact that a lot of practical effects are now composited with fancy digital software, blurring the line between the two.
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Jan 31, 2014 14:34
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Two Worlds posted:The green tint on the alien is not spill from a green screen. The puppet was shot against a blue screen. I think Bugblatter went into detail about exactly what was going on with those shots. Likely something inherent in the optical compositing method they used. D'oh! Of course you're right. We didn't use green back then, something I forget from time to time. These days green is so prevalent that it often gets used in setups where blue would be better. :-/ Anyway, I still think the it's spill (and there's no ignoring the chunky matte edge, or halo, jn that screen grab. Could be that the color timing has pushed it over to green? I dunno. Maybe I'm crazy. It's definitely lovely optical compositing, but also the elements aren't matched all that well to each other in terms of lighting. Edit: I should clarify that when I said "we didn't use green back then" I don't mean myself. I didn't start working in this industry until the mid 00's. By that time though, green was already starting to be used everywhere, even when blue was more appropriate. Five Cent Deposit fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 16:11
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They designed a complex machine to accurately replicate camera movement, but seem to have forgotten what lighting is.
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Jan 31, 2014 16:27
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Five Cent Deposit posted:Edit: I should clarify that when I said "we didn't use green back then" I don't mean myself. I didn't start working in this industry until the mid 00's. By that time though, green was already starting to be used everywhere, even when blue was more appropriate. Why the switch from Blue to Green? My best guess is that a green reflection, or the green outline/halo is easier to hide/touch up/avoid than blue.
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Jan 31, 2014 18:44
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CzarChasm posted:Why the switch from Blue to Green? My best guess is that a green reflection, or the green outline/halo is easier to hide/touch up/avoid than blue. They developed it from Superman in 1978 because Superman has a blue costume, they kept doing it because there's no green in the human skin. penismightier fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 18:59
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penismightier posted:They developed it from Superman in 1978 because Superman has a blue costume, they kept doing it because there's no green in the human skin. Fun Fact: Watch out if you see someone using bluescreen nowadays, they're likely one of the reptilian overlords who secretly rule this country and are trying to avoid an embarrassing greenscreen gaffe.
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Jan 31, 2014 19:02
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CzarChasm posted:Why the switch from Blue to Green? My best guess is that a green reflection, or the green outline/halo is easier to hide/touch up/avoid than blue. Green reacts less with flesh tones and seems to work better with digital processes. I think it depends on what the lighting requires and the action. Some of the effects in Independence Day were shot with red screens. The old sodium vapor process used on Mary Poppins and The Birds, which utilized yellow screens and in-camera mattes (bipack film). The use of blue actually originated from compatibility with 3-strip Technicolor. It was easier to use one color channel that way since Tech negatives were filtered to yellow, cyan, and magenta. By using blue screens, the matte would be produced from the yellow strip of film. penismightier posted:They developed it from Superman in 1978 because Superman has a blue costume, they kept doing it because there's no green in the human skin. Actually, they used mainly blue screens or rear projection for Superman. To get around the blue costume, they made an alternate outfit that was more of a teal green color that didn't bleed through. To get the zooms and movement, they interlocked twin zoom lens. One on the camera and one on the rear projector. If they zoomed in on the camera, the rear projector would zoom out. Extra fun fact: The Kryptonian costumes in the prologue were made from the Scotchlite rear projection screen material used for the effects. Egbert Souse fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 19:05
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