CGI - When did photorealism become so important?

[Alatar]

The question is in the title really. I grew up watching everything from Ray Harryhausen stop motion, models, green screen (the old fashioned kind), animation and everything in between. From The Thief of Baghdad to An American Werewolf in London. From Five Children and It to Star Wars. From Jason and The Argonauts to Close Encounters. Clash of the Titans to Legend. We had E.T., Number 5, every creature in Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and beyond. From rubber suits to dodgy makeup to stop motion. We accepted it all, because it was all in fun, to service the story, or simply for thrills.

Now I accept that people wanted LotR to feel more "real" than Hawk the Slayer, but honestly, most of that is tone. And yet I constantly hear about how bad the CGI is. Really? The physics were more believable in every movie we grew up with? Sometimes I just roll my eyes at the sneering and abuse doled out to the (pretty stellar) special effects in all of PJ's movies. And, yes, I know we can hold out the Gravitys and 2001s of the world of examples that transcended the limitations of their time. I find the CGI work in Dawn and Rise of Planet of the Apes to be breathtaking. But does that mean The Hobbit was bad? They came out of the same Effects house. Does anyone honestly believe that Apes got the Weta A-Team and PJ got the leftovers?

This all reminds me of one of the first photos from the Hobbiton set showing a hobbit hole with a path and gate. The internet erupted with claims of "FAKE" pointing out that the shadows went the wrong direction. Of course, they turned out to be 100% real and the shadow was actually damp ground from the constant watering of the greenery. But "everyone" knew better. They could tell it was fake.

But to come back to the original question. Why does everyone care? We were able to enjoy stop motion skeletons and superimposed Scorpions. We were able to enjoy the original King Kong and Jaws with dodgy models, animatronics and stop motion. Why is it now so important that fantasy creatures in a fantasy world that never existed have to look completely real?

[Passdagas the Brown]

Good topic.

IMO, it's simply a matter of taste. But the problem, for me, is what I call "the jumble."

Let me explain.

I actually like CGI a lot, and don't need that CGI to be "photorealistic" (within reason). Even in PJ's films, I like the use of CGI in a lot of places. I like its use for Azog, Bolg, Beorn (especially that great transformation scene). I like it with Gollum, the oliphants, the cave troll, the balrog, etc. I actually prefer CGI orcs to the prosthetic baddies of the LOTR films.

What I dislike, intensely, are almost fully CGI sequences with CGI heroes, enemies, weapons, bushes, trees, caves, bridges, clouds, etc. The "jumble" of CGI. Why? It's not because the scenes don't look photorealistic. I'm not demanding photorealism. It's that the excesses in these scenes - the overload - makes everything happening incredibly busy, overwhelming, and ultimately unmemorable. It's a jumble, an inconsequential vapor (especially when the invincibility of some of the CGI characters - and the worthlessness of their adversaries - reinforces the fakery). To me, it feels like the artistry of shot composition, etc, goes right out the window with the ability to create entire sequences on a computer. The "too muchness" of the CGI in PJ's Hobbit films (particularly in scenes like Goblin Town and with the Smaug fight) can lead your brain to reject what you're seeing, and no longer care about the great visuals (though PJ somehow sold me on Barrels Out of Bond, minus the Bombur-ninja idiocy).

I think of it this way, in regards to the new BOFA trailer as an example.

A dwarf lord (say, Dain) on a CGI ram or boar is cool, just as an elf lord (Thranduil) on a CGI elk is cool (one of my favorite visual flourishes in AUJ). What isn't cool, in my mind, are thousands of CGI dwarves on CGI goats charging an army of CGI elves and men and orcs and bats and blah blah blah. Or CGI goat-chariots ridden by CGI dwarves confronting CGI wargs in a CGI environment.

There's a tendency to lump "CGI haters" into one category, but as with every issue, it's more complicated than that. To me it's the excess (and sloppy) use of CGI that bothers me, not the mere use of it, and not the photorealism. Heck, I still don't understand why everyone hated the wargs in TTT so much. There was a reasonable number of them, they blended in well with the environment, and they felt just right to me, photorealistic or not.

As for Harryhausen, to me he didn't overdo it (possibly because it was too technically difficult to do so). You don't get a bazillion skeleton warriors attacking the hero, and a CGI camera swooping in and out of their eye sockets, and nonsense like that. He had static locations and environments, and a few stop-motion creatures battling (or hanging out with) the real characters. Same goes with Jaws. There was one main animatronic (even if he's not very convincing, by today's standards), and some practical effects. It was measured. And it works!

PJ and his toys are like Icarus, IMO. He just flies too high to the sun. And when he does, the film falls apart into a "jumble."

[Primula Baggins]

Great topic, Alatar!

I agree with PtB about CGI overload; at some point you realize that you are really watching an animated rather than a live-action film, at least in those sequences. The cost is the sense of reality and connection that can happen during sequences with live actors actually talking to each other.

A further factor, I suspect, is the uncanny valley. I think it can occur for more than just human figures—something that is alllllllmost real but not, in the context of things that are supposed to be real, can have a coldness, a subtle artificiality to it that is off-putting.

Alatar, I agree that at least those of us who grew up in the pre-CGI era got used to going the extra distance to accept creatures and effects on screen that were obviously fake. I love the old Doctor Who no less because the effects were cheesy. Maybe this is one reason for some people's complaints about the effects in LotR; you can more easily overlook that kind of thing if the rest of the elements are strong—acting, story, etc.—and many would say that they aren't.

I don't fall in that camp despite the flaws I do see in the films. PJ gave us the Rohirrim massing at the brow of the hill, with the sun rising behind them.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm not fully in agreement about the massive (reference intended) use of CGI to create large battles. I think about scenes like the last alliance battle, or Azanulbizar, or the charge of the Rohirrim, or Gandalf's arrival at Helm's Deep and I am deeply grateful for that technology, and Jackson's use of it. I am looking forward greatly to seeing this come to life:

"The Goblins are upon you! Bolg* of the North is coming. O Dain! whose father you slew in Moria. Behold! the bats are above his army like a sea of locusts. They ride upon wolves and Wargs are in their train!"

And if it is met by thousands of CGI dwarves on CGI goats, all to the better. Bring it on!

I think you said it best, PtB, when you said this: "IMO, it's simply a matter of taste." I have come to love the goblintown sequence, for instance, partly because there is so much going on it; I keep seeing new things. That scene, and the Erebor chase scene, are fun, to use Alatar's apt word. Whereas, to me, the stone giants are not (nor is the collapsing staircase scene in FOTR). A matter of taste.

But this is much I don't think is a matter of taste, or subjectivity. The sheer brilliance of the special effects used in these films. Love em or hate em, I think you have to respect the skill and effort that the vast creative team has put into them.

[Passdagas the Brown]

Though those great semi slow-motion scenes of Azanulbizar mostly consisted of real actors as dwarves, and real actors as orcs, with CGI used only for Azog, orc heads and the wider shots showing thousands of dwarves and orcs (which, IMO, were less compelling than the closer views). In other words, it was a comparatively restrained use of CGI.

But yes, it's just a matter of taste. Voronwë loves the Goblintown sequence, and I wish my eyes never came in contact with it! I think all of the scenes Voronwë referenced would have worked better using inventive camera angles and editing, while he loves the massive CGI armies and the impossible camera angles that capture them.

Taste! The great divider.

But this is much I don't think is a matter of taste, or subjectivity. The sheer brilliance of the special effects used in these films. Love em or hate em, I think you have to respect the skill and effort that the vast creative team has put into them.

The CGI team is extraordinary, that's clear. But IMO, that doesn't make PJ's use of their skills particularly good or brilliant. In fact, I think PJ has let the effects team (and the broader creative team) down by going overboard and losing his grip on the "real" Middle Earth he set out to create with LOTR and TH. Years from now, we won't be seeing much praise for the "dwarf slide" into Goblintown, for example. That's not the fault of the CGI artists, but the fault of PJ, who utilized their skills too flippantly.

But again, that's just like, my opinion man.

[Impenitent]

Al, I think in some small part it is a 'sneering connoisseur' attitude in play. CGI has become increasingly sophisticated and technologically complex, and the nit-picking comes from those who want to establish an elitist pedestal for themselves.

Which is not to say that the average Jane/Joe is not entitled to point out where the CGI is clunky, or overwhelming to the point of "jumble", as PtB puts it, or where the coldness of the technology jars one out of the human storyline. CGI, just like any other element of a film, can work for some while not working for others - personal taste.

But I do think that sneering elitism is a large part of the criticism.

[Passdagas the Brown]

Imp,

I actually don't see too much evidence of "sneering elitism" at play when it comes to CGI, though perhaps I'm not looking carefully. I've found that when CGI is employed with respect and restraint, as in Game of Thrones (stay away, Voronwë!), it is largely accepted and even praised by some of the most sneering entertainment critics alive (I've heard nary a negative word about Dany's dragons, for example, and most of the CGI in the LOTR films was praised by these same critics, though some started to complain about RotK's excesses, including the green scrubbing bubbles).

Based on my reading around the internet about the topic, critics tend to focus on many of the same issues I posted above. And those have little to do with "sneering elitism" and everything to do with wanting to be immersed in a world, and being jolted out of it by the excessive use of CGI.

Having tastes that do not jive with the normal blockbuster aesthetic does not make one an elitist, IMO. It just means having different tastes!

-PtB

[yovargas]

It's pretty simple for me - obvious CGI is often ugly. While you could often tell the old Star Wars effects were fake, they weren't ugly. The CGI'd remakes were. That's obviously a personal preference thing but it seems to be a common one. There's a plasticky quality to fake-looking CGI that is simply visually unappealing when set against otherwise realistic settings IMO.

[Impenitent]

PtB, did you not read the second paragraph, about differing tastes?

I stand by my comment; I think the "I've seen technically better" attitude is broader than it used to be (Al's illustration of those who cried 'fake' when the photo was later proved real is an example).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I fully agree with you, Impy.

[Smaug's voice]

I'm not fully in agreement about the massive (reference intended) use of CGI to create large battles. I think about scenes like the last alliance battle, or Azanulbizar, or the charge of the Rohirrim, or Gandalf's arrival at Helm's Deep and I am deeply grateful for that technology, and Jackson's use of it.

Word.
Some of the best sequences in all the 5 films have come from massive CGI-shots.
I am not at all against all CGI armies fighting against all CGI armies in a CGi-environment, only how they show it is what matters to me.
Avatar was full on CGI with CGI armies fighting each other in CGI environments and not for a moment it all felt fake to me.
Gravity is almost 90% CGI yet it never felt fake to me.

So when I say I hate the Goblintown sequence or the Smaug-chase, that is not because there is too much CGI, but because of the way those scenes have been shot and animated. I just dislike the idea of 13 dwarves managing to cut through 10,000 goblins so easily and without no scratches, or to take against a gigantic dragon a thousand times their size like they were dealing with a pet cat ( not to mention eye-rolling moments such as Thorin on Smaug's snout)

Likewise, I dislike Azog - not because he is a fully CGI'd orc but because the design they gave him makes him look fake (to me) and that he is far away from my notion of an orc. Relatively, Bolg I like much better than Azog.

[Passdagas the Brown]

PtB, did you not read the second paragraph, about differing tastes?

I stand by my comment; I think the "I've seen technically better" attitude is broader than it used to be (Al's illustration of those who cried 'fake' when the photo was later proved real is an example).

I did, and appreciate it. My comments were addressing the other part of your post about the sneering elite.

I'm just not sure why you're convinced that the sneering elite forms the majority of the critical vanguard. To me, it seems that most critics are simply tired of the excess CGI, where the freedom of the computer unhinges a film from any sort of artistic moorings. Careful shot composition, for example, often gets chucked out the window when you can literally go anywhere, and do anything, with your digital-world camera eye. A fatigue with that sort of filmmaking, particularly in modern blockbusters, seems to form the majority of the serious criticisms of CGI that I see (at least from film critics). I don't see much sneering in that.

Also, a lot of people, because they don't know the ins and outs of CGI, often do not know why they dislike certain CGI. They may say "it looks worse than CGI I've seen before" because they actually think it looks worse (even if, when you sit down and compare it to CGI they like, it's technically rendered better). I think this is a result of critics not being able to articulate why they don't like certain CGI. In my case, it's not about how well-rendered or photo-realistic some CGI is. It's how it's used within a scene, and whether it's used in a way that makes it seem believable. If lots of CGI characters are hopping around an all-CGI environment, and the camera is flying along with them, going under their feet and above their heads, etc, then no matter how well-rendered the characters/ creatures are, the context (and the camera work, and the lighting, etc) makes the CGI look bad. The brightly-lit high res cinematography of the Hobbit, for example, coupled with PJ's unhinged camera, may make CGI that is technically better than it was in LOTR actually look faker (which is why freezing frames from different films to compare the CGI is not useful). Where a scene is less brightly lit, such as in the misty forest scenes with bear Beorn and the orcs at the beginning of DoS, the CGI looks a lot more convincing. This is just something that's very difficult to describe, and can be confused as a strange and uninformed "CGI-snobbery," but I think it's wrong to dismiss it as mostly that.

With CGI, context is everything. If a real object is lit poorly by a cinematographer, and placed in some crazy circumstances viewed from a perspective that a human would never have (and in an indoor soundstage to boot), I might guess that the real object is fake. If a CGI object is lit well by a cinematographer in a natural landscape, and seamlessly woven into a scene with camera angles that represent realistic human perspectives, then I might guess that the CGI object is real. How well a director uses all of the tools at his disposal, including CGI, is what makes something look good or not. And today, it simply seems that many directors use CGI as a convenient shortcut, and don't bother getting the other elements of a shot right.

[Passdagas the Brown]

Another reason I think most of the CGI in LOTR works so well, while people had a big problem with a lot of the CGI in the two Hobbit films, is that most of the LOTR CGI was integrated into scenes that were shot on location and with natural lighting. So much of the CGI in the Hobbit films is integrated into already somewhat false-looking sets on sound-stages (not to mention the all-virtual environments), which exacerbates the sense of unreality.

[Impenitent]

I don't think that the 'sneering elite' (<--copyright) are the majority, but I think that there is an air, a trend, a tendency, which is led by such techno-sophisticates who feel the need to pick rather than enjoy.

At the same time, we are all entitled to our opinion, and tastes differ - not just in relation to CGI, but to all other film elements: casting, direction, lighting, etc. What works for one won't work for another.

Nevertheless, when there's an 'elite' group (even if self-defined) that offers a particular message, that colours the context for the rest of us, I think.

[Elentári]

Great topic, Alatar!

I agree with PtB about CGI overload; at some point you realize that you are really watching an animated rather than a live-action film, at least in those sequences. The cost is the sense of reality and connection that can happen during sequences with live actors actually talking to each other.

A further factor, I suspect, is the uncanny valley. I think it can occur for more than just human figures—something that is alllllllmost real but not, in the context of things that are supposed to be real, can have a coldness, a subtle artificiality to it that is off-putting.

Alatar, I agree that at least those of us who grew up in the pre-CGI era got used to going the extra distance to accept creatures and effects on screen that were obviously fake. I love the old Doctor Who no less because the effects were cheesy. Maybe this is one reason for some people's complaints about the effects in LotR; you can more easily overlook that kind of thing if the rest of the elements are strong—acting, story, etc.—and many would say that they aren't.

I don't fall in that camp despite the flaws I do see in the films. PJ gave us the Rohirrim massing at the brow of the hill, with the sun rising behind them.

IAWP. It's the sense of reality that becomes lost, particularly with the digital 'human' doubles, where it would not have been had real actors been used. The change from one to the other is still too obvious, IMO, in TH. CGI action still has a sense of "weightlessness" somehow...

and this:

It's how it's used within a scene, and whether it's used in a way that makes it seem believable. If lots of CGI characters are hopping around an all-CGI environment, and the camera is flying along with them, going under their feet and above their heads, etc, then no matter how well-rendered the characters/ creatures are, the context (and the camera work, and the lighting, etc) makes the CGI look bad

.

[Alatar]

I wonder sometimes how much of this is what we have become conditioned to. PdG talks about "framing shots" and argues that because PJ can put his cameras anywhere he overuses that. There may be a case to be made for that, but is it more likely that 100 years of cinematic techniques have trained us to expect certain camera angles and something different "looks fake" simply because our conditioned sensibilities rebel subconsciously.

The same argument could be made for the HFR. Its objectively true that is looks more real, but subjectively the vast majority felt that it looked more fake*. Again, we're conditioned by 100 years of cinema to accept things looking a certain way. I think its no coincidence that those who were most vocal in their criticisms were Americans decrying the "BBC TV series" look. The majority of those of us who grew up with the BBC don't see that as a negative, simply a different medium. People are used to 25 FPS, a matt look, certain filters, a certain film quality. The fact that Real Life (TM) doesn't look like that is beside the point. Its what we expect in movies. Its like fake blood, or gunshot sound effects. Everyone knows what they sound like and look like from decades of conditioning. Except they don't. Blood isn't that colour and gunshots don't sound like that. Again, the comparison has been made about the switch from Black and White to colour. Colour was considered a gimmick, because everyone knew that real cinema was black and white.

When people criticise certain shots as feeling fake and then try to break down that feeling it tends to come down to a vague sort of "I dunno it just feels wrong". People on this board have referred to a lack of "weight" to CGI characters. I've gone back and watched those scenes carefully out of curiosity and don't see it. But more to the point, highly skilled experts in their field put those shots together. They used real actors for reference, their models are anatomically created with skeletal and muscular structure. These guys know their stuff. Do we honestly believe they either didn't care enough or deliberately did their job badly? Or is it more likely that the fault is in ourselves. Our brains clicking jumping the tracks and saying "Whoa, this isn't the same as I'm used to. Its broken".

*I know the argument will be made that the HFR allows us to see that the props/costumes/scenery are fake, but that is also a red herring. I've been on normal film sets and stuff looks and feels real up close. And thats even ignoring the universally accepted high standard of realism of WETA props and sets.

[Elentári]

You may be right on some accounts, Al, re: conditioning, but that doesn't explain why, for example, the CGI digital double dwarves are easily identified from the actually actors. It stood out for me in the troll fight, and Goblin Town. There is something "off" that makes it obvious to me. I think where CGI is used subtly it is far harder to tell. I would like to think of it as a tool to enhance, say, a shot of a natural landscape, rather than to have that landscape completely created by CGI. I remember that very first shot of the DoS teaser where we see the barge on the icy lake against the Lonely Mountain. I had no way of knowing what was going to be in the trailer beforehand, and true, the effects may not have been completely finished and polished, but that first image screamed CGI at me it was so obvious...

[yovargas]

Raise your hand if you think post-CGI Star Wars looks more appealing than pre-CGI Star Wars?

[Smaug's voice]

When people criticise certain shots as feeling fake and then try to break down that feeling it tends to come down to a vague sort of "I dunno it just feels wrong". People on this board have referred to a lack of "weight" to CGI characters. I've gone back and watched those scenes carefully out of curiosity and don't see it. But more to the point, highly skilled experts in their field put those shots together. They used real actors for reference, their models are anatomically created with skeletal and muscular structure. These guys know their stuff. Do we honestly believe they either didn't care enough or deliberately did their job badly?

Not that.
I think WETA try their best to present a CGI figure as realistic as possible, but technology has not reached that stage yet to make it completely indistinguishable from RL figures.
So (imo) the WETA experts do see and acknowledge that it is not exactly a replica of real figures but the closest they can come to.

It's not a case of a job done bad, just the technology not good enough to make the unreal real.
Yet.

[Alatar]

Raise your hand if you think post-CGI Star Wars looks more appealing than pre-CGI Star Wars?

Which version yov? The original where you can see the strings holding up the models, the digitally enhanced version or the Special Editions?