It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
I don't get the obsession those people have with CG being somehow a bad or lesser thing, it clearly isn't. When Indy and his Dad are sat in that plane it isn't somehow better that the backdrop is being appalling optically matted around them than it is that the backdrop to some of the Skull chases is comped in digitally.
That is indeed the definition of practical effects, but not of practical stunts (both are VFX though), and we're talking about the Tuk Tuk chase.
No, it certainly isn't a bad or lesser thing. It's just a different tool that in itself can be utilised exceptionally well or exceptionally poorly.
And I'd agree with your latter point.
My original point was about people taking issue with the bad CGI in the Tuk-Tuk chase, which is not something I saw but what it felt like people were looking for.
Indeed, SFX as opposed to VFX. It might be seen as a subtle form of snobbery, but there's definitely a distinction to be made for things made with the intention of looking good in front of a camera versus things that are created in post. The sweet spot, for me, is when the two principles compliment each other.
Clearly I am that type of person.
I would have liked to go a day earlier, since the first showing is on Thursday, June 29, at 13:00. But my wife cannot make it then due to her job. So I'm not really among the first ones outside the Cannes audience to see it, but early enough.
That should shake them off!
(I think that doesn't get the attention it deserves as possibly being the most dad joke in all of Bond :D )
I think there's a good chance that there's lots of CG stuff that's so good we've never spotted it though. Did you know that Paloma's legs in the NTTD fight when she's high-kicking people in the face are CG for example? I would never have known that.
Likewise, I would never have known that the hangar door in the Octopussy Acrostar jet stunt was a foreground miniature unless I'd been told. If it's truly seamless like those, why does it matter either way? One may as well be fussy about the brand of lightbulb used on set to light it.
When Spielberg said he would made CRYSTAL SKULL with old school methods, he wasn’t lying. He actually did have a ton of miniatures and stunt work. The thing is that many misinterpreted his comment as “there will be no CGI”. Maybe he could have made his comment clearer by phrasing it as “we’re gonna use CGI in combination with miniatures and practical stunt work” and that would have set expectations more reasonably.
I always forget this caveat but I figure it goes without saying, since I've made the point a lot over my many years here, but when I offer that preference, I mean CGI physically dominating the action. If it's an extension of the background, the location, etc., I couldn't care less, especially when I don't notice it.
Hell, for all the grief I give SP for its poor implementation of it, there was a lot of B-roll footage I saw after the fact that I had no clue of after a few viewings, like the train being enlarged through visual work. That's great and works just fine for me. Patrice falling out the window in SF? Looks too rubber-bandy and cartoonish for my liking. And don't get me started on a lot of the superhero films of late.
So yeah, I don't think anyone here is complaining about seamless, almost impossible to notice moments of CGI, myself included. Even if I realize they are after the fact, it doesn't bug me.
@MakeshiftPython, reminds me of The Thing prequel, where most of it was shot with animatronics and methods that would've made fans of the '80s classic incredibly impressed, only for the studio to institute horrid CGI enhancements just weeks out from release. Definitely not the same situation but it proves one can go into filming with such intentions and have it cocked up by what's done in post.
Well fair enough, but you did say you would take practical over CG 'any day of the week'; which is what I was responding to. I can only really answer what people say, and people say this all the time. If you follow Todd Vaziri on Twitter (a very experienced and celebrated VFX artist) one of his big bugbears is when films are promoted on the basis of 'it was all done practically' this or that, and it's easily disprovable that digital effects were used in pretty much every case, downplaying the work of other very talented artists. There's this weird stance that somehow digital is bad and less artistic in some way, which gets repeated and becomes received knowledge, but it's rubbish.
For example, I think the model effects in GoldenEye are generally terrible. The plane crashing into the dish looks like absolute crap to me- and it did in the cinema too, and I don't give it any bonus points for being a practical model. I remember my friend and I watching it in the cinema and laughing at the huge water sloshing around in the Aricebo dish- it looked dreadful on a big screen. The shots of the Russian jets taking off from the runway look brilliant though, and are indistinguishable from the real thing.
I'll take practical effects/stunts over CGI any day of the week when it comes to being a major, integral part of the action itself, not in extending the world and universe around it.
And funny, cause I love the model effects in GE through and through, and would take those over, say, a CGI jet flying into a CGI satellite dish 100% of the time. Doesn't make either side objectively right or wrong, it just goes to show that everybody has a preference.
My opinion could change in 50 years if the technology was so unbelievable that you legitimately couldn't tell the difference but I'm not sure we'll ever reach that stage.
I'm not sure what that means really though. Was the DB5 explosion not integral? Here's what the real thing looked like:
Or Paloma's legs, Craig's face in the fight with Ash etc.
I can't tell if you're somehow genuinely finding confusion in my opinion or what but it seems like we're now nitpicking absolute-split-second moments, so I'll try another angle.
For an example to my original, now-overstated point, look no further than the DAD parasurfing garbage. That is an action scene completely dominated by CGI. That's what I don't like. Or look at the Avengers movies, when it's rubber-band looking Spider-Man flipping around the city or Iron Man awkwardly darting around at 200 miles an hour. It just holds no weight for me at all, I can't get into it. There's nothing tangible there for me to enjoy. If the tech was better? Maybe I wouldn't mind as much. That new Avatar movie is clearly in the same field, in terms of being so heavily CGI-focused but the technology there is so wildly, unbelievably impressive that I still had a damn good time and could get behind the emotional weight of it all and the excitement of the fights, the explosions, the crashes and the like.
I don't mind the absolute tiniest enhancements I'll never know about it. I could've gone my whole life and probably not recognized the Paloma bit you mentioned. Hell, I'm sure, knowing it, I still won't even recognize it on a rewatch. Even in your provided shot, it just looks like a car to me, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment.
And as I say, the model work in GE looked just as embarrassingly bad to me as the parasailing in DAD: in fact there’s a moment in DAD, where the dragster drives off the cliff and rebounds back, which I would say is the single worst effect in any Bond movie, and I’ve always thought it was a model effect. It may be CG but it’s so poor I genuinely can’t tell either way!
I get what you’re saying, but even with Spider Man there are shots of him swinging about that Vic Armstrong did with a real stuntman than I think most people think are CG anyway and dismiss because there’s a mindset that digital is bad.
To me, if it’s a bad effect, it’s a bad effect; and if it’s a good effect it’s just good and I probably don’t even notice it. And odds are, most digital effects fall into the latter.
That said: I do think everything I’ve seen of the opening WW2 train bit of DoD looks way more digital than I’d prefer! I like a real stunt just as much as the next guy, and that scene does look a bit faker than I’d prefer. If it were all done with back projection I’d feel the same.
While I find the creation of practical effects to be more interesting, and I see it advantages, I also see its weaknesses.
I think it’s a mistake to trash one technique or another. As far as CGI, yes there is some painfully terrible work out there, but there is also an incredible amount of absolutely beautifully done work that for the most part is undetectable.
The model work of Goldeneye is mentioned above; what makes that work look “fake” and model like are the explosions and fire effects. Fire and Water cannot be miniaturized; they are filmed at high speed, but in the end they are the wrong scale. If Goldeneye were to be filmed today, a hybrid technique would be used; miniatures would be combined with CG , scale appropriate, water and fire effects to make a much mor satisfying result.
All special effects techniques are tools; they all have their place.
Well speaking of The Drinker..
Clickbait videos from internet morons.
I can't wait for this film to finally arrive, so we can all make our own minds up.
In reality, these people are delusional and read what they want to see. They talk about PWB punching and bossing about Indy in this latest film, yet;
Marion slugged Indy and was quite the ferocious character in Raiders— and that was in 1981!!! The concept of women “bossing” men around is a trope that has been embedded in pop culture for decades…
It’s quite nauseating how a certain section of society forgets about this history, only to have an argument to tear down a film they haven’t even seen (or cite silly on-line “reviews”)…
He also said he’d never watch Star Trek Picard again and declared the franchise dead after enduring the horror of the first two seasons of that show.However,he was convinced to give Season 3 a go when he was advised by the likes of Rob Burnett ( who saw it months early ) that the final season was fantastic ( which it was ).
Drinker really liked it and so did i.
The difference here though is that the early word on Indy 5 is bad.Really bad.It is officially the lowest rated movie of the franchise on RT.
I’ve never taken any notice of RT. And I’m not about to start now.
If I’m interested in a film, I’ll see it.
If not, then maybe one day….
But I find that modern reviews are seemingly like modern politics: ridiculous warfare.