100% Virtual Sets movie:World of Tomorrow

[BadKarma]

thats all good and well being made of CG, but if that became mainstream and every movie started doing it to save money... the film industry would surely fall... everyone will get sick of seeing all this cg in films, the reason i choose some of my holidays is if i saw a good scene in a film with it!

but then maybe the film will be good... lets wait and see.

BadKarma

[Gentle Fury]

Originally posted by BadKarma
thats all good and well being made of CG, but if that became mainstream and every movie started doing it to save money... the film industry would surely fall... everyone will get sick of seeing all this cg in films, the reason i choose some of my holidays is if i saw a good scene in a film with it!

but then maybe the film will be good... lets wait and see.

BadKarma

but think about it, cg, especially for realistic environments is getting almost unnoticeable.........if this movie is real enough to fool people into thinking it was shot on location why should there be more 3D jobs available??????

plus you can have any location without the cost or the hassle of weather conditions............i think if its done right, this is the future of filmmaking!

[PhilOsirus]

No, this is very good if done well!

It will encourage the directors and producers etc to be more original in their depiction of environments. Instead of having to film a real mountain an dpretend it is a mountain in LOTR for exemple, they will be able to give it personality. That is an aspect of 3D I always loved and that made characters even more real (idealy) that real actors: The team has -complete- control over -everything-! Every single facial expression, and now every single mountain, wind, waves, etc.

If done properly it can add much more emotions to movies. Like they say an image is worth a thousand words, well if each frame in a movie is brought about through complete creative process, then we give mor emeaning to everything contained in the movie. The whole thing turns into a complete piece of art, not bound by any laws of physics or nature, and by no costs. Nothing remains impossible:)

[BadKarma]

thats all good and well, but "not bound by any laws of physics or nature" surely that would make films very unrealistic, and people, including minors may get confused - then you would get stupid people "blaming the films" coz they thought they could jump off a building and the floor will turn into a bouncey floor lol :D

but seriously i do think that making pretty much every aspect of a film has bothpros and cons:

Pros, like Phil "Osirus" said you can control every part of everything ! - which is good. more 3d jobs opening etc.

Cons, would be directors would be pretty much de-skilled, as animators, modelers etc would just have to follow a script of what to create and its done. the job of the director would be no more lol.

**sorry for any mistakes etc, i am english just very, VERY bad at it lol**

BadKarma

[Gentle Fury]

Originally posted by BadKarma
thats all good and well, but "not bound by any laws of physics or nature" surely that would make films very unrealistic, and people, including minors may get confused - then you would get stupid people "blaming the films" coz they thought they could jump off a building and the floor will turn into a bouncey floor lol :D

but seriously i do think that making pretty much every aspect of a film has bothpros and cons:

Pros, like Phil "Osirus" said you can control every part of everything ! - which is good. more 3d jobs opening etc.

Cons, would be directors would be pretty much de-skilled, as animators, modelers etc would just have to follow a script of what to create and its done. the job of the director would be no more lol.

**sorry for any mistakes etc, i am english just very, VERY bad at it lol**

BadKarma

actually it would put more on the director, with real film there is a lot that is chance.........something happened in reality and it looked really good on film that the director didnt intend.......now instead of only directing actors and character animators they have to direct the environment animators too.

everything has its place.......this wouldnt be good for say dramas or comedys.....but fantasy and scifi will wholey thrive!

[BadKarma]

ohhhhhh i see good point... alrite u win lol

but still i dont think that if all films took the role of "everything CG" is a very good idea oh yeha the odd film would befine n dandy ... but not if all films did...

BadKarma

[danteort]

I also think this is both good and bad. It'll be great because, as was mentioned, it'll free the director so he/she can depict whatever it is they had in their head with no limitations. And it's a big step forward for CG.

What's not so great, I think, is that there will be no real environment with which the actors can interact. I have a feeling there will SOMEthing missing from their performances if the set is 100% virtual. Probably not a big deal, but that's the only drawback I can think of at the moment. It'll be just that much harder to deliver the sense of spontaneity when there's less chance for spontaneity. Since the entire environment will have to be imagined by the actors, it may not read as well in their performances.

[snikki]

This is very bad for cinema in my opinion. This will undoubtedly lead to a whole lot of AttackoftheClones type of disasters.
I mean an actor is acting in a situation and environment. Remove 50% of more of that and you're gonna be looking at a very stiff performance indeed.

The second thing is that the whole point of going to different places and filming them is to capture the actual spirit and mood of the place.
No way no crappy CG creation can recreate that. Ever! (ok, I'm being overly harsh here but fake is always fake).

Had to get it off my chest :) I'm just hoping that good old fashioned movies would be the way to go. Not these crappy "look what a pretty rendering" type flics.

SAmi

----------------------
- www.saminikki.com (http://www.saminikki.com) -
----------------------

[BadKarma]

i dont quite know if i would go as far to say "crappy CG" becuase i ahve seen some very good and extremely realistic CG in my time. but like ive been discussing either use cg as the whole movie, as in "final Fantasy: spirtis within" (which i think really should of done ALOT better then it actually did - as ot was ****ing great), or just use cg as it is at the moment, special FX, "monster modeling" - as in the likes of the matrix movies lol etc, but using CG to create a whole 100% set, with just human characters - in my opinion is wrong.

BadKarma

[Gentle Fury]

let's clear a few things up about this particular article.

It is not 100% cg...........they said the environments are cg........but its more like a play. When they are doing a scene from the wing of an airplane they have the cockpit and the wing....so basically what will be directly interacted with actually on the set, and the rest will be CG........they said they did a scene with two people looking at a map on a table and the set was a table with a map on it. So there is still plenty for them to interact with...........it will mean that actors will just have to be better at their trade, or get out!

as for the we will see more attack of the clones comment........the reason for that was NOT that the environments were all cg, it was because all the characters (that werent jedi's) were CG! An actor needs someone to respond to, and im sorry some stagehand with no presence just wont cut it!!

Look at gollum as a perfect example of why CG characters NEED live actors presence for the other actors to really react naturally!

This project is an interesting idea and a good use of CG to enhance a story...........Lucas however used it, cuz he could.

Star Wars has just lately become a big budget ILM R&D session!

CG for environments are being used so prevelantly now you cant even tell!! Anyone seen that car commercial where the only thing that isnt cg is the people?????? The camera flys thru the handle of a coffee mug then thru 5 walls, a window, flys into a sewer grate, follows the car, then goes thru the windshield and out the back window and flys into an ariel view........all one shot!!!! It is the most amazing use of hidden CG i have seen to date.....any person that doesnt know what goes into all that wouldnt even think twice about the fact that the camera can move thru matter!!!!!

When people think of CG for some reason all that comes to mind is Star Wars..............anyone realize how much CG environment enhancement was done in say........Road To Perdition?? A LOT. How about all the building enhancements in The Truman Show. The final scene in what lies beneath was almost 100% CG environments...........its amazing how when not in a sci-fi realm it can be so deceiving :)

[snikki]

GentleFury,

You are quite right in what you're saying about CG enhancements. Everything we see is enhanced. THe keyword here is enhanced, not replaced.

What I'm against is 100% CG environments and CG actors (Gollum worked because they referenced heavily Mr. Serkis and he did the voice). It looks phoney and doesn't feel right.

There are places where it's appropriate to use it but I think filmmakers should think three times before going down that road. It might save a few bucks but my o my when you build a nice set.... that's how you truly create atmosphere in a movie.

Now, it might sound funny coming from a 3D artist but I've watched bad CG turn worse in movies for so many years now that it's getting annoing. THe problem IMO isn't in the actual CG element but in the use of it. THe ppl directing/shooting the CG are different than the DP shooting the movie. Hence we see a big difference in style.
Ok, got sidetracked a bit there... but it's an interesting disussion.

SAmi

[Gentle Fury]

but what about AI.

they had a blue studio set up so they could actually see a low poly mockup of what the city would look like and the camera was tracked in real time, that way they could see the virtual set while they shot.............and if you can say the 100% cg city in AI wasnt amazingly convincing you are crazy ;)

[malducin]

It just depends how it's handled. I mean if you are going to try to do something like what was shown in Cleopatra, or some such huge scenery where building costs would be very high, it might be possible. If they are trying to just do a simple office or kitchen, kinda pointless. Actually it's kinda been done in tests before. I saw a tape of a test Trumbull made where they shot the actors blue screen and composited them into a pirate town, all CG.

Also the examples are not 100% correct. In AI, Rouge City was mostly done via miniatures, plus the foreground set pieces. The minimal CG was mainly the holograms (like the dancing one Gigolo Joe imitates). That portion was done by Scott Farrar. Much of the flooded NY, including the submerged amusement park, was done via miniaures (like several buildings) and CG (the ocean).

In Star Wars much of the environments were done via miniatures too, and not because Lucas wants ot ILM needs the practice, but it was probably because of the high number of locations needed, plus the fact the almost none could be shot real, and the huge cost it would take to build most of the sets. In AOTC most of the locations are actually taken from real location shooting plus miniatures and some CG.

Better examples would have been several sequences in Fincher's movies, done not for saving cost, but for an impossible camera moves that at least have a story or filmmaking point (unlike other movies which use the virtual camera for no reason except trying to be cool). Like the opening sequence in Fight Club, which also has several ones, like thekitchen explsosion and the ride to the building basement. In Panic Room there are a few that take you to the ventilation system, almost all CG, but the big sequence when the robbers arrive it was mostly taken from a lot of live action motion control takes plus the CG to stitch them together and a few virtual pieces.

The question is if the director will know how to use it appropiately. In the case of the article, he is a first timer, and although it says he is a computer whiz, there is nothing there that says he knows anything about VFX. For all we know he might also think that all VFX are done by computers by just pressing a button. ANd there is the whole issue if the studio (unlikely with a 1st time director) will give the appropiate budget and time to do the VFX for the film.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.