Kenneth Stokes
Writing and Rhetoric 1
April 14th, 2013

CGI and Practical Effects in Film

It’s hard to believe that the first real use of what we know as computer-generated imagery (CGI) took place in a feature film, Westworld, which was in 1973. But it would be another 20 years before Hollywood experienced a real revolution in special effects, when photorealistic dinosaurs rampaged though Jurassic Park, a Michael Crichton-inspired theme-park-gone-wrong movie. The concept of today’s level of 3D CGI animation is an evolution from basic cartoon animation into a simulated world that seeks to represent realism as accurately as possible. It does this by slicing up the world into the smallest segments possible, and then controlling how those tiny parts of the real world objects move, react and change based on the other objects and conditions within that 3D world (See fig. 1).
The history of computer-generated imagery goes hand in hand with the history of the computer, as the computer evolved CGI effects got possible. For the origins of computer-generated imagery we need to go back to the year 1968. In this year a group of Russian mathematicians and physicists headed by N.Konstantinov created a mathematic model of a moving cat across a screen. A program was made for a specialized computer called BESM-4. The computer printed hundreds of frames to be later converted into usable film material. In the 1970′s CGI really got a hold in the designing community. With many people experimenting with new movie and designing techniques the technology rapidly evolved. New CGI developments followed shortly as a few months later in 1971 the first CGI was used in television programs. After these first steps into discovering the possibilities of CGI a probably familiar man named George Lucas saw it’s possibilities. George Lucas conceived the popular Star Wars franchise that made use of top edge CGI effects at the time and many that were never seen before. The 1977 movie became a huge box office hit and became an inspiration for many CGI effects that followed. Aside the movie industry the gaming industry made many improvements too. Implementing motion capture techniques and other CGI techniques that were also used in movies. Maturing into a fully dynamic industry in the last twenty years, games like Grand Theft Auto and Crysis keep advancing the CGI standard over the last several years on gaming platforms.
Avatar is well known for its incredible life-like CGI. Directed by James Cameron, a film that supposedly “raised the bar,” uses cutting-edge technology as its key to success. One of its stars, Sigourney Weaver, described the movie as “like Gone with the Wind in space.” It’s hard to picture what this film would have looked like without any CGI and even harder to believe that it would be anywhere near as successful, (See fig. 2). The time spent ensuring smoothness of features, sharpness of clarity and display of vivid colors helps to invoke fantasy and believability in my mind. This movie will draw the viewers to the edge of their seat and consume their attention. The giant dragon-like creatures used by the Avatar have vivid colors of blue, green, purple and yellow that fascinate viewers while these dragons soar and glide with ease. Having my breath taken away during aerial views of the planet at night and seeing the bioluminescent plant life that shine orange, bright pink and powder blue gave my brain the greatest sensory stimulation ever. The film uses a combination of live camera photography and CGI. James Cameron has stated that the film is about 60% CGI and 40% live action filming. Producing a CGI scene involves three basic steps. First a 'wire-frame' geometric model of every object in the scene must be developed. For animate objects that move, such models include the underlying skeleton and joints as well as the surfaces, since these define the 'avars' (articulation variables) that control the object's gait. The final step is to 'render' the scene, that is to calculate the color of all the pixels. Imagining the amount of time it took Avatar to render its pixels almost makes me want to vomit. Yet the photorealistic CGI technology Cameron perfected for years has made Avatar known as the highest-grossing movie ever, without considering inflation. The CGI is so good that while watching their Combat Amp Suit in action as it moves smoothly and flawlessly across the screen firing its weapons while running and jumping and dodging attack, I forget that the suit is mechanical and controlled by a human inside. Determining the final cost this film took to make is a little tricky. Many different reports have been published, ranging anywhere from $230 million, according to The New Yorker to nearly $500 million, The New York Times (Rebecca Keegan, The Hollywood Blog, Avatar). Its budget lies somewhere in between. Normally when we think of movie budget, we think about the production costs- expense of hiring actors and creating the sets and having special effect artists become slaves to their computer monitors. Thankfully the whole movie was not shot in CGI; there are well acted-out scenes with motion-captured humans. Many shots also include practical effects, those that are done using props or special gear to produce an effect for the camera to film. (See fig. 3) Wind and rain-machines, squibs, radio controlled vehicles, and pyrotechnics are all practical effects. So are breakaway furniture, walls or windows, and tilting or shaking platforms under the set. They are probably the most common type of effect and often seen as giving realism. In Zathura all the explosions and destruction felt very solid because they actually built the house interior on top of a tilt-able platform, filmed anything that required it to be intact, then proceeded to demolish the set as they filmed. Good luck doing a retake! There are both bad practical effects and bad CGI. Bad practical can be quite stiff. Bad CGI can look too smooth and perfect. Practical Effects have the advantage in being made from real things, but the disadvantage of usually being the wrong thing pretending to be something else. CGI has the advantage of being designed from the ground up to look and act like the thing it is supposed to simulate, but that can also be its downfall. When Spiderman 2 came out, some criticized the CGI of Spidey swinging from building to building. They said it somehow seemed less realistic than even the first movie. I myself noticed some obvious transitions between CGI and live action. Despite that, it seemed difficult to tell exactly what was wrong with it. I heard it suggested that they simply had Spiderman doing such fantastic feats that we couldn’t see it as realistic. Even if it looked exactly as it should were it real, we just instinctively know he was moving in a way not possible for a human, and see it as ambiguously wrong. CGI technicians seem to make everything look glossy and perfect only because they can or perhaps to earn their paychecks. Other than a few exceptions where greater care is given to place deliberately flawed details, most of us know that real landscapes have far too many nuances that can't be replicated successfully. On the other hand Practical effects can be used quite impressively. The Evil Dead reboot is a perfect example. With deliberate attention to not using CGI in the film, it seems there's a sudden epiphany in how intelligent moviegoers can scope out digital trickery. Of course, the question is whether that epiphany can extend beyond to other filmmakers who remember a time when using practical special effects added much more heart to a movie project. I think we can all agree that when done right, CGI is great, especially when it becomes near seamless. My issue is with the lack of practical effects when they absolutely would have done the film more justice and given it a sense of visceral reality than pixilated fantasy. There is a great number of make-up artists still working in Hollywood today, but their challenges aren’t the same anymore. Now, they’re either competing with CGI or working around it in order to achieve their results, creating the new problem of blending real effects with CGI in a seamless fashion.
One great make-up effects artist was the legendary Stan Winston, creator of the Predator, Alien Queen, and Terminator, among countless others. Winston died in 2008, leaving behind a legacy of outstanding work that is forever immortalized on film. Go back and watch the final confrontation scene in Predator. The mechanics of the mask, the subtle twitches, that monstrous roar… all were created with real make-up effects, which were utterly awesome and frightening. Ridley’s Alien chest burster scene is still and always a classic. I often find myself amazed watching old films just because I know Hollywood would never shoot them like that today. It’s like watching an old episode of Miami Vice and wondering how they ever solved crimes without the use of cell phones or the Internet. Recently, there are a number of filmmakers that make decent use of practical effects. Being completely reliant on CGI is the route we’re going and it’s a little sad. I miss the times of exploding blood squibs, freakish and convincing monsters, and seeing real cars and buildings blown up, rather than an obvious computer hack job that is less convincing. It’s high time Hollywood recognized the value and artistry that has helped lead the charge in the special effects community and take a stand to gives a little more of the real stuff.
In today's film world, CGI runs rampant. In the past CGI was used mostly to supplement practical effects, or was not even used at all. Now CGI is used dominantly, in almost every special effects movie today. Some believe using practical effects increases an artist's creativity since they have to come up with the most creative way to make it seem real. I believe that they are absolutely incorrect. Implementing CGI into a film does not inherently mean not at all using practical effects. It takes nothing away form the artist's creativity and, if anything, adds entirely new ways to be creative (creating the dementors in Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban would have looked ridiculous if it was meant with cloaks hanging on strings. Therefore, an artist's ability to be creative is only increased with use of CGI. When it comes to effects, nothing compares to CGI. Sure, a wound made by a flour mix looks a bit more realistic than one edited onto the arm on a computer, but in the end the art and the effect are the same unless one chooses to zoom into their screen by 100x or some ridiculous amount where the difference between a real video and CGI pixilation can be observed. I admit I am very cynical towards CGI, because films today look like cartoons, there's no weight to anything and I feel sorry for the actors who have to interact with an invisible ensemble against a blue screen. With characters like Gollum, I think "wow, that's great... wonder how long until it looks dated".
Practical effects are prone to technical problems if not handled with attention to detail. These problems can delay a production for hours and in some cases, days. Weather a huge these problems can also put both cast and crew at risk of getting injured, particularly effects that use pyrotechnics and wires. During the filming of a segment of the 1983 movie The Twilight Zone, produced by Steven Spielberg, actor Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le (age 7) and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (age 6) died in an accident involving a helicopter being used on the set. The helicopter was flying at an altitude of only 25 feet (8 meters), too low to avoid the explosions of the pyrotechnics used on set. When the blasts severed the tail rotor, it spun out of control and crashed, decapitating Morrow and Le with its blades. Chen was crushed to death as the helicopter crashed. Everyone inside the helicopter survived sustaining minor injuries. The accident led to legal action against the filmmakers that lasted nearly a decade, and changed the regulations involving children working on movie sets at night and during special effects-heavy scenes. The incident also ended the friendship between director Landis and producer Spielberg, who was already angered before the accident that Landis had violated many codes, including using live ammunition on the set. While dismantling an outdoor set in wintry conditions for Jumper, a sci-fi thriller starring Samuel Jackson, set dresser David Ritchie was fatally struck by frozen debris (Grace Murano, Oddee, Jumper). Investigators later found that the sand and earth frozen to the wall for exterior design came unstuck as the set was being torn down, falling and crushing Ritchie. The film kept going, eventually receiving widespread criticism and poor reviews from critics.
In conclusion, in terms of time, material and cost effectiveness when showing very in-depth artificial characters I believe there is sufficient evidence and past examples to prove that despite the inauthenticity of the method to produce the effect, the effects themselves, certainly on a large scene with many unreal characters, are better produced by CGI than practical effects.

Citation

Keegan, R. (2009, December 22). How much did avatar really cost?. Retrieved from http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/12/how-much-did-avatar-really-cost

Mitchell, D. (2002, June 21). The future of the cartoon feature film. Retrieved from http://www.zenoshrdlu.com/zenocgi.htm
Pramaggiore, M., & Wallis, T. (2011). Film a critical introduction. (Third ed., pp. 177-178). London: Laurence King. DOI: www.laurenceking.com

Murano, Grace. "9 Worst movie set disasters." Oddee. N.p., 13 Mar 2009. Web. 14 May 2013. <http://www.oddee.com/item_96604.asp&xgt;.

Shawn, Lealos. N.p.. Web. 18 Apr 2013. http://www.examiner.com/article/evil-dead-remake-promises-all-practical-effects-no-cgi

Svetkey, B. (2010, January 16). James Cameron on how 'avatar' technology could keep clint eastwood young forever. Retrieved from http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/01/16/james-cameron-avatar-technology/

Watt, N. (2009, December 18). Will 'avater' make viewers nauseous?. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/avatar-movie-making-viewers-nauseous/story?id=9370714

A CGI computer program breaks down life to it’s smallest parts
A CGI computer program breaks down life to it’s smallest parts
Figure 1
Figure 1

Berry, Kathie. "PD Particles." Planit 3D. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr 2013. http://www.planit3d.com/source/review_files/pdp/pdp_rev1.html

Without CGI the film Avatar might have looked completely different
Without CGI the film Avatar might have looked completely different

Figure 2

Rachaelwsz, . "How Avatar would look with and without CGI." Fanpop. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr 2013. http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/avatar/images/9609043/title/how-avatar-would-look-with-without-cgi-photo

Shows the distinction between particle effects and CGI
Shows the distinction between particle effects and CGI
Figure 3
Figure 3

"Star Wars: episode VII wishlist." Virgin media. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr 2013. http://www.virginmedia.com/movies/features/star-wars-episode-7-wishlist.php?page=12