Practical Effects (Movies)
I just saw a documentary that was going over special make-up effects from the silent era, to stop-motion, to special make-up effects, to animatronics and eventually to CGI. At the end, the ultimate lament seemed not to be that CGI existed, but that it was a cheap, all-encompassing mechanism which did not only exploit its advantages over previous technologies, but became an assumed panacea for any special effects need, appropriate or otherwise. In my case, I long for the days of practical effects, especially the films of the 80s (admittedly, what I grew up on, so bias). In any case, what are the special effect sequences you love in film, and what do you think about the increased digitization of cinema? But even besides the below, remember than films like Predator and Aliens were all shot using practical effects, as was even most of Terminator 2 (including the melting scene, which was done using magnets and quicksilver).
Here are some sequences I love:
The Thing 1982
The Fly 1986 (spoilers, especially for those who haven't even seen the 50s version...)
Scanners 1981 (Again, spoilers)
Comments
An American Werewolf in London
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Alien
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To be honest, practical effects don't look that good compared to properly made CGI. Usually at least.
You don't often get such attention to detail like Alien and Aliens did with their practical stuff.
However for example Japanese love practical effects in where-ever they can as alternative to CGI, probably due it should be way cheaper to make look good.
I'm a HUGE proponent of practical effects. The best movies, visually, these days have a great blend of practical and CGI. A practical effect cleaned up with CGI can look amazing. Actors also have better performances when the effect is right there in front of them. All CGI looks bad no matter how much money you put into them. To clarify, by "bad" I mean it just doesn't look correct. I'm one of those people whose brain notices slight movement quirks or irregular motions, such as being a little too jerky or too fluid. To me, I don't think there will ever be seamless CGI. Natural movement is too perfectly imperfect for a computer.
I would rather watch a practical effect B-film from the 80's than the next big Marvel movie. Yep, I'm one of those people.
Jurassic Park and Starship Troopers comes to mind when you say that.
Lol, that's exactly the opinion the documentary had, and exactly the examples they used.
It does? I honestly didn't watch the Documentary. Just two good examples I know that used CGI for moments the would of been next to impossible without. Like the Dinosaurs on Jurassic Park, or the Bugs on Starship Troopers. Both used a lot of practical effects for close up moments though, or say for Starship Troopers which all the space ships were all done using practical effects in the same fashion you see in the older Star Wars films. While also using real locations unlike say AVATAR's fully CGI everything that despite the HUGE budget, still made it look like an animated film rather than live action despite having scenes with live action characters.
Titanic is a wonderful example as well personally. CGI was used a lot in the film, but it never overshadowed the real "Sets" and practical effects seen. Even though you do notice on one scene that they literally had dummies doing some of the fall scenes so no one got hurt. Was still better than CGI using those dummies. If it wasn't for the rag doll effect of the dummies you'd never notice they were dummies and I doubt most viewers ever do notice them, but I know I do.