I vote for hand-built sets, or at least partially buit sets.
Cases in point:

• Natalie Portman in RotS ](*,)
• During LotR, many of the Frodo/Sam/Gollum scenes were shot with and without Andy Serkis. Invariably, the shots were Serkis was present were the best takes. (And poor WETA Digital had to paint him out every time.)
• Nightmare Before Christmas. Could NEVER work as CGI.

I personally liked Yoda better as a puppet, but there is something to be said for fully CGI characters. For example, Shelob. She still impresses me.

I like hand-built sets better because they feel more real. Take Charlie & the Chocolate Factory for example. Tim Burton had most or all of the sets built by hand rather than CG-ing them. He even had real squirrels trained for the Nut Room scene.

To me, that makes it the events in the movie far more believable. When I see the chocolate "forest" and candy grass and chocolate waterfall and candy longship in the trailers for CatCF, I can see that they actually made it and therefore it makes me feel like such wondrous things are a true possibility. I feel like Wonka could really be real.

So, I like hand-built sets the best. However, I understand that in some places, CGI is needed because it can't be done believably any other way (Coruscant cityscape in the Star Wars movies, for example).

Joy

In general I prefer real sets. However there isn't a European arthouse movie that I've seen that couldn't have been improved with more CGI.

i prefer Hand Built Set, but there are movies where you really need the CGI

so...either way, i dont care.....

Basically yeah, I prefer Hand Built just because so many times CGI is horrible in movies, it looks very cheesy, but ofcourse theres exceptions like LOTR and Star Wars, but alot of people just dont know how to get it right.

Is it REALLY a matter of how they get it right or folks in the internet world are just too overly damn nitpicky and can't suspend disbelief or imagination for 1 second without dissecting every frame of a movie and finding fault with it?? This is the reply of the night right here and sad to say, it is true..

True True!

What does that have to do with anything, imagination is one thing, when I say they're cheesy im talking about the cgi not the stunt, plenty of movies just have bad cgi. For every LOTR theres about 10 xXx2.

I don't think it has anything to do with internet users. In fact, I'd consider them to be more accepting of cgi due to their computer savvy and exposure anyways. I'll take your comment one step further and say cgi defies criticism to me (when done properly of course). Stuff like Sith had no imperfections, and it made me glaze over a bit. Everything was to clean, to visually and spacially unrelated because production was never forced to deal with the physical presence of a landscape. Actors couldn't respond to it, cinematographers couldn't frame it (and then altar that frame) while shooting. It became completely seamless and a bit reporduceable.

Granted Lucas took his time, so I'm not saying its reproduceable by any director at any given point, but it is reproduceable by him within the same movie. Its like building a house without a blueprint for me for some reason. I couldn't really establish a geography for the star wars universe, or even the inside of the ships. There were some exceptions, like the Senate and councel rooms, but like I said, Lucas did a great job. I just realized at one point I wasn't viscerally responding to the space on the screen anymore.

Looking back,

I think that you can't compare CGI sets to real, hand crafted pieces. It's not only the human touch, the imperfections, either. Dolce made a great point in her last post- films loose their edge with CGI... it's harder for actors to focus, to get into the character, to stand out. It's difficult to be anything other than stale when you're acting around nothing... Look at Natalie Portman, Hayden Christiansen, Ewan McGregor, Jude Law, and Gyweneth Paltrow. Fine actors, all of them. But when you watch them in Sky Captain and Sith, their performances come across as dull. They seem lifeless, like they can't channel their character without a setting to do it in. And cinematographers can't add their own touch- atleast, not without planning it out before the SFX work is done.

It's not that CGI is bad, it's that films that rely on it can't replicate the subtle touces that set regular pictures apart.

All these arguments hinge on the fact that CGI is not yet a completely acceptible alternative to hand built sets. Technologically it doesn't work.


Devil's Advocate: Well... the problem is you picked two films there (Sith and Sky Captain) who are both modeled on the stiffly acted serials of the 30s and 40s and at least part of that was absolutely intentional. That said, even in the pieces that had set (Anakin and Padme's apartment was real) it didn't really help them.


It just creates a new kind of cinematography.


I would say that there are no films in existance that we can compare 1:1, so I'm not really sure I understand the point of this entire excersize. I mean do we use Lord of the Rings? It used CG but didn't rely on it... TONS of set work, much more than most pictures. Star Wars wouldn't exist without CG and neither would Sky Captain. Is it fair to use those as an examples when their goal is something more lofty than what can be achieved WITH CG. What about Sin City?

Truth is, there isn't a lot of films out there we can use in CG's defense because the technology is still so new. If someone wants to bring up things like Charlie's Angels or Torque, that's fine, but don't compare something like Gangs of New York's set design to those, it's a completely unfair comparison.

Did someone mention GONY?

[schoolgirl crush]Cinecitta[/schoolgirl crush]

I know I'm particularly resistant to cgi in general, as I already mentioned my animation preferences. May be better to do things like compare Titanic to Sith. Alien, etc. I believe stuff like *the propellarscene* were cgi'd, correct me if my memory is mistaken. But Cameron built the entire ship, and the biggest storm pool (they filmed Master and Commander in it too).

Or Jurassic Park. That was an interesting moment in the cross-section between the two set approaches.

Uhum, Sky Captain and the World of Tommorrow is a prime example where CGI background setting went way too far. It never quite felt like Im watching a full mass setting, it really felt like the background was glued on sort of like someone leaping off a theater screen. I do think Sky Captain's full CGI was an interesting concept but still needed alot of polishiong

Well, I suppose using Sin City would hold up in defense of CG. It worked remarkably well in the film. It was stylized enough to pass the CG off as part of that style. Eh, I wonder if I'm making any sense?

I agree, that at this point, since the technology is so new you can't discount it as inferior automatically. In time, I'm sure it will be just as good as man-made pieces. And we can't forget how CG let's filmamkers do extraordinary things not possible before. It has its merits.

But it doesn't work, in my opinion, in SW. You can argue that acting was stiff on purpose.... (yup, we all know SW was inspired by those stale Buck Rogers commic shows..) Ultimately, you can't get away with bad acting no matter what. Who cares if its a nod to old films? The actors are competent, the writer is known for telling the most epic stories, but the acting comes off as horrible.... (Even Sin City delivered stale acting from Owen, for example). I blame it on the inability for actors to relate to the setting due to giant blue screens all around.

For now, anyway, it isn't as good as the real thing. Like dolce is saying, can you imagine if ALL of Titanic was fake? That movie wouldn't have worked. It's seeing a real ship sink with actors relating to real objects that makes the movie work so well. And for the same reason, thats why *most* CG films don't work. They feel to fake.

Exactly. The concept is brilliant, but nothing felt REAL. It was like watching two people walk around with some sort of fake matte paiting in the back. It just doesn't work as well.

I knew you were going to say that even before I opened this thread....

Well, in Captain, I think it was actually intentional. They were trying to refer back to old cinema and tv (radio shows too) when the backround was in fact pasted in. Ever see old movies where there is a car scene and you can tell the background street was a different cycle that was editted in? It also was of course comic-bookish. Sky Captain to me didn't suck, but mostly it just got boring storytelling. Its one of the times where cgi was used appropriately, and wasn't aiming for realism but for, well, feeling fake and inserted. Drawn in, so to speak.

I see what you're saying. Everytime I try to make up my mind about the use of CG in the movie, and cement a feeling, one of you guys comes along and ruins it all. You make it... difficult to choose a "side" to be on. Can't I just agree with everyone? :razz:

You mean they are trying for that fake feel like in that movie "Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" :wink: ?

Exactly. But sans parody, and on a higher budget.

Speaking of hand-built sets!

@Dolce- Yes... You are 100% exactly 'prescient'...... SCATWOT echoed the serial cliff-hangers of yesteryear...
ON PURPOSE.. exactly what you said, the style of the times matched 'cgi'....
with compliments,
the unknown author.............................................................................................................

M&C- if this movie had not been made in 2001, the knowledge of the era(rigging, quarters) would have been lost( in a few years), and no real-set movie would be possible. Crowe in the crows nest, last chance... So to speak...

@Dolce- an example of a great set movie would be Gosford Park... They replasterer an old mansion or two to get the look of old.. As a fee for shooting.. They also had real hunts .. I think it all made the movie 'gel'.. But it is a large set recreation.......

Ask yourself- Would I rather go to a costume/theme party where everyone is in dress?, or a place where only the walls are decorated???
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BKB, the majority of the sets in LOTR were real or partially built and enhanced by CGI. I know. I live here. I was in some of the films and I've seen the sets myself. It took almost a year to build Edoras. Rivendell -partially real, The Shire -every bit real. Gondor (the White City) -lower levels were real, Fangorn Forest- real with CGI enhancement, Lothlorien -the setting was real with huge Mallorn tree trunks built and added, Emyn Muil- real right down to the mists that roll in, and the list goes on. Of course many shots had replicas in the studio warehouse also built to do some intricate scenes, but many also had a environmental setting as well. People come here to my wee country every day in are stuck down in awe when the many of the places they saw in the film and believed to be CGI are actually right in front them remain as they always were...a part of our natural environment.

That's exactly how I feel about it. They both have their pros and cons, and I could never really decide which is better. I like them both equally.

zach, you are fun to talk to!


Well apparently you can these days


That's a good question. Is Kill Bill's acting and set pieces justified by old films? Yes. What about the cheeky Down With Love? I think it's, in general the perception that there is ONE kind of acting, and clearly there isn't. Obviously a lot of people care, and a lot of directors are trying to achieve that with MANY types of films. I think to not acknowledge that is unfair.


I wouldn't call Star War's acting "brilliant" by any stretch of the imagination, but I think you are letting the director and editors off easy here. Sin City and Star Wars were both stylized, but in Star War's case, this failed to live up to the expectations of the best acted of the Star Wars bunch, Empire Strikes Back. But in general, it's much more likely that this is George Lucas' lackluster direction of people (see Harrison Ford's comments on Star Wars DVDs) and his inability to take more than a few shots. He thinks visually, and what he see goes. In a scene with Anakin and Padme, in their apartment, which is real, I think it's putting too much emphasis on one aspect to say "they didn't believe they were in Coruscant".


Well... it wouldn't have been, and still pretty much would not be possible, so that argument is pretty moot.


But also as CGI improves. It's just as plausible that a certain class of actors will arise who are aware of the changing state of movies and can adjust their performances accordingly.

All of these arguments rely on ONE aspect of the industry changing (CG) but they don't take into account all of the other changes to directing, cinematography, and acting that come with that. And it's exciting, at least from my perspective.