VFX Artists React to Bad & Great CGI

[a duncandisorderly]

Is that how some americans say Matrix?

he only says it like that the once, & then it's "may tricks may tricks may tricks" for the rest of it.

[St_Eddie]

VFX Artists React to The Star Wars Prequels' Bad & Great CGI

[St_Eddie]

They got a fact wrong, or rather turned a fact into a half-truth; the clone troopers' armour was entirely CGI, not just the helmets.  Which was one of the most pointless exercises in all of cinematic history, it must be said.  Doing something just because you can, even though it would be infinitely cheaper, and better looking, to just create a few practical suits and then duplicate the actors in editing.  Which is another thing the guys in that video fucked up on; claiming that the reason that they used CGI for the clone troopers was to save money on crafting practical helmets.  Utter horseshit.

[biggytitbo]

Seems these guys were behind this viral video that got clipped up and posted on social media out of context, leading to various solemn op-eds about the ethics of how we treat robots - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIlEYGFBECU&t=0s

[buzby]

They got a fact wrong, or rather turned a fact into a half-truth; the clone troopers' armour was entirely CGI, not just the helmets.  Which was one of the most pointless exercises in all of cinematic history, it must be said.  Doing something just because you can, even though it would be infinitely cheaper, and better looking, to just create a few practical suits and then duplicate the actors in editing.  Which is another thing the guys in that video fucked up on; claiming that the reason that they used CGI for the clone troopers was to save money on crafting practical helmets.  Utter horseshit.

ILM already had no option but to create the battle droids and Gungans with CGI (along with developing crowd modelling engines for the battle scenes), and as after The Phantom Menace George went to almost complete digital sets as well, it was far easier for him to do the clone troopers as CGI as well. Also, George could use it to give ILM a push to develop their CGI capabilities and use the films as a showcase to get VFX work on other films (almost the entire modelmaking and sculpting department were let go after TPM, which is how Myhbusters started - everyone but Jamie Hyneman was an ex-ILM modelmaker or sculptor)

Regarding the props vs. CGI argument, although it looks infinitely better to have actors in practical armour (one of the few things the newer films have got right, though the company that worked on them went bankrupt after problems with the props they made for BR2049) it's more expensive in both paying actors/extras and the cost of a props department to build , finish and maintain the prop suits than modelling the characters digitally (once you have created the 3D model, you can render any number of them at no additional cost or effort). Also, if you are going to the trouble of having to duplicate and composite multiple shots of real actors in suits to create large numbers of troops, you can miss that step out of the VFX workflow completely by starting with digitally-generated characters (which would also appeal to George's dislike of working with actors).

[St_Eddie]

Regarding the props vs. CGI argument, although it looks infinitely better to have actors in practical armour (one of the few things the newer films have got right, though the company that worked on them went bankrupt after problems with the props they made for BR2049) it's more expensive in both paying actors/extras and the cost of a props department to build , finish and maintain the prop suits than modelling the characters digitally (once you have created the 3D model, you can render any number of them at no additional cost or effort). Also, if you are going to the trouble of having to duplicate and composite multiple shots of real actors in suits to create large numbers of troops, you can miss that step out of the VFX workflow completely by starting with digitally-generated characters (which would also appeal to George's dislike of working with actors).

So, it was cheaper and easier to paste Temuera Morrison's head onto the CGI clone trooper's armour body for the scenes where they remove their helmets?  I think not.  They at least could have used a practical suit for those shots.  That's just doing something for the sake of doing something, or possibly, as you suggested, to push the capabilities of ILM, but George Lucas should have concentrated on what was best for the movie, instead of using his movie as an advert for his special effects subsidiary.  The CGI on those shots looked as janky as all heck too, so it wasn't even a particularly good advert, much less in service of the movie itself.

"A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing."

One gets the feeling that with the prequels, Lucas' priorities had shifted somewhat in the intervening years.  I know that Lucas pushed technological breakthroughs with the original trilogy too but it was always in service of the story, not the other way around.