As I said, though, not everything has to look stylized, some effects look good when they are realistic. "Jurassic Park" (which was part go-motion, part CGI, and part full-scale models) is a good example. That said, making something look stylized can add to the spectacular effect, as the effect sticks out and grabs the audience's attention, instead of blending in and looking real. This can work well with both traditional effects ("The Wizard of Oz", "King Kong", etc) and CGI ("Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow", etc).
Although I do like old-fashioned types of effects, such as stop-motion, I think CGI is a good tool to have as well. And I wouldn't dismiss it as being lazy either. A lot of hard work goes into making CGI. I remember the visual effects artists on "King Kong" (2005) talking about how they spent so much time and hard work building a CGI replica of 1930s New York, street by street, building by building, that they get confused when going to the real New York city because things look so different from the way they did in the 1930s version of the city they spent so much time in.
Kerry Conran took four years just to make this six-minute short on his computer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqRvdm8jHz4
It took a lot of hard to work for him to create the short. He said in an interview:
I knew I could do it if I just stuck it out. But yeah, along the way, there were nights where I was in the fetal position underneath the desk wondering why I had ever started this.
Of course, he was doing it by himself, on a slow computer, but when he was finally made director of a full-length feature version "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow", it still took a lot of work. Although shooting the footage of the actors took less than a month, creating the CGI backgrounds took several years of hard work, even though they had professional equipment.
Courage, men! We've not sunk before, and we'll not sink now!
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Big G-2
14 years ago
Obit, it is always good to hear from you!
In regards to Ray Harryhausen colorizing his films, for me, it wasn’t so much on the amount he supervised, (or none of it at all) but rather, that he agreed to do it in the first place. In my book, that is still a form of tampering. And of course, you have other movies that supposedly Ray had some kind of hand in for colorization, namely THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, SHE, and THINGS TO COME.
There is always two sides of me arguing with this issue. On one hand, I don’t like tampering with any film. On the other hand, if they have the technology fix up minor blemishes like improving green screen shots (like they did with THE AFRICAN QUEEN), I’m not entirely against it. Of course, there is always that fear of going George Lucas crazy!
And I also heard the Harryhausen commentary on IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, and yeah, he was extraordinary surprised at the green color! I have all three of the Harryhausen “color” movies, but only because it also came in with the best b/w prints I have ever seen!
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