Emphasis on the "practical" - what is lost and gained

My simple thought on Practical vs CGI effects... It is a whole lot easier for an actor to get into character when they are submersed in their surroundings, instead of surrounded by a bunch of blue/green screens and have to pretend they are in a populated environment. When I say populated, I mean structure as well as actual actors. Having to pretend that you are leading 100 soldiers into battle, when in fact you are surrounded by walls of blue, and zero soldiers is not an easy thing to do.

When the actor can get into full character, then usually the acting is much better. This is why I think a lot of the acting in the PT was very stiff and unbelievable.

 

I think ultimately it comes down to why you enjoy Star Wars. Obviously we all love the exotic aspect of the galaxy far far away, however, I think we most easily relate to the story of three friends fighting the seemingly invincible terror that is the Empire. The acting, the stakes, and the relatability are a huge reason why I fell in love with Star Wars as a youngster. The locales are familiar in the way the locales in a western are familiar. While it is exciting and enticing to explore completely alien worlds, it's my opinion (and you may totally disagree, that's totally chill) that placing the action in settings like that can take a little away from the emotional stakes of the situation. I'm all for exotic and beautiful alien worlds, however, if I can't connect to the characters and their stakes, I'll completely lose interest. I think there is a middle ground and I honestly do have faith that the current film makers will imbue a sense of wonder and fun we'll all be happy to see.

 

Are limited but its enought to make good movies. Tatooine (Tunisia + Death Valley), Yavin IV (Tikal + set), Hoth (Norway), Dagobah (set), Endor (Redwood National Park) are examples that we don't need CGI planets. The CT was built in real locations and sets and the movies are far way better than the PT.

 

I respectfully suggest that this subject has been argued ad nauseum on these boards. However, your ultimate question, are we going to see any truly alien worlds (not resembling things on Earth) because of a lack of CGI, is a valid one. At the end of the day, there must be a good balance between the two so that the story and acting is believable. My personal feeling is that CGI immersed worlds are fine for large battle scenes (that is why it works well for space battle scenes), but highly problematic when the script calls for significant dialogue or major emotive events.

 

Practical is better than CGI for the same reason that bands make better music when the struggle towards the top than after they get there and are rich enough to do whatever they want. With limitless opportunity comes lazyness and lack of vision, and when you don't have to work out clever ways to solve problems, magic doesn't happen. In addition, there is the lack of chemistry with actors and whatever real world bits that the CGI stuff interacts with.

 

Puppetry, animatronics, creature effects, etc have come a long way just like CGI has. It is all a matter of what is the appropriate tool for the shot, scene and story. Computers have a hard time with reality. Computers make everything perfect and symmetrical. Reality isn't perfect. In reality you get free imperfections. The light you get in reality is almost impossible to replicate in a computer. Light is a very complex thing and you get it for free in reality. Your eye picks up on these subtleties that reality shows us that a computer has to ultimately fake. That being said I really believe in Photogrammetry. I have a feeling they are using this tech in the new movies. It's already being used in the game Battlefront. Also using motion capture to control animatronics is really interesting. I wonder if they will enhance the puppets with CGI. Being a VFX artist myself I can see how having real creatures to enhance digitally would add to the realism. Also this is Star Wars and part of Star Wars is pushing new art and technologies in the form of film making. I have no doubt they have some advanced things they are working on that will blow our minds when its all revealed.

 

Your post is proof that one can disagree entirely with the content, but admire the form and passion so much in the argument that you cannot help but enjoy the read. Thanks for a really great post.

This is the part I'll take some polite contention with.

You can build all kinds of environments on Earth, it's just much more expensive to do so than to throw up green screens everywhere and draw it in.

Also I'll go further, the CGI effects of the prequels are often more outdated than the practical effects of the trilogy. They are actually aging faster too, because the CGI of the 90's and early 00's was still fairly primitive.

The acting improves in more organic space too, actors keep telling us this, it never seems to bother fans that we keep insisting they act in environments that resemble a cartoon rather than a set.

I think CGI most certainly has its place in Star Wars, a prominent one indeed. Space battles for one thing, CGI can kick major butt with space battles, if Lucas proved anything in the prequels, he firmly established this.

But there is no down side to practical effects, because they complement CGI so well.

I can't see how anyone can look at Bullhead's recent spoiler leak and not be fully on board with the realization that practical effects can still look great and at times, even better than CGI.

As for the planets themselves, the environment is nothing like Hoth. Go back and look at the beautiful REAL landscape they filmed to create Hoth. Then go back and realize the shots with snow have a deep Bavarian / Gothic feel, it's quite different than Hoth. The desert is an homage setting, this trilogy starts off in a similar environment than the first, but culturally it is vastly different and it is littered with remnants of the old war that spawned in the OT. It's poetic.

Also Dagobah, a simple swamp set was just as interesting as the CGI planets we visited in I through III.

I loved your post. I admire your concern, because part of Star Wars' charm is the ability to render truly alien environments. I just think you gain so much more when you blend the two and in particular a physical set really enhances the performances on screen.

 

Look, I get why they keep hammering the point home about practical effects. However, they will use CGI, probably a lot. I mean two main characters to the plot (most likely) are CGI, no? Maz and Snoke? I know there's a balance between OT practical and PT CGI-heavy handedness. And I'm hopeful that JJ will strike that balance.

 

Space stuff will probably be CGI too.

 

This is going to be the coolest looking Star Wars movie to date so don't worry guys haha. Everything I've seen looks fantastic. I'm super stoked!

 

I think that they are using the term "Practical Effects" as an umbrella covering a number of different things. As we've seen, the prequels used models extensively, even more extensively that the OT. The problem with the prequels models is that they were photographed and filmed in a specific light, and then the actors in front of green screens were filmed in a specific light, but the lighting didn't match when it was all put together, making the environments look fake and the actors look out of place. Practical effects to me means things like practical sets, where about 80% of the set is built out of real and tactile things, where as in the prequels, those sets were still filmed, but they were built as scale models and made bigger in post production. The creatures and everything they have shown us are awesome, but the prequels had man made creatures too, however george Lucas was unwilling to make the creature shop characters anything more that background set pieces basicalky, and instead gabe us Dexter Jettser and Jar Jar. I think that the most important thing when it comes to practical effects vs CGI is the lighting. It just looks better when every aspect of what is going to be on films is lit the same way. Lighting plays a huge factor in the way things look. Take carrie Fisher for example. Those leaked photos of Leaia came out and they didn't look that great, but that's because she was under bright white LED bulbs from the looks of it. Then we saw her in the BTS feature and she looked incredible, because she was in a soft warm greenish brown lighting.

 

All the practical effects in the world won't save a bad movie. If the script is bad and the dialogue stilted; if the characters lack depth and the actors chemistry no CGI will compensate.

A bad story is a bad story. A poorly told story is a poorly told story.

The bottom line is Lucas really struggled with the story of the PT. He knew where it had to get but didn't know the route. He rushed the script, didn't have enough eyes on it and didn't have enough people telling him what was wrong with his stories.

If the TFA has a good story, the practical and CGI effects will beautifully compliment the movie and it will be wildly loved. If it has a poor story, it'll likely do great damage to the Star Wars name and question Disney's purchasing of the franchise.

 

This BTS of Game of Thrones Hard Home scene is a great example of practical FX and CGI working together.

 

Yes. I will watch Avatar and John Carter for nice CGI environments. Practical effects added to the 'realnes' everyone loved, that SW was almost in ur living room. Big alien CGI worlds take that effect away. Also, are all the anthology films gonna be practical? Not sure about that.

 

A wise film maker once said 'Make the strange, familiar and make the familiar, strange.'

 

Felucia yuck. haha

 

i would like to know why it is so freaking hard to accomplish properly. they should try using better light replication techniques.

 

I dont think its that hard. It's just attention to detail