Comment on Commentary, behind-the-scenes features, bloopers: What did we lose when we said goodbye to DVDs?
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 months agoMy theory is that practical effects takes a monumental amount of knowledge and skill and as those people got more and more expensive it was cheaper for the vultures to just hire college grad artists and grind them into the ground than pay the union salaries.
I think it takes the same amount of knowledge to do well.
But cheap CGI looks better than cheap practical effects. Or it can be made cheaper. Maybe both.
Anyway, even Empire Strikes Back involved using computers for some work. Yep, late 70s’ computers.
It’s not one or another with these.
I think the reason for the drop in quality is moviemaking becoming corporate. Not “owned by corporations” kind of corporate (obviously that too), but “no way to get in without acquaintances or patrons inside” corporate, nepotism.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 months ago
CGI gives the producers the ability to re-do complex shots over and over again. With practical effects you don’t get to say “That fireball isn’t red enough, make it redder” without a ton of extra work.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You can sort of redden it frame by frame, like they do when colorizing movies. A lot of work, yes.
My point was that a qualified person will do good things with CGI too. It doesn’t have to look worse.
But again, about time spent - for a hobby I can spend hours on making a burning torch look realistic in my POV-Ray scene. For actual work - I suspect they just take available things from enormous libraries of ready meshes, normals, textures, shaders, which sort of fit all cases, but are not perfect. But I haven’t yet even learned to use Blender, so.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Totally agree that qualified people can do good or even great CGI. But the reason everything is CGI these days - and why end credits are getting longer and why budgets are going through the roof while VFX firms are going bankrupt - is because it allows executives to send shots back over and over to get “fixed.”
This is a real problem in the VFX field, and leads to a ton of burnout. They even have a term for it: “Pixel fucked.”
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This seems a business problem. Something in the contract should make it impossible to just go on until such a person likes what they get. Maybe pay per time. I dunno.