Jordan Cole
White Lodge
- Sep 22, 2022
- 851
- 1,291
This distinction seems kind of arbitrary to me. Doesn't it ultimately rely on a subjective aesthetic judgment? There's no logical reason why CGI shouldn't be considered movie magic, or why digital effects professionals aren't legitimate artists. Someone could take just as strong a stand against rear projection, filming on sets rather than real locations, or any element of the artifice that is inherent to most filmmaking.
But I already addressed this. Sets are filmed in front of a camera. Rear projection is movie magic made in front of a camera. CGI is you are looking at nothing in front of a camera. That's the distinction, and I disagree that it's arbitrary. I think it's everything. As Tarantino says, "getting it on the day." Getting that magic in front of the camera on the day of shooting. Stunts, sets, locations, puppets, whatever.
The argument against CGI reminds me a little of Scorsese's distinction between superhero movies and "cinema". I think most Marvel movies are bland and uninteresting, but they are surely cinema nonetheless, in that there is no definition of cinema you could provide which would exclude all comic-book movies but include all the genre films Scorsese loves. I agree with the spirit of his argument, but on a literal level find it indefensible. By the same token, I share many of your thoughts about modern cinema and CGI, but think writing off all digital effects is too absolutist.
That isn't Scorsese's point about those movies. His point is they are made to sell products as part of a mega corporation/franchise. Not that they use CGI. Scorsese uses CGI. He's saying, I guess, that the motivations for their existence is questionable compared to somebody making a movie because they want to tell a story they are passionate about. Note that I love many Marvel movies.
There are loads of instances of blatant CGI which I think look terrific. This is an obvious example perhaps, but I don't think that Gollum or the Balrog would work particularly well as stop-motion creatures or if they were played by men in costumes. The effects work isn't perfect, but it's far better than any alternative approach.
My issue has never been with how well the CGI looks, but I think Gollum looks pretty awful, like a video game, and hurts those movies. Why that couldn't be a man with makeup or etc is beyond me. Plenty of old fantasy movies with great practical creatures and goblins and effects that still hold up today. And here's the twist: when they don't hold up today, I find it utterly charming. I find CGI charmless.
When it comes to more mundane things like sunsets, I think there's an element of confirmation bias, in that we notice the effects that look phony but ignore that ones that actually are seamless. It's rather like how we all think we can spot a toupee or when somebody has had work done, because we simply don’t notice when such things are done well.
Like I said, seamless isn't factoring into my opinion here. I hate it even when we don't know it's there. I have noticed this retort to when I say my thoughts on CGI. People every time say I don't even notice great CGI. That's not my point.
My point is about the lessening of the magic and art of film because of the shortcuts (not for the CGI artists themselves, by the way) in deploying this "anything you want to happen can happen" machine rather than being crafty, clever, using your limitations, and blowing away the audience's mind by creating impossible things by hand. No charm at all.
I had this argument on Twitter once. I linked to a scene from a giallo horror movie I love where a woman is covered in snails. Real snails. The guy responds "yeah but with CGI I can make the snails do anything I want. Make one go up her nose, etc."
He completely missed the point. The point is that they covered a woman with fucking snails and that's an insane thing to film and show people. That's why horror movies are thrilling. Now they have totally gone to shit. CGI gore. Awful. Action movies too. CGI destroys genres, giving you no reason to see them. I mean even a stupid, bad action movie from the 80s or 90s will blow up some cars for real. Don't get me started on feature animation. What a tragedy.
Not sure I agree. If celluloid looks bad it's not the film stock's fault, it's the cinematography, and I'd argue even so the film stock layer itself is pulling just as much weight as it always does. Maybe this is subjective, but I can't imagine film stock being so bad that it doesn't at least add an organic and charming kind of noise. I mean, there's a reason that grindhouse films have an allure regardless of quality. Digital, though, at its default level, doesn't really add anything. That's not to say you can't make cinematography pull the weight and work with it and of course there are fantastic things shot digitally. But digital itself is a neutral layer.
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Correct. Even garbage horror direct to VHS movies from the 80s look absolutely beautiful and atmospheric and tangible to me compared to so much digital polished stuff today. We have lost something so wonderful. The only digital I like is totally crappy looking stuff like hi-8 cameras (which I shot a recent music video on) or like what Inland Empire looks like. Where it's such low quality that it becomes a strange new space.
I think there's something physically special about the way film works. How it uses light to capture images. It's chemicals. It's physical. I'm not saying nothing has been made digitally that looks cool. I am saying it is an artistic tragedy that film is practically an extinct medium.
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