Movie Landmarks for CGI Effects? 165
Daniel German asks: "I am in the process of preparing a lecture on the influence of computers and computer science in the movie industry. I'd like to include excerpts from the most important landmarks, and in order to give credit where credit is due, I'd like to ask for help from the Slashdot community. What are those movies and moments? The Westworld robot vision; the city landscapes of Blade Runner; Final Fantasy; Toy Story; the water beings from The Abyss; the starting sequence in Forrest Gump; bullet time; and so on. What do you consider to be the scenes that have become landmarks in computer generated special effects in Movie History? I am not only looking for Science Fiction, in fact, I'd like to have a wide range of examples on how computers have altered the way that a director can bring his or her vision to the screen "
Tron (Score:1)
Re:Tron (Score:2)
But for the questioner: what is considered "landmark"? Is it a CG effect that was copied in other movies and became a standard? Or was it simply something that resonated with the audience but had CG elements in it?
For the moment, I'll define "landmark" movies with CG content as 1) ones I remember for years afterward and 2) ones that have technology/a way of life that I would very much like to have some day. So there are two others I would mention:
5th element
Jo
Tron (Score:4, Interesting)
Made me think for a while (I was 6 at the time) about whether that could really happen to me while I was futzing on the computer.
Re:Tron (Score:1)
They had this one room that the ride car went through slowly (but just fast enough to support the motion illusion), with various images projected onto a dome ceiling screen.
One of those was from the Tron sequence you mentioned - probably as close to being digitized as one can get :-)
Ice Age? (Score:2)
Easy ones... (Score:2)
Re:Easy ones... (Score:2)
Star Wars Episode II (the planet where all the clones are produced, looks like something designed by Apple)
Re:Easy ones... (Score:2)
Remember where it all started: (Score:2, Insightful)
Although quite shoddy by today's standards, it got the ball rolling for computerized special effects in cinema.
The Last Starfighter came soon after. That was a bit more impressive.
I remember watching these films as a kid and being blown away.
The Last Starfighter (Score:3, Informative)
IMDB Link [imdb.com][imdb.com].
Re:Remember where it all started: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Remember where it all started: (Score:3, Interesting)
What I found ironic was that the movie didn't get an award for special effets, since the Academy considered using a computer for special effects to be 'cheating', but only a relatively small part of the movie used the CGI. All of the backlight glow effects and such that gave the movie the feel that
Young Sherlock Holmes (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Young Sherlock Holmes (Score:2)
Boids (Score:3, Informative)
Predator vision (Score:3, Interesting)
Luxor Junior & the other Pixar early movies
actually, do you own research
Pixar (Score:5, Insightful)
Pixar has used CG to tell stories that can't be easily told otherwise. I'd say that's a landmark.
Monsters, Inc. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pixar (Score:5, Insightful)
When people say that, eventually, synthespians will be indistiguishable from real actors, the programmer/skeptic in me scoffs, but then I think that, twenty years ago, I don't know if I would have believed that Pixar films, Gollum, or even Jar Jar would have possible so soon, so maybe I'm wrong.
BTW, "invisible" CGI is my favorite, too. The "oh wow" moment came for me when I saw them filming Arnold jumping the motorcycle off the overpass in T2 and he was hanging off big, thick, black cables that were painted out. For some reason, this was cooler than the morphing terminator.
Re:Pixar (Score:2)
Actually, I thought Luxo Jr was pretty good. But that was long ago now.
Qualifications (Score:2)
CGI or SFX? (Score:4, Interesting)
If just SFX, hey, Ray Harryhausen (sp?) did some great stuff "back in the day". Certain 2001: A Space Odyssey was the beginning of the realistic stuff. There's nothing in there that looks any worse than Star Wars: A New Hope, and it's a lot more realistic. (Fighters using aerodynamic maneuvers in space? Yeah, right.)
Certainly a lot of technology was invented at ILM for the first three Star Wars films, and you've gotta respect that.
Terminator 2 for the morphing.
Aliens for mixing live action and miniatures (the duel between Ripley and the alien queen was a mix - amazing stuff; just saw a special on the Alien series last night - AMAZING work and you never notice it's fake - that's why it's so great).
For non-human CGI, nothing has surpassed the original Jurassic Park, really - it's pretty much levelled off there, if not gone down a bit, likely due to budgetary concerns. The stuff Weta did for the LOTR movies is great, but isn't groundbreaking in terms of anything other than sheer scale.
For CGI humans, I'd have to say 'Final Flight of the Osiris' in the Animatrix is the best I've seen (same people that did the Final Fantasy movie), but it still has a long ways to go. The skin _still_ isn't right, though the movement is almost perfect. Hair is good, but not great (yet). I suspect hair will be perfected before skin will.
Here's the killer idea: what happens when the only thing left to artificially generate are the voices? Artificial voice actors? Yikes!
Re:CGI or SFX? (Score:1)
Re:CGI or SFX? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not sure exactly what this sentence meant, but it reminded me of something little-known about 2001. The computer displays they had in that movie were not computer generated at all. They were hand animated.
The amazing thing is that they're damn convincing. They had rotating objects, for example. They actually shot video of a rotating object and the animator traced over it frame by frame to film and play on the screen.
Kick ass stuff.
Re:CGI or SFX? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not sure exactly what this sentence meant, but it reminded me of something
I think I know what he meant. 2001 was the first movie I ever saw that realistically portrayed the near future based on technology that was about to come on-line and on obvious trends such as the commercialization of space. While earlier films showed space as being the domain of some sort of unitard-clad one world government paramilitary rocket jockeys, 2001 treated space travel as a routine and mundane activity requiring a stewardess to coach the regular joes who were commuting to the orbiting hotel through the safety procedures. It's been a long time but IIRC it also portrayed videophones and credit cards as commonplace and boring. Weight was provided by spinning the station not by a pseudo-scientific gravity generator. And the capabilities of HAL seem almost prophetic in retrospect. I'm sure there are many more examples if I watched the movie again. I think it strikes closer to the mark even than many movies made today. Realism is definitely one of the major distinctions of that movie.
Re:CGI or SFX? (Score:3, Interesting)
Dr. SFX? (Score:2)
While studying music studio techniques at uni I had the opportunity to compose and perform a piece on a VCS3 (think pre-putney), one of the earliest commercial analog synths.
This "portable" british beast was housed in solid wood casing, "wired-up" by sticking metal pins into a matrix, the controlled by a button and a joystick.
To get any sort of pleasant sound from it (even if only once: an
Tron (Score:2)
The VR sequences in Lawnmower Man were really out there as well.
I know this old school stuff might look hokey today but back then they were revolutionary.
As much as I'd hate to admit it, George Lucas has really raised the bar with episodes 1 & 2.
Also don't forget music videos. Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" comes immediately to mind.
Lawnmower Man (Score:2)
I Just Thought of 2 More (Score:2)
Yet Another (Score:2)
How 'bout the tic-tac-toe game in wargames? Just wondering how far you'd go.
For initial public consumption ... (Score:2)
Plagiarism.... (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Plagiarism.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you looking for the influence of... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because, if you mean computer science, then The Matrix and Reloaded must be the first movies ever about Godel's Theorem and the Halting problem. Remember the scene with the video displays behind the Architect? That was the diagonal argument. Remember the first meeting with the Oracle? It was basically a summary of the halting problem. Think about it.
Re:Are you looking for the influence of... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're looking for both, I think Tron is a good answer. One of the first movies to use CGI (the first?), and had a LOT of comp sci terms thrown into it in a time when very few people owned a computer, let alone knew what they meant.
Re:What the f are you talking about? (Score:4, Insightful)
Much of the Architect scene is about how the Matrix is inherently flawed, like any axiom system. The video displays are like an explicit enumeration of Neo's responses which Neo wants to act differently from. The diagonal argument, clear as day.
And it goes on...
Re:What the f are you talking about? (Score:2)
Incorrect. They are both explicitly about self-knowledge, not omniscience. They are both about the contradiction that happens in such a situation. Don't forget. We're not just talking about any old self-reference. This is explicitly a movie about computing machines. The Oracle appears to be an oracle.
More to come tomorrow, it's getting late...
Re:What the f are you talking about? (Score:3, Interesting)
Monday Night Football. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Monday Night Football. (Score:1)
I'm not making this up. (Score:5, Funny)
A couple of years back when I was living with two other guys myself and one other (both programmers) were trying to figure out just how they did this. What sort of algorithm is used to determine what to point over and what not to, how the cameras could be moving and the line staying stationary on the field, etc.
We shot ideas back and forth for about 10 minutes while watching the game. The third guy (a non-tech) just sat silently. After a while he finally came up with the solution for us. Looked at us both in disbeleif and said,
"What are you guys? Stupid? They do it with a computer!"
We started blankly for a good 2-3 seconds and just busted out in laughter.
Re:I'm not making this up. (Score:2)
Re:I'm not making this up. (Score:2)
Re:Monday Night Football. (Score:2)
How about cricket? (Score:2)
In the case of an LBW, the path of the cricket ball is extrapolated from it's path before it hit the pad, then superimposed on a 'virtual' pitch to see if it hit the stumps or if it veered to either side or over the top.
Considering that most LBW decisions come from spin bowlers where not only do the path and speed of th
metropolis(1927). (Score:2)
there hasn't actually been that many 'wow' effects just because of
Re:metropolis(1927). (Score:2)
I really liked the ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast, and An American Tale had some impressive rotating gears (I think it was AAT). Not impressive now, but for the dawn of good CG, it was amazing.
--
Evan
The landmark effects... (Score:5, Informative)
If memory serves, Back to the Future 2 made good use of CG effects by removing the wires that held the hover-boarders over the ground to appear as though they were defying gravity.
True Lies is one of the milestones in the digital fx industry. Not so much for 3D rendering, but for compositing and for motion tracking. You'd be surprised what all went into making Arnie pilot the Harrier over a city block.
It's neat to use computer generated effects to wow people, but there's little attention given to the digital effects that are used to keep people from being distracted. Who would have enjoyed BttF2 if they could see the wires holding up the hovery things?
Re:The landmark effects... (Score:2, Interesting)
True..
Listen to the director's commentary for Blade2.. there's a scene in the sewers, where Ron Perlman sticks his gloved hand into the sun, and his glove starts to smoke..
The smoke was CG.. Guillermo del Toro makes a big deal about how he loves to use CG for stuff like that - stuff that could easily be done with other methods (and usually is)..
Re:The landmark effects... (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree. Forrest Gump was the first movie with lots of CGI stuff that went unnoticed by most people.
My list would be like:
Re:The landmark effects... (Score:2)
IIRC, the ping-pong balls in match against the Chinese champion were CG.
Jurassic Park (Score:1)
T2 was phenominal, most will agree. Even now, the CG still impresses. I preferred it to Spiderman, for certain.
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:2)
I just watched T2 recently. I think the reason T2 is preferred to Spiderman FX wise has more to do with the director than with the technology. The T-1000 never tried to do anything completely impractical.
I have to admit, I'm curious who'd win between a T-1000 and Odo.
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:2)
The answer to that depends more on the director than their technology.
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:1)
Might I suggest? (Score:3, Insightful)
You may ask why, and I will state right now that I'm not sure it is the earliest example, but it is so well done that you just don't notice. I was watching the DVD commentary track a while back and they comment on it a few times... The scenes on the mississippi with large numbers of incidental boats on the river in the bg... Stuff like that... Don't know the details of course.
I'll put it this way, I rate CG by how easy it is for me to notice it, the more I notice it, the lower the score usually(for live action, and those who try to be near to life like FF:tsw). And if the general public sees it as CG, then it just plain fails. And I don't mean this in a Jar-Jar sense either. Everyone knew he was CG, but his integration into the environment was superb, so the realism was way up there...
Anyway
Preparing for a Lecture? (Score:4, Insightful)
Research papers are for learning---teaching/lecturing is when you already know and want to teach others what you have learned.
Follow the progress of ILM (Score:2)
We would also appreciate it if you could make your presentation materials available to Slashdot readers.
Let's see... (Score:2)
The digital limb removal from Forrest Gump was quite good, and really started that particular niche, as I recall.
Starship Troopers was the first to have a very, very large number of critters moving in Full 3D. And getting the motion right on six legged critters is not so easy.
Aladdin was the first movie I remember to have the mixed 3D/2D, especially the flying ca
Re:Let's see... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Let's see... (Score:3, Informative)
True...
However, 'Rescuers Down Under [imdb.com]' in turn beat Beauty and the Beast by a year (with CG that was integrated much better) and 'The Great Mouse Dective [imdb.com]' beat B&B by 5 years
In The Greate Mouse Detective, the climx in the works of Big Ben is the main thing to take note of.
Rescuers was much more impressive, but underrated. It's computer work was much less jarring that Beauty (where the ballroom looks like a completely different movie), and was used to fu
Bullet Time? (Score:2)
Re:Bullet Time? (Score:2)
I first saw it as "arrow tracking" in that horrible Robin Hood movie. It was definitely the best part of the movie. Since then, I think "Three Kings" used it best.
Perhaps it's not even a digital effect, though. Remember the opening sequence to Naked Gun?
Non-Sci Fi examples (Score:2, Interesting)
Rambling Thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be worth looking through back issues as frequently a front-page article dealt with breakthroughs and problems in CG. The oceans in Waterworld, animating hair, and so on.
It also had interesting articles on geeks and directors. I don't recall if it was Casper or Toy Story but one article mentioned the difficulty encountered when the director mentality collided with the computer animation mentality. The director kept going back to the animators for more "takes" while the geeks thought they had delivered finished product (hmmm...that actually sounds like a pretty common type of IT/management complaint outside of CG as well).
While it's easy to grab sci-fi adventures as examples as the CG is obvious (well done, perhaps, but we know that the death-star or pod-racer or whatever isn't real) don't forget to include examples where the CG is invisible - just another tool in the box so the director can add or modify elements in everyday scenes to create his or her vision.
In fact, if you are looking for influence you might concentrate on looking at the shift in tools over time. Sci fi flix have been around a long time but we no longer hang pie tins from strings. We used to blow things up for real but now it's frequently just bits and bytes. As we get better and better, CG becomes a more cost effective way of creating ever more parts of a movie. Given how well dead actors have been integrated into live-action films you might conclude that eliminating the actor (or at least outsourcing the mo-cap to India) is the "final frontier".
Re:Rambling Thoughts (Score:2)
Scary thought: in the sixties we had the spagetti western, when for budget reasons "American" westerns were filmed in Italy. Could the oughts (or whatever this decade is called) end up having the curry scifi?
In the spagetti westerns, Italian actors were passed off as Mexicans. I wonder if any director today would dare to do the same thing in India...
You need to define what you want (Score:2)
Motion control, where a computer controls a camera that's shooting artwork could fall under this catagory, which makes many slitscan efx count.
You should be looking at Siggraph [siggraph.org] which has a good history section, unfortunatly it's buried somewhere on that site. If you read the first 10 years of Cinefex [cinefex.com] magazine you'll find what you're looking for.
City of Lost Children (Score:3, Informative)
Quicksilver in T2 (Score:2)
Rendering types (Score:3, Insightful)
Something nobody else has mentioned is rendering types. We've moved from phong and goraud shading to raytracing, to radiosity (which was used to great effect in Fight Club, but which generally takes too long for renders that it's left out of movies), and now HDRI (High Dynamic Range Images) are being used as global illumination maps. Essentially, this allows you to take a high-quality shot of the sky, for example, and light an outdoor scene based on the pixels in the image, giving a more natural look.
You should ignore the rest of the complaining trolls. You'd think that, considering how slashdot is an epicenter of OSS and free thought, that people would be a little more apt to give you starting points for your research.
Re:Rendering types (Score:2)
Remember Prince of Egypt? (Score:2)
For something different.... (Score:2)
What Dreams May Come (Score:2)
CGI in pursuit of a story.. (Score:2)
The Matrix, or not (Score:2)
The guy who invented this technique is called Dayton Taylor, and I seem to remember that it was written up on Slashdot [slashdot.org] some time before the Wachowsi brothers movie first appeared on our radar. That's how old Slashdot is. Doesn't it seem a long time ago now!
IIRC the inventor had originally envisaged its main application as being for televised sports games, to give a new twist to "action replay" of cruci
Fincher & Jeunet (Score:5, Interesting)
In my opinion, the two most interesting modern masters of special effects, by a wide margin, are David Fincher [imdb.com] and Jean-Pierre Jeunet [imdb.com].
Fincher is probably known to most Slashdot readers as the director of Fight Club [imdb.com], Se7en [imdb.com], and Panic Room [imdb.com], among others.
Jeunet is a French director, and wouldn't be as well known if not for the fact that Amelie [imdb.com] was such a big hit a couple of years ago. In addition to that movie, he's also the director or co-director of City of Lost Children [imdb.com] and Delicatessen [imdb.com].
(Interestingly, it turns out that Fincher and Jeunet also did the last two Alien movies, Alien3 [imdb.com] and Alien: Resurrection [imdb.com]. Neither reviewed very well, but both directors have gone on to establish pretty good reputations; it would be interesting to go back & watch them in comparison to their more recent work. In any case, I haven't seen these two movies, and they're not why I choose them as among my favorite modern filmmakers :-)
---
In any case, the thing I love about these guys is that, unlike a company like Pixar or a director like (say) James Cameron, these guys have digital special effects so ingrained into the way they make movies that it's no more of a gimmick than, say, choosing a camera lens of film stock to work with. Their movies are for the most part not gratuitous special effects extravaganzas, full of the standard pyrotechnics, monsters, and other gimmicks that are the hallmark of the standard, standard [imdb.com] boring [imdb.com] effects [imdb.com] fare. (Okay, maybe trolling just a little in that last bit... :-)
Just to pick a few random examples off the top of my head:
Apollo 13 (Score:2)
CA-acting (Score:4, Funny)
I would say the biggest advance in the last twenty years has been in computer aided acting. Perhaps it's just because I don't know as much about how it's done, but I find it much more impressive than all the flash-boom-and-lots-of-nicely-lit-splines side of the biz.
For example, I've seen several John Travolta movies over the last decade or so where it was posible to forget for a scene or two that he was a smarmy self absorbed scientologist. As I said, I have no idea how they did this, but I was impressed. All I know is we've come a long way from the days of having the short guys stand on boxes to kiss the tall girls.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. At this rate, I wouldn't be suprised if Keanu Reeves comes out with a movie someday that doesn't remind me of excellent! [billandted.org]
Blade Runner *NOT* CGI (Score:4, Informative)
From the ILM books and 80's Siggraph annuals you should look at:
The early days -- Replacing models with CGI. The spectical of CGI itself.
TRON (CGI + Live Action + Rotoscoped Animation)
Young Sherlock Holmes (stained glass knight)
The Great Mouse Detective (use computers to create 'pencils' for clockworks scene)
Star Trek II (Genesis Planet animation -fractals)
Last Starfighter (cgi spaceship)
Abyss (cgi/actor interaction)
The middle phase -- Hybrid/Partially Synthetic actors. Partially Synthetic environments.
Jurassic Park (synthetic non-human actors, sorta)
Flintstones (dino)
Babylon 5 - (synthetic environments, desktop-level software)
Star Wars - The Phantom Menace (Yoda, Jar Jar)
Then we have a leap. With The Matrix you now have the ability to create a synthetic camera. Add to this the leap in sythetic environments (subway fight scene).
The next phase is going to be realistic human synthetic actors. So far, the results are not that impressive. Spiderman CGI was over animated as was the cgi humans in the Matric reloaded.
Artists will need to realize that the squash and stretch so necessary to create convincing motion in non-realistic animation carries with it, the immediate recogition as non-real. Subtle effects based on movement, cloth and interaction with the environment will come in the next five years to create realistic human movement. Creating the realistic human face will take a lot longer.
TRON (Score:2)
Get the recent DVD edition and watch all the documentary stuff. Get the Cinefex issue.
In mostly-chronological order (Score:3, Informative)
They are:
Willow (first film to use morphing)
The Abyss (water tentacle)
T2: Judgement Day (T-1000; was more than just the standard 2D morph)
Jurassic Park (dinosaurs)
Forrest Gump (Various invisible 2D effects, digital removal of Gary Sinise's legs the most notable and most well done)
Titanic (realistic CG water, CG stunt doubles)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Gollum)
I'm intentionally excluding movies like Tron and The Last Starfighter, because they weren't very influential. Tron bombed, The Last Starfighter broke even, and more importantly nobody "Ooh"'ed and "Aah!"'ed their use of CG. I'm not saying that the CG in those movies wasn't done well, just that it didn't influence many people.
Re:In mostly-chronological order (Score:2)
You must have not been conscious when Tron came out. People ooh'ed and ahh'ed over the effects. Film/art/whatever can be (in fact, must be) influential by not being memorable
More bits (Score:4, Funny)
'The Last Star Fighter' (Score:2)
Also the TV show 'Amazing Stories' had the first CGI opening. You could compair those effects to those of Babylon 5, to show how far things have come since the 80s.
O Brother Where Art Thou (Score:2)
Unless I had seen the documentary on the DVD I never would have known.
Pixar's debut was significant (not Toy Story) (Score:3, Informative)
Alex.
The Last Starfighter (Score:2)
Jurasic Park (Score:2)
I think it was THE major moment when computers where used in films.
Before that there was a sequence in the move "Young sherlock holmes" that used CG to model stained glass knights. But it was a much smaller part.
Mary Poppins and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. (Score:2)
The last starfighter (Score:2)
as someone
Jurassic Park (Score:2)
Animatrix (Score:2)
If you liked the animation in FF: TSW, check out 'Last Flight of the Osiris' on the Animatrix DVD; they've really improved their skills. The opening sword fight is masterfully animated.
Babylon 5 (Score:2)
I'm amazed so few people have mentioned B5. OK, it was a series with some extended episodes rather than a movie, but...
This was pretty much the first time space-based sci-fi went completely CG for the effects, with no models at all. They also did it very realistically: not only does the station rotate to give artificial gravity, it launches its fighters using that rotation, and the fighters themselves perform manoeuvres that are realistic in zero-g, rather than the remarkably atmospheric effects you see i
Demo Reel (Score:2)
Robert Abel's Sexy Robot (early mocap), James Blinn's Voyager simulations, Nam June Paik's analog video synthesizers.. I could probably think of a few more.
Everyone cites The Last Starfighter, I got a chance to look through their shop, they had a Cray and a CM-2, running Symbolics software, it was awesome. But that wasn't what made TLS a bre
Flight of the Navigator (Score:2)
Re:Suggestions (Score:2)
Re:10 Best CGI Achievements (Score:2)
Actually, I'd change this to 'Anything from Pixar'.
Look at their earlier short movies - Luxo Jr, Knick Knack, and particularly the baby in Tin Toy. Although the baby looks pretty ordinary by today's standards, it was incredible groundbreaking stuff when first released.
Re:Geri's Game (Score:2)
It also has some pretty nice mirror effects with his glasses.