Harrison Ford doesn't like modern SF movies.

A

Aspiring Mogul

He says that, with CGI, the emotions are not there.

“I think what a lot of action movies lose these days, especially the ones that deal with fantasy, is you stop caring at some point because you’ve lost human scale,” Ford said. “With the CGI, suddenly there’s a thousand enemies instead of six – the army goes off into the horizon. You don’t need that. The audience loses its relationship with the threat on the screen. That’s something that’s consistently happening and it makes these movies like video games and that’s a soulless enterprise. It’s all kinetics without emotion. I don’t have time for that.”
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I wonder if George Lucas is listening. Thing is, I wonder if the audience would agree, because many fan-boy blockbusters tend to use tons of CGI.
 
I agree with Harrison Ford. I've always "liked" him as an actor. Too much CGI these days! Especially in horror flicks. I loved the large scaled CGI movies though such as LOTR and Harry Potter.
 
I can understand that somewhat, but Captain America has the army-over-the-horizon scene and it definitely didn't make me disconnect.

I really disagree with this:
it makes these movies like video games and that’s a soulless enterprise.
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The kind of games I play offer the most in depth connection to the story you can get. Instead of identifying with the main character, you are the main character. That's a discussion for a different thread though.
 
I'm not entirely sure I agree with him here. Or rather, I agree that there's lots of bad CGI, and it's not always appropriate. But just because there's a lot of people on the screen, doesn't mean you lose the emotional connection.

LOTR comes to mind. Huge battles...did you ever lose a sense of connection with the main characters? I personally didn't. That was sort of the point of those scenes; an epic macrocosm with engaging microcosms within.

I do agree that not every movie needs an epic scale. But "cast of thousand" movies were done years before CGI. Take a look at Spartacus, or Braveheart. Armies as far as the eye can see (well, because the shot was framed that way, but that's beside the point). But saying that the technology is the problem is sort of like saying spaceships in movies are bad because there are some bad looking spaceships in movies!

Oh, and:
PaulGriffith said:
The kind of games I play offer the most in depth connection to the story you can get. Instead of identifying with the main character, you are the main character. That's a discussion for a different thread though.
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+500
 
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Aspiring Mogul said:
He says that, with CGI, the emotions are not there.
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I guess he's never seen RotPotA. Or Chronicle. Or X-Men: First class. Or Super 8. Or Attack the Block. Or Inception. Or Watchmen. Or Star Trek (2009). Or Splice. Or Avatar. Or Wall-E. I think you get my point.

I'm as big a Harrison Ford fan as anybody. But he made a crappy sci-fi, and CGI is not to blame. Which, by the way, CGI didn't stop Daniel Craig from being awesome in Cowboys and Aliens.
 
I didn't lose personal connection because of CGI, but Braveheart - a good example, BTW - was visually more interesting than the LOTR battlescenes.

What's RotPotA?
 
Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The lead character is entirely CGI, and that movie is bursting with real emotion, particularly from that character. I think it's safe to say that in Rise of Apes, the CGI lead far outshone the living and breathing.

Yeah, I'm a little bit of a fan (see my avatar). :)
 
Aspiring Mogul said:
I didn't lose personal connection because of CGI, but Braveheart - a good example, BTW - was visually more interesting than the LOTR battlescenes.
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As much as I enjoy Braveheart (and I do), I completely disagree with you there, but that's a matter of personal taste. I'm more than a bit of a fantasy-junkie :)
 
The problem I see with CGI is that it's supposed to be a tool, not a crutch. "Fix it in post" seems to be the mantra of too many filmmakers any more, and that's just lazy.

Also, I think that filmmaking was of a higher quality before the advent of CGI. The reason being that if you can just put anything you can imagine on screen, there's little artistry on the part of anyone not working for the FX company.

Lucas is a perfect example. When he made Start Wars in the 70's, the technology didn't exist for him to create many of the things he wanted to see. So they had to come up with ways to create the world he wanted. This led to a more minimalist approach to many of the scenes. But once he added all the extra crap in the late 90's it did nothing to make the film better. In fact it took away from the artistry of the original.

I just think that having a hurdle to surmount makes for a more creative approach to things. CGI is the antithesis of that.
 
A friend once said - many, many years ago (before the prequels) - "George Lucas forgot the simple beauty of two 'droids in the desert."

I always felt that hit the nail on the head, and also serves as a metaphor for everything that now passes for "science fiction".
 
LasVegasIRA said:
The problem I see with CGI is that it's supposed to be a tool, not a crutch. "Fix it in post" seems to be the mantra of too many filmmakers any more, and that's just lazy.

Also, I think that filmmaking was of a higher quality before the advent of CGI. The reason being that if you can just put anything you can imagine on screen, there's little artistry on the part of anyone not working for the FX company.
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Bingo.
 
Like the song "Turn turn turn" by The Birds says "There is a time where everything serves its purpose."

I can see where Harrison Ford is coming from when I compare Gor in the original "The Day The Earth Stood Still," which is a man in a suit to the remake where Gor is all CGI. The original Gor is much better.

In my production we will be doing both CGI and model spaceships. From what I'm told it is better to land a model ship on the ground in the shooting location than to try to cgi the scene. So, we will bith on location greenscreen and on location scene to see which one will work out better.

There will be a spaceship fight in space with photon cannons and lasers blazing that will be done with 3D animation.

The type of 3D I've seen in Final Fantasy and parts of the European 3D movie Immortal are cutting edge.

But, there will always be some scenes where the organic version will shine above 3D. And, there will always be scenes where 3D is by far the best solution.
 
I will say that in the CG age, big grand battles and what not don't feel quite as special as they did prior to it.

The original Jurassic Park was grandiose because, even though it used CG, it was new and groundbreaking and special. Not something every production could do. Much in the same way the original King Kong was that type of special in it's own time.

LOTR, while using a massive amount of CG, still goes more than the extra mile to pull off so much practical. There are armies of orcs that number in the thousands on screen, but there are also dozens of people in high quality make up and costumes that make it real and make it special. Again, not something every production can do.

Funny enough, the same applies to movies like Dark Knight and Inception where, while not an Epic in the sense of LOTR or Star Wars, they shut down a tunnel every night in chicago for weeks for a car chase and the flipped two 18 wheelers in real life, or they built two life size hotel sets that spinned freely and travelled to 5 continents to shoot. Bigger than life production and a bigger than life wow factor.

The "simple beauty" nails it though. Well said!
 
I just love how peter jackson manages to use CG and models in the same shots with real life stuff.

Just take the horse charges, in the last movie, where he had the horses charge in lines with spaces inbetween. There he added all the horses to get killed by CG effects...
Or all his combinations of models with CG effects as well...

that can teach us that, as long as you don't just use CG to sell your shot, you can do amazing stuff these days.

But i do agree, we need some more serious Sci-fi movies. It has felt quite empty for many years on that part.
That and cyberpunk...
 
Duckforceone said:
But i do agree, we need some more serious Sci-fi movies. It has felt quite empty for many years on that part.
That and cyberpunk...
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You're not kidding - we're missing serious SF. I wonder if we can make a low-budget one which tells a good story and which uses miniatures.
 
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Aspiring Mogul said:
You're not kidding - we're missing serious SF. I wonder if we can make a low-budget one which tells a good story and which uses miniatures.
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definately doable... just look at old time sci-fi's... they did it with low budgets...

i'm doing a fantasy movie right now, but i'm thinking my next project is going to be a low budget sci-fi movie..
just have to let it all be in the story...
 
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