Hell yes they still have a future. They aren't used as often because of the costs, not because CGI offers better visuals.

Yes

I ain’t readin’ all that. But yeah, they definitely have a future. As long as there’s live action films, there will be practical effects.

[deleted]

If George Miller still wants to make action films, yes.

The TLDR is as long as the text that came before it! But, seriously, practical effects will continue to exist. Right tool, right job, etc etc.

CGI now has basically ruined Star Wars. The originals were so good in part because they used practical effects.

Dude needs a tldr for his tldr

You really out-jerked r/moviescirclejerk this time

I’m not reading that lol

I disagree. Say what you will about the stories of the newer films, but they look spectacular. Rogue One especially.

I didn't read all of that because it is late and, no.

A recent example I can point to where I agree with your title is Andor vs. Obi-Wan Kenobi. The practical sets just work so much better than The Volume.

Grogu.

Practical Effects require practically planning ahead, which many productions aren’t keen to do.

Returning to practical effects is a huge trend rn. Ofc they have a future. Any good director is gonna talk about how important it is to them to capture as much as possible in camera. Examples would he faverou with mando, nolan with Oppenheimer, giannachi in werewolf by night, just to name a few.

> conspiracy theories weren't common, there was no such thing as mass manipulation by companies, nobody had to worry about nations like China seriously spying on them, bigotry was on the decline.

I'm sorry, but all of this is bullshit hyperbole. The Internet and social media hasn't made things worse, it just made the worst aspects of human nature a lot more easy to see than ever. That's not to say they don't represent challenges to us that we have no exact precedents for, but the "everything was so great before computers crowd" are just remembering a simpler time where they didn't have as many responsibilities and didn't have a broader understanding of the world beyond their own spheres of experience.

The alien from Alien movies would disagree that physical monsters from old movies look bad.

Doubt it. Thanks, OHSA.

Practical effects, like CGI, continues to innovate and improve. Puppetry today is more complex and realistic than it was 40 years ago. I don’t know if I’m alone in this but the best CGI still looks like PlayStation to me. It’s best used sparingly, when absolutely necessary. If you can afford it, real exploding cars look better

Yes.

Yes, but practical effects driven blockbusters are a thing of the past with the rare exception. The best outcome is a marriage of both practical effects and cgi, which is quite common. For example, making a small portion of a set and using cgi to expand it for more scope. Also, actors in suits for creatures, but with cgi augmentation for extra details or removing rigging. Actors and VFX artists benefit immensely from having something tangible on set, even if it's removed or manipulated with cgi later on. It's also important to notice the artistry that goes with cgi, for any given shot there are numerous stages and revisions to get it to cinema quality. It can be highly creative and very challenging work, we're still ages away from pressing a few buttons and then a computer craps out a video file.

Take a step back and revisit decades worth of practical effects driven films if you're disillusioned with the direction cinema is heading. I'm not too keen on cgi blockbusters myself, so I tend to seek out mostly older movies while watching new releases that are smaller in scope.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is assuming that CGI is always cheaper than practical effects (or will be in the near future). This is wildly untrue. It is both cheaper and better looking to chuck a low paid stunt double through a fake wall during an action scene than it is to try to render that whole action scene through CGI, as one example. You are thinking of the huge practical action set pieces that certain directors are known for, but those typically take up under 5% of the runtime of a movie.

Yes, eventually in hundreds of years if humanity manages to avoid destroying itself then we may start seeing entire movies just rendered entirely in CGI and even characters down to the voice acting that are 100% digital and basically indistinguishable from real actors in real places but they didn't even use a camera at all to make it. Because its cheaper, not because its better. You can't get better than real if its done right. That's not happening in you or your kid's lifetimes though, after that who the hell really knows.

Yes and no.

Hand props will always have a place in movies. Actors like playing with the props and it makes their job more fun.

Explosions and things that could hurt the actors and crew will be replaced by cgi. It is safer and less liability for everyone involved.

Building shots are easier to film on location.

[deleted]

Top Gun Maverick and Everything Everywhere All at Once used a lot of practical effects, the response and reviews showed how important it still is.

I feel like we are in an odd place with CGI. It got really good looking, peaked, and then it got too good looking. Really brings out the uncanny valley. It's almost like CGI clearly displays features that my eyes wouldn't see normally if that makes sense.

There will always be practical effects

Mad Max: Fury Road. Best action movie to date

Yeah but everyone was talking about how great Prey is, and those animals were some of the worst CGI I've ever seen (and I'm not talking about explosions, I'm talking about a fake snake that would've been better if you'd used a rubber one).

An American Werewolf in London is my practical effect touchstone. The transformation scene is pure magic.

The Graboids from Tremors.

there were so many bad boomer takes that OP takes as unquestionable assumptions lol.

I'm not a boomer, and I learned what I did about tech in a programming class I took just a few years ago (we couldn't have a traditional graduation ceremony because of the pandemic to give you an idea). My opinion is my own, and certainly not taken from any 'boomers'. My own professor laughed it all off, until some of the other students apparently educated him about the modern tech industry. The next class session he went on a bit of a tirade about how we should all just avoid the internet, though he didn't elaborate on why. Guess he thought he didn't have to, even though not all of us talked to him about the topic (I know I didn't).

Tell me this. Before the internet, extremists and looneys had a much harder time reach an audience. No one would let such people lecture to students, or give them a stage and an audience. As many have said, the internet has removed the 'gatekeepers' who determined what was worthy of dissemination and what was not. This has allowed extremist views to spread farther than they ever have. I mean, even older minorities are claiming what we see now is far worse than what they experienced in their youths. Granted, the laws don't match up, but at this rate who knows how long that will last?

Yeah, these looneys existed in the past, but they weren't as common as they are now. They were rare, and now they are not. Tell me how that's a good thing? Its not, its worse than what came before. This world isn't just endless progress, regression is possible, and we're clearly regressing. You're a denialist if you think otherwise. I don't even need to read the news to see the ramifications of all this, I can just talk to people in real life and see everyone become increasingly extreme in their beliefs. If you don't trust the news, fine, a study I heard years back claimed that the only news station where over half the things they said were actually true was pbs, seriously. I don't trust it much myself, honestly. I do believe someone when they express their own views on the world though. Why would someone go on some bigotted tirade when they aren't a bigot? Seriously. Even my own mother went on an islamophobic tirade randomly just a few days ago. Again, you're an obvious denialist if you think our society isn't going downhill. Granted, its not solely because of the internet. Many of these problems we're having now have been mounting for decades, though that doesn't change the fact that we clearly would've been better off without the internet.

Same discussion since the nineties. Practical effetcs aren’t going anywere.

Let’s be real

I'll take the most shit CGI over practical, if it means the actors are and production staff is safer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7FWNBe5MB8
This custom barely fits the actor, there no room for cooling, they cant even pee in it. Takes a long time to get into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXfoUGhKx0c
These big customes. The actors inside of them couldnt see where they were going. It takes forever to get into it, and multiple actors suffered heat stroke because of them. Even with the AC they had buitl into the suit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Jo1OV-k1vo
The person that hard to work this suit, had to get in it backwards and contort themselves into a heap.

They look great. Its never worth the suffering on those preformers.

Fire in the movie Backdraft looks great. Its real fire. That means the actors are near real flames, are exposed to that real heat. It meals all the production staff has to be next to something that can quickly turned from controlled into a fire bomb.
Compared to the climax to Stallone Samaritan. Its in a burning building but it was all done CGI. It looks worse.
But it means the child actor in there isnt at risk of getting burned, isnt at risk of heat stroke.

It doesnt matter for me if CGI is always terrible, if it means safer easier on preformers movies.

I couldn’t read it all, but I think the tldr was basically Dune. Computers bad, worms good.

That was a long and windy walk down the beach to a closed restaurant.

I think it will get more brutal, and more out of the mainstream. look at toe tag and their “august underground” movies.

Wildly popular in horror circles, yet more or less unknown in the mainstream. All practical effects, completely disgusting and vile to boot.

Every movie has tons of practical fx. You dont notice because it works

My guy needs a tldr^2

Not as long as Michael Bay is making movies

If you watch how they made they muscle car Batmobile come to life in ‘The Batman’, you’ll see how practical effects are still very effective and can be sweetened with cgi. For example, watch the way the intake vents were glowing like hellfire when it was warming up that monster engine.

I find CGI is aging so fast.

I watched IT last night (2017). I remember being so scared of that movie when it first came out. But watching it last night I couldn’t help but feel how cheesy many of the special effects already look.

A teaser for his trailer...

I personally boycott heavily CGIed movies like Marvel ones with a few exceptions (Doctor Strange, Watchmen and alike). I love old movies and even a poorly made movie effect-wise will not put me out of the story as it is only a tool for the narration.

I love plays and reading books as well so maybe it has a little to do as well.

Jonestown happened in the 70s the Satanic Panic happened in the 80s the red scare and McCarthyism was in the 40/50s Anarchist bombings we're in the 10s

All this stuff predates the internet

The Thing prequel is an excellent example. Imagine working on all the practical effects for that film and then having studio execs swoop in last minute and dump CGI over it.

It must have been heart breaking for the talented people who made that body horror come to life. You can find footage of the practical effects on YouTube IIRC.

My impression from reading assorted threads and articles on the matter over the past few years is that, if anything, practical effects are being used even more - you just don't notice them because they are so good and, if required, a bit of CGI is used as an assist.

There's movies with great practical effects and movies with non-cgi scenes that look cgi. Nowadays you can't tell if two actors are really on set together. One could've been added in post.

Let’s be real

Not reading all that. Happy for you tho. Or sorry that that happened.

I always love posts like this because it just shows that the poster doesn’t understand the effects industry at all.

I love watching people bitch about digital effects aging poorly without realizing that most of the dinosaurs in the original 1993, Jurassic Park were digital effects

I love people Saying that practical effects are superior without realizing that many of the ugliest shots that people complain about in the Phantom Menace are practical

Holy lord 😂

There will still be directors in the horror genre that will insist on practical effects.

> Yeah, these looneys existed in the past, but they weren't as common as they are now. They were rare, and now they are not. Tell me how that's a good thing?

I don't know, man. We fought an entire Civil War against these looneys, and they came back in the form of the Klan and Jim Crow. We had vaccine denialism, anti-maskers, creationists, and conspiracy theorists all over the joint since well before the Internet as well. We had Nazis holding huge rallies in Madison Square Garden in the 1930s, xenophobic immigration laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act, people were teaching quack science like phrenology in universities. Every time a new medium rises it presents challenges. Everything we are seeing has happened before and will happen again.

I don't think we're regressing so much as we're realizing just how much we never really progressed in the first place.

Jeez. Extreme exposition…Dragonslayer is still epic. There’s nothing wrong with practical effects and there’s nothing wrong with cgi.

People who pontificate about how such and such effect ‘took them out of the scene’ or those who bitch about how dated something is- they aren’t in it for the joy of the film. They just want something to complain about. If you can’t get over older effects (practical or cgi), stick to board games. Just watch the damn movie.

I was asking if my opinion was wrong. I wasn't making an argument that practical effects are better, I was questioning it. You clearly didn't even read the title before you posted that. Great way to get people to take you seriously.

Damn. I started reading because this could have been an interesting topic of conversation, but this post is unnecessarily long.

Usually the movies that are remembered most fondly blend CGI and practical effects. Star Wars, Alien, The Thing, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park. There are still a great deal of fuel makers today who use a lot of practical effects, Christopher Nolan and Guillermo del Toro for instance.

I think it will continue to be a blend of both. Yeah, practical effects that look mind blowing when the movie first comes out look dated 10 years later, but CGI that looks revolutionary now will also look dated in 10 years.

I didn't say people didn't talk about movies with heavy CGI. Prey was an amazing movie that the audience is fine overlooking cheap CGI.