Models or CGI?

[Shat Happens]

Simple question, much polemic.

My vote: I prefer models, but I concede that the saucer of the Enterprise in the 2009 movie was impressive. Problem there was the LENS FLARES!!! and digital dirty lens (even worse choice than the flares IMO).

In ST:ID I didn't like the shaky camera. In the 1980s the SFX motion control cameras had to be in rails, having it shake on purpose was impossible, and by accident meant a ruined shot. So we got beautiful images. Now with CGI they can shake, but what did the President say? "just because we can do a thing desn't mean we should".

 

[Last Redshirt]

Both are lovely. There are some lovely instances of both. However, models are very limited in their usages and it can give the impression that only a few types of ships exist in the universe, but CGI also suffers the same, with the same couple ships being used again and again.

 

[MacLeod]

Both have their place. Model work can look outstanding as can CGI, but the reverse is also true sometimes they can look awful.

 

[trevanian]

Look at the TMP refit and the Phoenix from FC ... miniatures, when well-shot, are the tops, man. SUNSHINE's CG spaceships are pretty damned good, though, I'll give you that. The SOLARIS remake, too.

I think if you take the jitter and lens flare and digital dirty lens away from the Abrams, that you'd see something that maybe didn't withstand scrutiny. The best stuff so far in the Abrams was the KELVIN stuff, which really did have a physical look to it as the camera closed in while it was getting the crap kicked out of it.

I'm still trying to find out what Kerner Optical did on Trek09 - they were the former ILM modelshop, and early reports had them doing pyro stuff, probably with models, and they have a vague screen credit, but nobody has ever gone on record about what they did. Kind of makes me think it is like the Sebulba crash in TPM ... a shot that looks so good it is hard to believe it is CG -- and a decade later you find out it was NOT cg.

And ILM themselves don't always do all the work. The really good earthscapes you see in a lot of late 90s early 2000s ILM shows were actually farmed out to a place that had created a high-rez digital Earth for scientific purposes... it was used for GALAXY QUEST and I think SPACE COWBOYS, probably others. I can't find the name of the company (I interviewed the owner for a space.com article that never happened, I think they couldn't get an okay to run illustrations), but I'll dig around.

 

[Melakon]

I prefer model miniature effects, and the field produced some specialists like the Lydecker brothers, Ray Harryhausen, and Derek Meddings. I can't think of any person working in CGI who has achieved that type of brand name familiarity with the public. The field seems to require many more specialists to do the same thing.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I love physical models. I'm awed by the intricate detail and craftsmanship involved. It's a huge shame that their use has declined as much as they have.

BUT... I've seen Avengers many times, and it wasn't until I saw the behind-the-scenes ILM thingie on their Youtube channel did I realized that the New York City in the movie was entirely digital. THAT was a "holy shit!" moment. The future cities in Into Darkness are just as realistic - I absolutely believed there were thousands of people populating each megaskyscraper which Khan and Spock flew between during their battle. And the way real shooting locations were merged seamlessly with CGI, the days of spotting the "green screen" are long gone.

Sometimes CG looks cartoony (case in point: TOS-R), and sometimes models look hollow and fragile (when most TNG ships explode, it's immediately apparent that they're hollow shells). Budget and execution makes all the difference.

 

[Forbin]

Use ALL your tools.

 

[Viper78]

I went for both. For me it depends on the films. Take Star Wars for instance, the prequels were full of CGI and looked far too glossy, the models/props and lack of CGI used in the original's for some reason looked much better.

For Star Trek CGI seems to work better as the ships are supposed to look shiny and new, Nemises was a great example.

 

[SPCTRE]

I voted models, but I'm not exactly opposed to the use of CGI - if it is well done, CGI can create a very believable, even used or lived-in look.

 

[Melakon]

It does depend on the film. I'm in the middle of watching Forbidden Planet right now. Even when Anne Francis isn't in a scene, nearly every frame has something to marvel at. I can't imagine a film of such impact being made today.

Apparently there was an idea to remake it a few years back, but it wouldn't be the same. Many shots of C-57D done with live actors would likely be supplemented with CGI, the same when Morbius reveals his Krell lab with the power meters along the walls. Not building something just because you can fix it with CGI seems lazy to me.

 

[BillJ]

Both.

Ten years ago, I would have said models but CGI has really grown in the ability to present realistic objects.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Both are good, when taken in moderation. VFX of any stripe should never be used as a crutch to hide a weak story.

 

[Shat Happens]

border-topic:

 

[Richard Baker]

I think it really depends on what you are trying to do with a scene. 'Independence Day' used everything in the book, from rubber bands (Cruise Missle wing deployment) to CGI, mixing from shot to shot.
Models have a certain mass of scale that CGI has to struggle with still. Models also have filming limitations to work around- mounts have to be hidden (The KBoP landing on Vulcan shifted from tail to nose mount as it swept by, using the rock spire to hide the transition).
I remember how the early CGI looked trying to show real non-Tron objects in The Last Starfighter. What we have today is incredible and continues to evolve. I still prefer the look and feel of actual filming models, but CGI can create things that would be either impossible or too time consuming to do physically.

 

[Alrik]

Both.

Ten years ago, I would have said models but CGI has really grown in the ability to present realistic objects.

This.

 

[Relayer1]

I like both.

TMP is beautiful, but a lot of recent CG is remarkable too.

Cheap modelwork looks worse than cheap CG imho...

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Being colorblind, I tend to find CGI--cheap CGI--to be very unsatisfactory. Most images lack depth and dimension.

 

[JesterFace]

Models just look better in my eyes and feel like they're really there, because they are.

 

[MacLeod]

One example of where I think model work is superior to CGI is ROTJ vs ROTS, for me the CGI battle at the start of ROTS just looked fake whilst the model work of the space battle at the end of ROTS seemed more real.

 

[Lance]

^ The trouble with a comparison like that though is that ROTS was made at a time when CGI was not NEARLY as sophisticated as it is today. Modern CGI is vastly better than that.

I still remember when 'The Mummy Returns' came out, and I saw those shots of the CGI Scorpion King at the end, and I remember I just laughed at them (I assume this was not the reaction the film makers intended me to have). I was just like, "They could've got Stan Winston to provide some kind of awesome physical effect for this sequence, and THIS is what they do instead?!". My general feeling was that people in Hollywood, as well as in the wider audience, had bought wholesale into the myth of CGI as being shiny and flash and necessary, and were using it simply because it was there, when there were in actual fact better options available elsewhere that were being overlooked by movie producers at the time.

Now however I think the level of CGI has finally reached what everybody said it could do back then but it hadn't. It's now really a very, very good medium for effects.

In ST:ID I didn't like the shaky camera. In the 1980s the SFX motion control cameras had to be in rails, having it shake on purpose was impossible, and by accident meant a ruined shot. So we got beautiful images. Now with CGI they can shake, but what did the President say? "just because we can do a thing desn't mean we should".

I agree with this as a wider and more general issue, not simply relative to effects shots. Some of the cinematography in modern cinema is appalling, and like the CGI example I cite above one gets the impression they've bought into some idea that frenetic pacing and out-of-focus shots somehow make it look more like an action movie. I watch them and I just keep thinking the cameraman has got ADHD...