and Eye for CGI

[Geckothan]

Subtle, small amounts of high-quality CGI that blend in with the film are fine. Over the top, overused, unnecessary CGI is disgusting. Sadly, most big budget movies fall into the latter category, and while low budget movies have less CGI, it's usually lower quality so it's not subtle at all.

I voted for the third option.

 

[Arrqh]

But movies like THE HULK seem to fall way short, IMO. I think the Hulk movies, and even spiderman CGI, is very uneven, and these are big budget movies.

And this is surprising? CG isn't some magical computer process, it's a technical and artistic workflow done by people. Just because a movie is "big budget" doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be successful at all the shots required and a lot of it can come down to the direction of the movie as well. CG isn't getting better just because technology is getting better... it's getting better because the artistry is improving as well.

On the subject of direction; I was at a presentation a few years back by the animation director of ILM where he talked a lot about CG in the PT. In the Q&A session at the end, someone asked about how he felt about some of the less successful shots in AOTC (this was just before ROTS came out). You know that whole bit when Anakin and Padme are on Naboo and they're riding those giant, ugly looking animals? Apparently they called them space ticks internally. And no one at ILM wanted to do that shot; from a technical perspective it was enormously complicated. But as they didn't have a choice, they came up with a detailed filming plan for how they could do it which involved animated it first and filming the live action plates later, with animatrionics based on the animation. But instead, Lucas decided to film it his own way. The result was turning a difficult shot into a near impossible one, and the subpar results are there for everyone to see. Apparently Lucas did this a lot for the PT and I remember quite a few specific examples... times where a shot was done incorrectly because of the "fix it in post" mentality, where filming it correctly in the first place would have made the CG cheaper, easier and with a better looking final result.

This is an extreme example obviously, but what's the point of failure here... the CG or the director? CG is just a tool in a directors toolbox and if you use a hammer where you were supposed to use a screwdriver it ain't gonna come out too good.

 

[Nardpuncher]

My brain must be fubar because even though i lean toward "too much CGI in movies" the Hulk from the Ang Lee movie looked really, really good to me.