I Hate CGI Blood
- Thread starter Mr Light
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^Also, in the film's defence it reverts to physical effects (pink goop) once the gravity is switched back on.
Still, let's be honest, while scenes like this certainly justify the use of CG blood--I mean it's either this or a very messy trip on the vomit comet, right?--they're very much in the minority. Most films that use CG blood are usually either of the action or horror genre and even if I really thought about it, I probably couldn't come up with much more than half a dozen examples of films that include blood in zero-G...and two of them are Trek films.
Still, let's be honest, while scenes like this certainly justify the use of CG blood--I mean it's either this or a very messy trip on the vomit comet, right?--they're very much in the minority. Most films that use CG blood are usually either of the action or horror genre and even if I really thought about it, I probably couldn't come up with much more than half a dozen examples of films that include blood in zero-G...and two of them are Trek films.
I liked that. Vulcans have green blood, Klingons have pink blood. Where's the problem?
This makes no sense to me. CGI blood "completely ruins the illusion of the movie"? Come on, it's just a narrative tool. If you can't buy that, how would you manage to sit through a play, where whole armies are conjured with nothing but a spotlight and sound effects?
"completely ruins the illusion of the movie" is just a complicated way of saying "it looks like shit".
Only in ST6. Everywhere else they have red blood.
And?
ST6 has the most prominent use of Klingon blood, and it's even a part of the story (Chekov finds purple blotches on the transporter room floor, and Col. Worf recognizes that the assassin can't be a Klingon because his blood was red)! So I regard the red blood in TNG, DS9, etc... as "wrong".
Yeah, it's an important plot device. It didn't pay attention to what they did in TNG earlier, though, which is odd. I could rationalize it with some technobabble and the Enterprise Klingon forehead two-parter if I really cared, but I don't.
I hate CGI blood because it makes my CGI stomach queasy.
And Vulcan blood being green at least has a reasonable explanation: the copper-based proteins of Vulcans, as opposed to humans' iron-based proteins. What element turns a vivid pink when it oxidizes?
There are two main reasons why it's used heavily, and one minor:
1) Timing, which equates to money on a film shoot. As was said upthread, it's quicker and easier to reset for another take if you don't have to clean up all the sets, costumes, and actors between takes, and knowing you can add the blood later means you can do more takes more easily to get the performance you want.
2) Ratings. So many movies now have a PG-13 cut for cinema and an unrated for DVD, that it's again easier to just add less blood to the first cut and more to the second - certainly it's easier than using a blood squib and then painting out all the droplets for the PG-13 cut. (though to my mind, this means you're really just adding extra fake blood to the DVD, and why bother, if it wasn't in there originally?)
3) On a practical note there are times when it simply makes it more possible to have blood at all - for example in something like 300, where everybody's pretty much naked, there's nowhere to hide the practical gear to squirt kensington gore out, so you'd have to do it with (if you'll pardon the expression) cuts - going to an insert of latex skin splitting, then coming back to the actor with a fake wound on. That would mean you can't have a seamless shot of a swordfight causing a wound. CGI allows you to do that.
1) Timing, which equates to money on a film shoot. As was said upthread, it's quicker and easier to reset for another take if you don't have to clean up all the sets, costumes, and actors between takes, and knowing you can add the blood later means you can do more takes more easily to get the performance you want.
2) Ratings. So many movies now have a PG-13 cut for cinema and an unrated for DVD, that it's again easier to just add less blood to the first cut and more to the second - certainly it's easier than using a blood squib and then painting out all the droplets for the PG-13 cut. (though to my mind, this means you're really just adding extra fake blood to the DVD, and why bother, if it wasn't in there originally?)
3) On a practical note there are times when it simply makes it more possible to have blood at all - for example in something like 300, where everybody's pretty much naked, there's nowhere to hide the practical gear to squirt kensington gore out, so you'd have to do it with (if you'll pardon the expression) cuts - going to an insert of latex skin splitting, then coming back to the actor with a fake wound on. That would mean you can't have a seamless shot of a swordfight causing a wound. CGI allows you to do that.
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Actually, copper based blood is found in animals like octopus, and it is a blue colour, not green. Instead of Haemoglobin, it uses haemocyanin.
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