Effects in Horror Movies.

[IrishG3nt]

I think you can forget about seeing anything of quality from the U.S. horror industry. Outside of the rare one or two good films per decade we seem to get

The UK and France are putting out the better horror imo..

AGREED!

I know I will get some lip for saying this but the only American Director right now that I see using oldschool/true effects is Adam Green....watching the behind the scenes is great to see their effects guy doing his work out of his grandmothers garage

[BurnetRhoades]

AGREED!

I know I will get some lip for saying this but the only American Director right now that I see using oldschool/true effects is Adam Green....watching the behind the scenes is great to see their effects guy doing his work out of his grandmothers garage

LOL, I hope you're being ironic.

[BigFatOgre]

I prefer practical FX over CGI in Horror (Death scenes mainly), but also understand that sometimes CGI needs to be used. I take them as they come and decide based on what it looks like later. Shit is shit, practical or CG... both can look beautiful and both can look like something a five year old made.

[WickedNik]

I dislike CGI. Most movies that use it just abuse it. I understand some scenes or movies need it or it's cheaper for them, whatever. But then again some movies that use practical effects look like shit too. It just depends on how much time the person is willing to spend on CGI or practical. How real they want it to look and how much time they're willing to spend to make it real. I just hate when a movie could just use some fake blood and instead use CGI, really you can't spend the couple extra bucks to make fake blood? One movie that pissed me off, although its not horror, but Ninja I think it was? It was blood splattering on walls and it looked fake as shit, come on!

[BigFatOgre]

Wouldn't it be cheaper to use fake blood created by your FX team already on hand rather than pay a team of techies to make it using CGI? I'm sure those people get payed well for their time. Hell, I could make fake blood better with shit in my house than some of the CGI splatter I've seen and some of that fake blood that turns all pink after a few minutes... fake blood is not difficult to make or purchase.

[Splat]

Watched Dinoshark just before. Almost EVERYTHING was CGI. Guys were shooting and the muzzle flashes were CGI...bullets hitting the water CGI...Helicopter CGI...wtf

[BigFatOgre]

That is way too much CGI... Ninjas vs Vampires did almost everything CGI as well, including muzzle flashes. That irked me.

[lostforever]

I hate CGI. Hate it to death. Sometimes, maybe, you don't have a choice, but I love models, puppet work, Godzilla in a suit, anything practical. You can use CGI to enhance or fix some little things like wires, but CGI is so horribly overused now. I really hate CGI blood. 99% of the time it looks so fake. I'm not using any CGI in the movies I make. It's all practical. I love latex and gelatin. I want to build real monsters. Look at An American Werewolf in London compared to The Wolfman. It's such a shame.

[Darkgod]

Look at the effects in Jaws(no cgi) as opposed to the effects in shark night 3d... Jaws made over 35 years ago, looks better

[Primetimeloser]

I really hate CGI blood. 99% of the time it looks so fake.

Ugh I know, every time I see it it just kills the movie for me.

[Splat]

Ugh I know, every time I see it it just kills the movie for me.

Totally agree with this. As for Jaws fuck yeah. CGI is a tool not the whole process of creating the effects for a film. Some mofos are just plain lazy!

[lostforever]

CGI is a tool not the whole process of creating the effects for a film.

It's a shame a lot of filmmakers forget that. Jurassic Park holds up really well, because there actually isn't that much CGI in it. They built a giant T-Rex, a Velociraptor, a Dilophosaurus, the Triceratops, a Brachiosaurus' head, etc.

If Jaws was done now, they'd probably show the shark way too much and ruin it. And of course, it'd be CGI.

Look at Terminator 2 compared to T3 and Terminator Salvation. T2 had a real life-size T-800 right at the start, crushing a skull. Salvation just used CGI at the end for the T-800. T3 had a lot of CGI too. The opening of T2 is so effective and incredible largely because they did practical effects for the Terminators. They built them for real.

queenalien.jpg

The Queen in Aliens wouldn't have been nearly as good if it was CGI. Same with the Warrior Aliens.

warrioralien.jpg

Even the cloaking effect in Predator and Predator 2. They changed it to CGI for Predators, and it's nowhere near as good. I know how they did the CGI, but I don't have a clue how they did the great cloaking effect in the first two.

[Primetimeloser]

Totally agree with this. As for Jaws fuck yeah. CGI is a tool not the whole process of creating the effects for a film. Some mofos are just plain lazy!

I'll agree it's only part of the process but CGI doesn't necessarily make the filmaker lazy. Well done CGI is just as complex and time intensive as practical effects. Yes it is annoyingly over used because it's a new toy but to execute it properly does take skill.

[BurnetRhoades]

whats-going-on-in-this-thread-486x500.jpg

[lostforever]

I'll agree it's only part of the process but CGI doesn't necessarily make the filmaker lazy. Well done CGI is just as complex and time intensive as practical effects. Yes it is annoyingly over used because it's a new toy but to execute it properly does take skill.

That's true. If it's really well done and you can't tell it's CGI or it still wins you over, that takes skill.

But I can see the argument if you say using CGI blood over real blood is lazy. I know the director of Ninja Assassin wanted to use CGI blood to give it a certain style so that's different; however, I don't think it really worked, and I pretty much hate that movie despite how great Shô Kosugi is. There's a scene in Ichi the Killer where a ton of CGI blood flies out of a room as Ichi goes berserk. I don't see why that couldn't have been practical, but I still like that movie a lot, and I would never say Miike is lazy (he has been making 2-6 movies a year literally every year since 1991). In general though, I would say CGI blood is lazy. "We'll add it in post." That's a little lazy. Sometimes, you don't have another option, but you always do with blood. If you don't have enough time in your schedule, you should fight for it, because CGI blood is just awful.

Going back to Jurassic Park, they could've just used all CGI dinosaurs with no practical effects at all like so many Sci-Fi channel movies (I refuse to call it the "SyFy" channel... it's already bad enough). That would've definitely been a poor choice, and you could argue it would've been lazy on the part of the director. He would just say to the actors, "Oh, look at that ping pong ball. That's a T-Rex." If it's practical, he's got to make sure it works right then and there on the set. Hence, why Jaws was such a nightmare for Spielberg, but obviously, it was worth it.

[Primetimeloser]

There's a scene in Ichi the Killer where a ton of CGI blood flies out of a room as Ichi goes berserk. I don't see why that couldn't have been practical, but I still like that movie a lot, and I would never say Miike is lazy (he has been making 2-6 movies a year literally every year since 1991). In general though, I would say CGI blood is lazy. "We'll add it in post." That's a little lazy. Sometimes, you don't have another option, but you always do with blood. If you don't have enough time in your schedule, you should fight for it, because CGI blood is just awful.

Completely agree and while we are on the topic of Miike when I was watching 13 Assassins last night I realized that CGI fire tends to look bad too. That one I understand the use of a lot more than blood since fire stunts are dangerous but I wish it would evolve a bit more. The fire in that film looked about the same to me as the flaming head in Ghost Rider.

[lostforever]

Yeah, I was disappointed with that in 13 Assassins even though I love that movie. But I guess it'd be hard to do that without CGI or at least probably inhumane.

Spoiler...

Real animals running with real fire on packs of fake dynamite? That definitely wouldn't work. Even if you coated the animals in that fire-resistant liquid, I don't think you could control them and they could easily burn down the whole set. Use real animals and try to focus on making the CGI fire look good? Film the fire separately on a green scene and composite or use that as a model for the CG artists? You got me. Cut the scene?

CGI fire and CGI animals are usually awful. I remember the awful CGI bear in The Wolfman. I love No Country for Old Men, but I hate the CGI antelopes at the beginning.

[BurnetRhoades]

In general though, I would say CGI blood is lazy. "We'll add it in post." That's a little lazy. Sometimes, you don't have another option, but you always do with blood. If you don't have enough time in your schedule, you should fight for it, because CGI blood is just awful.

Actually, most of the time what y'all think is CGI blood is actually practical blood done as FX elements and composited in. Actual "CGI" blood is quite rare because it's 100X harder to do, effectively. Doing it shitty is maybe only about 10X harder.

The choice to do something CGI is sometimes a bad choice. It is actually never a lazy choice. That is maybe the most incorrect adjective one could use.

Also, the difference between Jurassic Park and the SyFy schlock has little to do with CGI or technology at all and everything to do with the fact that (at least for the first one) the best team of visual effects animators for that time, on the planet, were doing them and the folks doing the SyFy channel effects are...not.

Brilliant as the life-size T-Rex and raptors were they had serious practical limitations in performance and were used to the extent that they wouldn't wreck the believability of the scene. Sooner or later just standing there is going to get really boring and we're going to want to see them, you know, walk and stuff and eat people.

[lostforever]

Actually, most of the time what y'all think is CGI blood is actually practical blood done as FX elements and composited in. Actual "CGI" blood is quite rare because it's 100X harder to do, effectively. Doing it shitty is maybe only about 10X harder.

That doesn't make much sense. If you're going to do it practically against a green screen, you might as well do it practically on set. I've seen a lot of films with CG blood where it's obviously not practical in any way. It doesn't move like a real liquid at all. It'd take a ton of skill to make it look so fake if they're compositing in practical blood footage unless they're reusing the same stock clips and horribly manipulating them, which would make the fact they used practical at the beginning a mute point. I know another local film from Missouri that has CG blood in it. It was obviously pretty simple for him to do, and he didn't film any practical blood to composite it in. Either way though, they're adding blood in post with the help of a computer, which is a bad idea. When you're saying it's harder, who is it harder for? It's not harder for a director. You hand it off to a digital FX company. And if it was so much harder, I don't think you'd see CG blood so often in cheap crappy movies.

Also, the difference between Jurassic Park and the SyFy schlock has little to do with CGI or technology at all and everything to do with the fact that (at least for the first one) the best team of visual effects animators for that time, on the planet, were doing them and the folks doing the SyFy channel effects are...not.

And the Jurassic Park team opted not to do all the dinosaurs with CGI. They knew to use practical as much as possible, and then with the relatively-few CG shots they did have, they could spend a lot more time perfecting them. The Sci-Fi channel guys always do CG dinosaurs. It's true even if they did practical effects, they would probably still be horrible, but I bet they'd be better than their CG work. Talent matters more than anything, but the technology is a part of it too, because if Jurassic Park was made in 1985, they couldn't have used CGI at all, and the film wouldn't be as good (they would've done stop motion animation like they originally planned).

Brilliant as the life-size T-Rex and raptors were they had serious practical limitations in performance and were used to the extent that they wouldn't wreck the believability of the scene. Sooner or later just standing there is going to get really boring and we're going to want to see them, you know, walk and stuff and eat people.

You got to give the practical FX in that movie a lot more credit. They do a helluva lot more than just stand there. Just rewatch the raptors in the kitchen scene:











The dilophosaurus scene with Nedry is all practical:
http://movieclips.com/MxCyj-jurassic...lan-goes-awry/

So is the part with the sick triceratops.

The "clever girl" scene doesn't have any CGI either:
http://movieclips.com/xfrUL-jurassic...e-clever-girl/

Practical was used as much as possible. Of course, it has serious limitations, but the fact it's used so much contributes greatly to the believability of that film. They didn't build a life-size T-Rex, raptor, dilophosaurus, triceratops, etc. for nothing. I'm not putting down the CGI in that movie, because it was crucial, but I'm saying that team was smart enough to realize the importance of practical FX.

[BurnetRhoades]

Dude, all your examples above are mostly static shots. That shot of the raptor standing in the doorway, it doesn't take a step. It couldn't. The illusion would be blown. All of the practical shots had to be staged and framed in a way that you only saw a limb move, or just the head twist and move (puppet) or it just stand there with limited body movement.

All those constraints imposed on the camera due to the limitations of the practical mechanisms make doing the same shot CGI that much easier as well. Holding up to scrutiny in such CU shots was a slight issue for the time (of the first one especially) and necessitated when it was most practical to use practicals, but not now, not for a while now, as evidenced by a contemporary example like Davey Jones, where you don't see a single bit of Bill Nighy, he's totally CGI and completely photographically integrated.

FYI, I actually know the guy that designed the full-size T-Rex and one of the principle puppeteers on the raptors and worked with him for several years. He's a friend of mine. Prior to being a CG animator for Disney he was one of the top puppeteers in the industry, including "Splash-Head" et al in T2, work on the Predator films, Batman films, 2010, Return of the Living Dead, Ghost Busters and dozens more.

For nearly four and a half years, back in the 90s, our lunches consisted of me listening to him talk about all the amazing work he'd done and all the horror movies we both loved and how different Stan Winston actually was from the public perception of him...and our similar tastes for progressive rock. The guy is one of the most talented and brilliant guys I've ever met.

It's kinda ironic that he's actually the fellow most responsible for Stan Winston getting into CGI production and it was his CGI group at Stan's shop that would eventually split off to become Digital Domain. The thing is he's, like many of the best craftsmen from practical visual effects, never been one to sit around and bitch about things changing because he was smart enough to recognize opportunity. It's the lesser talents that became/become obsolete. The most influential and important folks in the formation of CGI and digital effects as an industry were from the practical school who invented and drove the new technology into becoming viable tools, not computer scientists.

My point is, you guys idolize practical effects to unrealistic extremes (often citing one of a handful of exceptional examples) while condemning digital effects based on mediocre and poor work. You don't really understand either craft as they truly are.