Does CGI make horror movies not as scary ?

[Gorn Captain]

Del Toro makes beautiful use of "on set" effects.
The making of Hellboy II is a real gem to watch. Very often, what you thought was CG (because it seemed impossible to do on set), was actually totally real.

[Adam West]

I think maybe what most everyone is saying is that CG doesn't necessarily make a movie crappy or noncrappy. Just with any movie; it should be about the story first. CG can be an effective tool to enhance a good plot but is often used as a way to help beef up a movie that is terrible either way. I guess that is really true of all movies no matter what genre.

[MIB41]

For myself, the most effective horror is psychological. Once you have a captive audience you can do anything. CGI is too often used as a work around, for those who have run out of ideas. Thus they turn these films into a gore fest that are more about spectacle and less about suspense and horror. It's like comparing John Carpenter's Halloween to Rob Zombie's. Sorry. Zombie doesn't even make it into the same zip code with Carpenter.

[Sandman9580]

I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again. Compare the asteroid chase in Empire Strikes Back with the asteroid chase in Attack of the Clones. One was done with models, matte paintings and potatoes, the other with "state-of-the-art" pixel magic. One is exciting, pulse-pounding, dynamic, and just all around epic, and the other one... isn't.

Yep. Go watch Attack of the Clones if you wanna see what 22 years of progress looks like.

[Gorn Captain]

One of the most exciting scenes in SW, to me, is still the first TIE fighter attack. It used just models. And only four of them. That scenes still gets my blood pumping...

[Mikey]

For me one of the most exciting scenes of all space movies was the brief second at the end of Return of the Jedi when they showed a million ships in battle.

I heard a rumor there was even a sneaker hidden in there among the ships but to this day i've never found it.

[ctc]

>My biggest problem with CGI is the unnecessary over use of it.
>It's all about the director

I agree with both these points; and think they tie in. I don’t think CGI makes you a bad director, but it DOES make it harder to hide it. Case in point: Jaws has been mentioned a few times here for it’s subtlety and psychological creepiness ‘cos they didn’t show the shark.... but remember: Spielberg WANTED to show the shark. They had three robots made. Hell; the movie is called “JAWS” and the poster features the opening scene with a huge shark coming to eat the girl. Subtlety WASN’T what they wanted. It was forced on them ‘cos they couldn’t get the effects to work. The problem with CGI is that it makes too much too easy: directors don’t have to compose shots, or think through them ‘cos they can just slap on some precoded vectors with new skins. They can also focus on the zazzle by cramming as much detail in as possible.

....but even THOSE aspects aren’t new. Focusing on the effects instead of the story has plagued film since effects were discovered It’s easier to play the sense of novelty in a film with effects, but it puts you on the treadmill of always needing new ones ‘cos the audience won’t accept anything less. (Which is why cartoon Bela turning from Drac to bat wowed ‘em in the ‘30's but gets chuckles now.) And the folks who sneer at the new stuff ‘cos it’s not as “authentic” or “challenging” or whatever are BUYING INTO THIS NOTION JUST AS HARD ‘cos they’re focusing on the “how” more than the finished product. It’s kinda like looking at a painting and going “Yeah, Michelangelo is OKAY.... but he was using a #6 brush equivalent.... and all REAL artists use a #5.”

Ultimately I don’t care so much for CGI, but not because of anything inherent to the process itself. I dislike how may folks use it in exactly the same way, for exactly the same effect, in what feels like exactly the same scene, film after film after film. It’s the same reason I don’t like car chases, fight scenes, explosions.... CGI or not. CGI is just the latest in a long like of crutches used by mediocre directors, writers and actors.

Don C.

[Sandman9580]

Okay, this is gonna get a little rant-y and long-winded.

Yeah, I remember Spielberg saying in an interview that if CGI had been available at the time, he would have shown the shark a lot more. And then he actually admitted that JAWS would not have been as suspenseful as a direct result. (He's also talked about how if he'd gotten the higher budget he wanted for Raiders, he would have made a more "pretentious" movie, and that it wouldn't have been as effective, either.) Okay. But my question is, if Spielberg himself is admitting that access to greater resources would have made his horror movies less scary and his action movies less fun, what hope is there for the rest of Hollywood? (And we don't have to take Spielberg at his word on this -- he's actually proved it by making Indiana Jones 4. And I think most of us agree that Lucas has proved it as well. Three times over.)

It's one thing for an iconoclastic filmmaker to want to show restraint and shoot a movie old school, it's another thing for the people putting up the money to OK it. This is one of the things that has changed. For every Guillermo Del Toro or Christopher Nolan who has the box office clout to deviate from the digital imperative, there are many, many more who'd have a hard time convincing a studio to mount a large-scale production using technology like in-camera effects, miniatures, motion control, or matte paintings (the old kind that involved using "physical" things like glass and paint brushes and gloppy paint). Requests like that are way too easy to say "no" to. (Not to mention that if you made a monster movie with 100% CGI effects, but then showed the monster very sparingly, you'd have a room full of confused execs saying "Why can't we see the monster? Why doesn't he show the monster more? It needs more action. We need to re-edit this and put more of the monster in. Who does this @$$hole think he is? Spielberg from the '70s?") Oh, and remember stop-motion technology? If you proposed using that in a "non-arty", un-ironic way, you'd be laughed out of the room.

But that's assuming you can even find people with the know-how to do the old school stuff. They're getting rarer all the time. I can remember almost wanting to cry back in the day when I found out that Stetson Visual Services was disbanding. They worked on Dick Tracy, built the New York cityscape for The Hudsucker Proxy (at least those buildings got to be re-used in other movies), and -- my personal favorite -- the old abandoned zoo in Batman Returns. (I still get chills watching the fly-through of that set). The oil tanker in Waterworld was their last job, I think, and then they announced they were disbanding. I just thought, well, that's the end of an era.

And that's true for everything. Try finding someone who can shoot a Technicolor movie for you. The last one was The Godfather Part II (that was in 1974!). It is beautiful in a way that every movie shot after it is not. Sheesh -- just last night I was listening to the DVD commentary for The Thomas Crown Affair (the remake) and John McTiernan was saying how he wanted to use moving dolly shots to give it a classic feel, but since everyone uses Steadicam now, they couldn't find anyone who actually knew how to use a dolly. They had to spend time and money to train someone specially, just for that job. And I doubt whoever they trained has ever had to use that skill again. (Unless they were lucky enough to get a call from Wes Anderson.)

Anyway. The cool thing about old school special effects was that they were like a magic show. People used to go up to Tom Savini back in the day and ask him how the hell he pushed an arrow up through Kevin Bacon's neck. There was still a sense of wonder and awe about things. Nowadays, you could do an updated version of that effect; make it more sophisticated, use fancy translucent silicone instead of latex, add articulation to the torso and whatnot... it would look amazing. And you know what people would say? "Wow. Nice CGI."

It kind of seems like the magic show is over for good now.

[ctc]

>But my question is, if Spielberg himself is admitting that access to greater resources would have made his horror movies less scary and his action movies less fun, what hope is there for the rest of Hollywood?

Well.... I think you have to look at the underlying reasons for this. What is it that attracts directors to the bigger effects?

>Try finding someone who can shoot a Technicolor movie for you.
>They had to spend time and money to train someone specially, just for that job.

These points underline what I think the actual problem is: folks fall into a rut, and see things in a "right way/wrong way" kind of way. You could produce the result of either of these techniques with a computer. No technical reason why not. Problem is; doing so requires looking at BOTH ends in a different way. What excactly is it about a dolly shot that makes it look the way it does, and how do I translate that to code. Unfortunately you come to the impasse that the old school director is probably not up on the technical bits of CGI creation (since it's a pretty specific and labour-intensive deal) and the newfangled CGI programmer probably has less than a passing knowledge of what a dolly shot is. (For much the same reason.) In essence, something like a dolly shot is ALREADY a cheat; since it's an established way to get a certain framing effect that folks have used for decades.... rather than trying a new way to get that effect. "But it WORKS!" the masses cry. Sure; so does computer stuff. It's a means to an end.

I think of "Mars Attacks," and how they programmed the computer to drop frames fropm the martians, so they'd look jerkier.... like old school stop action effects.

>There was still a sense of wonder and awe about things.

I would say you're right; but that the folks enamoured of the old school effects were still a problem because they took the focus away from the result and placed it on the nuts and bolts. Kinda like walking on stage during a magic show and peeking behind the curtain.

Don C.

[cbgorby]

Bad Writing /Concepts/Direction Make Horror Movies Not As Scary

The last horror movie I saw that scared me was " The Blair Witch Project " - and it wasn't because there was no CGI , it was because the idea was sound , the writing was solid and the director knew what he was doing to get his story across .

CG is a tool and can be pretty effective to tell the story - provided the filmmaker understands that is all it is , a way to illustrate what needs to be said that no other method can accomplish as effectively . Peter Jackson used it quite nicely in the LOTR trilogy - and while I'd be hard pressed to say it was " better " that Ralph Bakshi's cursed attempt at translating the story in the '70's - the use of CG FX allowed the story to be told in the epic manner that it needed to be told .

He failed to live up to his game with " King Kong " - beautiful effects work but compared to the '76 De Laurentiis version or the " UNDISPUTED CHAMPEEN !!" ORIGINAL version , there just was not enough character involved .

The trouble with Hollywood is the same trouble with everything - we suffer from tunnel vision , we are a " single solution society " - rather than seeing storytelling as a combination of several methodologies we tend to favor a single method over utilizing a variety to tell our tales .

What makes horror " scary " is really the presence of the unknown - if you can identify a problem then in most instances you can come up with a solution to deal with it . As far as a horror movie is concerned - you need to keep the mystery , sure give us some sneak peeks and some glimpses - but under NO circumstances give us an identity . BATMAN would be pretty helpless if all his enemies KNEW he was Bruce Wayne after all .

Sadly , due to a variety of reasons , moviemaking has become too formatted and it will stay that way - with only the occasional treat given us by the rare " maverick " director who for whatever reasons is forced to think outside of the box in order to tell the story that he needs to tell .

[ctc]

>The last horror movie I saw that scared me was " The Blair Witch Project "

That one scared a lot of folks. I was really unimpressed; but that's 'cos I got a bit of experience in the woods. The kids in the film got lost within WALKING DISTANCE of a road. That's not horror; it's natural selection.

>due to a variety of reasons , moviemaking has become too formatted

Here ya go:

5 Hollywood Secrets That Explain Why So Many Movies Suck | Cracked.com

Part of the problem that nobody addresses is the audience. Crappy stuff comes out because it sells! And we're all guilty of it: it's the same nostalgia that fuels new Batman movies AND "Battleship: The Movie."

Don C.

[cbgorby]

>The last horror movie I saw that scared me was " The Blair Witch Project "

That one scared a lot of folks. I was really unimpressed; but that's 'cos I got a bit of experience in the woods. The kids in the film got lost within WALKING DISTANCE of a road. That's not horror; it's natural selection.


Don C.

That response isn't HORROR either - it's FUNNY !

[deputypowell]

I loved the original King Kong...the 70's King Kong...and the Peter Jackson King Kong.

(Did we get off the subject?)

[Demers60]

I think you can look at The Exorcist for the answer to the topic question. The original, with no CGI, still scares the pants off me while the sequels and prequels were an absolute fiasco! CGI, in my opinion, makes movies less scary.

[mego73]

Was it the CGI or the people making the movie that made it a yawner.