MovieChat Forums > Big Eyes (2014) Discussion > Did anyone else _notice_ the digital eff...

Did anyone else _notice_ the digital effects of "old" San Francisco?

posted 9 years ago by Jayce
12 replies | jump to latest

One thing I thought I noticed that I imagine nobody else did was the way the digital effects—to make outdoor scenes look like the 1960s—were a little off and kind of intrusive. This was specifically obvious to me when Margaret is leaving San Francisco: San Francisco in the distance looked to have some digital jittery edges, scenes on the open road (presumably to remove cell towers and add old-style telephone poles) made the road look sort-of flat and animated, and the teal 1950's car (a Mercury Montclair, maybe?) sometimes looked like its color was out-of-gamut—an unnatural teal that would have been impossible for the camera to capture (but that a computer could generate).

Did anyone else see this?

[–] rogerdob 9 years ago

I was immediately put off by the scenes of them driving on the open road...the scenery looked quite artificial. Could Tim Burton have purposely wanted this look?

[–] gpxdlr 9 years ago

How about when she was approaching the GG Bridge in the car, after she left her 1st husband, from the west side and on a road lined with palm trees(?. This is not in the SF I was born and grew up in.

[–] GhostTheDireWolf 9 years ago

That had to be deliberate it looks like one of those cheap painting a you'd hang in your living room! And if it was deliberate then it was a wonderful and intelligent opening

[–] shermandemetrius 9 years ago

I think those posting that the effects were deliberate have a valid point. I mean, at first "Walter is a blessing" and Margaret's world was like a fairy tale.
One Big Eyes screenwriter stated that a scene is manipulated to symbolically show that Margaret in her mansion is in a glass prison. As some have pointed out, there is much symbolism in the film and that is a good topic for discussion.

[–] BuzzSF 9 years ago

YES! I was like "What view of the GGB is *that*?!" Totally CGIed. LOL

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[–] LinusW 9 years ago

I really liked the street scenes in this movie. Some looked more like matte paintings than CGI. Especially Hawaii.

[–] Ddey65 9 years ago

Anybody notice the 7Up logo on the sign at the liquor store in North Beach? It looked a little too contemporary if you ask me.

Also Margaret's car wasn't a teal Mercury. It was a green Meteor.

[–] willard86 7 years ago

Yes. I lived in North Beach in 2010. That convenience store is modern. I laughed at that, and I also noticed a bar that definitely wasn't there in the 50s. I lived on that street, and saw the sign for Amanti in the background of one scene.

[–] slgr7 9 years ago

This early scene in the movie of the GG Bridge and the palm trees, to me, looks like it was taken while driving south on Treasure Island and looking the west. The GG Bridge is actually the western span of the Bay Bridge that had been CGI'd to be the GG Bridge.

[–] DocBludgeon 9 years ago

I only noticed it in the scene in which Margaret bails her husband out of jail. And then only because I was sure the building was the actual police station in New Westminster, BC. (According the locations, it was.) The vista and streetcar tracks are all digital effects.

[–] fanaticita 9 years ago

The GG Bridge scene really threw me! I had to look at it several times to try and figure out exactly where this might have been, and I didn't come up with an answer. This did not exist. Then I realized it must have been digital.

[–] 7 years ago

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