CGI really is a huge culprit in why this film sucked. - Alien: Covenant (2017) Discussion

[–] [deleted] 7 years ago

Your whole argument seems to revolve around your knowing cgi is fake,therefore you can not be scared by that which you know to be not real...but you would also know that the threat,monster,whatever is a giant puppet,soooo...also,by your own admission, it would not move fluidly soooo....

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[–] not_a_virus.exe (1267) 7 years ago

Sooooooo.....what?

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[–] Frogarama (12942) 7 years ago

He's saying that suspension of disbelief applies to puppets and costumes and practical effects just as much as it applies to CGI. You know when you watch The Thing that those monsters are not real, no matter what.

Also, practical effects can look fake just as easily as CGI. I've seen practical effects actually mistaken for CGI, like the engineer in Prometheus.

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[–] not_a_virus.exe (1267) 7 years ago

I know what hes saying, I just don't see how it pertains to my point. Of course we know facehuggers and chestbusters don't exist, but practical effects still make them look like they would. CGI doesn't. It throws all that magic out the window. It's like watching an event unfold in two different realities. Like Watch Roger Rabbit. You have the world world, and the cartoon world. Completely takes you out of the moment.

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[–] Frogarama (12942) 7 years ago

You're only talking about obvious CGI objects that you notice, though. The vast majority of CGI can't even be pointed out by a casual viewer, it flies under the radar. Check out the extensive invisible CGI for that Benjamin Franklin series from years ago. It's insane and completely convincing.

But even CGI objects can look completely real, as long as care is taken with it. District 9 is a great example of that.

Personally, any effect can take me out of the moment, because most of it looks fake. As long as I don't focus on it, and just enjoy the movie, all is well. Again, suspension of disbelief has to be done willingly. It just means you're not sitting there actively looking for fakery, you're focusing on the story and dialogue instead.

Still, I do love practical effects. Independence Day remains one of the greatest usages of practical effects, right before CGI started becoming more normalized.

Also, keep in mind that practical effects have DECADES worth of head start, so CGI is much younger. It all takes time to develop. Even the first 30+ years of practical movie effects looked pretty bad, up until the 60's. EVEN THEN, it was rare for practical effects to be used convincingly, and still took more time to fully develop.

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[–] not_a_virus.exe (1267) 6 years ago

Yeah but the problem is movie studios are no longer spending the time to improve practical effects because they've decided to abandon them for digital ones. The only time CGI looks convincing is when it's used for a backdrop like during the war scenes in Lord of the Rings, or during a tsunami scenes in The Day after tomorrow. The difference is that people can still watch The Thing and be scared almost 40 years later over it's practical effects, but Avatar was dead in the water. And those were the best CGI effects back in 2009. It still wasn't enough.

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[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

Yea I don't get why millennials are so anti CGI. The thing is totally fake looking and the original Alien(1979) looked to stiff to be threatning. I mean the people in aliens only died cause 1) They frooze up when the saw the Alien. Brett & lambert 2) They walked into the alien in the dark Dallas 3) Sticking your head in a stationary threat so the thing can be sprung in your face. 4) You ran at the alien like a dumbass (Parker). 5) You went back for that stupid cat. (oh wait she even survived that one)

Point is at no point in the movie do you see the alien run after anyone. The suit was obviously to heavy for the actor to be a real threat so the script has the cast either freeze in terror or approach the alien on their own. How is that scary.

Same goes for the thing. We don't even see most of the deaths. I mean look at how real and threatning the stop motion thing was when it pops out of the floor. Or the one thing just sits there in the dog kenel waiting for its a** to get fried by a flame thrower.

Some of us grew up in the era when CGI first started making movies look realistic. We remember Jurassic park when it opened and where amazed at the T-1000 in Terminator 2. You kids just got here and for what ever reason are in love with nostalgia not the realism of the movie.

Like for real I cringe when I hear kids prattle on about how much better records sound. I'm like really I lived through the cracks and pops and sizzling static of record players. Every one back then could tell when a record player was playing but when CDs came out we coulden't distinguish the real thing from the CD. Well at least untill studios started compressing their audio(Reducing dynamic range) we could. Maby that compression is why you kids claim records sound better then CDs.

Imagine if you have children and for what ever reason they come out and say "I just like the warmth of VHS tape over the antiseptic video from blueray" and I love the old 480 scanlines of NTSC and its faded colors

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[–] not_a_virus.exe (1267) 7 years ago

I agree with you about records. Vinyl sucks. Even those that claim that .flac is superior to 320kbps .mp3 I don't even understand. When you need to spend thousands of dollars in equipment to hear a difference in acoustics, it's probably not worth it.

This isn't the same though. The CGI in every single movie that has ever used it, has sucked. The only time it ever works is when it's used on grandiose landscape battles like in Lord of the Rings when there's no real life to compare it to. But one Gollum pops up on screen it's ruined.

And it never lasts. When Avatar came out, it was the creme de la creme of CGI effects. It lasted a year before the human eye got used to it. Practical effects are timeless. The CGI in Terminator 2 and Star Wars sucked even worse than CGI does today, but that doesn't mean that CGI should be used as a replacement for practical effects. It reeks of laziness. Takes all of the art out of it.

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[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

I agree with you about records. Vinyl sucks. Even those that claim that .flac is superior to 320kbps .mp3 I don't even understand. [/quote] But flac is a perfect copy of the original data. mp3 is a fast fourier transform with compression that strips off the lower frequency coefficients meaning its encodes only the loudest frequency while saving space and dropping the frequencies it thinks your brain can't here. Your right you probably can't hear the difference but it shows up on a spectrograph pretty easy.

[quote]
This isn't the same though. The CGI in every single movie that has ever used it, has sucked. The only time it ever works is when it's used on grandiose landscape battles like in Lord of the Rings when there's no real life to compare it to. But one Gollum pops up on screen it's ruined. [/quote]
Why does it suck. It allows the filmmakers to add actual animal behavior to their monsters. The creatures run and wrap them selves around victums where as you can easily see the motionaless alien queen being spun around on a rotating dollar then being dragged by a string in a straight line. The string is not centered so you can see the queen slightly wobbling as it is "running" towards ripply.

[quote]But one Gollum pops up on screen it's ruined. [/quote]
I agree modern CGI characters look fake. In the case of gollum its his fu*cking eyes and actual design that makes him stupif along with his voice. Given the right model and voice and more realistic skin color and shadows he'd look pretty awsome CGI is not the reason gullum looks so washed out.

[quote]
And it never lasts. When Avatar came out, it was the creme de la creme of CGI effects.
[/quote]
Avatar was a cartoon like shrek. There was no attempt at photo realism to it at all. There is no getting used to it. Its the modern equivlent of Roger rabbit where cartoons are mixed in with human live action. The film sucked in my opinion.

[quote]
The CGI in Terminator 2 and starwars sucked even more

its the notion of a liquid killer that offends you about terminator 2. And yes star wars sucked cause George lucas only spend 2 million throwing in those CGI scenes. I'm gonna go out on a limb and just save George lucas sucks in general. He did every thing on the cheap. The star wars prequels shoulden't have been done on CGI sets. Our technology isn't really there yet. Individual characters and objects are still where CGI stand out. Lets get back to Alien Covenent can you even tell which scenes used CGI vs the practicle shots. Both were used in the film.

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[–] [deleted] 7 years ago

It actually reeks of efficient film making in terms of how much practical effect cost. Not trying to ruffle any feathers...you stated that cgi terminated any suspension of disbelief for you,and I merely pointed out that giant puppets would achieve the same effect,if you are a person that's easily distracted.

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[–] johnmiller (3355) 6 years ago

The early spaceship scenes especially seemed pretty darn CGI.

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[–] Renovatio (2990) 6 years ago

CGI is cartoons and cartoons aren't scary...

Watch the original Hellraiser movie and you can tell that the practical effects are not "real", that it's not a real "de-skinned" man, but it's still gross and gives you a visceral reaction...

And that is key, the visceral, bodily reaction, rather than an intellectual or rational one... that's the point of going to a horror movie... 😉

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[–] Scape (504) 6 years ago

Couldn’t agree with you more!
And for the person saying “Well a puppet....” No. The difference & problem with CG is simply this -

CGI - is not really there. The actors have to imagine what’s going to happen and what they’re supposed to be afraid of. Then the CG is “pasted” on after filming is complete & in post.

Practical FX - is there. It’s there the day the actors acted along with it. There the day the director & cinematographer shot it. There for the lighting crew. And it’s more “real” because it is physically real.

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[–] Catbookss (13664) 6 years ago

"The difference & problem with CG is simply this -

CGI - is not really there. The actors have to imagine what’s going to happen and what they’re supposed to be afraid of. Then the CG is “pasted” on after filming is complete & in post."

That's the best argument against it in this thread, although there are actors who have done a wonderful job reacting to something that exists only in their imaginations, not on set.

Personally, I have no problem with CGI, and have enjoyed a lot of it. The dinos in Jurassic Park were great, and I reacted to them in a visceral way. Same with everything in the first 10 minutes of The Empire Strikes back.

Never saw Avatar, no interest, so can't comment on its CGI.

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[–] zephyr_cape (2979) 6 years ago

"Watch the original Hellraiser movie and you can tell that the practical effects are not "real", that it's not a real "de-skinned" man, but it's still gross and gives you a visceral reaction...

And that is key, the visceral, bodily reaction, rather than an intellectual or rational one... that's the point of going to a horror movie... 😉"

Yeah this is exactly the issue with cgi 100% — it's a matter of the v i s c e r a l .
Though we can understand that neither approach is *real*, on a deep psychological level we intuit the intangibility of the digital image, and that the practical physically exists makes it real on some level, and therefore it is always more real. No matter how "good" the modeling and animation are, on a core level, deeper than intellect, we can't be fooled! It makes one wonder though, how good would cgi have to become to actually trick the animal brain and attain the same visceral impact? Is it even possible? Do we inherently see through a virtual image subconsciously? It's pretty fascinating to consider how the evolution of the virtual image impacts the evolution of our perception.

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[–] LetThemEatCake (2717) 6 years ago

it's called having "weight", and it is real, they are real objects and automatically the brain knows it's real, digital lacks all the qualities of real objects because it's made by a computer and one does know.

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[–] zephyr_cape (2979) 6 years ago

It's interesting on the other hand how concerned people tend to be with realism and being convinced by what they're seeing in movies. Practical vs. cgi obviously factors hugely into suspension of disbelief, but to me the even bigger issue is FEELING. IMO the crux of experiencing a film is in the feeling. Different mediums and materials inherently tap into different parts of the brain and trigger our feelings in different ways. It's so important to make decisions about which medium to use based on how they feel. For example, consider you're in a mosque with its elaborate tiling, or on a paver patio, or a nice hardwood floor — it changes the feeling of the environment if we swap the materials out for vinyl and pergo imitations, doesn't it? Humans are very sensitive and we know that the cg alien is made out of pixels, and therefore has only ever existed inside a screen, and so the animal brain detaches. We have inherent visceral feelings about computers and things made of pixels. There's no flesh there. Even a verbal description of something not seen is fleshier and touches us more than a cg image. It's not that there's no place for cgi, but it's never the right material to give us a feeling that hinges on physical presence.
There's also a factor of artistry, timelessness and charm. I think of a movie like Beetlejuice — there's just about nothing going on there that "looks convincing", but it gives off such a strong feeling. Artists physically made everything you're seeing and figured out how to make it come to life, and you can feel the connection to hands using materials, the passion that goes with that, and the humanity and history of physical craftsmanship that goes back as far as we do.

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[–] LetThemEatCake (2717) 6 years ago

and why wouldn't that look convincing?

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[–] zephyr_cape (2979) 6 years ago

It could! Imo it's more important that it *feels right*

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[–] zephyr_cape (2979) 6 years ago

For instance, I think the cgi in Lawnmower Man is better than it is in this movie, because it feels right in context : )

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[–] Frogarama (12942) 6 years ago

I think it's basically nostalgia. People who complain the most about CGI tend to be the ones who grew up with practical effects. They also tend to not understand CGI and think the computer does all the work, so they see it as lazy.

I grew up with practical effects too, but I've also done CGI work, and I hate seeing CGI-bashers insulting computer artists by pretending their work isn't difficult.

People can be moved by fully animated movies, too. There's nothing real about those. You don't hear anyone complaining that they can't invest in The Black Cauldron because there's no weight to the visuals, or complaining that the movie Heavy Metal is bad because it's just cartoons.

People just want something to complain about. The unfortunate thing about complaining that something fake in a fake movie looks fake is that it basically just highlights one's lack of imagination.

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[–] zephyr_cape (2979) 6 years ago

For me I really don't think it is nostalgia, though I fully admit I tend to be a nostalgically susceptible person. (Long post pt.1)

I was born in '87 so I grew up right as cgi in movies was starting to take off. I saw a lot of movies from the 70s and 80s with puppets and optical compositing and stuff in my most impressionable period, but I remember the novelty of cg as a new frontier being so thrilling, and I was way into it! I very fondly remember stuff like the T-1000 in Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, heck the cave of wonders in Aladdin blowing my mind. (Full disclosure the cave of wonders scared the fuck out of me to the point that I cried.) (Also in retrospect I genuinely think T2 was such an appropriate and effective use of cgi and remains awesome and feelsy - aand many of the shots of the T-1000 were practical, like the image of it split in half in the final showdown - that's a cable controlled puppet and it's one of the most glorious things ever! I can give a link to BTS if you're interested.)
I also grew up super into and inspired by burgeoning cg animation art, and as a kid had a huge stash of VHS tapes of stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lNb3Fei8kY and watched them obsessively over and over.
Also also, I was hugely into video games as they were beginning to shift into being more cinematic and was super inspired by stuff like the fully rendered cutscenes in Final Fantasy VII, etc. (cont...)

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[–] zephyr_cape (2979) 6 years ago

(Long post pt. 2)

I'm an artist who works with practical effects in filmmaking, and I do also have some experience with 3D modeling and animation, and I certainly have an interest in delving further into it. A good number of my friends are digital artists, as was my dad before he retired. Full respect for the craft of digital artists and animators - in many ways it's a more intense discipline than physical sculpture, and it has as much potential as any other medium! The issue is, as with any other medium, how the chosen media affects meaning in context and appropriateness/intentionality of its application.

I'm myself an animator and a huge fan of animation, especially traditional cel and stop motion. The Black Cauldron is one of my favorite things ever. I have a lot of love for some of the currently working great conceptual artists using cg as a medium - guys like Cool 3D World and Sam Rolfes. (cont...)

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[–] zephyr_cape (2979) 6 years ago

(Long post pt.3)

I totally get why especially for practical reasons and trends in production we're seeing so many practical effects dropped in favor of quick and dirty cg and traditional animation, even digital 2D animation virtually doesn't exist anymore, at least on the big screen – but which is so lamentable. There really is something rich lost there, and I don't think it's just nostalgia.

What it comes down to for me is that approach and medium defines our reading and tangible impact – it defines the meaning of what we're experiencing, – think of Claes Oldenberg's "Soft Sculptures": the crux of the work is how an object's significance is totally changed by changing its material – and so it is an artistic decision. But increasingly we're seeing that decision being made out of financial and temporal convenience. Which is a huge bummer if you ask me. Its a reflection of the world that we live in though, not unique to movies.

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[–] Frogarama (12942) 6 years ago

Well we can't forget that industry movies a primarily a business, not an art form.

I also want to make sure to remind that practical effects were often terrible. Obviously today, the best of the best is what's remembered.

As for me, I will take some CGI any day over the old stop-motion which was used for most of that stuff before.

I do like stop-motion, but it's best when it's the entire movie, like Coraline.

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[–] zephyr_cape (2979) 6 years ago

"I do like stop-motion, but it's best when it's the entire movie, like Coraline."

Interesting! That's kinda how I feel about CGI.
What year were you bjorn, Frogarama?

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[–] Frogarama (12942) 6 years ago

1977, five days before Star Wars came out.

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[–] Renovatio (2990) 6 years ago

We're talking about CGI in film as art and as entertainment... So arguements based on philistine accountants & executive concerns of time and money aren't really persuasive... In fact they are exactly what the OP complained about...

Most horror movies today have tiny budgets compared to even 90s era horror movies... Blumhouse productions (who did Get Out, Insidious and scores of other successful horror movies) make them for around $5MM per movie and they give directors final cut and the key actors % in exchange for the small budget... they're commercially successfull, but can't afford to do the practical side of things in this business model, or maybe havn't tried 🤔... it's lazy.... it's the safe economic way of doing it... it's fine, better than nothing or straight to video-on-demand that happens to other genres (sci-fi and dramas), and i like a lot of those movies, but they are missing something...

Is it because of torrents, because of studio consolidation and mergers/acquisitions, because adults stopped going to the cinema, or is it because people are less interested in mainstream horror for cultural reasons? I don't know... The commercial reasons are less interesting than the cultural and artistic ones...

Dunkirk looks so real and is more impactful than all cgi comicbook movies put together because it is non-CGI... You feel it more in the few explosions and aerial battles than in all of the spandex clad dudes throwing CGI at one another in superhero movies...

Sure, there is artistry in CGI, in animation and cartoons and in video game graphics, but it doesn't give the same response as cinema... and saying that filmmakers can't afford it is not an argument against lamenting it's absence...

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[–] Frogarama (12942) 6 years ago

and saying that filmmakers can't afford it is not an argument against lamenting it's absence...

Oh no, I actually brought up the business side of it because of movie studios making what sells. Big-budget movies held back by the old-school limitations of "only practical effects" just don't get the kind of attention these days that a movie can get by doing visuals that are only possible using both practical and CGI.

I don't mean they can't afford practical effects. A lot of what's done onscreen today for blockbusters just can't be feasibly accomplished with only practical effects.

Another aspect of CGI is that most of it is completely invisible. I notice a lot of CGI-bashers seem to think that the only CGI in movies is the CGI they can easily notice.

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[–] Renovatio (2990) 6 years ago

yeah, after the mergers and large studio takeovers of the smaller houses, and now of one another, the executives decided to not make $50-80 million dramas or genre movies aimed at adults or a more mature audience and instead make larger $200mm+ movies than can be marketed globally with toy and merchandising opporunities and such... as they can put more capital to work and standardise the product...

This accelerated during the early 2000s with comicbook movies and CGI cartoons as they are the lowest common global denominator, across language, simplicity of ideas, branding as well as merchandising and other commercial opportunities...

it's not a simple, this-is-what-audiences-demands commercial arguement since Hollywood is oligopolistic... Now you have a couple of generations of trained consumer audiences who are basically philistines are do not recognise what real cinema is capable of...

Fox Searchlight will be decimated under the new acquisition and even more mid-budget movies will dissapear... literally the backbone of cinema...

Lamenting the loss of practical effects, even bullet injury FX squibs for gunshot scenes and their replacement with CGI is the least we can do to keep some knowledge of the artistry of cinema alive...

It is possible to have a cheeseburger that is better than fastfood mcDonalds... it's further possible to eat even better food than cheeseburger.... On this thread we're simply asking for our fries not to be soggy 😂

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[–] Frogarama (12942) 6 years ago

Squibs are a great example, because they sucked. They were super-obvious and looked awful. There's no reason to pine for the days of the squib.

Also, here's a video that explores what I was talking about, the under-apprecation of CGI because the best of it is unnoticed:

We believe that the reason we think all CG looks bad, is because we only see "bad” CG. Fantastic, beautiful, and wonderfully executed CG is everywhere - you just don't know it. Truly great visual effects serve story and character – and in doing so are, by their very definition, invisible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6hp8BKB24

This guy says it in his comment, too:
"good CGI = you dont know it is CGI
basically why people hate CGI"

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[–] Renovatio (2990) 6 years ago

I just watched that, just a bunch of examples ugly CGI... Superheros throwing CGI at one another, Gravity, Mad Max Fury Road, CGI 'splosions... Video game style CGI action...

One of the few nice looking ones was that Ape Planet war movie and a great deal of that was the actor... Very cool effect that I commented on in it's discusion boards...

Some subtle background adjustments that look good, others like Mad Max that always looked fake, but it's meant to be stylised and not photorealistic... But hollywood has always played around with that stuff with rear projection and painted backgrounds and such... not many issues there, except that green screen is so heavily used that movie exteriors (and often interiors) feel fake... So here I get the arguement that things can be done well or poorly... The same with deleting the camera in multi-camera shots, or in reflections in mirrors... that's not what were talking about...

All the rest are trivial things like deleting or changing objects and such... Photoshop touch-ups for movies...

Then there is the kind of crowd/extras filler that Ridley Scott used for Gladiator and such 18 years ago... None of that feels as epic as old movies from the 60s with massives casts of extras, or even a musical like Oliver that saturated the panoramic screen with real dancers...

Why do you think movies today look so cartoony in terms of colour grading and the way things are shot? Even the live action bits and the non-comicbook movies? It's partly so that all the CGI blends in well. We all assumed that all comicbook movies are just green screen CGI, no one is under the illusion that any of it looks real. Why do you think they have to destroy entire CGI cities, every movie, just to make an audience feel something, which they never do... Wheras in Dunkirk, a war movie, a kid being accidetally pushed and hitting his head is tragic!

Same with the editing... Cut every 3 seconds or less so people don't see the CGI seems...

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[–] Renovatio (2990) 6 years ago

cont'd ..... At some point all of this CGI will seem photorealistic... But that is not the point. It's not yet and for decades we've had to settle for CGI, when it would have been better if the filmmakers had taken the care to do it "in camera" or "on set" so to speak...

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[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 6 years ago

Yes CGI is the first big problem with this film. CGI has certainly diminished films. Back in the day when you saw something amazing, you wondered how they hell they did it. Now you simply shrug and think "Meh, CGI." Then you might consider if it were good or bad CGI.

The second major problem is that this is just another re-hash of the Alien saga with lots of nasty beasts jumping out of people's chests. So you pretty much knew what was going to happen before it happened. Did anyone NOT realize immediately after after the Walter v David WWE match that David won, and was going to kill everyone? I think we all
saw that coming.

Other problems include: 1. The flute scene. Filler. 2. People in 2104 still don't know that the word is pronounced
ZO-ology, not ZOO-ology? 3. Why was Walter wearing a hoodie? Androids don't feel heat or cold. 4. Once again,
NO sound in space, Ridley! 4. And as usual people doing really STUPID things to advance the plot. (Sigh.)

😎

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[–] [deleted] 2 years ago

CGI is here to stay dude. Get used to it. Practical Effects is a dying artform.

For the record many younger film fans find The Thing (1982) and Alien (1979) to be hokey and clearly puppets/men in suits. That may surprise some people but take a look at some reviews on IMDB for The Thing, you'll come across younger film fans who think it looks so cheap and phoney. As well as unthreatening due to the slow movements.

It's a bit like Zombies, back in the day they walked, now they run. Many viewers find the faster, more aggressive Zombies terrifying whilst the meandering, bumping into things, old school Zombies to be laughable.

When you grew up with practical and are used to it, CGI looks terrible and like a video game. Other people have grew up with CGI and video games and find slow moving puppets or men in suits to be very dated and off-putting.

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