Special effects, where are we headed?

[Trevatanus]

I watched the new Avatar film last night, great movie, but absolutely blown away by the CGI.
Obviously the Avatar budget gets you a lot of special effects, but I can honestly say, it was the most amazing I've ever seen. Which got me thinking, Where will we be in say 20 years time?
My initial thought was VR headsets, and not needing to go to the cinema, but I cannot imagine that the cinema's would welcome this, but what else could we do?

[motco]

Just as vinyl records are back in vogue, will 'real' special effects as opposed to CGI return as being "...more authentic..." ?

[anonymous-user]

surely it will be immersive VR before long. How that affects the model of the physical cinema I have no idea though.

[Mr Penguin]

motco said:

Just as vinyl records are back in vogue, will 'real' special effects as opposed to CGI return as being "...more authentic..." ?

Hopefully. They do look a lot better.

[E63eeeeee...]

motco said:

Just as vinyl records are back in vogue, will 'real' special effects as opposed to CGI return as being "...more authentic..." ?

There's already a strong element of this - a lot of commentary about big budget films moving away from CGI to use "real" effects - iirc the recent James Bond films compared to the Brosnan ones, Tenet, the later Star Wars stuff compared to the prequels, to take a few random examples. Probably a bit simplistic but the initial excitement about CGI from films like Titanic and the early Terminator films seemed to be scuppered by the awfulness of the Star Wars prequels which turned a lot of people off heavy CGI.

In theory, it might actually go back the other way over time as indistinguishable-from-reality CGI will only get cheaper.

[QJumper]

Many years ago (1990's I guess) I was in an arcade and played a holographic video game. It was pretty incredible seeing what looked like little people in front of me on a stage. I remember wondering what it would be like if they were able to recreate something like that for film and tv. I imagined watching football on a table, like having your own mini stadium in front of you.

I've never seen a game like it since, and wonder why holographic video never went any further.

[motco]

Mr Penguin said:

motco said:

Just as vinyl records are back in vogue, will 'real' special effects as opposed to CGI return as being "...more authentic..." ?

Hopefully. They do look a lot better.

In the same vein, I like cel based hand drawn cartoons over computer generated ones. Tom and Jerry style.

[Randy Winkman]

I'm not much of a film goer but I have been very impressed by special effects to disguise people's appearances in a couple of TV documentaries recently. Such as this one about protests in Hong Kong in 2019. Might not be that radical but as an avid TV documentary watcher, I'd say that such well executed use of special effects is a fairly new thing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001fhjf/hon...

[Lincsls1]

I too, am blown away by the latest CGI effects. It is totally amazing when done with a high budget.
IMO it really doesn't need to get any better and I genuinely do not wish to engage with any type of VR to 'watch' a movie.

[Cotty]

motco said:

Just as vinyl records are back in vogue, will 'real' special effects as opposed to CGI return as being "...more authentic..." ?

There is also a cost element. Moon was supposed to feature a lot of CGI until they looked at the budget. They were happliy surprised when they discovered how much they could save using practical effects and the finished film looks great.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/?ref_=fn_al_t...

[Wacky Racer]

Ground breaking stuff in the 1950's.

[Mr E]

Forget the effects. How long before they stop bothering with actors entirely?

[skilly1]

QJumper said:

Many years ago (1990's I guess) I was in an arcade and played a holographic video game. It was pretty incredible seeing what looked like little people in front of me on a stage. I remember wondering what it would be like if they were able to recreate something like that for film and tv. I imagined watching football on a table, like having your own mini stadium in front of you.

I've never seen a game like it since, and wonder why holographic video never went any further.

This effect is called peppers ghost.

It’s being more widely used on huge scale. For example, at a concert when you see a holographic image walking - interacting on stage.

[jayemm89]

Cotty said:

There is also a cost element. Moon was supposed to feature a lot of CGI until they looked at the budget. They were happliy surprised when they discovered how much they could save using practical effects and the finished film looks great.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/?ref_=fn_al_t...

From memory Moon took advantage of the writer's strike at the time, which in turn put a lot of VFX houses out of work, meaning they got it cheaper than ordinarily possible.

Brosnan's Bond in Goldeneye also had very little in the way of CGI - it was the final film of old school model guru Derek Meddings (Thunderbirds!)

There are lots of films considered big CGI fests, which actually have lots of model work. The Star Wars prequel trilogy is a great example. Each film had more models than the entire original trilogy, they just weren't so good at filming and combining them digitally.

[Morningside]

I hope in a way the full CGI is toned down a bit as after a while it just reminds me of a watching a video game.

[fourstardan]

I got absolutely bored senseless in the first Avatar, my eyes were knackered using the glasses.

Sound wise I've got a In-Law side family member who is a Foley engineer, I was amazed they existed when we met but he's made a generous living off of it that's for sure.

[Panamax]

Morningside said:

I hope in a way the full CGI is toned down a bit as after a while it just reminds me of a watching a video game.

This.

[Radec]

I think Interstellar used minimal CGI and scale models instead which should help it stand the test of time.

[Greedydog]

Mr E said:

Forget the effects. How long before they stop bothering with actors entirely?

This. Technology is already/almost at the stage of being able to generate and animate apparently real faces etc. How long will it be before these are simply voiced by humans, before ultimately the voice/ acting etc. all being computer generated. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but I wouldn't bet against it within the next decade or so.

[RosscoPCole]

If you want to see good CGI go see ABBA Voyage. ILM were behind the scenes.