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A lot of what this article talks about rings true in a presentation I watched recently by the team at Weta Digital which did the VFX for The Batman They talked

A lot of what this article talks about rings true in a presentation I watched recently by the team at Weta Digital which did the VFX for The Batman They talked about, among other things, how they had to: - digitally replace the stunt man's face in many of the action shots because his jawline was too dissimilar to Robert Pattinson's. - digitally modify a hand because a prop gun misfired in a shot - enhance the fight scenes to look more visceral and violent - add rain and rain spatter to the car chase (the parts that weren't already fully digital) I'm no filmmaker but I felt many of those things could have been done without VFX. Hire a stunt man that looks more like RP, reshoot the scene with the broken prop, forget about rain and/or tone down the epic action set piece, etc. Instead it seemed like it all just came to rest on the shoulders of the VFX artists.

jbverschoor 4y ago
VFX artists are cogs.. I guess they're like cloud servers. Cheap for some things, but misused for too many things
- ygra 4y ago
  It's probably also everything that is accidentally overlooked during the shoot. Previously you would hat a different take, perhaps, or live with the goof. Now you can just offload that to post-production. But probably also a question if how expensive filming days are with the whole crew vs. how expensive VFX artists are. The latter work is also highly parallelizable.
  - ip26 4y ago
    It’s probably a good ol perfectly rational slippery slope. Fixing a minor mistake or two in post is absolutely the best choice for everyone. Each additional fix is not worth a reshoot either. But slip too far and the product suffers.
berkut 4y ago
As someone in the VFX industry myself (but as a software dev writing the tools the artists use), I'd argue those examples are generally useful work being done on the movie to make things "more real". Whether it's worth it, is going to be very opinionated. However, I would say: I re-watched GoldenEye recently, and - maybe it was because I'm in the industry and notice these things more - but the blatantly different stunt men (especially landing the Cessna in Cuba: the man looked totally different compared to the actor who should have been flying!) compared to the actors did make me personally go "hang on a moment, who's that?" Some of this stuff can now also be automated to a degree (not completely, it still requires artist input, and sometimes a lot), but it's not often Rotoing every frame like it used to be ten years or so ago. Things I'd personally argue aren't worth artists having to work on, but I know they do, are things like skin wrinkle removal on leading actresses, removing mustaches on actors, etc. And the biggest issue is clients changing their mind at the last minute, often having previously signed off on lookdev or anim at the earlier stages, or just generally having to deal with bad set preparation because the 'talent''s time on set is 1000x times more important than the unseen artists, who then have to do loads of work to compensate for badly lit (very un-evenly lit) greenscreens or lighting on set, because the on-set VFX supe was likely ignore when he complained ("Oh, they can just fix it in post").
- croes 4y ago
  But Superman with a mustache would have looked weird.
  - ihateolives 4y ago
    Ok, now I want to see Magnum P.I. era Tom Selleck as Superman.
    - slim 4y ago
      deep fake to the rescue
  - ssrc 4y ago
    He would have looked like Omni-Man.
goto11 4y ago
> forget about rain and/or tone down the epic action set piece, etc. But this is the stuff which make the movie cinematic and draws the audience. Hiring a stunt man which looks more like the lead might not be possible - historically this have been solved by filming stunt scenes at a distance, from the back etc. But this makes the scenes less engaging. A set with full crew and actors present is extremely expensive. For any mistake which can be fixed with VFX rather then a reshoot, it is probably the prudent financial decision to use VFX.
- toast0 4y ago
  > historically this have been solved by filming stunt scenes at a distance, from the back etc. Those were often done, but other options that increased engagement were having actors do their own stunts (not always appropriate) or casting stunt workers into bigger parts.
  - goto11 4y ago
    You can't have lead actors perform actual dangerous stunts (despite what marketing might tell you). The financial risks are far to high and insurance would never accept that. Just imagine the financial loss if the actor is not able to complete the movie due to an accident. It only really happens in B-movies and movies produced outside of Hollywood.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
When you say that a prop gun misfired, do you mean that a real gun, used as a prop, went off accidentally? Between this anecdote and the rust shooting, actors seem to have really poor trigger discipline. Is this something that happens a lot?
discordance 4y ago
"eh, we'll just fix it in post"

jbverschoor 4y ago

VFX artists are cogs.. I guess they're like cloud servers. Cheap for some things, but misused for too many things

ygra 4y ago
It's probably also everything that is accidentally overlooked during the shoot. Previously you would hat a different take, perhaps, or live with the goof. Now you can just offload that to post-production. But probably also a question if how expensive filming days are with the whole crew vs. how expensive VFX artists are. The latter work is also highly parallelizable.
- ip26 4y ago
  It’s probably a good ol perfectly rational slippery slope. Fixing a minor mistake or two in post is absolutely the best choice for everyone. Each additional fix is not worth a reshoot either. But slip too far and the product suffers.

berkut 4y ago

As someone in the VFX industry myself (but as a software dev writing the tools the artists use), I'd argue those examples are generally useful work being done on the movie to make things "more real". Whether it's worth it, is going to be very opinionated. However, I would say: I re-watched GoldenEye recently, and - maybe it was because I'm in the industry and notice these things more - but the blatantly different stunt men (especially landing the Cessna in Cuba: the man looked totally different compared to the actor who should have been flying!) compared to the actors did make me personally go "hang on a moment, who's that?" Some of this stuff can now also be automated to a degree (not completely, it still requires artist input, and sometimes a lot), but it's not often Rotoing every frame like it used to be ten years or so ago. Things I'd personally argue aren't worth artists having to work on, but I know they do, are things like skin wrinkle removal on leading actresses, removing mustaches on actors, etc. And the biggest issue is clients changing their mind at the last minute, often having previously signed off on lookdev or anim at the earlier stages, or just generally having to deal with bad set preparation because the 'talent''s time on set is 1000x times more important than the unseen artists, who then have to do loads of work to compensate for badly lit (very un-evenly lit) greenscreens or lighting on set, because the on-set VFX supe was likely ignore when he complained ("Oh, they can just fix it in post").

croes 4y ago
But Superman with a mustache would have looked weird.
- ihateolives 4y ago
  Ok, now I want to see Magnum P.I. era Tom Selleck as Superman.
  - slim 4y ago
    deep fake to the rescue
- ssrc 4y ago
  He would have looked like Omni-Man.

goto11 4y ago

> forget about rain and/or tone down the epic action set piece, etc. But this is the stuff which make the movie cinematic and draws the audience. Hiring a stunt man which looks more like the lead might not be possible - historically this have been solved by filming stunt scenes at a distance, from the back etc. But this makes the scenes less engaging. A set with full crew and actors present is extremely expensive. For any mistake which can be fixed with VFX rather then a reshoot, it is probably the prudent financial decision to use VFX.

toast0 4y ago
> historically this have been solved by filming stunt scenes at a distance, from the back etc. Those were often done, but other options that increased engagement were having actors do their own stunts (not always appropriate) or casting stunt workers into bigger parts.
- goto11 4y ago
  You can't have lead actors perform actual dangerous stunts (despite what marketing might tell you). The financial risks are far to high and insurance would never accept that. Just imagine the financial loss if the actor is not able to complete the movie due to an accident. It only really happens in B-movies and movies produced outside of Hollywood.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

When you say that a prop gun misfired, do you mean that a real gun, used as a prop, went off accidentally? Between this anecdote and the rust shooting, actors seem to have really poor trigger discipline. Is this something that happens a lot?

discordance 4y ago

"eh, we'll just fix it in post"