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>How Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan Created 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'... ...without CGI, thankfully. It's been more than a decade since Hollywood released a movi

>How Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan Created 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'... ...without CGI, thankfully. It's been more than a decade since Hollywood released a movie with a realistic patina. For an example, compare the centerpiece truck chase in Crystal Skull with the propeller-dodging fistfight in Raiders. Where's the fullers earth, where's the blood, where's the sweat? Contemporary CGI effects contaminate films with a phony "sheen" which future film historians will no doubt condemn as glaringly phoney. Likewise, CGI seems to encourage special effects artists to "overload" movie frames, the clutter devolving into little more than a figurative close-up of a child smashing toys together. Was the Tarzan reference really necessary in Crystal Skull's truck chase? Did a kitchen sink really need to float by in Revenge of the Sith? Further, CGI characters are forgettable. Can filmgoers still see the details of the spheroid attack vehicles from Attack of the Clones in their minds eye? Contrast this with the AT-AT's from Empire Strikes Back. The former CGI props do not ring true to the mind and are thus only imperfectly recalled. The latter physical models are unforgettable. Also see ED209, the stop motion owl from clash of the titans, the terminator skeleton from Terminator 1, etc. Physical models are crude but effective. CGI is nuanced but phoney at a deeper and much more damning level. The widespread adoption of CGI circa Phantom Menace will likely mark the beginning of a protracted dark age in filmmaking. Who knows when or if there will be a renaissance.

shangxiao 12y ago
There's also something about the sound effects in the modern Star Wars films that sound so fake & made up. There was a post on HN a few weeks ago about how the Millenium Falcon's hyperdrive sound was a mashup of actual sound recordings.
wyclif 12y ago
This is precisely why the first film in the series (Raiders of the Lost Ark) was by far my fave. It's just so gritty and realistic—comparatively speaking, of course—to the sequels. It's almost a perfect action/adventure movie. You can feel the love and physical attention to detail that Spielberg poured into every frame.
agumonkey 12y ago
The prelogy was as much badly done than badly timed, they were still trying to go over using the technology[1] for the sake of it, nowadays you see people using CGI to help the experience more often. People will probably realize that all of this is unnecessary. There was a video on youtube showing how much CGI there was even in a movie like The wolf of Wall Street. It's incredible how everything is faked (scenery, mood, ...), you end up wondering how people did make movies at all before. Well they did it pretty well. CGI characters and stage are bad because they lack .. depth. I watch Alien often and only a few seconds of it sucks you into the ship. Same for Blade Runner, the guys are walking in an actual street, it probably embeds the whole crew a lot more, giving realism that can't be achieved in green rooms (Star Wars < 4 shined in this department, it was as bad a Soap Operas). All of this require good sense and good sense of measure. Terminator 2 SFX very pretty crude in retrospect, but the editing made them blend perfectly. If you do frame by frame you'll laugh as some shots were really bad, but in real time, it never shows, the pace, framing, action compels your mind to think about the story, not the pixels. [1] which makes the original trilogy even more impressive, most was invented on the spot yet it wasn't detrimental to the story.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > It's incredible how everything is faked (scenery, mood, ...), you end up wondering how people did make movies at all before. Well they did it pretty well. Sometimes, just as films now are sometimes done well; just as often as now, they did it poorly, too...and, in any case, almost as much was faked even when CGI wasn't the tool used to fake it. > CGI characters and stage are bad because they lack .. depth. CGI characters and stage are sometimes good because, compared to alternative special effects techniques, they have depth and realism. Sometimes not. Like any other technique in cinema, the art is in how it is used as much as whether it is used.
  - agumonkey 12y ago
    Maybe I'm biased by my love of minimalism (making a good movie without tech appeals to me) but also by the fact that movies are overblown these days. They're higher resolution but on the wrong dimensions, more backstory details, more detailed background decorum, more background characters. CGI lowered the threshold too much, and now movies are out of low-hanging fruits. I agree with you about the 'how' and that's what I tried to show before, back in the days the cost forced people to weight carefully how shots were to be made; not anymore.
Jtsummers 12y ago
See the difference in the dystopic visions of the two Total Recall movies. In the original, the slums of Mars felt like slums. They seemed rundown, there was trash everywhere. In the sequel, so much was created in CGI that it had a pristine look to it, even though we were told it was a rundown place. Also look at how often they switch to CGI for action sequences, or CGI enhancement so they can zoom out and show a whole city block or office floor that never existed in reality. It feels off, the movements aren't based on actual body mechanics anymore. A character jumping from building to building moves in perfect ballistic arcs and rarely stumbles when they're generated in CGI. A real person, even skilled, has a clumsier appearance to their movement. They may not actually err, but the way the body moves varies with each step, they aren't just perfectly recreating the same running stride for the entire distance.
joosters 12y ago
Another big difference between CGI and 'traditional' special FX is that CGI really seems to age worse. The SFX in the Indiana Jones films are dated, but they have aged well, IMO, and are still watchable today. Yet CGI from only a few years back (barring one or two exceptions) somehow manages to look so poor. I wonder if this trend will continue, or will CGI manage to become 'good enough' so that the effects can stand the test of time. It's weird looking back at old movies and being disappointed at the computer effects, yet when I watched them the first time around I thought they were fine. Or maybe this is just nostalgia, a sign of me getting old, and how "everything was better in the old days" :)
- joshuapants 12y ago
  Absolutely. If you look at the Phantom Menace today, the CGI looks like a bad video game. The "real" Star Wars trilogy aged fantastically; the stuff done as miniatures looks miles more convincing than the best CGI on offer in 1999. I bet we'll get to "good enough" CGI someday given the amount of money and effort being dumped into it, but it might take a long time. The details are going to be the hardest part for sure.
  - sjm-lbm 12y ago
    I'd actually disagree with this. A lot of what is remembered about the first SW trilogy is sanitized a lot by the many re-releases Lucas has made over the years. Off the top of my head, for example, in the original original trilogy, R2D2's color panels switched from blue to black on the shots where he was seen in space so as to not conflict with the chromakey color used to shoot the space background. I'd argue something like that is much worse than bad CGI: even though the shots looked plausible visually, it actually made me wonder if R2D2 was still on the ground and we were looking at a different R2 unit (or, in other words, actually injected some uncertainty into the story the filmmaker was attempting to tell).
- ars 12y ago
  I think that might just be survivor bias. You don't remember, or have never watched, the bad pre-CGI movies.
Zelphyr 12y ago
A lot of this thread, to me, has analogies to modern music. Its WAY easier to record music these days than it was 30-40 years ago (20 even?) but progressively, the easier it has become to record music through the use of technology the less interesting music has become overall. As is the case with CGI. The easier it is to render a scene the less interesting that scene seems to become in many cases. At least with the film industry, they tend to overuse new technologies/techniques until they learn how to use it properly and then it just becomes another tool in the film makers toolkit.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Ubuquitous recording and acoustic instruments can give rise to phenomenal results though. Overproduced synthed and autotuned pop. Not so much.
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
I never understood this view. I think there's so much wonderful CGI its unfair to group the good with the bad. CGI has the same problem AI has - when its unnoticed people don't realize its CGI, the same way people don't consider expert systems, personal assistants, etc AI. I watched the original Star Wars movies recently. I love the set design and costumes, but my god, the aliens and effects were laughable. I literally laughed at Yoda, who looks like a second hand muppet. There's just no way to think any of that looks remotely realistic or good. The scale models look like... well models. The stop motion animation just looks terrible. It was a fine effort for its time, but today its like watching a horse try to outrun a Ferrari. I also rewatched Alien, and my god, when they show the whole Alien's body it looks like a guy in a rubber suit. Without CGI, that's the best you can do. A guy in a suit or a crappy puppet. >Likewise, CGI seems to encourage special effects artists to "overload" movie frames This seems questionable at best. Art direction is either good or bad. A poor craftsman blames his tools. >Further, CGI characters are forgettable. Goto to Disney and watch kids completely lose their shit over CGI characters. Not only are these characters not forgotten, they will be this generation's Luke and Leia. Even an old man like me loves CGI characters like General Grevious. >protracted dark age in filmmaking. Ah yes, the traditionalist approach. People said the same thing about talkies and color film. Curmudgeonly old men are rarely good judges of the future or the arts.
- Crito 12y ago
  > "I also rewatched Alien, and my god, when they show the whole Alien's body it looks like a guy in a rubber suit. Without CGI, that's the best you can do. A guy in a suit or a crappy puppet." You should compare Alien to its sequel Aliens. It too used people in suits and puppets to portray the xenomorphs, however due to improved creature design I think it looks miles better. I recommend watching the entire movie instead of clips of the effects, but even on their own I think Aliens's hold up very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp7SNoYOQmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp7SNoYOQmY
  - drzaiusapelord 12y ago
    I think there's just more clever camera work in Aliens. There aren't as many full bodied shots and they spent more time working with puppets than people in suits. The last scene with Ripley fighting off the Alien in the airlock looks especially terrible. The alien just looks like a pile of latex. Its laughably bad by today's standards.
djloche 12y ago
The new Mad Max film is supposedly nearly all practical effects.
jonhohle 12y ago
> It's been more than a decade since > Hollywood released a movie with a > realistic patina. Aronofsky's The Fountain was made with only practical effects. It's beautiful.
tcbawo 12y ago
The movie Coraline (2009) is entirely stop motion. It's a beautiful -- a technical marvel. Every object on screen was specifically made for the film. The crew used three 3D printing systems in the development and production of the film, but no CGI.
greggman 12y ago
Have you seen how much of Edge of Tomorrow is not CGI? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYDmUR9PdUE#t=7m38s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYDmUR9PdUE#t=7m38s
shalmanese 12y ago
OTOH, if you look at the iconic boulder scene [1], it's laughably obvious that the boulder is made from foam. CGI would be able to give the boulder weight and momentum and make that scene far more menacing. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db5rRtOExbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db5rRtOExbA
michaelbuddy 12y ago
Filmmaking is all an illusion. Go back to any heyday of films and you'll spot plenty of issues with effects. Even when I was younger movies like Indiana Jones had obvious rear screen projection. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it just looked off. And for whatever number of seconds I was thinking about it, I certainly wasn't immersed in the movie for those scenes. Hate digital effects. Watch indie dramas. CGI characters are kinda of dumb, although I have to say that Pirates of the Caribbean movies did them really well for the time. If you hate CGI and desire some catharsis, definitely watch the red letter media reviews of star wars.

shangxiao 12y ago

There's also something about the sound effects in the modern Star Wars films that sound so fake & made up. There was a post on HN a few weeks ago about how the Millenium Falcon's hyperdrive sound was a mashup of actual sound recordings.

wyclif 12y ago

This is precisely why the first film in the series (Raiders of the Lost Ark) was by far my fave. It's just so gritty and realistic—comparatively speaking, of course—to the sequels. It's almost a perfect action/adventure movie. You can feel the love and physical attention to detail that Spielberg poured into every frame.

agumonkey 12y ago

The prelogy was as much badly done than badly timed, they were still trying to go over using the technology[1] for the sake of it, nowadays you see people using CGI to help the experience more often. People will probably realize that all of this is unnecessary. There was a video on youtube showing how much CGI there was even in a movie like The wolf of Wall Street. It's incredible how everything is faked (scenery, mood, ...), you end up wondering how people did make movies at all before. Well they did it pretty well. CGI characters and stage are bad because they lack .. depth. I watch Alien often and only a few seconds of it sucks you into the ship. Same for Blade Runner, the guys are walking in an actual street, it probably embeds the whole crew a lot more, giving realism that can't be achieved in green rooms (Star Wars < 4 shined in this department, it was as bad a Soap Operas). All of this require good sense and good sense of measure. Terminator 2 SFX very pretty crude in retrospect, but the editing made them blend perfectly. If you do frame by frame you'll laugh as some shots were really bad, but in real time, it never shows, the pace, framing, action compels your mind to think about the story, not the pixels. [1] which makes the original trilogy even more impressive, most was invented on the spot yet it wasn't detrimental to the story.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> It's incredible how everything is faked (scenery, mood, ...), you end up wondering how people did make movies at all before. Well they did it pretty well. Sometimes, just as films now are sometimes done well; just as often as now, they did it poorly, too...and, in any case, almost as much was faked even when CGI wasn't the tool used to fake it. > CGI characters and stage are bad because they lack .. depth. CGI characters and stage are sometimes good because, compared to alternative special effects techniques, they have depth and realism. Sometimes not. Like any other technique in cinema, the art is in how it is used as much as whether it is used.
- agumonkey 12y ago
  Maybe I'm biased by my love of minimalism (making a good movie without tech appeals to me) but also by the fact that movies are overblown these days. They're higher resolution but on the wrong dimensions, more backstory details, more detailed background decorum, more background characters. CGI lowered the threshold too much, and now movies are out of low-hanging fruits. I agree with you about the 'how' and that's what I tried to show before, back in the days the cost forced people to weight carefully how shots were to be made; not anymore.

Jtsummers 12y ago

See the difference in the dystopic visions of the two Total Recall movies. In the original, the slums of Mars felt like slums. They seemed rundown, there was trash everywhere. In the sequel, so much was created in CGI that it had a pristine look to it, even though we were told it was a rundown place. Also look at how often they switch to CGI for action sequences, or CGI enhancement so they can zoom out and show a whole city block or office floor that never existed in reality. It feels off, the movements aren't based on actual body mechanics anymore. A character jumping from building to building moves in perfect ballistic arcs and rarely stumbles when they're generated in CGI. A real person, even skilled, has a clumsier appearance to their movement. They may not actually err, but the way the body moves varies with each step, they aren't just perfectly recreating the same running stride for the entire distance.

joosters 12y ago

Another big difference between CGI and 'traditional' special FX is that CGI really seems to age worse. The SFX in the Indiana Jones films are dated, but they have aged well, IMO, and are still watchable today. Yet CGI from only a few years back (barring one or two exceptions) somehow manages to look so poor. I wonder if this trend will continue, or will CGI manage to become 'good enough' so that the effects can stand the test of time. It's weird looking back at old movies and being disappointed at the computer effects, yet when I watched them the first time around I thought they were fine. Or maybe this is just nostalgia, a sign of me getting old, and how "everything was better in the old days" :)

joshuapants 12y ago
Absolutely. If you look at the Phantom Menace today, the CGI looks like a bad video game. The "real" Star Wars trilogy aged fantastically; the stuff done as miniatures looks miles more convincing than the best CGI on offer in 1999. I bet we'll get to "good enough" CGI someday given the amount of money and effort being dumped into it, but it might take a long time. The details are going to be the hardest part for sure.
- sjm-lbm 12y ago
  I'd actually disagree with this. A lot of what is remembered about the first SW trilogy is sanitized a lot by the many re-releases Lucas has made over the years. Off the top of my head, for example, in the original original trilogy, R2D2's color panels switched from blue to black on the shots where he was seen in space so as to not conflict with the chromakey color used to shoot the space background. I'd argue something like that is much worse than bad CGI: even though the shots looked plausible visually, it actually made me wonder if R2D2 was still on the ground and we were looking at a different R2 unit (or, in other words, actually injected some uncertainty into the story the filmmaker was attempting to tell).
ars 12y ago
I think that might just be survivor bias. You don't remember, or have never watched, the bad pre-CGI movies.

Zelphyr 12y ago

A lot of this thread, to me, has analogies to modern music. Its WAY easier to record music these days than it was 30-40 years ago (20 even?) but progressively, the easier it has become to record music through the use of technology the less interesting music has become overall. As is the case with CGI. The easier it is to render a scene the less interesting that scene seems to become in many cases. At least with the film industry, they tend to overuse new technologies/techniques until they learn how to use it properly and then it just becomes another tool in the film makers toolkit.

dredmorbius 12y ago
Ubuquitous recording and acoustic instruments can give rise to phenomenal results though. Overproduced synthed and autotuned pop. Not so much.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

I never understood this view. I think there's so much wonderful CGI its unfair to group the good with the bad. CGI has the same problem AI has - when its unnoticed people don't realize its CGI, the same way people don't consider expert systems, personal assistants, etc AI. I watched the original Star Wars movies recently. I love the set design and costumes, but my god, the aliens and effects were laughable. I literally laughed at Yoda, who looks like a second hand muppet. There's just no way to think any of that looks remotely realistic or good. The scale models look like... well models. The stop motion animation just looks terrible. It was a fine effort for its time, but today its like watching a horse try to outrun a Ferrari. I also rewatched Alien, and my god, when they show the whole Alien's body it looks like a guy in a rubber suit. Without CGI, that's the best you can do. A guy in a suit or a crappy puppet. >Likewise, CGI seems to encourage special effects artists to "overload" movie frames This seems questionable at best. Art direction is either good or bad. A poor craftsman blames his tools. >Further, CGI characters are forgettable. Goto to Disney and watch kids completely lose their shit over CGI characters. Not only are these characters not forgotten, they will be this generation's Luke and Leia. Even an old man like me loves CGI characters like General Grevious. >protracted dark age in filmmaking. Ah yes, the traditionalist approach. People said the same thing about talkies and color film. Curmudgeonly old men are rarely good judges of the future or the arts.

Crito 12y ago
> "I also rewatched Alien, and my god, when they show the whole Alien's body it looks like a guy in a rubber suit. Without CGI, that's the best you can do. A guy in a suit or a crappy puppet." You should compare Alien to its sequel Aliens. It too used people in suits and puppets to portray the xenomorphs, however due to improved creature design I think it looks miles better. I recommend watching the entire movie instead of clips of the effects, but even on their own I think Aliens's hold up very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp7SNoYOQmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp7SNoYOQmY
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago
  I think there's just more clever camera work in Aliens. There aren't as many full bodied shots and they spent more time working with puppets than people in suits. The last scene with Ripley fighting off the Alien in the airlock looks especially terrible. The alien just looks like a pile of latex. Its laughably bad by today's standards.

djloche 12y ago

The new Mad Max film is supposedly nearly all practical effects.

jonhohle 12y ago

> It's been more than a decade since > Hollywood released a movie with a > realistic patina. Aronofsky's The Fountain was made with only practical effects. It's beautiful.

tcbawo 12y ago

The movie Coraline (2009) is entirely stop motion. It's a beautiful -- a technical marvel. Every object on screen was specifically made for the film. The crew used three 3D printing systems in the development and production of the film, but no CGI.

greggman 12y ago

Have you seen how much of Edge of Tomorrow is not CGI? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYDmUR9PdUE#t=7m38s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYDmUR9PdUE#t=7m38s

shalmanese 12y ago

OTOH, if you look at the iconic boulder scene [1], it's laughably obvious that the boulder is made from foam. CGI would be able to give the boulder weight and momentum and make that scene far more menacing. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db5rRtOExbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db5rRtOExbA

michaelbuddy 12y ago

Filmmaking is all an illusion. Go back to any heyday of films and you'll spot plenty of issues with effects. Even when I was younger movies like Indiana Jones had obvious rear screen projection. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it just looked off. And for whatever number of seconds I was thinking about it, I certainly wasn't immersed in the movie for those scenes. Hate digital effects. Watch indie dramas. CGI characters are kinda of dumb, although I have to say that Pirates of the Caribbean movies did them really well for the time. If you hate CGI and desire some catharsis, definitely watch the red letter media reviews of star wars.