“Is this a computer film or a normal film?” I recently overheard a question of a girl directed at her boyfriend near a movie theater. The guy told her that they were about to watch Terminator 4 and it would be a “normal film but with lots of computer stuff”. The girl sighed. “Nobody falls in love with anybody in those movies…”

I chuckled but I couldn’t forget about this little conversation. While her statement was not always true it still bears some truth. As the VFX keep getting bigger and better their underlying plots degenerate and become more one-dimensional than the comics most of them are loosely based on. The money of the production is mainly spent on stars and on post-production sweatshops facilities on the west coast. The companies make good money and so nobody ponders: Is it all worth the effort?

Techno Breed

Every couple of years there’s a new breakthrough in technology that the upcoming movies feature. Disney’s Dinosaur was prominent for the dinos having digital muscles under their displacement-mapped skins; Lord of the Rings was one of the major features to use sub-surface scattering on Gollum and Watchmen showcases that live-action tracking finally works. So what’s next?

Nowadays computing speed has more or less leveled out, you can’t get considerably faster than 3.5 GHz (by staying somewhat economic in your efforts), so for the last couple of years we experienced and still experience a shift towards multi-core CPUs. You won’t get more MHz for your buck, but more parallel processes. So instead of doing things faster and faster one after another, especially in real-time environments we do more and more computations simultaneously which imposes better programming on what’s already there. This may be one reason why there is nothing really groundbreaking going on in the visual department in the last few years except the usual “bigger” and “better”. Whereas bump-mapping, anti-aliasing or HDR rendering really were obvious to the occasional gamer, better physics, ambient occlusion or parallax mapping aren’t that much of a blast compared to what we’re already used to. I won’t go much deeper into the gaming sector because it is a topic of its own, yet film and game share the same efforts in making things look more real.

Photoreal Seductions

So can we get more photoreal? I bet. In games we’re already there. In movies, well, we’ve already arrived: Jurassic Park, Terminator 2 were trailblazers for VFX-flagships auch as Cloverfield, Watchmen and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Do we want to get more photoreal? What’s beyond photoreal?

Stylization — that’s what’s beyond and I see this as a big trend in the upcoming years and, frankly I can’t wait for it to happen if it is done with thought and consideration. Since anything’s possible in CGI, well, anything’s possible and filmmakers (as well as some game designers) aren’t inclined anymore to find creative ways around showing something that’s technically not possible. You don’t have your protagonists worry about how terrifying a monster is, you just show it. But is this really more terrifying?

Fig. 1: Typical blockbuster plot.

This trend has started around ten or twelve years ago when most films wrapped their plot around visual effects (consider Godzilla). I like good movies but I feel that this technology-driven way of film making opened the door for hollow shells, fancy CGI with a plot that lacks mostly of a plot (see fig. 1). Let’s face it: Transformers was just a CG-showreel with enormous budget and had a plot that insulted anybody with an age of more than one digit (or an I.Q. with more than two digits).

Of course, there are exceptions, but in general the more “groundbreaking” CGI is in a movie, the more holes has a plot. More than the antagonist after the final battle.

So am I proposing to ban CGI from movies and do it as Quentin does, edit your masterpiece on a Steenbeck and the only “optical effects” in it are titles and credits? Of course not.

Visual Storytelling

I am not the only one (and by no means the first one) to notice. So what is visually interesting enough to burn a bonfire of visual effects, yet still has something one can call a plot? Comics. It started with Spiderman, along came X-Men, Batman, a bomb of Superman, Iron Man, Hancock, Watchmen… and I am sure I missed some. Do you see a pattern there (apart from the Men ¹?)

There’s a lot of good will to adopt the comic style in films and some bold attempts do succeed. Just look at Sin City! In my opinion Frank Miller is not a really good comic author nor artist but, hey, it’s a step in the right direction. If you want to know who I feel is the best comic artist at the moment then read David Mack‘s Kabuki series. It is so good that I hope there will never be a movie.

CGI can do so much more than just enhance movie reality. It can create one. But why stop there? It doesn’t have to create anything realistic. Today’s audience grew up with television, movies and animé, they know about film language, have an instinct for how story arcs work (even without attending an overpriced Robert McKee lecture) and they are familiar with all kinds of crazy shit. They don’t need to be shown the devastation a hostile army can create ². They don’t need to be treated like idiots!

What are films about again?

Having all that eye candy surround you in every film it is hard to take a step back and see the big picture (pun intended): Films are about people. They are about emotions, feelings and relations. Consider Terminator 2: It’s not about the T-1000 being able to morph into anything it wants to, it is about John Connor who is terrified of this machine, yet he has to trust the T-800, another machine, the only person in his life that is more father-like than any human. This movie would work even without the CGI. Transformers on the other hand would just be silly. It already is silly.

Fig. 2: Still from Ryan, (2004)

But well placed CGI and visual effects may help to transport the feelings, emotions or perceptions. A good example I feel is Ryan (fig. 2). Just the opening shot tells so much more about the characters than dialogue ever could. The inner workings are visualized and are in interplay with the traditional film making techniques. And Ryan is not the only attempt into this direction. The more indie a film is, the more experimental it can be.

This way CGI shifts from being the silver coating of a turd ³ to becoming a wheel on the delicate cart where the plot is pushed along.

Yet we all know: As soon as a film has to accumulate money the producers lack the balls like a mule and rather please the 8 to 22 year old males who are prone to bring their sorry girlfriends along.

So?

Think beyond! Use your imagination! Feel! VFX are more than wire removals, rotoscoping or giant dancing robots. VFX are art and craft. VFX are a wonderful tool to create and reveal what can’t be captured by any other medium in the world.

Be indie! Be involved in pre-production. Find fellow artists who want to be more than roto-monkeys in the guts of some galley. For transforming VFX from just a finishing tool to a source for inspiration and art it is crucial that “post-production” should become “pan-production”.

And that’s tonight’s word.