One Film Student’s Opinion on CGI

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story by Jakob Burnham design and illustration by Makayla Zayic

FILM STUDENT’S OPINION ON CGI

CGI Changes

Watching movies with terrible CGI may tend to take you out of the movie, and lately there hasn’t been much good CGI. CGI stands for Computer-Generated Imagery and without it not a whole lot of things are possible within the film industry.

But why now? How is CGI getting worse? First off, there are many reasons why CGI has gotten worse and most of the time it isn’t just one reason.

Throughout time there have been great movies with CGI, maybe audiences are spoiled because of good CGI, but that’s not the case. Slowly but surely CGI has been getting worse and it may take some time to get better again.

One big reason CGI has gotten worse is that every filmmaker wants to use it. Filmmakers know they can make some good money with good CGI, but half of the time now it isn’t even that great.

In the 1990s CGI started to get popular with movies such as Jurassic Park and Toy Story, which is known to be the first ever entirely computer-generated feature film. In this time everyone started to use it, especially after these blockbuster movies.

Now because everyone is using it, people are using CGI with such a low budget or cheap VFX which causes them to have poor CGI. Not every movie needs this though, practical effects exist and oftentimes it can work better than CGI.

But since CGI is such a “trend” people will follow it, especially when there is no limit and no one telling these people no.

CGI is a Trend “Working on #Marvel shows is what pushed me to leave the VFX industry. They’re a horrible client, and I’ve seen way too many colleagues break down after being overworked, while Marvel tightens the purse strings.”

- Dhruv Govil

HD to 4K

The article 10 reasons why CGI is getting worse, not better, written by explains that the advances in resolution clarity has made CGI less convincing.

In 2012, 4K was approved as a standard. TimeScapes being the first film to shoot in 4K, their winning of awards brought with it a lot of attention. One major film that influenced other filmmakers to shoot in 4K is District 9.

The switch from HD, High Definition, to 4K within filmmaking is another huge reason why some CGI is poor nowadays. With 4K, 8K and so on making the film more detailed and beautiful, it also causes us as the audience to see the faulty CGI more clearly.

Sometimes CGI isn’t detailed enough to keep up with the resolutions. Especially since more and more movies are using higher resolutions, making the CGI less convincing which defeats the whole purpose of CGI.

As filmmakers use more CGI within their films, they become so reliant on it that it becomes the soul of the film. Films such as Rampage (2018), are pure CGI. Most of their budget goes into the CGI instead of better writers, directors, etc.

Rampage is literally about a CGI gorilla, wolf and alligator who all fight each other, but in addition the wolf can fly. Movies like Rampage can be very fun at times, but most of the time are they good quality movies?

The effects are supposed to be hidden, if viewers can notice the change between normal shots and CGI shots then there is a problem. Some filmmakers and companies just think that CGI makes the movie, since it may “look cool”, but really what makes a good movie is a compelling story and characters.

More and more movies are using CGI and using it as the soul of the film rather than their characters and story. CGI can look good when done right, but if CGI makes the whole story and isn’t done right. One issue that people may now know about is that VFX teams tend to be overworked a lot. CGI and VFX are already difficult to do, so with staff being overworked, it can’t be much easier.

Recently a lot of VFX employees from Marvel Studios spoke out about how they are being overworked and underpaid, according to the article ‘Overworked, underappreciated’ VFX artists call out Marvel over terrible working conditions, written by the Tribune.

This was a pretty big deal especially since lately Marvel Studios’ movies haven’t had much luck with their CGI, so this could very well be one of the reasons.

This isn’t only with Marvel Studios. VFX teams have it quite difficult, so it’s amazing they get CGI done at all under the circumstances.

Dhruv Govil, a former CG artist from Marvel Studios, tweeted, “Working on #Marvel shows is what pushed me to leave the VFX industry. They’re a horrible client, and I’ve seen way too many colleagues break down after being overworked, while Marvel tightens the purse strings.”

CGI isn’t an easy thing to do at all. Through the past years of CGI there may be some bad ones, but that doesn’t mean the team can’t be appreciated.

Hopefully CGI will see the light of day again, back to the golden days, but for now we may need to sit and wait for our technology to advance and for Hollywood to not look at movies as a CGI fest.

The Soul of the Film Overworked Staff