Why cant Visual Effects be the star?

I just thought of something, it seems like the unique selling point of films has somewhat changed. a unique selling point is basically what your product or service has that makes it different from another and encourages others to purchase it. This very much applies to films and helps sells the film to the audience. This is also a great marketing tool.

At first the directors were the unique selling point of a film, directors such as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick were enough to solidify the film and make it appealing to audiences. Actors were just tools in the directors vision (and certainly didnt get paid 20million for a movie)

As time progressed the celebrity culture began to increase and the audience became more and more interested in the actors and this became a unique selling point, it was a about watching the latest marilyn mon roe film, the latest clint eastwood western or watching sean connery play james bond.

and it was this way for some time.

Now people are paying more attention again to consistantly good and famous directors like Tarantino, Ridley Scott, Peter Jackson, etc. But however another unique selling point has arisen and that is the Visual Effects. There are now films where visual effects is the unique selling point. For example Lord of the Ring had a budget of around 100 million for all three films and they spent the majority of that in their visual effects budget. were there good performances....yea, good storyline...yes, but the main attraction was the visual effects. The same with Avatar, it had a horrible storyline, mediocre performances but it was one of the most popular films of millenium simply because the visual effects and animations were out of this world.

Peter Jackson has been 'dubbed' by some as one of the best directors with Visual Effects and his name on a visual effects movie solidifies it.

I think it is only a matter of time before they start to use phrases such as "I cant wait to watch that new ILM movie", or "Double Negative just produced a new movie". and it will be the visual effects that will take pre-dominance in a film, and not the actors.

Its already been proved that they can replace actors altogether with films such as Beowulf and The curious case of benjamin button being complete CG renders of the actors.

the making of jurassic park

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_TFEFA3eAM

Excellent documentary and great at explaining the tools, methods and though process involved of creating a classic like this one.

Gladiator

"An emperor who became a slave, a slave who became a gladiator, the gladiator who defined an empire."

Unquestionably one of if not my favorite films, it was absolutely perfect from the storyline, the actors performance's and some of the most iconic movie lines ever to be created.

I am not however just rambling on about my favorite film but I want to talk about the visual effects used in Gladiator.

The visual effects used in this film was simply to enhance the film and you do not necessarily think about it while watching the film.

The Colosseum was incredible, they used 2,000 actors to form the bottom tiers and the rest were computer generated characters. Its not in your face and just is used to increase the epicness of the movie.

I think the best piece of Visual Effects was achieved and no one would have noticed it when watching the film, i certainly didnt. Oliver Reed died during the making of this film, they deemed it to be too expensive to shoot all over again and decided to shoot and replace a doubles body with Reed's head pieced together from previous shots where he was alive. It truly was amazing to see how they adapted to this situation.

And won them the VFX award at the 2001 Academy Awards, an award I had the privilleage of seeing up close after our recent visit to 'the Mill' one of UK's most prestigious post production houses.

In conclusion a great example at how VFX was used to enhance an already brilliant storyline.

Jurrassic Park 2 - First fully CG Film

Jurassic Park 2

Jurassic Park 2 was also a very iconic film in the visual effects industry it was the first film to use no physical effects and rely solely on visual effects work again done by ILM. Spielberg was so happy with the work done on the first one that he decided to go fully CG after a 8 year absence from the series, after seeing the success of the first film.

again the concept hasnt changed from the first one. The dinosaurs are the stars of the films if possible more so than the first one as they are all fully CG now.

Jurassic Park 1

Jurassic Park I

Jurassic Park 1 was one of the first films to incorporate Visual Effects, Spielberg after having seen the amazing work ILM done on Terminator 2 and producing the liquid terminator decided to entrust them to help with some of the visuals of the dinosaurs. In this movie they used both digital dinosaurs and physical man made ones and alternated them for both ease and what would look best on the camera. Spielberg was a bit skeptical at first but after having seen the beggining stages of the creation of the dinosaurs and how they moved, looked and behaved he was 'hooked' and started to push the envelope as to what 'Alias' (Maya's pre-decessor), and the good people at ILM could do. I still find it amazing what they were able to achieve as I cannot tell which ones were real or not.

It is un-questionable that the dinosaurs and the visual effects work of ILM were the star of the show. they used infamous actors, so they could contribute as much as they could to their visual effects and make the dinosaurs the attraction.

BLADERUNNER

There have been some very iconic visual effects films which mark the way for the future standards of what the next generation of film making should look like digitally. the first film i will be looking at is bladerunner. Though BladeRunner does not encorporate modern visual effects tools such as digital modelling, particle effects, or digital doubles this is still a very iconic use of Special Effects wizardry such as excellent model building, and it was amazing to see what they could achieve with the limited resources availiable in that time period.

I think this is a very good example at how VFX can be used to enhance a film, Bladerunner had an excellent storyline, well thought out characters and good storytelling techniques and simply used the effects to enhance and cultivate the viewers in that 'world' as opposed to having special effects be the main focus of the film.

VFX Star or Tool?

In this blog I will discussing the art of visual effects. I will explore visual effects in films and how they have been used throughout film history to enhance films but more recently to be the unique selling point of a film.