3.05.2010

I'm Not Against SFX...

...but I will claim to having a major boner for practical effects versus computer generated ones. Even during my eleventeenth viewing of Groundhog Day last night, I commented on how I missed real explosions. Practical effects, for all their limitations (since you must be able to actually DO whatever it is you're trying to convey), are generally more aesthetically pleasing to this author's eye.

I can still picture certain truly bad FX work in movies and TV shows years after I've seen them, and if it's something I've seen more than once (a few shots in Spider-Man, for example), they're just a giant black mark of deja vu. They hold things back for the simple reason that they take me out of the process by making me suddenly aware of the filmmaking. Bad practical effects can have the same effect, but in general they camouflage a bit better because they still happen within the diegesis of the film.

Imagine my surprise when I watched this video of television green screen FX and found myself inspired by how deftly the work was hidden in most cases. It actually got me excited about the progress of computer generated imagery and where it can allow me to take my budget (non-comics) work in the future.


Thanks to all the twitter folks who linked this. Can't remember who posted it first.

1 comment:

Shawn said...

This reminds me of my brother's reel:
http://tinyurl.com/yggjpka
Very cool, thanks for sharing!