Indy 4, mostly CGI free

[martinland]

I'm guessing they're counting individual CGI elements. So, in a shot with a CGI matte painting and some animated creature would count as two CGI shots.

A shot is the sequence from one cut to the next. It may last a couple of frames or 15 minutes.
It may contain just one digitally comped background, just actors, a close up of a prop or a hundred spaceships flying.
If this one shot contains any digital tampering whatsoever, it's a CGI shot.
Based on its budgeted length and complexity one woman or man or dozens work on it a couple of hours or 6 months.

Just my two cents, I hope they helped...

 

[SterankoII]

Loganbush

I think the stuff on the trailer looks horrible. If it looked good I wouldn't care, but it looks about 1999ish and will make this Indy look way out of place.

Okay the cliff chase looked obviously bluescreen but everything involving the temple looked great. A lot of older people just complain over effects. I've read SF authors back when the original Star Wars came out b**ch about people in rubber masks. Then when ROTJ came out it was the puppets. The trailer impressed me because you can see it was really Harrison Ford doing some stunts and people want to do is nitpick over a few shots.

 

[The Man]

Loganbush

Okay the cliff chase looked obviously bluescreen but everything involving the temple looked great. A lot of older people just complain over effects. I've read SF authors back when the original Star Wars came out b**ch about people in rubber masks. Then when ROTJ came out it was the puppets. The trailer impressed me because you can see it was really Harrison Ford doing some stunts and people want to do is nitpick over a few shots.

The fact the Ford does the now famous Hangar swing himself, albeit it with a safety wire, gives us all great heart.

 

[loganbush]

Okay the cliff chase looked obviously bluescreen but everything involving the temple looked great. A lot of older people just complain over effects. I've read SF authors back when the original Star Wars came out b**ch about people in rubber masks. Then when ROTJ came out it was the puppets. The trailer impressed me because you can see it was really Harrison Ford doing some stunts and people want to do is nitpick over a few shots.

I'm not nitpicking anything. The cliff (which is really my only beef) stood out the first time I saw the trailer. If a second of film jumps out at me I wonder what the sequence will look like. And I think its great that Ford is doing his stunts I said nothing about that anyway. I think the temple looks good too.

 

[AHegele]

The shot of Ford swinging toward the truck in all one take no less is an example of how to use CGI to its fullest for this series. That shot could never work from 82-89. Not possible. They couldn't erase the wires holding him up.

woot

 

[xVendetta17x]

A shot is the sequence from one cut to the next. It may last a couple of frames or 15 minutes.
It may contain just one digitally comped background, just actors, a close up of a prop or a hundred spaceships flying.
If this one shot contains any digital tampering whatsoever, it's a CGI shot.
Based on its budgeted length and complexity one woman or man or dozens work on it a couple of hours or 6 months.

Just my two cents, I hope they helped...

I would like to see a 15 minute shot with CGI in it
That'd be brutal to shoot

 

[martinland]

I would like to see a 15 minute shot with CGI in it
That'd be brutal to shoot

Peanuts, Hitchcock did a whole movie with ten shots in 1948!!!
(without the luxury of changing anything - be it photochemically or digitally - after exposure )
Martin

PS:

I almost forgot, there's a movie consisting of one take only, I think it's called The Ark or something. On topic so to speak. It was shot on HD and with Steadycam, because no film camera in the world holds this much film...

 

[herr gruber]

The ultimate minimalist movie has got to be Derek Jarman's Blue!

 

[NileQT87]

if anything, i think most of the c.g.i. complaints are actually people complaining about janusz kaminski's cinematography. it gives a very bizarre green sheen to everything.

if you look at the original trilogy, it's that "disney meets curtiz" that spielberg was talking about. and the faces look very warm, even reddish, and the colors and shadows are very flat. here, everything doesn't look quite so flat and skin is paler with a lot of light shining on it--desaturated and more 3-dimensional. it actually gives it a bit of an unnatural sheen. though the more darkly lit shot of indy and mutt in the temple was MUCH closer--and ironically everybody thinks that clip looked the best.

imo, the best cinematography in the trilogy was in temple of doom.

also, the set design on the trilogy was all pretty minimalist and rough. the current set designer is quite a bit more detailed and less rough.

i hope we see something in the film that is stop-motion. also, i think a warmer browns/reds/oranges in bright sunlight and browns/blues/greens only in dark lighting needs to offset kaminski's washed-out green. the opening of raiders is greenish... but it's also not as brightly lit. the trilogy looks very natural and warm... there's that feeling of the natural warm-hued sunlight beating down on people and trees and indoors settings putting the shadows on faces more than the white artificial lighting look you see with kaminski.

and i think a lot of people would be screaming "c.g.i." less if it didn't have that weird filmy sheen on everything--especially shots with a lot of light. also if the colors were much more flat... i'm guessing that's film quality. it almost looks kind of that unnatural kind of digital.

hopefully, the sound effects by ben burtt will take away a lot of this with the old-fashioned atmospheric jungle sounds and campy sound effects.

i would say kaminski definitely wasn't happy about being told to strive for slocombe's style.

 

[xVendetta17x]

Peanuts, Hitchcock did a whole movie with ten shots in 1948!!!
(without the luxury of changing anything - be it photochemically or digitally - after exposure )
Martin

PS:

I almost forgot, there's a movie consisting of one take only, I think it's called The Ark or something. On topic so to speak. It was shot on HD and with Steadycam, because no film camera in the world holds this much film...

That would be like watching a video recording of a play

 

[Shortie]

"Steven Spielberg estimated during production that 30% of the visual effects would be CGI, but mostly for elements such as backdrops and rotoscope removal of the visible safety wires during stunt sequences. Apparently, the finished film will contain only “a couple of hundred” effects shots, compared to Michael Bay’s Transformers which featured almost 650 effects shots or Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 which featured almost 1,000 effects shots."

Didn't The Phantom Menace have close to two-thousand CGI effects? I think I remember reading that the scene were the two jedi were on the trade federation ship being gased was the only scene w/o CGI effects.

I can live with 200 Indiana Jones CGI shots. It'll make for a better film, I'm sure.

There's no way Spdiey ahs more CGI than Transformers, unless each grain of san from Sandman counts.

 

[xVendetta17x]

There's no way Spdiey ahs more CGI than Transformers, unless each grain of san from Sandman counts.

Once you think about it the only CG in Transformers was the robots
In Spiderman there's a bunch of the fight scenes, the Sand Man, the symbiote (Sp?), and all that which occurs in like every scene

 

[martinland]

That would be like watching a video recording of a play

You're absolutely right. If I remember correctly, it was more like a couple of staged performances, maybe even w/ narrator.

Another thing I seem to recall vaguely is the fact that they got pretty nervous when the first couple of takes had to be interrupted some ten minutes into the shoot.

Be it as it may, nowadays they throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at mere seconds to make them worthwhile and cut them like that, in the old days they had looong master shots to let you explore the frame on the big screen (where medium shots would be considered closeups because of the screen - nowadays everything has to be sergio-leone-eye-level close so it can be watched on cell phones...

Martin

 

[SterankoII]

I was surprised that there were fewer CG shots in Transformers than Spider-Man but I think that figure shows the number but not the complexity of the shots. Transformers had less FX shots but each one had an incredible amount of work on it.

 

[Indy]

cool

 

[xVendetta17x]

You're absolutely right. If I remember correctly, it was more like a couple of staged performances, maybe even w/ narrator.

Another thing I seem to recall vaguely is the fact that they got pretty nervous when the first couple of takes had to be interrupted some ten minutes into the shoot.

Be it as it may, nowadays they throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at mere seconds to make them worthwhile and cut them like that, in the old days they had looong master shots to let you explore the frame on the big screen (where medium shots would be considered closeups because of the screen - nowadays everything has to be sergio-leone-eye-level close so it can be watched on cell phones...

Martin

Back then they could pull it off because a lot of the movies were based off plays and a lot of the Actors originated from the stage
They didn't see the need for cut after cut, that's why the shoot didn't last as long

 

[Mickiana]

Martinland, the one shot movie you refer to is called Russian Ark and it is very Art House. It is interesting to watch mostly, but I did fall asleep several times in it.

 

[martinland]

Martinland, the one shot movie you refer to is called Russian Ark and it is very Art House. It is interesting to watch mostly, but I did fall asleep several times in it.

Ah, right - that's the one, thanks!
In this case I always thought the behind-the-scenes events were far more interesting than the final movie...

 

[xVendetta17x]

I just looked it up on Wikipedia
And it looks really interesting
I'm not a fan of arthouse but the premise looks really promising

 

[Gear]

Wow. Nice find. I'm glade to hear it.

However, to sufice for the lack of CGI in Indy 4 I will now post several computer generated depictions of Indiana Jones....