Animation and CGI in Cinema

The development of the digital graphic system Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) becomes one of the most important elements in movie making. Although it may have its pros and cons, it did contribute a lot in many kinds of the digital media. Computer Generated Imagery use wildly on much different type of digital media, such as films, animation, video games, printed media. With this advance computer graphic, the special effects and 3D effect on those media can make the impossible thing become possible in the digital world. CGI can make our creative imagination come true so that to increase entertainment and visual enjoyment in the movie. Such as the superhorse movie, Superman, Spiderman, Batman, with the CGI, they become powerful, they can move cars, they can jump high, they can fly and they can have their super power. We can create any character we can imagine, such as monster, zombie, and giant est. Also, CGI can visualize anything that are abstract, difficult to present and hard to control in production a movie like animal and the nature power and effect, lighting, waving. In the movie Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, the main character can control lightning. Also, in X-Men series , all X-men have their special power such as they can control thundering, fire, ice, wind est. Also, in Harry Potter series, the Charters can use their magic is because of special effect of CGI.

As the development of the film industry, the variety of the film genre increased, CGI greatly apply in many film genre, such as fantasy, Sci-Fi, adventure, animation. In animation, the whole film is mad by CGI, even the background, or the characters. Each year we will have many kind of the animation coming to the cinema and the theme of animation are different, such as the most success animation, Toy Story series, Up, Wall-E. Those movies also got a lot of attention in the Academy Awards -Oscar. As the CGI and digital technology develop, now, 3D movie become more and more poplar, Avatar is the representative and it gained a lot of compliment.

  

Also, with the CGI, moive can become more realistic. CGI can increase the reality of the background, character, such war fighting screen, imagine world Such as the background scenes of Lord of the Rings and Alice in the wonderland. Moreover, the visual effect of the CGI can increase the reality and feeling of the Character, through the facial expression, digital make-up. In the series movie of Transformers, all robots are made by CGI (2011) and they are like the real, they just like transformed from car. In the recent movie Rise of the Planet of Apes 2011, it shows how the humanity Apes can be created from people actors by the CGI.  CGI can surely enrich the movie, make the movie become more attractive.

For the cons of CGI, I think it is that filmmaker may over rely on this technology. They might rely to CGI to do all the special effect, character design, make up, decoration or even the role in the movie, they will all use computer to do it. In fact, it will affect the Character’s acting and performance, they will act without partner, he or she needs to act with no one, and that will be difficult to the character. Since using CGI become the trend on filmmaking, every movie tend to it, and even deal with small object like the basketball in sport movie, the balls, animals, or even background. Some poor production house, didn’t have the familiar skill to do the CGI, eventually, the CGI used in the movie are not real and unnatural. All these will affect the quality the movie.

CGI is a very awesome technology in filmmaking, it can even create a character from zero. However, I don’t think it can’t  make actors obsolete. The real human can also make by CGI, but the real human emotion that induced from the heart can create by the computer. CGI just imitate the outlook of the human or other thing, but it can’t imitate the real emotion of the character. Even the emotion can be imitated, the audience may not feel touch by the character, because it is not real and not from the heat of the actor. However, some movie’s animation character are also rely on the real human actor to play, that means, the place of the actor is not replaceable. 

For the animated characters, although them devoted a lot in the movie, but I still don’t think it can be nominated for acting awards competing with humans. Animated character relies on a lot of after effect and digital make up, decoration to build the image of the character. All the performance of them acting in the movie dependent on the new technology of the computer, so all things can be correct, amends. For the real human actor, it is all rely on their real performance and acting to lead the plot enriching the movie and attract the audience, let they more into the story. The emotion of the characters are real, it is from the heart., not like CGI. The performances of the real actor are more unique and realist. The actor work very hard to study and practice the skill of acting, talking, they may paid a lot of effort. 

If we need to set up acting awards for the digital characters, I think we can separate the type of the acting awards, such as the digital characters are acted by the real actor and digital characters created by the CGI not acted by actors. Because I think human actors compare to digital animation character actors is not fair which human actors is acted by human with their hard work on acting skill, but digital animation actor is just created by computer programmed, it didn’t have the reality.

Motion capture is technique that recording the actors’ movement and later translate them to a digital model. This give advantages to movie making, especially on CGI and 3D technique. Motions capture help to record the actions of human actors, make creating the animate digital character become more convenient and faster. Also, this method  capture the detail movement of the human actors, such as fingers , facial expression, so the performance of the digital animation characters will be come more realistic and nature. Compare to the traditional way of animation characters, the performance are also better. Also, the cost of making the keyframe in animation also reduced and the effectiveness is increased.

The disadvantage of Motion capture is that the cost of the software and hardware, equipment and the installation fee of that technology may be high. Also, it needs professional people to operate this technology, this will also increase the production cost. Also, there is not many equipments allow director to have real time viewing of the shoot, so problem will occur and many reshoot will be need. And there will be artifacts since the proportions of the actors or object and the computer model are not always the same and they may not fit to each other.

I think it is not the way that Animation should strive for photorealism. It is because they are totally two different things. For the film plot and the screen beauty, filmmaker will use the CGI to make the animation and make it look like the real object. But it is only for the aim to make a rational movie. However, photorealism is not the final aim for animation. It tends to create more creative and interest, meaningful story and use CGI to do the beautiful animation. Just like the DreamWorks Sky, Pixar, and Disney doing, every year they create new and creative animation for the world, and the movie always achieve the big success. Animation is seeking to do reality thing, the object, background and even the characters, they resemble the real things in the actual world. But it is for the aesthetic purpose, not because to seek for photorealism. Each animation have its meaning, value, they help remind us the simplest, naive and different kind of positive thinking. Personally, I love animation very much. I think it is a very unique movie type.     

Mission to Earth

Mission to Earth is a film produced by the new digital cinema media which called Soft Cinema. The director of the Mission to Earth use this new creative media to produce a unique film. And the film is about a human immigrant’s experiences of a modern world. Compare with the traditional film, the way of telling story and constructing a film are not the same, and it have some new and different elements in it.

This kind of digital cinema-Soft Cinema is a kind of software that relies on the huge database of footage to perform the screen and people can edit the film with the computer use this software and edits the footage of the film. Just like the screen play in this film, each screen’s performance are not the same because of this new software allow the movie element have many combination. Unlike the traditional way, there is not only one-way to tell story in this new media. And in the movie, the voice-over repeated the same word, but the software will make screen play very differently each time, like using different visual element, photos, window separation est.  Also, what is new in this movie is that in some single movie screen, they separate into different windows and each window will show different thing such as different point of view of the same object or screen. The frame of the screen separate into more than two windows and showing different screen, so audience need to be more focus and find out what the screen is talking about. I think that was the most new element is the layout of a screen in the film display in that moment. I think that also affect film’s development.  With the help of the soft cinema, the computer can edit the film, and it will take care about the element of the editing the film like the playing ways, theories, music…etc. it can save director or editors’ time and make filming be come more convenience. 

 

This film remind me that the movie 127Hours. Because of the screen play and the window layout of 127Hours films are similar with that movie. 127 Hours is a true story about how the main character Aron Ralston's save himself in a serious accident that is a big rock crashes on his arm and he was trapped in an isolated canyon. This film also use the voice over to tell the story, but not the whole story and whole movie is voice over. Also, some of screenplay of 127Hours separates the screen into different windows, in one screen we may see 4 windows and each one screening the same object on different view or direction. The emotional music and the documentary shooting style of 127Hours also remind me that was similar to the Mission in Earth.

Since soft cinema is computer software and it is a digital editor of the film, people can just press the button and the software will edit the movie corroding to their will. With this convenient technique, more people can become the movie director and make their own movie. 

Modern Time

In “Modern Times”, Chaplin acts as a factory worker, and he is responsible for the assembly production line. With the help of machine, Chaplin’s work is only need to tighten the screws with the tool that is a one-steps assist in his work. So, Chaplin needs to do the same thing repeatedly all the time. Since the company need to increase production rate and efficiency to earn more profit, the machine work faster and faster, so Chaplin also need to work as fast as he can. He works like a machine and controlled by the machine. He works as forced by the machine. Finally, He got mad and suffers the mental illness. Even after his work, he gets used to the working process and repeats the action of screwing. He screws every thing that is the circle shape, even people’s cloths’ button. As the result he was chasing by the police. The invention of the New technology may increase the production rate in the manufacture industry, help the company to earn more money. However, at the end it may also harm people, just like Chaplin in the movie, new technology badly affect him physically and mentally.

On the other hand, Chaplin’s boss asks him to test the new automatic feeding machine. In the beginning, the machine performs well, Chaplin just sit and fixed in the chair and the food will put into his mouth automatically. However, when time goes on, the feeding machine become crazy and finally out of control even the controller tries his best to repair the machine. Finally, Chaplin got hurt. All these show that, people are really lazy, they always want the new technology to do all the things for them. Maybe the new technology can achieve the goal of human’s desire, life can become more convenient and people always rely too much on them and think them reliable, in fact, the new technology is not always reliable, and finally will out of human’s control, we can’t depend too much on them.

The same as the people in the movie, I feel very convenient with using new technology, they have a lot of advantages, such as by using computer and Internet, we can know the world’s news just by clicking the website. Also, we can search the information we want from the Internet that means we can sit in our home and know everything in the world. The way I am similar with Chaplin is that I sometimes don’t feel comfortable if I can’t use the computers, that means I need to use computer and the Internet everyday. Just like the majority of Hong Kong residents, I am addicted to the Internet. Every day, when I come back to home, the first thing I do is turn on my computer and it is a repeating action, I do the same thing every day even I don’t have anything to do with the computer. In fact it is not good, it is not only wasting electricity, but also my time to doing the meaningless things. With the computer and the Internet, my life becomes systematic and entertaining but I become very lazy at the same time, just like the people in the movie. During the leisure time, I will just sit in front of the computer and using the internet for the whole day.

On the other hand, the first difference is that, nowadays the new technology is more stable and reliable. Since the technology had been already developed for a period of time, the developments are more mature and reliable, so we can trust the new invention or digital technology. And nowadays, people are always looking forward for the new invention of the technology, they will do a lot of tests without using human as the tester and they will find substitutes. When a new technology is invented, people will use it with faith instead of being afraid to use it. We control the new technology, but not they control us. Even the technology has any problem, human can stop it and take care of it, and finally make some improvements. In these days, new technologies really bring a lot of advantages to us, our life become more convenient, people rely so much on it. Therefore, I think we should strike a balance on using the new technology.

Self-Introdution

Hello everyone, Welcome to Water's World! I am Water, I am studying Visual Studies Year 2 at Lingnan University. I had studied Design before and I am very interested in digital technology.  Our creative idea can come true through different digital media. In the course, I hope I can learn more about digital media. This blog will be the way I learn and express my understanding about digital media.

I regularly play basketball and football in leisure time and enjoy the competitive element of both sports, these help me to maintain a healthy body. I am interested in all things that related to art such as design, drawing, photography,movie and current social current issues. Also, I enjoy keeping myself up-to-date by searching internet, art and design website, reading Newspaper, arts and design related magazine such as i-D magazine, art monthly magazine. 

Nice to meet you all. Hope you can enjoy my blog.

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