AnimA TV

Since my interest in VFX starting with ET, Alien I or Starwars, I loved to watch how these thinks were done. Often stunned by the amazing effort and money people spent on realizing effects people love to see on the big screen.

Nowadays, many effects can easily be achieved with an ordinary PC or – of course – MAC. But people can identify who worked overnight or who just convinced the unexpirienced or poor producer that this is a good visual effect. These effects take you out of the story right away.

Watching Zarthura, I feld like watching a movie when Steven Spielberg was still my idol- and still is. All the images had a heart and I thought the CG artists did a great job.

I love to watch the “Making of” to catch some new things and even learn from them. Taking a look to the “Zarthura Making of “ I was surprise, how much was done with miniature: A perfect harmony of traditional and CG effects. The actors had not the problems to be scared since there were real monsters, real fire, real laser blasts destroying the walls. The environment became an actor and it was treated as such.

The whole set was built on a gimbel arm – a huge platform moving 45 degrees in all directions. The actors had to fall or react to the movement – extremely good for the young actors. Still green- and bluescreen has been used and wonderful digital environments have been design.

CG vs. practical effects is often discussed like photo or digital photography, HD or film.

Talking to many people from the postproduction business, listening to lots of lessons on conference like the IBC or fmx and watching thousands of “Making of”, I am still convinced that CG is perfect to make everything happen. But using all possibilities to realize an effect on set should always be considered – also for fun reasons. CG gives excellent control over anything happening, but reality might show the director things he was not considering but pushes the effect beyond expectations.

2006 I listened to a cameraman on the IBC. He worked on the project “Phantom of the Opera”. He sounded kind of frustrated that most people do not know which lenses are perfect to achieve a certain effect. Without digital manipulation the form of the streaks when a candle light hits the camera can be realized with the right choice of lenses. This effects can be done and controlled on set and might even safe time and money.

Directors and producer tend to say: “Lets fix it in the post”. If the images has been poorly arranged, even a highly skilled postproduction facility might have a hard time to fix the problem. And where is the talent on set when the post has to fix everything?

However, at the end is a budget decision. Many TV series like “Battle Star Galactica”, or “Atlantis” work great, since they work with environments the audience is not used to and the whole look has been adapted to the CG look and feel. “Surface” or “4200” could not be done without CG but take you out of the story since CG and the real world do not work together. Of course the stories where also not as good.

I love the effect of this famous Hitchcock movie, just seeing the knife in the shadow and hearing the scream – that’s emotions without special effects.