Keepin’ it Real: The Benefits of Practical Effects over CGI in Telling a Story
A T-Rex tramples through its enclosure, devours a man with a satisfying crunch, and pancakes a mud-splattered Jeep Wrangler. Now the beast is headed right toward the hero, with its impending jaws opening wide, it seems there is no hope. All is lost until the audience gets in close to the creature, only to reveal its teeth are made of foam and its skin is glued on rubber. The human eye can tell the difference between what is real and what is fake, so those in the special effects industry have to walk the line between fantasy and reality carefully. The industry is unique in that the same effects can be created in multiple ways, but they break down into two main categories: practical and computer-generated. Some filmmakers use practical, or effects shot in-camera, to give the story realism. On the other hand, some use computer-generated images or effects shot in post-production to make the story. Ultimately, practical effects are more successful in immersion than computer-generated effects because they can grab the audience with a sense of reality. To understand why practical effects are more personally captivating to the audience than CGI, one must learn the differences between the two. Practical effects are physical, tangible things that are not created solely in post-production. Computer Generated Imagery, more commonly known as CGI, is the application of computer graphics to create images. A real-world example of CGI and practical attempting the same effects would be in The Thing film series. In 1982, John Carpenter directed the practical effects-heavy horror called The Thing and in 2011, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. helmed a prequel to the film relying on CGI. Carpenter’s film is commonly seen as superior, both critically and visually. Even today, the effects “remain as shocking now as they were then, often rendering an entire theater speechless with astonishment” (Gentry 3). Carpenter hired Rob Bottin to do makeup for the film, who would later create iconic effects for Robocop and Total Recall. In Total Recall, Bottin won an Academy Award for his work on the horrid tumor named Kuato, as well as the iconic “two weeks” scene of Schwarzenegger removing his mechanical mask. Bottin used a variety of unique ways to make his monsters and suspend the viewers’ disbelief. In The Thing, he used “melted chemicals and bubble gum in place to create the effect of alien innards” as well as “mayo, strawberry jam, foam latex and KY jelly” (James 1). Heijningen tried to use practical effects, but the studio was against the idea, so the 2011 film relied on fully computer-generated images, much to the audiences’ disliking. While the latter film’s effects were quite advanced, the original succeeded because of how disgusting and gritty the crew made the alien feel. Of course, the main goal of special effects is to help tell the story, and to do so, they must be able to work with another essential piece of telling the tale: the actors. Watching a movie with weak acting can take anyone watching right out of the film just as quickly as poor visual effects can, and to be taken out of the story’s momentum can make or break the viewer’s experience. The overuse of CGI can even affect an actor’s performance; Ian McKellen, who plays Gandalf in The Hobbit films, was miserable shooting his scenes without anyone to act with, even saying it was “distressing and off-putting.” He was surrounded by a green screen and felt miserable by himself, "It's not what I do for a living. I act with other people, I don't act on my own.” Every filmmaker wants their actors to give their best performance, isolating an actor and forcing them to refer to a tennis ball on a string as Gimli seems quite counterproductive (Pulver). Sometimes actors have to be replaced by their stunt doubles, who also help tell the narrative practically. When a stunt double performs a feat, the audience will see it is a real person and become more concerned with their safety. A CG dummy will not give that same feeling to the audience because it is essentially just a cartoon character like Tom or Jerry. Jackie Chan, actor and stuntman, has captivated audiences for years because they know he is actually doing the stunts. One of his more daring exploits would be when he “slides down a 21-story skyscraper without the help of a safety harness. Chan even manages to get up on his feet and run a few steps down the side of the building” (Jang 1). Of course, there are some things stunt doubles can not feasibly accomplish, but they are still a critical part of drawing in the audience’s attention. A filmmaker that draws heavily on practical effects would be Christopher Nolan. This quote sums up his relationship with practical effects; "It's about filming as much as possible. So the starting point is, What can we shoot, what can we build, and how real can we make it?" (Grierson 58). In his film, Dunkirk, Nolan switched between shots of actors in the cockpit of a spitfire to radio-controlled planes to give the illusion of a real dogfight. In Nolan’s film Inception, he made the dream world the actors were in explode around them practically as well. To achieve this, he shot the scene with high FPS cameras, had the set “rigged with compressed air canisters that fired lightweight debris” and had the “five-second take slowed to a minute on playback” (Robertson 8). Just slowing the footage down gave the effect of floating objects in the air. The point is that Nolan uses his effects to tell his story. He does not experiment with them for the spectacle; he does it practically because he tries to make his film feel real. George Lucas, on the other hand, uses CGI for different reasons than Christopher Nolan; focusing mainly on the evolution and spectacle of new visual technology. Lucas is the creator of the highly successful Star Wars franchise and is responsible for advancing many visual effects techniques. He is notorious for revisiting his old films and reediting them with better CGI, much to his fans’ chagrin. An example of Lucas trying to fix something perfectly fine would be the insertion of CGI characters in A New Hope. In one scene in a busy street, some of the characters are talking to each other. Prior to the rerelease of the film, the scene was as simple as that. After Lucas tinkered with the film, the conversation in the street was blocked by a space dinosaur walking in front of the camera for five seconds. That insertion added nothing to the story; if anything, it pulled the audience out of the adventure and hurt the film. George Lucas is not similar to Christopher Nolan because he puts the spectacle before the story. Even if the CGI looks incredible, it should not be the goal; the goal should be to bring the audience into the characters’ world, not out. There is the opinion that CGI is better than practical effects, and to understand both sides of the argument, one must see it from multiple perspectives. To start, CGI is continually improving as technology becomes more advanced. Entire characters can be created and look as though they are in the space with an actor. Effects work in post-production could also save money; if the story is set in France but the budget will not allow the crew to shoot there, a computer can put the Eiffel Tower in the background. Unfortunately, the downside to this argument would be that technology is continually changing and soon the effects will become dated. Despite Raiders of the Lost Ark being almost forty years old, the effects in it hold up better than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull because much of it was done practically. If the later film had shot on location as the original had, the world would feel more real and less like an indoor set. It is understandable if the production had not been able to shoot in the jungles of South America, but perhaps it could have at least shot outdoors. Recently there have been productions that have successfully blended practical and CG effects together. Mad Max: Fury Road had done what they could in camera and then altered what they could not achieve later on: “some skies were altered and stunt performers' cables were erased in postproduction.” The film had used CG to add landscapes and dust storms but did not shy away from stuntmen: “on the heaviest stunt days, Norris would incorporate 150 stunt actors.” The vehicles were not spared either, “more than 150 vehicles were built for the shoot--and then destroyed”, despite having the cheaper opportunity to destroy them on a computer. The CGI in this film was not used as a crutch, rather as a tool for enhancing the practical effects (Grierson 87). Computer Generated Images are not a bad thing; they can just be relied on too heavily and substituted for the real thing too often. When a film crew has the opportunity to film what they can for real, they should take it because people notice when what they are seeing is a lie. Practical effects are not the best option for every scene, but they bring the story into reality for the audience where a computer cannot. Films like Gravity are terrific for spectacle, but everyone remembers the claustrophobic, zero-gravity edge given by the actors in Apollo 13. Filmmakers have to remember that effects are just a tool for telling a story, and the more real the effects feel to the audience, the more immersed they will be.
Bibliography
Gentry, Ric. "Interview: John Carpenter." Gale In Context: High School, vol. 34, no. 1, PostScript, Fall 2014, p. 3+. Accessed 24 Oct. 2020.
The quote sums up how important the use of practical effects is to the cinema. The human mind has a sixth sense about what is real and what is fake, so seeing something tangible makes the audience believe whatever the filmmakers want.
The article showed different practical effects and told the reader how they had been carefully planned out and set up to be done safely. The report describes how much work and rehearsal goes behind big scenes that require some cinema magic. Not only would the crew work with one person to set the stunts up, but over one-hundred.
The article gave an example from the Christopher Nolan movie Dunkirk, which consisted of many practical visual effects. He put actors in the cockpit of large rigs to simulate them flying and model planes. Nolan also used remote control planes, which had to be controlled from a nearby helicopter.
This article is terrific because it goes into the specifics of crafting one of the most iconic uses of practical effects and makeup of all time. Rob Bottin worked for so long on the creature from the movie The Thing, and to this day, there are hardly any other examples that can surpass his work.
This article was helpful because in finding stunts of the great Jackie Chan, many of his stunts did not go right, resulting in many injuries. Chan is a modern Chaplain with worldwide acclaim and success.
Pulver, Andrew. “The Hobbit’s Gandalf Almost Proved Greenscreen Too Far for Ian McKellen.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 20 Nov. 2013. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020 This quote is an excellent example of how difficult it is for actors to work with a green screen. McKellen struggled to work without anyone to act with, and it shows in his performance.
This article goes over how some of the awe-inspiring shots in the movie Inception were pulled off. It goes into both the practical and computer-generated effects that Christopher Nolan used to create the illusion of exploding produce stands, moving architecture, and a city that folds over on itself.