Special Effects Lessons From JJ Abrams' Star Trek 461
brumgrunt writes "JJ Abram's hugely successful — on many levels — reboot of Star Trek has, for Den Of Geek, brought to the fore a lesson about special effects that many movie makers have been missing. Surely it's time now that special effects were actually used properly?" (The new film is not without some goofs, though only a few of the ones listed by Movie Mistakes' nitpickers are sciency.)
Two words (Score:1, Informative)
Lens flair.
Re:Connection? (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, the author of TFA is the submitter of this "story" (email address matches byline).
Re:Should have told those who made the trailers th (Score:4, Informative)
I have to agree with the author here, it was quite tasteful. I was turned off by several movies this last year due to liberal application of CG where it wasn't needed, but I never once had that feeling with this movie. I also have to comment on the fact this didn't suffer from the 'prequel' syndrome that Lucas's movies did. The art departments did an excellent job of recreating "period" technology that fit right into the setting.
Re:Wasn't that long ago... (Score:2, Informative)
Hurt it's appeal??? For Chirsts sake it's the second most moneymaking movie of all time and broke more than a dozen box office recrords!!!
Re:Wasn't that long ago... (Score:5, Informative)
Iron Man did make money, but it's nowhere near the second highest grossing film of all time.
Domestically, that's Dark Knight [boxofficemojo.com], with Iron Man in 21st place. Worldwide, Iron Man is in 48th overall [boxofficemojo.com] -- -- it is the second highest grossing for 2008 [boxofficemojo.com].
It did well, but not quite as well as you suggest. You are, however, correct in saying it certainly doesn't seem that the character in Iron Man hurt it's appeal to movie-goers.
Cheers
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:5, Informative)
So long as you don't have any actual experience with engineering spaces. Real ones do tend to be cramped, but they aren't random - the ones in the movie look exactly like what they are, factories pressed into service as 'engineering spaces'.
Again, only so long as you don't have any actual experience. Warship bridges in real life are deadly serious places without a dozen extras milling about without a purpose just to fill space.
One of my pet peeves is the tendency of SF to ignore how real-world combat vessels operate - ship control and combat control functions are separated. On a surface warship of any size, they are physically separated. Even on a submarine (lacking room for physical separation) they are functionally grouped. On US submarines, ship systems and control are traditionally on the port side and sensors and combat control on the starboard. Separating them is the periscope stand, the CO's battle station, where he can easily oversee both functions. (With the conning officer on the port supervising the ship, and the XO on the starboard managing combat control, leaving the CO to focus on the big picture.)
Physics problems (Score:5, Informative)
Vulcans are very bad at calculating the velocities caused by supernovae.
Oh so very true. The black hole Spock was going to make wouldn't have done very much for the wave of radiation and near light speed particles escaping that would have baked the Romulans home world like a potato in a microwave. If the microwave was the size of a 12 story building.
How 'bout these?
The planet Vulcan would not compress into a black hole the same size as Vulcan. It'd probably be about the size of a marble. See Schwarzschild radius. [wikipedia.org]
You can't drill a hole to the core of a planet. They're molten inside. That would be like trying to drill a hole into the center of a gallon of milk. Thin crispy shell, big fluid inside.
If you have something that sparks off a black hole, you could probably just drop it on the surface and it would do it's magic. The drill is unnecessary anyways.
Things do not go back in time when they fall into a black hole. They pass the event horizon and remain locked there until they dissolve as Hawking radiation. Besides, if things did go back in time 25 years, the ruined remains of Vulcan would have also showed up 25 years ago giving them plenty of time to prepare.
Re:Science errors (spoilers) (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Science errors (spoilers) (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think you understand.
It was red matter.
Red. Matter.
Re:Enough Shakey Cam! (Score:3, Informative)
Supposedly, much of the lens flare was real, achieved by pointing a light at the camera from the appropriate angle.
Still artificial, but not CGI.
Re:Umm... no... That is NOT summarizing the articl (Score:4, Informative)
A movie where they send mentally unstable astronauts to reignite the Sun by dropping a bomb in it.
The technical explanation of what they were trying to do is online if you want to read about it, and is actually based on advice from some physicist consultants the production team worked with.
The director seems to have (correctly) assumed that most audience members wouldn't want to sit through a lengthy briefing.
If you can't buy the idea that a few members of a team of astronauts might start exhibiting unusual behaviour when they're isolated and placed under extreme stress for a long duration, it's probably not your film though.
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:3, Informative)
Yet, Coast Guard bridges are deadly serious places too. As is NASA Mission Control.
And even so, the Enterprise does function as a warship (as do Coast Guard vessels), and warships don't survive in combat by ignoring basic combat discipline.
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:3, Informative)
But those people aren't milling about - they are at workstations or other specific places.
My submarine had about 15-20 'workstations' (Defined as individual functions performed in a specific place), including navigation and command/control, manned during combat. We didn't have extra's milling about without an obvious job either.
Re:Wasn't that long ago... (Score:4, Informative)
OK, here's [boxofficemojo.com] the inflation adjusted list too. :-P
Cheers
Re:Another lesson... (Score:3, Informative)
No, anti-piracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coded_Anti-Piracy [wikipedia.org]
Note: I've now ruined theatrical releases for you. You will now notice these dots in nearly every movie, and it will drive you *nuts*. They like to show up as orange dots on blue, but that changes from time to time.
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:3, Informative)
"The Matrix had a novel plot"
Yes it did have a "novel" plot. The novel's name was Ubik.