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.)
Wasn't that long ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
Connection? (Score:5, Insightful)
Um... What exactly is TFA about, other than being a gushing fanboi ode?
'Story' is pure fluff (Score:4, Insightful)
The article gushes about how the efffects were not overdone, and only put in to enhance the story. The problem is, the story itself is the screenwriting equivalent of the overzealous effects producers the article complains about.
Don't get me wrong, the movie was awesome. It was a masterpiece, but it wasn't in any way morally superior to the Star Wars prequels - they just did the special effects right.
It just didn't live up to the older Star Treks, where the focus was on the sheer joy of discovery and the strength of the human spirit. There was a bit of the latter, but it was mostly just standard action-movie fare.
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:5, Insightful)
none of the new Star Wars were actually that boring due to all the big-budget CGI/effects.
Yes, it was the script and the acting that made them ponderously boring.
Re:I'm sick (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wasn't that long ago... (Score:2, Insightful)
I found Tony Stark to be one of (if not the most) developed and interesting characters in any comic movie yet.
I think the main reason Iron Man was so successful was the interesting characters. I mean, if you think about it, the actual suit really wasn't in the movie that much.
Re:Should have told those who made the trailers th (Score:5, Insightful)
It was great, and definitely worth seeing. There's a lot of action that you seem to not be interested in, but the plot & acting are excellent.
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:5, Insightful)
I might be risking my geek-card here, but none of the new Star Wars were actually that boring due to all the big-budget CGI/effects.
Boring? No. But I haven't watched any of them a second time, whereas I still watch the original trilogy every once in a while.
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:5, Insightful)
don't rely on special effects for content
Why not? The special effects were the only thing that kept me going. The storyline pissed me off both as a Trekker (destruction of Vulcan, Kirk as a whiny bitch, Spock and Uhura as an item) and as a normal movie goer (3rd year cadet gets command of the flagship at the end of the movie? yeah, right....).
The effects saved the movie for me. From the little touches (ships don't always share the same z-axis, the Arcologies [wikipedia.org] in Iowa) to the re-imagined ships, engineering with actual engineering components (save the stupid water pipe scene) and a bridge that looked every bit as crowded and chaotic as you'd expect for controlling a starship with a crew of a thousand.
If it wasn't for the well done effects I would have walked out in disgust. The storyline wasn't as bad as some of the treknobabble particle-of-the-week plots that we've seen in the past but it was no Wrath of Khan or Pale Moonlight [wikipedia.org] either. If I had to rank it with the other movies I'd put it behind Khan, Voyage Home, Undiscovered County, Generations and First Contact.
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Some movies are pretty good just because of their CGI alone
I see your Star Wars ante and raise you Transformers, Lost in space, Speed racer. Lots of CGI, still a waste of time and money.
Re:What I learned (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm sick (Score:3, Insightful)
You are right.
Although the movie is incredibly bad, people go see it.
It's because it has the names Kirk and Spock in the titles. The exact same movie with Picard and Data would be labeled as boring and as bad as Nemesis.
Re:I'm sick (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree it's a -bit- soon to be calling the reboot of the franchise a 'success', they have proven that it's possible. All they have to do is keep doing what they did.
Of course, I make that sound much simpler than it actually is, even assuming they really -know- why it's so successful. I've seen many franchises that get the first one spot-on, but then don't understand why. (Matrix, I'm looking at you!)
Re:Connection? (Score:5, Insightful)
His point appears to be that good films use special effects to enhance good story etc not just provide eye-candy without relation to the rest of the film.
* *SPOILERS * * Am I the only person who can't see 'the purpose' of the scene with Kirk getting chased by progressively larger beasts on the ice world other than to show off (and try and gloss over the fact the entire story relies on him bumping into future Spock). You could at least argue that the sequence with Scotty teleporting into the Enterprises water cooling system was character building (I don't see how) or that the sky-diving onto the drilling platform emphasised Kirk's willingness to take risks (when it wasn't his idea) but the beast scene was there entirely as special effects porn.
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:3, Insightful)
I might be risking my geek-card here, but none of the new Star Wars were actually that boring due to all the big-budget CGI/effects.
True enough. OTOH, it doesn't say anything good about the movie when it's more enjoyable by fast-forwarding through 2/3rds of it.
Crap, plastic crap. (Score:2, Insightful)
I am tired of films made for all the audience. The plot so simple as to be ridiculous. The players pathetic, (not his fault, just an horrible history that should ever been ever filmed to start with). The effects and sound over-emphasized. And the result, well, if you have 8 years it's a great movie.
But that's not SF, that's CRAP.
The gist of the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that we're still experiencing special effects giddiness as many of the industry people that started in the 70s and 80s when things were hard and you had to build intricate models and crazy sets and sometimes colour things in with crayons are now the old coots in charge and leading some of these works of wonder out there, and literally can't control the power they have. It's not even that you couldn't do some things without CG but it was just too expensive and no one in their right mind would do it.
Just look at the Gungan/droid battle at the end of SW Episode 1; it adds virtually nothing to the story but does show a total lack of imagination by those in charge. They took great pains to construct an encounter that, for all its lasers, aliens, droids and tanks, is essentially a medieval skirmish where large formations clash at close quarters. 20 years ago you'd have to dress up a few hundred guys, build faux tanks and giant beasts, and many of those things in miniature as well, and then use a lot of clever editing to pull all of it together. It would have likely never happened because of the sheer physical effort involved, or they'd do a different style of battle instead because it'd be easier to show a few people on the screen at one time. George is not the only one succumbing to this, though he certainly is our favourite example.
The current state of CG in movies is almost what would happen if new Lamborghinis were suddenly being sold for $20k - many of the people who wanted one as a kid would probably get one, and then your roads would be packed with impractical but cool-looking two-seaters, and it would take some time before people came to their senses.
Enough Shakey Cam! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This movie is empty (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Paying to see a movie that is still being exclusively shown in theaters is not an optional "tip" that you give to show that you liked the movie. You either pay for the movie and take the risk that you don't like it, or you wait until you can rent it or watch it for free on T.V.
Your subjective response to a movie is not a factor in the price. If you don't like the movie, then the price you paid subsidies the price paid by others who did like the movie. If you did like the movie, then the price paid by others subsidies the price you paid. On average, it tends to balance itself out.
Re:Science errors (spoilers) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:5, Insightful)
don't rely on special effects for content
Or to put it another way: if your viewers realize that they are watching special effects, you're doing it wrong.
One of the biggest successful CGI movies ever was Forrest Gump - because nobody was thinking "cool special effects", everyone was concentrating on the plot of the movie. And the plot, after all, is the main point.
Michael Baysplosions!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I knew JJ Abrams was no Michael Bay [youtube.com] when the orbital drill, after being destroyed, fell into San Francisco Bay *right next* to the Golden Gate bridge, but somehow missed subjecting us to a gratuitous and cliched effects sequence of the destruction of San Francisco's most famous landmark, preferring instead to get on with the story.
some of those goofs are goofy (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the "goofs" doesn't make sense to me:
The first shots of the Enterprise in space show it docked at the massive space station with the bridge facing the center of the station. When they show Spock entering the bridge for the first time (when the ship is still docked) you can see the view out of the front viewscreen/window. You should be able to see the huge space station, but all you see is empty space.
Submitted by BocaDavie
Isn't it possible that people in that century have figured out that you can have a camera facing backwards and put it on a video screen on a wall facing the other direction?
Re:Underwhelmed (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember that this was an "alternate timeline" (I rolled my eyes too) so while THIS Kirk might have been stupid and arrogant about it, the original timeline was probably like what you imagined, and I happen to agree with you on it.
Re:Connection? (Score:5, Insightful)
I gotta agree 110% on this one. This scene didn't advance the plot, it didn't develop the characters. It introduced a new conflict (Kirk trying to not get eaten) which was supposed to be scary but it completely distracts from the existing conflicts between Kirk and Spock, and between the Enterprise and the other ship. This was more annoying than anything... it's like, 'aw, crap, I gotta sit through a bunch of special effects before I can get back to the story'. If you cut it out, you'd have a better movie.
The one place where the special effects made me think 'aw, yeah!' was the scene where the Enterprise warps into the upper atmosphere of Titan and then slowly emerges out of the clouds. Not because it was visually appealing, but because it was *emotionally* satisfying... in the same way that it's emotionally satisfying when you see the Enterprise slowly rise up behing the Reliant in the Mutara Nebula, or when you see the Millennium Falcon pull that immelman turn and come barreling back towards Cloud City to rescue Luke.
Re:Science errors (spoilers) (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh... no. If that were true, the ship would fall too. So would all the TV satellites currently in orbit, which are stationary relative to the surface of the earth (this is why your TV satellite dish doesn't have to move to track the satellite), and have no propulsion systems to keep them up there.
If the drill were not moving relative to the Earth itself, then yes; it would fall at 1g towards the Earth (barring external gravitational sources, like the sun). But, if the drill were not moving relative to the Earth, the drill would be moving very quickly relative to the surface of the Earth, since the surface of the Earth is moving at around 1700km/h due to the Earth's spin. The drill would be cutting a big trench in the Earth instead of drilling a hole.
The better choice was made (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Connection? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the fact that it's on Slashdot explains the lack of editorial review.
Better F/X: See "Angels and Demons". (Score:3, Insightful)
You want to see good F/X? See "Angels and Demons". That wasn't filmed at the Vatican. The Vatican scenes, inside and out, were filmed in LA. It was done with partial sets, CG sets, green screen work, miniatures, matchmoves, and computer generated crowds. Can you tell?
Star Dreck was an easy F/X job. Anybody can do 3D spaceships. It's faking the commonplace that's tough.
Re:Effects have gotten worse (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Science errors (spoilers) (Score:5, Insightful)
science geek:* (n) person who is willing to suspend disbelief as to 'red matter', energy drills/ray guns, 'warp drive', 'transporters', artificial gravity, ubiquitous bipedal vertebrate aliens, and time travel, but who finds fault with a story that fails to account for reentry friction and orbital mechanics
*And proud of it!
everybody likes a good plot (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to disagree with you on that. My favorite movie is Rio Bravo [imdb.com], which I first saw when I was nine years old. By current standards, that movie is slooooowww. It goes for over two hours and it's only about five minutes after the titles that someone first speaks something. But it's a wonderful film.
I loved it the first time I saw it because I became immersed in the action, I never realized time was passing. I remember it was only after the film ended and my father remarked on how long it was that I realized that nearly two and a half hours had passed.
It's a simple plot, but it's so good that the director Howard Hawks did the same thing again, not once [imdb.com] but twice [imdb.com]. All three movies are great and all star John Wayne doing a similar plot. I still have to see a film that I liked on Fx alone.
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh come now... Transformers is a decent movie.
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:4, Insightful)
(destruction of Vulcan, Kirk as a whiny bitch, Spock and Uhura as an item) and as a normal movie goer (3rd year cadet gets command of the flagship at the end of the movie? yeah, right....)
Here's a few things to keep in mind when watching the movie:
* the destruction of Vulcan was a bold move, and demonstrated more clearly than anything else they could've done (including killing off some of the bridge crew) that this is a different universe and no one is safe. I think it was the right thing to do in this movie and made sure people knew they couldn't depend on the old canon to keep things straight.
* quite a few starships were destroyed by Nemo, so maybe as many as 10,000 Starfleet officers were lost. Suddenly, a third year cadet is a lot more senior than he would ordinarily be.
* different military organizations have different rules for advancement. Just because the US Navy of the late 20th/early 21st century wouldn't make that kind of jump in grade doesn't mean others haven't, or wouldn't. During the American Civil War, Custer was promoted from Lieutenant to Brigadier General nearly overnight (and it could be argued that Custer and Kirk have a lot in common). So promoting Kirk to Captain isn't without precedent even in real history.
* Uhuru and Spock as an item actually makes sense. They were supposed to kiss in one episode of TOS, but Shatner bitched about it so Kirk and Uhuru shared the first interracial kiss on network TV. But with emotions running bare after the destruction of Vulcan, I can see where things would go off in a different direction for them both.
Re:What I learned (Score:4, Insightful)
lens flare: (n) method of replicating a 20th century image recording error sometimes used to create an impression of authenticity in viewers not used to error-free techniques. See also camera shake.
Re:I liked it (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey glad there is someone with a sane head out there. I 100% agree with you. The movie was great in that it was... FUN. It was also timely and perfect in what it did. Like you said, it breathed new life into star trek, it captured allll the nostalgia and star trek jokes and threw them in the movie (live long and propser, vulcan neck bench, damnit i'm a doctor not a, i'm giving it all shes got, red shirt destruction (my wife and i were the only ones to laugh out loud in the theater when he got waxed in .2 seconds), and on and on. So you felt like watching a 'star trek'. Loved the little detail with muffling sound in space.
All in all it was just a well done movie, and cleverly set up a few 'torch passing' scenes for actors and will allow them to move on and create new star trek movies without having to worry about stepping on any toes with the previous established cannon.
Fun movie, let go, enjoy the movie for what it is, and be glad enough people like it that star trek won't keep nosediving to oblivion like it has been.
Re:Underwhelmed (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm, have you ever watched Star Trek before?
The whole series of coincidences and bad acting starting with meeting Spock on the planet's surface was just ridiculous.
Have you ever...
Also, if you have this "red matter" that can create a black hole, why bother to drill to the center of the planet? Hell, you could drop off a black hole around Pluto and still easily destroy the Earth depending on it's size, but at the very least just putting it right next to the Earth would certainly do the job
Re:Wasn't that long ago... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He could have been captain of a bucket (Score:5, Insightful)
Kirk successfully successfully got a distraught and emotionally incapacitated captain to step aside, and proceeded to save the earth from total destruction.
I could be mistaken, but I think the whole earth-saving thing is something they want to encourage in Star Fleet. That, you know, if you SAVE THE EARTH, the normal rules of promotion might become slightly more flexible.
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:3, Insightful)
Some movies are made to entertain people between the ages of 4 and 70 (i.e. spiderman). The wider the age range, the less room there is for typical plot elements, because younger audiences get bored quickly. Some movies are pretty good just because of their CGI alone. I might be risking my geek-card here, but none of the new Star Wars were actually that boring due to all the big-budget CGI/effects.
"A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing." -- George Lucas, before the fall
The most essential task of any story is drawing in the audience. The most essential task of any actor is to be interesting. When the audience is engaged, the story is successful.
Special effects are just an example of the distracting fluff poor writers throw at a story to try and make it interesting. It could just have easily been sex or violence.
The Marx Brothers had a very scientific approach to making their movies. They would have a framework for the sketches to hang off of, the loose storyline, and they would experiment with shaking things up as they moved their act around the vaudeville circuit. Sometimes it would be a new skit, sometimes just a punchline. Often times they wouldn't know why one was seen as funnier than another, they just knew which got the better response. By the time they were ready to film, their script was scientifically tested and proven to be a laugh-maker.
I laughed when I read about that because it went along with something I'd already decided for myself -- you know you have a good story and good actors if you can put them on an empty stage, do a reading and have the audience interested. If you have a script and actors that can survive this test, just imagine how good it'll be with costumes and sets and a real movie wrapped around it.
Star Wars A New Hope had us engaged from the start. The music, the title crawl, dropping us right into that story. The special effects blew us away, of course, seeing those huge ships. But when we saw the brutality of the firefight and Darth come out of the smoke, we were hooked. That movie came out the year I was born. When I first saw it I appreciated it for the pretty shapes and sounds. As I got older and had subsequent viewings I could appreciate it on more levels. The hints of galactic politics left room for geeky speculation without getting mired in poorly done senate scenes. Of course, we need only look at a number of good movies to see how senate chamber and court room scenes can be done in an utterly engaging fashion.
I won't comment on the script and plot of the new Star Trek here, I'll just comment on the special effects and cinematography. They Sucked. I'm sick of the hyperkinetic Bourne Identity shakey-cam. It's old. It sucks. I'm over it. I'm sure I would have rated the quality of the CGI work more highly if they'd have bolted the camera down to something so I could tell what the fuck I'm looking at.
Re:What I learned (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:4, Insightful)
Even as a Trekkie, I can accept those things (except maybe the "whiny Kirk" one). Knowing that it's explicitly a "reboot," I could have even accepted all the changes even without the need to rationalize them with time travel!
Now, what I couldn't accept (as a Trekkie) was the complete lack of science fiction depth. Where was the social commmentary? Where was the intellectualism? Where was the "What If?"
As a Trekkie, I was hoping (but not expecting, since seeing the previews) for something comparable to the likes of "The City on the Edge of Forever" (TOS) or "The Undiscovered Country" or "Who Watches the Watchers?" (TNG) or "Captive Pursuit" (DS9), or, yes, "In the Pale Moonlight" (DS9) -- that's a good one. Something that makes you think. Instead, what we got was a generic action movie, with no real sci-fi in it at all. In terms of its "Star-Trekness," it was a travesty!
On the other hand, it was a pretty great action movie -- I like it a lot, as long as I pretend it's not "Star Trek." It had plenty of both action and character-driven drama, and awesome special effects. I was also amused by some of the allusions to previous Trek instances, such as the wordplay between Kirk and the cadet he was fighting (recalling Sulu in Star Trek 3: "Don't call me Tiny"), although others were annoyingly cliched, such as Checkov saying "Wictor."
But in the end, I'd have gladly traded all of allusions, along with the special effects and action -- heck, even the whole "Star Trek" setting itself -- in return for a decent sci-fi plot!
The effect I could absolutely do without... (Score:3, Insightful)
is the incessant damn shaking of the camera by film makers these days whenever they want to evince a sense of action or urgency.
There was a time when holding a camera steady was considered the most basic of requirements for producing a watchable film, along with an editing style guided by the belief that anything worth putting up on the screen is worth leaving for on the screen for more than one second. That time ended abruptly when a TV show called "Miami Vice [wikipedia.org]" came along. Suddenly it was "cool" to depict action by having a one-legged cameraman chase your actors down the street with a handheld camera.
There are brief instances where jolting the image around on screen is effective, such as when the Enterprise is being struck by enemy fire, but for the most part all this shaky camera work and split-second editing is a needless assault on the senses. If, god forbid, these are combined with the necessity to sit rather close to the screen in a packed theatre, the effect can be physically nauseating.
I wish today's film directors would embrace the simple rules that amateurs learned with the advent of "home movies" many years ago. Hold the f***ing camera still, and make each shot long enough that viewers can actually discern what the hell is on the screen.
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:3, Insightful)
the destruction of Vulcan was a bold move, and demonstrated more clearly than anything else they could've done (including killing off some of the bridge crew) that this is a different universe and no one is safe.
You mean "no one except Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura are safe". If you believe otherwise, then you don't understand Hollywood, actors, agents, and sequels.
As long as the actor is a "good boy" and doesn't piss off management, the character is safe. How, exactly, is this any different from any other incarnation of Star Trek?
Re:He could have been captain of a bucket (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:3, Insightful)
Transformers is a well-made movie if you like Michael Bay's style. It's not a well-made movie in the "film as art" sense, but that's not the point. If someone goes to see one of his movies expecting to see Citizen Kane or 2001, they bought the wrong ticket.
It's not a well-made movie for people who want coherent plots, likable characters, quality entertainment.
Re:Actually, the "plot" was total crap (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, "Star Trek" and the Daniel Craig "Bond" movies had exactly the same problem: the people who made them completely failed to understand what their respective franchises were supposed to be and thus removed everything important leaving only the superficial bits (like the setting) and trying to fill the gaping void with gratuitous action.
James Bond, for example, was never supposed to be a gung-ho action hero; his cleverness, wit, and charm are equally important (if not more so) than his fighting ability. Older Bond films, such as the Sean Connery and Roger Moore ones, had considerably less action and a slower pace than, say, "Casino Royale" -- and that's exactly how they're supposed to be!
Similarly, Star Trek was never supposed to be about action either. It's supposed to be about exploring the unknown -- and not just literally, but socially (e.g. "The Undiscovered Country" as allegory for the fall of the Soviet Union, Kirk and Uhura's interracial kiss, etc.), morally (e.g. episodes dealing with the Prime Directive, etc.) and intellectually/philosophically (e.g. all the classic "what if?"-type sci-fi episodes, such as "All Good Things..."). All the superficial cliches that non-Trekkies like Abrams mistakenly thought were important got shoveled in by the truckload: redshirts, funny accents, references to previous Trek stories (e.g. the "centaurian slug" or whatever = the "ceti eel" from "The Wrath of Khan"), technobabble, the setting and characters themselves, but the essence of Trek got completely left out!
Re:summarizing the article for you... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Umm... no... That is NOT summarizing the articl (Score:3, Insightful)
You sure you want to point to that explanation [sunshinedna.com] as "advice from some physicist consultants"?
Basically it boils down to them using a bomb made out of unobtainium, dumped into the Sun to simulate Big Bang.
VERY scientific. Like The Core. A tad less scientific [wikipedia.org] than Armageddon though.
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
Religious people going crazy and wanting to bring on the end of the world? Nothing unbelievable there.
What IS unbelievable is that the entire fucking planet chooses to send a religious lunatic (apparently nobody caught on him being batshit insane during all those tests and training) - instead of one of those Russians that they put up in space and forget about them for years.
Or an otaku with a stash of hentai literature, videos and games.
And a supply of ramen.