Film School: Technological Evolution's Impact On Storytelling

by XdarksparkX

Originally written for COM 312 - "The Modern History of Film"

March 27, 2011

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Jurassic Park (1993), and Avatar (2009).  These three films have one major thing in common: they are each considered great leaps in terms of cinematic visual effects for their time.  Empire improved upon the fantastic practical effects from it’s predecessor, A New Hope and managed to use matte paintings, miniature models, puppetry and stop motion animation to their fullest extents; Jurassic Park used gigantic audio-animatronics aided with subtle amounts of computer-generated imagery (or CGI) to bring back creatures thought to be extinct 65 million years ago; and Avatar showed the true technological capabilities of pure CGI and performance capture in the 21st century by creating a highly emotional and believable alien race who inhabited a fantastical alien world.  But were any of these leaps required in order to properly sell and enhance the story arcs in these films, or were they simply a case of the filmmakers being nitpicky in how their film was presented?

James Cameron was originally supposed to begin pre-production on Avatar immediately after the release of Titanic in 1997, however after numerous production tests he found that “technology was not where he wanted to be to realize his vision”.  While one could argue that he was right, one could also argue that after seeing the finished product of Avatar, it wasn’t a lack of technological advancements as much as it was Cameron’s own refusal to relent.  I believe the story of Avatar could have been told in the early 2000s with creative workarounds and a desire to make the story simply work.  For instance, was it important that the Na’vi be 10 feel tall (a design choice that surely helped sell Cameron on using CG when they would be interacting with humans)?  In the context of the story, no, their height holds no bearing on whether or not the story itself works or fails.  So the real question becomes, was it necessary to not only completely computer generate the Na’vi, but to spend 237 million dollars (The Wrap, 2009)—the fifth most expensive budget nominally as of this writing (The Numbers, 2011)—in order to tell this story?  While an epic fantasy movie like Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, which deals with outrageous imagery like giant Samurai’s and Dragons populating a dream world, manages to only claim an estimated 82 million dollar budget (Los Angeles Times, 2011).  Snyder’s previous film, an adaptation of the acclaimed graphic novel Watchmen in 2009, consisted of a completely computer-generated Doctor Manhattan.  While this was one character as opposed to an entire race, a convincing fully realized CG character using performance capture was still fit into a 138 million dollar budgetary constraint (that had to deal with Snyder being adamant about building sets rather than using vast amounts of chroma key compositing like he did with 300).  Avatar’s budget numbers don’t even included the money spent for on developing the “necessary” performance capture and 3D camera technology that were funded separately (Vanity Fair, 2009).  So what does all this mean?

Its possible that Cameron was simply blasé with his budget, because when Twentieth Century Fox was hesitant to take the monetary risk on Avatar, he himself went ahead and put forth the money into developing the 3D camera technology he wanted (BussinessWeek, 2010).  By using his own funds to develop the tech, perhaps he had the wiggle room within his production cost wallet to experiment with said technology and attempt new filmmaking ideas and concepts, rather than to do something he knew would work for possibly less.  All of this could point to the reason why a lot of critics, myself included, found the story of Avatar to be the weak link of the film at times.  When I finally got around to seeing it, I just thought that the effects weren’t so much for the story as much as they were for Cameron.  In a sense, Avatar was a tech-demo—Cameron’s way of showing just how powerful the technology we have available is.  The visuals of the film are gorgeous, however in this regard I feel that visuals and storytelling in film have a relationship akin to that of game play and graphics in the video game industry—just because your game is pretty, doesn’t mean it’s great if the controls don’t work.

29 years before Avatar started bludgeoning box office records three times over, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back came around, and got its story across by making due with what it had, what was feasibly obtainable, and what could be created in 1980.  It’s budget of 18 million (roughly 47 million when adjusted for inflation) held up enough to get the visual effects to the point of believability, and some could argue that’s all that’s needed.  Sure, as Luke’s little mount known as a Tauntaun gallops across the frozen plains of Hoth in the opening sequence, we know it’s unnaturally stiff and therefore not actually real in the context the movie is telling us it is. But perhaps, because of the fact that the creature was an actual miniature that existed within this world, our level of acceptance stretches farther because random anomalies like unnatural lighting glitches don’t exist.  Perhaps we’re also already engrossed in what the film is selling due to the physicality that model brings, and therefore the slight that arises isn’t enough to jar us out of the moment the film is putting us in.

The reason for pointing out Empire as opposed to its predecessor A New Hope (which holds many more similarities to Avatar production wise), is that it while A New Hope contained the formation of Industrial Light & Magic (who would go on to be one of if not the biggest effects house in the world), it was the Hoth battle scene at the beginning of Empire that I really wanted to touch on.  Yes, it may be more time consuming to do stop-motion animation (or in this case, “Go-Motion”, ILM’s own version of stop-motion animation developed in conjunction with Phil Tippett), but in the end those stiff and slightly awkward movements only fit to make the Imperial AT-AT walkers look all the more realized.  As seen with the many “special editions” Lucasfilm has churned out of the original Star Wars trilogy with “updated effects”, newer isn’t always better, and the story itself does not suffer if one watches the theatrical cuts of the original trilogy—difficult as they may be to actually obtain—with the original practical effects intact.  I personally feel that the newer effect almost cheapen the films, rather than enhance them as Lucas intended.

The reason for this being that when you have practical effects, the viewer knows that its something tangible, something with weight that existed on the set.  The lighting is the same, the shadows are the same, the colors and textures are the same as the human actors and everything else on the set, because it’s actually present.  When Mark Hamill speaks to Yoda, he has not only the puppet and its movements for visual reference, but Frank Oz’s own performance to play off of.  When interacting with a pure CG character, seldom is there a time where there isn’t at least a partial disconnect due to the awkward nature of having nothing in essence to work with.  Perhaps this coincidentally explains why Cameron wanted so much of Avatar to be CG.  By making the Na’vi themselves CG, it makes them seem more at home with their CG-laden homeworld of Pandora and the other indigenous creatures it claims.  In that regard, I understand his thought process through the technology/story connection, but I don’t know if it completely sells me on it, because in scenes where the humans and Na’vi are interacting (like during the climax when Neytiri holds Jake’s asphyxiating body in her arms) there is something just… off that just doesn’t make what I’m watching believably real.

All that said, surely it would seem impossible to make anything CG seem tangible within a film—to get the viewer to believe 100% that whatever they are witnessing isn’t so much a fable as much as it is a documentary of fantastical proportions, while never allowing their minds to really slip into the uncanny valley.  However, in 1993, a thunderous boom echoed out, and Steven Spielberg shut down the perimeter fences and unleashed Jurassic Park upon the world.

Originally, Jurassic Park was set to use “Go-Motion” for the dinosaurs during long shots, and Stan Winston’s animatronics for the close-ups.  However, after the Go Motion test animatics and various attempts at motion blurs proved unsatisfactory to Spielberg, two animators began working on a CG T-Rex skeletal walk cycle, and upon review were approved to do more.  The first full CG animatic they showed Spielberg and Tippett was of the T-Rex hunting a herd of Gallimimus.  The exchange between Spielberg and Tippett after witnessing this feat—“You’re out of the job”; “Don’t you mean extinct?”—found its way into the film, and was ironically the beginning of the end of the practical effects era.

However, perhaps it shouldn’t have been.  For while the advent of CGI in this regard was huge and the primary focus of the praise of the film’s effects, maybe the true praise should’ve been put on the seamless transitioning of the CG dinosaurs and Stan Winston’s fully realized animatronics.  When the Rex smashes through the tour cars roof in an attempt get to Lex and Tim, that was something that could have never feasibly worked on a emotional and psychological level if done with CGI.  The close proximity that the Rex was required to get within pertaining to the children meant that you would have something tangible (the actors) attempting to cater to something intangible (the Rex)—they wouldn’t have been reacting from what the Rex was doing, they would’ve been telling the Rex what to do wherever they moved the shattered plate of glass.  Certain emotions can’t be faked either, like the one of lingering terror that exists in the back of one’s mind when they realize that a giant mechanical T-Rex head is barreling down upon them with the potential horsepower of ten muscle cars.

One of the most iconic scenes in the film comes after the Rex escapes from its pen, and its foot steps right behind an unsuspecting Alan Grant as he tries to free the children from the now overturned tour SUV.  Aside from the shot being beautifully constructed, it’s another instance where no matter what tactics they would’ve tried, it would not have been had the same power and haze of reality if it had been achieved through CGI.  That was real weight from that animatronic skeleton pressing down into that mud, “real” latex skin that folded just right upon its placement.  Tangible, believable… real.

I think the problem faced today is that the current powerhouses of SFX like ILM and WETA are being overworked.  CGI has become such a crutch in the industry that these effects houses are constantly on a time crunch to get anywhere from 200 to 300+ VFX shots finished, approved, polished and finalized.  All before a deadline of say roughly 90 days.  An example of this: say you pull 10 CG artists off the floors of ILM today and 10 from the team that worked on Jurassic Park in 1992.  Today, because films are requiring so many Visual Effects shots to be completed, those 10 artists are probably working primarily on an entire scene by themselves.  Whereas in ‘92 with Jurassic, one person could (hypothetically) meticulously work on the animation of the T-Rex when it breaks out of it’s enclosure, while someone else is specifically working on the rain refraction on the skin, making sure that every drop falls and disperses as it should according to real world properties and that the determined light source is accurately reflected through this as well.  This is just my own theory, however it is obvious that as SFX houses have been spread thinner, the finer details that were seen in Jurassic Park have been lost due to sheer volume of work and time in which to complete said work.

In conclusion, I think that the best storytelling tool is a moderation of both practical effects and computer generated imagery.  CGI has become a crutch, when at its original rise to popularity it was meant to be a tool—a simple technological puzzle piece to aid in bringing a director’s vision to life.  While Avatar is a huge selling point for the true potential of CGI in this day and age, I feel that Jurassic Park showed the power of moderation in a perfect way, and that practical effects don’t nearly deserve the shunning that they’ve received from the Hollywood machine of today.  Not to mention, given the fact that the highly touted stance is that CGI is cheaper than practical effects, if you were to adjust older movies that use extensive practical effects for inflation, few would even come close to the budgets of the blockbusters today.  So how much cheaper is CGI really?

Perhaps it’s a joke—a metaphorical knock-knock with an unknown punch line.  How many licks does it take to get to the center of the money pop?  The world may never know…

_____________________________________
Patten, Dominic. The Wrap,
http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/avatars-true-cost-and-consequences-11206 (2009).

The Numbers,
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/budgets.php (2011).

Los Angeles Times, 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/03/movie-projector-diary-of-a-wimpy-kid-rodrick-rules-sucker-punch.html (2011).

Vanity Fair,
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/12/how-much-did-avatar-really-cost.html (2009).

BusinessWeek,
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_05/b4165048396178.htm (2010).