Story vs Special Effects.
starboard
Posts: 452
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting item on the editorial page this morning, "For Hollywood's Big Studios, the Picture is Looking Bleak" by Rod Pennington. As many of us have mentioned on this forum the importance of a good story is paramount (sorry about the pun), apparently has been forgotten of late by the big studios and their wallets are getting thin. Pennington explains, more or less that the big studios have forgotten what got them there in the first place - storytellling, and have instead have come to rely on special effects and endless sequells. More Penninton,
"Try to think of a recent movie from a major studio that you simply had to see in the theater. Now dig deep and try to pick one that wasn't based on a best selling novel, a comic book, or a rehash of a discovera franchise. Not easy, right ? That eliminates "Harry Potter", "The Hunger Games", "Star Wars", all the yoga-pants Marvel hero films and anything with Chris Pine doin on William Shatner impersonation. The rest is slim pickings."
"The studios continue to do a marvelous job of adapting other people's intellectual property to the silver screen, Unfortunately, they've already done all the good comics people remember from their youth, and sequels don't have the same drawing power.
The solution to today's film malaise is simple - better storytelling. Studio - executives seem to have fogotten the basic rule preached by the late mythology scholar Joseph Cambell and his model of the "Reluctant Hero". Over four decades this formula has dominated the blockbusters: Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen, among many others, are ordinary people reluctantly thrust into extraordinary situations. Elaborate car chases and stunning specia effects are fine, but audiences still want someone they can root for. Want people to come out ? Tell fresh, original stories."
Carrara is caperable of giving us marvelous special effects, but any of the figures used without the bones of a story moving it, is just an exercise in 3D...nothing more.
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Comments
Are you saying that Michelangelo's scuptures were just an exercize with the chisel ?
an exercise with marble,.
He already knew chisels were a franchisable productverse
Nope, Still images and statues don't have to have a story. We can admire them for themselves and skills involved in creating them. Still images created in Carrara are an entierly different catorgory from moving images and the same rules don't apply. However the post was about movies and videos which like an unfolding story in a novel, time is involved. Passing time implies something happening in that time. Back in the sixites someone made a two hour movie of a camera just looking at a sector of the sky..half way through it a seagull passed through the frame..the movie was not a success and the genre did not catch on.
Well... those crap chisels in the store just don't cut it. Want a real chisel, we need a good blacksmith ;)
So we need a good, fresh story eh? Where do we find such a thing?
there's a strange irony in an industry which can make Billions of dollars and celebrate doing their job with gold awards, while claiming to be struggling, and under threat.
There are some really interesting stories, which are being told with style and passion, by independent film makers, but they don't get the same publicity and marketing budget. or guaranteed showing internationally as the main big bully's of the film industry.
I like good stories,.
but i also like special effects ,.
paradox whirlpool time
In the case of Holleywood, where they always came from.. Novels.. If a story can survive the publics financial support via the bookshelfs of a bookstore it must have something going for it. There are thousands and thousands of great stories begging for hollywoods attention... However, if you don't read you won't be aware of them.
In the case of Carrara its up to us poor entrepeneures to write our own, as you have been doing Dart and many others on the forum.
Not really a paradox. Specail Effects ARE really cool - or really can be. But when used to try and make up for a lack of story, they might still come off really neat... but the overall satisfaction can't really be the same. The thrill ends as the effect does, where a really good or well-told story can stick with us our whole lives long.
Interesting. And a lot of smaller studios put out some really awesome fims. On small budgets. Of all the films I saw at the cinema last year (and there were 73 of them), these are the films I enjoyed most, in the order in which I saw them.
Dad's Army (nostalgia fest)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (what a mash up!)
Zootropolis (bunny cops!)
10 Cloverfield Lane (great suspense. John Goodman is always worth a watch)
The Jungle Book (a retelling, but well done)
Florence Foster Jenkins (*boggle!*)
The secret Life of Pets (bunny baddie!)
Swallows and Amazons (one of my favourite books as a kid)
Kubo and the Two Strings (claymation from the always awesom Laika Studios. Just wow.)
The Girl With All The Gifts (zombies the next generation)
A Streetcat Named Bob (Bob played himself. Meow!)
A United Kingdom (King marries pauper. Government upset!)
Sully (2 shots of grey goose and a splash of water...)
Rogue One (Star Wars does Saving Private Ryan. Okay I had to put one blockbuster in!)
That's 14. Notice how many big franchise movies there were - just one (actually, I ummed and ahh'd about Deadpool, because I thought it was sufficiently mould breaking. But in the end it didn't make the cut). Notice how few big Hollywood studios are represented? Blockbusters? A lot of the films I liked most were in some way biographical. Hovering just under the line: Deadpool, The finest hours, The BFG, Cafe Society, Arrival, Moana.
I Loved Rogue One. In fact, not just the movie, itself... but what it did to the opening scene of A New Hope! Now, when those dudes are scrambling about on Leia's ship, I feel their terror! Before we really had no clue. Somewhat... big ship gets swallowed up by something enormous... but now that I've seen the ending of Rogue One, Darth Vader closing in on them in such a horrific fashion... yikes! None of these people have even seen the Force in use before - if so... not like that!
But besides that... I thought it was really well done.
That said - it was made by a very famous Guerrilla Filmmaker! Gareth Edwards went out with two actors, a van, a DOP and a camera and a laptop and made "Monsters" and shook the Filmmaking industry doing so. I've never seen the movie but I must. VFX for Guerrilla Filmmakers course through Future Learn is an amazing course - learning how to do VFX Guerrilla Filmmamker style is like learning how to make movies - period. Except for the big thing - the point of this thread - the story!
John Knoll started working at Lucas Film/ILM as a teenager and developed the first version of PhotoShop in the process. Now he's waaaaay up on the ILM totem pole and, when he heard that Disney wanted to make all kinds of Star Wars movies, he decided to pitch an idea he's had for years and years to some of his friends, whom all urged him to pitch it to the Lucas Flim Star Wars Story Group and Kathy Kennedy - and finally he did - and they loved it. By this time, in relaying his ideas to his friends, the story had time to bake with each telling - getting better each time. It was based around the opening scroll of Episode IV - A New Hope.
Who better to write a great story than someone as imaginative and truly wonderful a person as John Knoll, right? Honest, good-natured troubleshooter for story-tellers. If they have a dream, he's the guy who says: Oh yeah... we can do that! And then establishes a team to make good with his word - Really good!
Gareth comes in with his Guerrilla talent and techniques, to a place just the opposite of Guerrilla, yet a place where Guerrilla techniques can grow into amazing! And he took his Guerrilla approach to casting as well, and did a beautiful job! The Cast is stupendous!
I cannot wait until April 4th for it to come out on BluRay!!!
Oh... and Zootopia was really freaking awesome as well!!!
But I agree. A lot of these Guerrilla films are a lot better (for some of us) than a lot of what Hollywood has been doing. I like a lot of the films that have been coming out - but I always see them long after they've left the theater, unfortunately.
I've mentioned this before, but I've always considered "The Twilight Zone" (1959-1964) an example of good story telling (9.0 at IMDB). From TV Guide: "Filled with invention and irony, the stories are tightly constructed, ingenious flights of imagination with often cautionary themes---and frequently a terrific twist at the end." I've got the complete series on DVD (159 episodes) plus "The Twilight Zone Companion" with lots of background and a summary of each episode. A great source of inspiration for short animations. On top of that, I recently started reading "Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories" by Charles Beaumont who wrote a lot of the Twilight Zone episodes. Good stuff with almost no special effects. Here is a slide show highlighting some of the better episodes (including "The Odyssey of Flight 33", inspired by a flyer Rod Serling got in the mail offering an obsolete full size jet cockpit simulator for sale or rent):
http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-10-greatest-twilight-zone-episodes/
Just coming back to FifthElements' Michelangelo comment - he wouldn't be nearly as famous if his sculptures (and paintings etc) were just technically very good - they have something more. They convey emotion and humanity in a way that few artists can achieve, and in their way, they DO tell a story. That is why they have become so iconic, not just because they were technically superb, although they were that too. That is what Hollywood needs to achieve - great storytelling coupled with a bit of spectacle. But while a great story without the pizazz can still be a moving and involving film, lots of effects without a story gets to feel very empty very quickly.
How cool is that?!!! What an amazing collection to have, especially for a shorts creator!
Say... my Son just left after watching "Hacksaw Ridge" with us, a BluRay he just bought to watch with us for our movie night.
I have to say that Hollywood and Director Mel Gibson score a big Win on that one! What an amazing (True) story and very well executed on the screen. Bravo from me with two thumbs up! All of the previews prior to the flick actually looked incredibly promising as well.
So I think that, while there might be some film studio flops, I really don't feel as if the whole realm is heading in the wrong directions.
Agreed. Forest Gump, for example, has amazing visual effects that are completely invisible. Like having Tom Hanks meet President Kennedy and play the most spectacular game of Ping Pong ever. Or how Captain Dan cruises around with no legs. But much more effects played into the telling of that story that we simply never see as visual CG effects.
Jurrasic Park's debut film was an incredible leap of faith from Stephen Spielburg on the advice/request of Dennis Murren of ILM, with the guarantee of success from George Lucas. It almost feels like a total opposite example of visual effects used to tell a story than that of Forest Gump, but not really - because the CG is actually quite believeable considering how "in you face" they are. It takes a lot of work to pull off that much effect in such a seemingly effect-free fashion.
But what about Gumby? and Davey and Goliath?
- excerpt from a short article on the history of claymation
He’s Green, He’s Gumby
Meanwhile, with movies being replaced by television throughout the 1950s, Warner Bros. cut back on its cel cartoon output by a third, stopping completely by 1969. A less sophisticated made-for-TV style, by Hanna-Barbera, had taken over. The time was right for clay’s first superstar: Gumby.
“The whole motivation for making Gumby was to give children something of real value,” says the green guy’s creator, Art Clokey. “Gumby was expressing my love for children by telling stories from the heart.”
NBC gave Clokey a contract to produce a series from 1956-1963. Gumby and his orange horse Pokey became icons.
Not many people realize that Clokey was also the creator of another curious series of that era: the moralistic Davey and Goliath. “The Lutherans saw Gumby on WPIX in New York and called me,” Clokey says. “It was shown more than Gumby, actually. The church gave the films to the stations for free. It was an act of service to society.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=116413&page=1
An even better summation of the importance of story is at the end of the movie Idiocracy. Paraphrasing, you have to know whose as$ it is, and why it is farting.
At the one minute mark, or so.
Here is how you achieve that in less then 5 minutes
I was reading an article about the history of Pixar earlier today, I remember a quote but can't find it again, it was either by Steve Jobs or more likely John Lasseter, which went "Computer animation will hold someone's attention for 2 minutes, to keep people in their seats for 90 minutes, you need a Story". If it's good enough for them...
Very good, excellent photography. I'm a sucker for black & white, color confuses me, and this is a good example of why - excellent.
Color needs to be artistically thought through, and then adjusted. It makes filmmaking more difficult. Here is an excellent special on that topic:
Yes, it looks like a good video. I watched the first part and agree with the statement "Color is hard". Indeed. I've tried a few educational things like reading about Pixar's "color scripts", Bruce Block's "The Visual Story" (Chapter 6 "Color", 30+ pages), and this 6 lecture course by a college professor (~1 minute overview video provided):
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/how-colors-affect-you-what-science-reveals.html
It sort of made sense, but how to apply it ... I pretty much stick with red roses, blue violets and orange oranges.
One thing I remember from the lectures was about college basketball uniforms, in particular Baylor's "neon yellow". They look like a bunch of highlighters running around. Very tall highlighters.
I was wondering about the similarity in plots between the first of the Star Wars and Harry Potter. Both Skywalker and Harry had parents who got into trouble with an evil force. Both as tots were whisked away to be brought up in secret by an inocuous family. Neither knew their backgrounds until later revealed. Both had extraordinary latent gifts, one the force the other magic. I suppose there are other similarities but these ones came to mind.
The other thing I was wondering about is that there seems to be a separation in the Star Wars episodes between those made with the origial cast and the ones that came after.I thought the first two or three Star Wars were excellent - .they were fun with dialog laced with irony and reparte..The later episodes seem to be so serious and the dialog bland. I can't recall any humor in the later versions or any verbal sparkle at all. This is just my personal view based on the impression they left on me. I know most people like them equally. I was wondering, do you think Lucas started out wanting to make a light entertaining semi spoof on the old Buck Rogers, as in the first episodes, then the emphasis changed to more serious versions? I haven't seen the latest "Rogue One" which I understand has received good reviews.
Oddly I think the same thing happened to Harry Potter.... The first episodes directed under Chris Collumbus were fun and then they began to get serious... I lost all interest in seeing the later ones.... I think the magic stopped working.
I agree with SteveK I think the old Twilight episodes were very good. But then I liked the old Perry Mason's also.
Just some wayward thoughts.
I agree on the series of Star Wars movies, I've always preferred the first one by a large margin. Of course everybody was caught off guard, especially my wife whom I had to almost drag to it ("A scifi rocket ship movie?"). But when that big ship came down from the top of the screen in the first minute, she was hooked. It was a hard act to follow, especially the humor, and I didn't even watch some of them. As far as Lucas' intentions on the first one, here you go, an alltime favorite short:
Bummer. Steve, your video cannot be played here :(
Yes, George was looking to bring back the feel of Flash Gordon serials with the first Star Wars. I think thhat he was a very different person by the time he started working on the last three he did. At first he had to struggle to get the movie made because it was so 'out-of-this-world' (pardon the pun) that evryone he pitched it to thought he was mad. Then came the fact that there was no technology in place to actually make it.
By the time he started the first of his final three (before selling Lucas Film to Disney) he had made Willow and ran ILM - ever pushing technology and keeping those capable of doing so employed and in an artistically and creatively inspired atmosphere to work in. THX, ILM, Lucas Film... he had his hands full, but also, by then folks kissed his ass rather than looking at him like he had flown over the coocoo's nest. That - right there - made (I think) a HUGE difference.
There was also the whole FAME of Star Wars to contend with. Roleplay games, books of every sort, merchandise gallore.
I'm really proud of him for sticking with it through his life, even though he didn't really have to - and, in doing so, has done me a huge service, for I crave movies like this.
It never bothered me - the change in seriousness - the (supposedly) over-complicated plot issues(?) and the switch to digital.
I know I already posted this in the Post Your renders thread, but it will likely soon get lost among pages of text. Besides, it was this thread (and the one Pjotter started for me to get my arse in gear) that inspired me to make it. It's a storyboard cel for my project:
Description
The Innocent being Oppressed by the Wicked - being Hunted and Slaughtered
The Day will Come... The Innocent shall Live Again!
Made with...
I think in one sense Star Wars and also the Star Trek series and the multitude of clones have been a disaster for science fiction. For one thing Star Wars, etc. are not science fiction but science fantasy... I would go further and say they are just plain fantasy with little if any connection to reality, no different than Alice in Wonderland or fairy tales such as the Seven League Boots. What is the difference from saying a magic word in a fairy tale and something happens and from saying the word Warp Drive and you have solved faster than light travel.There is nothing wrong at all with fantasy.. I love it. But in this case it seems to have stifled any science based fiction involving space. The tradition of Science Fiction goes back to Jules Verne and probably earlier. For example, Jules Verne tried to solve submarine propulsion, if I remember correctly by using the salinity of the sea to generate electricity and gave the hull a cigar shape for hydrodynamic efficiency..as they are today. He also imagined a huge gun system to send man to the moon. It used multi chambers that fired in sequences, so that the projectile was moved faster and faster in a gradual acceleration so that people might survive the G-Force, which is more or less what we do today with rockets. The multi-chamber system he wrote about was used by Nazi Germany years later in its superguns. Science Fiction involves using the the laws of science with only one or two "what ifs"...Much of the Science Fiction I read years ago was based on this. Good Science Fiction anticipates scientific break throughs. Science Fiction was carried over into the movies, with Andromeda Strain, 2001 A Space Odyssey, etc. With the exception of the movie "Gravity" in 2013, and "A Day After Tomorrow" in 2004, it has been very hard to find traditional science fiction.
So what does it matter? Besides being entertaining Science Fiction can help spark an area of scientific investigation which in turn can lead to discoveries that enhance our known world. For example the astronomers have just discovered seven planets around the dwarf star Trappist 1.... Luke Skywalker using the force and an x-fighter won't get us there...but someone imagining a propulsion system using say dark matter, or using the solar wind particles might inspire a futue researcher.
Don't get me wrong...I like Star Wars, its just it seems Science Fantasy has sucked out all the oxygen in the room.
The Martian had a couple of big "excuse me?"s (moreso in the film than the book), but on the whole was based on hard science. There's also work being done and published at least at the theoretical level towards warp technology, particularly the Alcubierre warp drive. There are lots of hurdles, not least the requirements for tachyons and/or exotic matter, but the science is being worked on and one day it could happen. Then it's just a two week hop to Alpha Centauri. And the fact that it will be called a warp drive if it happens is directly attributable to Star Trek.
BTW, even the mockup Alcubierre ship shows a deck that's oriented horizontally, like an airliner or surface ship, despite the fact that the only "gravity" (due to thrust) will be axial and their "floor" will only ever be a vertical wall. That's always bugged me about spaceship designs. Of course Star Trek (and Star Wars) gets around this by inventing artificial gravity. In my opinion that stinks more than a faulty biorecycler. Then there's those space stations that despite figuring out you need a large spinning ring to generate a semblence of "down" don't have a good enough grasp of centrepetal force to avoid putting windows in the floor and furniture on the walls... Sorry, that's a particular bugbear of mine. Right now I'm thinking a lot about spaceship design and space station design, both inside and out, and docking one to the other, for an upcoming "project".
TangoAlpha,
I agree about space station design..or space craft in general..I also wonder about the girder plate construction often depicted...I suspect when it comes to large consruction, such as a space wheel there is a lot to be said for ultra light flexible inflatable structures with high tensile strength fibers. Inflatable structures are ideal for space considering their low surface area. Possible in multiple layers or envelopes that capture escaping air so that there is not such a drop from room pressure to zero of space. A spinning wheel or two pods out from a center axis that can provide gravity, is the only thing that makes sense even going to mars.
Athur Clarke wrote a non-fiction book on what the future may bring. I read it but cannot remember the name. In it he said,"man will never conquor space, but his machines will". Meaning, that it is suicidal to put man in a long term stellar journey where you have to mimic an earth environment, gravity, air, temperture, etc. when you have machines that operate very happily in those conditions and have the patience of the stars to reach a destination. If man ever travels between stars the only way that I can see it happening, is to send robotic ships that can build the DNA from scratch and thus construct a human at the other end and infusing that person with the personality and memories of a certain individual from earth. In other words you would be cloned from scratch. This would avoid the degradation of time, radiation, and who knows what else. Fun to speculate
If you had asked me 20 years ago about the possibilities of life within our own solar system, I would have put a very low percentage on it, even for very basic microbial life, certainly less than 1%. I'd put it much higher now, with the discoveries surrounding the various moons of the gas giants. I think we live in exciting times from that perspective.
Okay, so the title of the thread lets us think that Story is more important than Effects. But yet we're supposed to base our Space Fantasies (Star Wars) around real science, like Space 2001? Why not give us a sleeping pill and save some cash from going to the movies?
Besides, if we listen to Bill Nye the Science Guy, there is no such thing as "The Force". Whereas, there is... it was just exaggerated for the fun of fantasy storytelling. It was a kids movie. A Chiropractor was telling me about the Chinese beliefs upon which the Force was based. He had me "Hold Strong" my arm straight out from my side. He pulled and pulled and couldn't pull it down. He then used a lead X-Ray barrier pad to cut off the qi from the strongest point to which it enters our bodies and did the same thing. As much as I tried, I could barely resist his pull.
So while The Force (TM) is a silly fantasty, it's fun. The is a Dark Side of it and a Light Side of it.
Bah... to each their own... why am I arguing? Sorry about that. I'm just glad that the movies have more to offer than such strict rules of reality. Reality is around us all day. I like the ability to escape... to imagine... to have fun. I have a nice collection of Science Fact. I love that too. But I also need my fantasy fix.
(gravity issues)
Well, yeah. So instead, let's just use real-world science and not have these shows then - because watching people floating around in zero-gravity without sound really wouldn't be much fun to watch.
Here's where we're getting into (IMHO) the differences between artistic entertainment and real-world physics simulation. You guys don't want story at all... you want to go to the mall and watch real people walk on a floor and use a belt system to defy gravity.
One last thing, and I'll shut up
Star Wars was not deceiving in the slightest. The original promotion and posters all made it very clear that it was an imaginary tale of good vs evil. It didn't even try to sell reality. The movies that followed continued in the same fantastical fashion. It was honestly sold as a Tale, not a guide on how to save the Earth.
Star Trek was a series on putting all of the World's races together in a single imaginary vessel to show how we can all live together - we truly are made of the same stuff. Spock, from another planet, was the difference. They never tried to sell real science - just fun stories of morality.
There really aren't enough reality shows out there? I wasn't aware. I mean... I know that they don't sell well to the masses, but our science community seems to know exactly where to find them. W have a rather large collection. And as interesting as I find it all (I really do and collect them because I AM interested) very interesting, it puts me to sleep. I tried to get one show that I really liked - based on reality. it cost over $200 pre episode because nobody wants it. They'd have to cut custom discs per order.