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You're welcome, and I agree. Its the kind of story that makes me smack my head, saying "why can't I come up with ideas like that?" I'm sure everybody caught the title reference to "Shakespeare In Love", another favorite of mine with some great dialogue (yes, I'm admitting there *is* some good dialogue, especially when Tom Stoppard gets involved):
Philip Henslowe [Theater Owner]: The show must... you know...
William Shakespeare: [prompting him] Go on
Well, we also need to realize that "Done in Carrara" doesn't have to mean "Every effect Done in Carrara"
We can use our strengths of Carrara to assist us with post too, like using Fusion, HitFilm, Howler, AE, etc., to assist with adding or tweaking water and other effects. We just need to remember that the story comes first. So we do what we must to help our author tell the tale as intended - or at least a close as we can. Perhaps even better than expected.
I still don't have Terrain Tools by DCG, but I've often longed to see if that also works on the Ocean primitive, perhaps using Intersect, to enhance it along the edges of terrain and other object that intersect with the water. But we must also try to never forget the power that we have with Carrara in being able to load video footage as texture maps. Ever since I've seen the 'behind-the-scenes' of Lord of the Rings Extended, where the yound Weta Digital artist explains using footge of real fire a particles for the Balrog... I've imagined trying it in Carrara. Not necessarily the same effect, just using animated textures for other animated things, like particles or the Ocean Primitive's shader or Terrain shader elements, etc.,
VFX for Guerrilla Filmmakers was really cool in that some of the really good Guerrillla Filmmakers working today provide input via short articles and video interviews that really inspire a person to realize (especially when the student (me) has Carrara and knows(?) how to use it) that anything and everything truly IS possible, we just have to think it through as to how it really needs to look in the end.
So a lot of this was about live action filmmaking, so they'd use cameras to film elements to add to the footage in Post - often after effecting it to become what they need it to look like. Well there's really nothing stopping us from using camera footage in our Carrara work and still considering it Carrara work (or other software can also be inserted where I say Carrara) and likewise can further edit our Carrara work in post and still consider it Carrara work, I think. But let's say we don't have a camera. We cannot let that stop us. We have cameras in Carrara. So we can shoot our own extra effects footage in Carrara for use in post with our other Carrara work. This is what I started playing with since taking that course - among many other things that course has inspired me to try.
Awesome! And the 12 visual effects artists and the two cinematographers too, handling the shaders, lighting, all of the elements we see.
...and like I mentioned earlier, these folks are Very Trained in what they do! Some of us might be considered trained in ways - perhaps even formally. I'm not formally trained but each online class that I take through a college of the arts truly steps up my game a LOT. Some of it actually does include some "How Tos" but even when it's just inspiration and direction as to what all needs to get done and where we need to go... it all helps immensely to me.
This film was covered in that VFX class. He is known as being the first VFX artist. Amazing the things we Humans can come up with when we dream about our ideas, or have ideas about our dreams ;)
Story + Effects + Sound + Music
I've been mentioning my taking a VFX for Guerrilla Filmmakers course, and that I really got into it and learned a lot from it. Well this is a really cool Guerrilla Filmmaker whom I've discovered during that whole process, and he also works closely with the ever-so-awesome folks at HitFilm.
I'm talking about Ryan Connolly aka FilmRiot
This sequence should make for a good piece of inspiration for others besides just me
The Movie - Ghost House
The Making of Ghost House
VFX of Ghost House
Music and Sound Design for Ghost House
But just to help drive home the point that FilmRiot is awesome and has wonderful, inspirational advice, please watch just one more...
The Psychological Effect of Music in Film
Some interesting comments on story from Noah Hawley, creator/writer of the FX TV series "Fargo" (a favorite of mine):
http://time.com/4667769/noah-hawley-legion-fx/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+time/topstories+(TIME:+Top+Stories)
"When he wrote for network television a decade ago, Hawley recalls, executives often demanded that writers 'clarify' events—explain things ad nauseam rather than allow the audience to reach its own conclusion (or no conclusion at all). Hawley’s work for FX defies this." Indeed. The print version of the article mentions "surreal flourishes like those on 'Fargo' (fish fall from the sky, an alien spaceship shows up just because)". I've been watching "Mr. Robot", talk about surreal flourishes ...
It's amazing how much story can be set up to become assumed with just a great shot of an expression or a simple motion and the perfect music backing it up - nothing else, hence the cool batch of short offerings above ;)
Likewise, lack of sound and/or music can also force implicated story without words.
Give the human brain recognizeable senses and let it compute.
Along those same lines, add a single spoke or unspoken word to the mix and see what happens. Better yet, force what's implied next.
Just a simple fade to black can tell so many different things depending upon what happens just prior.
A couple of intersting conversations occurring here.
Special Effects
The issue of story emphasis vs visual effects is a tough one for me.
Part of what makes special effects less effective these days is how "cheap" they've become. A lot of people have gotten to be really good with this stuff. But since they all use the same tools (Photoshop, 3ds Max, Maya Lightwave, Cin4D, Modo, Blender, rigging, minimal physical simulation.. cg hair..etc) and similar techniques to accomplish these goals in every single project, the results can seem a bit generic and makes individual films difficult to stand out. It's a bit like pop singers today. Seems everyone can do those crazy scales and runs up and down on a single vowel, that skill is no longer as impressive as it once was. Is that Adele singing, Christina, or is that Mariah or is that Celine or is that Whitney or is that Ariana Grande or Leona Lewis? While not the same, sometimes they can sound a lot like one another. Another good example is unbiased rendering. It's shocking to me to recall the amount of effort it used to take just to get some indirect light onto a model that wasn't just some sort of arbitrary ambient glow. Today, It can be impossible to distinguish a render from Octane from a render from Iray for all but the most dedicated critics. Even though the renders may be amazing, they aren't necessarily as distinct as people would like to believe because the tools are all pretty much the same anbd all being used in similar ways. Today, we have so many similar tools and highly effective tools for creating indirect light that we no longer appreciate a well implemented example. We expect it to look real, regardless of application, instead of being impressed that it looks real at all from any application. Our viewing standards have gotten REALLY high. We're spoiled. That's at least part of the problem.
Plausibility of storytelling and the need to ground ourselves in physical reality/// People have more education now than they used to have. So grounding is more important than ever. This education makes people more aware of whats actually possible in real life and what isn't. Makes it harder to trick them. People today know that sharks attack people rarely, so a movie like Jaws will be less plausible to us than it was to audiences the day it was released. Another example. Back when people used superstition to explain everything, the idea of ghosts making things move was plausible, and thus the image of a ghost on screen might have been plausible as well, since no one knows what a ghost is supposed to look like even if we believe in their existnece. But knowing as we do that ghosts probably don't exist, no depiction, no matter how well done, will convince us. We don't have the same child like imaginations of generations past, we are so practical. We willfully refuse to allow ourselves to be convinced of things that we know consciously are not real. Uncanney Valley.
Storyline Emphasis
While some would say that lack of story has ruined films, I think the opposite. The problem is Too many storylines, all competing, that they lose relevance. For example I no longer follow any comic characters with any seriousness, not even in print. Why? Because I thought Superman died a long time ago on paper. But he keeps popping back up. Seeing Superman die at the hands of Doomsday...that is powerful and significant. Having a guy be born on a dying plant, come to Earth live his life as an unchallenged GOD and then to die at the hands of Doomsday; Seems like a full story arc to me. It could be told over and over from start to finish like the stories of the Greek and Roman Gods with little or no need for updating. But no., we dont see things that way these days. I dont mind killing superman, so long as you don't go and reboot superman 12 hours later as if nothing ever happened. Makes the whole battle scene I just watched seem like a waste of my time. Now they expect me to buy into the Superman myth once again, for them to kill him off again just to reboot him a day later. Seems nothing truly STICKS anymore. That cheapens the effects themselves for me.
But we needed to keep selling comic books, right? People get bored if nothing substantive ever happens, but they also get bored if you kill off a beloved character. So we try to do both, have meaningful things occur yet keep our characters safely in the story. So we kill them, then resurect them for continued profits. Not because we have anything new to add to the story. We undermine our previous stories every time we decide to start over again.
The X-men franchise is a perfect example of a total mess caused by bad storytelling in the later installments, not failure of effects or due to an over emphasis of effects. X-Men MUST have huge effects. If it doesnt, then there's no point in producing said film. We want to see each hero or villian use their powers/abilities at least a few times during the span of the film. Think the opening sequence with Nightcrawler at the White house in X-Men 2. That was AMAZING special effects, by any standard. Just like that example; the writers need to contrive circumstances where the characters suddenly have a plausible need to activate their powers. That's a writing thing. But they wrote themselves into a wall by focusing too much on the Logan storylines, leaving all the other heros and their histories to languish and share the remaining screentime, which isn't very compelling. Wolverine, Like Batman, really isnt worth the screentime emphasis he's given. His powers just aren't all that impressive. Cellular regeneration...not ageing,..seriously, how inexpensive is that to produce compared to flight or some ofther form of transformation? Logan focused films are far cheaper to produce compared to the more fully casted Xmen films due to the lowered need for special effects alone. They purposefully write the Logan themed films such that they don't need to rely as much on special effects. The Logan films are all about masculine brawn and tough-guyziness... Almost more like action films akin to The Transporter than a true hero genre type of film series. This has caused them to have to basically reboot the entire franchise. Last I heard before the reboot Jean Grey was no longer dead. Yep, never dies in this new alternative timeline. So the whole thing of her becoming the Phoenix at the end of that earlier installment...never happened. Here I thought I was impressed with the water rushing over her body and her disappearing. Guess in hindsight that those special effects sucked.
I was so into Toby McGuire as Spiderman. But why would I re-watch those movies today knowing that everyone has moved on? The Toby McGuire Spidey movie series is fossilized, even though he was the best spider man in my view. Nothing against Andrew Garfield. But Toby takes this one for me by a large margin.
Star Wars-Complete fiction. Almost no connection to real world physics that we can recognize today. However, the use of robotics and the magnetic fields they use to create vehicles that hover instead of experiencing friction by roilling on wheels, makes it feel like science fiction.
Star Trek- About half fiction, and about half based on real world known physics. Most trained physicists I've spoken to say that Star Trek is more in line with their knowledge than Star Wars, and they prefer watching Star Trek because of it. Because they feel like they might actully gain ideas and insights from Strar Trek they'd never gain from Star Wars.
In truth Star Wars came first, and it could be said that the lessons learned from Star Wars were implemented in Star Trek. Such as to ground your tech in something realistic.
Unlike Star Wars that never tries to explain any of its technologies. Star Trek actually attempts to do so. This to me is what makes Star Trek much more science fiction than Star Wars. Star Trek would present known physical problems and limits, such as the limits of light speed, and they would also provide a mechanism for solving said issue, such as Nacels that can bend the fabric of space around the ship while firing high velocity particle that collide and create a tine black hole that the ship can then fly into...... For this to stick, the viewer must at least understand what space bending actually is, and that requires some degree of education, otherwise the explanation is wasted anyhow.
However, it is said that Star Wars approach is more robust. Because some day soon, the "science" in Star Trek will seem outdated, and films like Star Wars where nothng is explained might have continued life.
Humans in Space
I disagree strongly with the ideal that humans cannot and will not conquer space. Mnay thought we'd never conquer the seas, but we've done it. Mimicing the conditions of a planet to house humans on a space ship for some huge journey might seem silly, but no. What I'm saying is that we need Earth-like conditionson the ship because one day we plan at arrive at some earth like planet. Once we arrive on that planet, we need to have the muscle strecngth to withstand gravity on the planet. So yes, we can and will build spoace fairing greenhouses as temporary hosing for humans (temporary could be thousands of years) with the ideal that we would not allow the apaptations tha made us successful while living on plants to be lost.
Freeze male sperm and store it in radation proof conainment units. use an all female crew. When they arrive, they unfreeze the spermatophores and get to populating some new planet. or you could create articifal wombs, and then use all male crews who then would use the articial womb to gestate the first generation of females.
There is no problem that technology will not eventually be able to solve. Eventually being the key word.
Interesting post, Rashad, a few random thoughts:
*spoiler alert* (sort of)
"Star Wars" (the first one anyway, I haven't seen all the rest) is as much a Western as it is Scifi.
I'm not sure knowing that shark attacks are rare makes "Jaws" any less scary for modern audiences. Even as late as 2000 (it came out in 1975), Ebert wrote about it as one of the "Great Movies". In his original review, he called it as frightening as "the Exorcist", but I dunno about that.
I tend to agree that traditional "ghosts" are gonna be a hard sell, but seeing "dead pople" worked out pretty well in "The Sixth Sense". And a similar idea works out well in "Mr. Robot".
I gave up long ago on super hero movies. But multiple story lines are a real plus in some series, e.g. "The Wire", "Mr. Robot", "The Sopranos" and similar.
I admit being skeptical about humans conquering space. Lots of major problems that curently seem overwhelming, e.g. the radiation away from Earth is deadly. Okay, shields, etc., but all the time?
Again, no real argument, just different perspectives.
Long post follows.
Dart, Rashad and Steve, your posts are always thought provoking. Lot there to digest, and y'all make many great points.
For the stories that I want to tell, I know that I depend upon the audience's willing suspension of disbelief. If I understand one of Rashad's main points, the fact that modern people have more formal education means that there is more potential for an image's unreal details to jar the audience and shatter the suspension of disbelief. This may be true. However, for myself, if a story is framed accurately for me before I start watching (or reading if it is a book), then I am willing to maintain my suspension of disbelief even in the face of obviously unreal details. When I saw the original Indiana Jones, I knew that a person could not be dragged under a speeding truck and then climb on the outside and climb in the passenger door window, or hang on the outside of a submarine across the eastern Mediteranean. My suspension of disbelief was willing, and it was established early in the picture. The director preserved and manipulated it, and depended upon it. Unreal details were part of the fun, not a jarring experience. However, sometimes willing suspension of disbelief is shattered. Maintaining it is a skill that I hope to acquire.
Personally, I'm not usually going for a realistic look in the images that I create. If the viewers want realism, they know at first glance or in the first panel to stop. To me, the original King Kong is still a much more enjoyable viewing experience than that abomination in the 1970s (Jessica Lang was able to overcome it and have an excellent career), even though the technology was superior in the 70s. Young Frankenstein is still one of the all-time great comedies even though Mel Brooks chose to film it in black and white. Wallace and Gromit, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and Gumby can still mesmrize the intended audience even though the claymation was obviously fake. But the unreal elements should be purposeful, and that means understanding realism.
If I could put something together that holds an audience like Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.'s silent 1924 Thief of Baghdad, my personal goals would be greatly surpassed. It had many special effects for its time.
But it also had a fun story to hold it together.
Had a good ramble there. Would love to get feedback from the community on some of the following topics.
What are your favorite clearly unreal movies (or other media), excluding cell-styled animation? Why are you willing to suspend your disbelief for these?
What are examples of movies (or other media) that had your attention but then your suspension of disbelief was shattered? How was it shattered?
Do you think that because people with a 3D hobby have typically trained their eye to look for flaws in lighting, surfaces, etc. that it is more difficult to maintain willing suspension of disbelief? If so, how could an artist induce people trained in 3d art to willingly suspend disbelief despite the trained eyes?
And to bring it on topic, do the elements of the story make it easier to maintain willing suspension of disbelief? If so, doesn't that make story essential to special effect?
We live in an infinit time machine. When we stand outside on clear night and look at the sky - we see time. We see light of different ages all mixed together in twinkling art. Outside of our planets non of this light is less than 4 light years old while most is hundreds of thousands of light years. There is faint llight there that is millions of years old but our eyes can not decern it. Millions and millions of galaxies, uncountable stars, and an infinity of planets and moons. Thats our universe and unfortunately we have the life span of gnat.
I am not a physicist but I try to apply common sense to what I know of this universe. For example; It is my understanding that the closer you get to the speed of light mass becomes infinite. I have heard it suggested that to acccelerate a pound of matter near the speed of llight would take the energy of a galaxy. But I suspect that it is more than that..to move near the speed of light matter as we know it would cease to be and would become some sort of plasma or even light itself. Long before then biology as we know it would cease to exist. And of course there is part B to this...It would take the energy of a second galaxy of energy to slow you down at your destination. Its fun to invent words such as warp drive, parsec drive, or star drive and whoosh you transit galaxies at the convenient speeds of a gnats life...But you might was well say a magic word, say rumpleskiltskin.. or whaterver, turn three times and bingo you are on a planet at Tau Ceti some ten light years away. If you are going to wish your way across intersteller space one word is as good as another.
So why not a generation ship.Time...something that large would only be accelerated very slowly. to accelerate to half the speed of light would take tremendous energy and time and to slow down at the other end will take even more time. . Even if you could rob the earth of enough energy to build it in orbit and then to accelerae it to half the speed of light and went to the nearest star system that "might" have a human friendly atmosphere, it will probably be, if we are lucky about 100 light years away, by the time you accelerate up to speed and slow down at the other end.. you are probable talking about 200 years. Thats a lot of time for things to go wrong, a lot of radiation and expecting an aweful lot of the people who might volunteer. Knowning what I do about human nature you would'nt get me on that ship.
I suspect that the only viable way man might travel to habitable planets, far , far away is by means of robotic ships. No air necessary, no heat, and can be designed to cope with radiation. Being small it can be accelerated to an appropriate speed far more economically.. and time would not be essential. When it arrived at destination, two or three centuries later, and found the planet satisfactory it could land and establish a secure base. Since periodic table of elements are the same throughout the universe, all the elements will be there to create whatever you want. In this case, people. We are already manipulating human and animal DNA..I suspect that by the time we have developed the engineering to design intersteller ships we will have also developed the ability to build DNA from basic elements. These nursury ships could create humans and raise them to adulthood and then go on to create whatever plants or animals are necessary for an ecosystem.or whatever the planet is lacking. Sounds a little ghoulish ..I know.. How badly do you want man and woman to get there ?...that is the question. As the old Latin phrase goes, "Ad Astro per Asperum"..To the stars with difficulty"
Diomede -
"What are your favorite clearly unreal movies (or other media), excluding cell-styled animation? Why are you willing to suspend your disbelief for these?"
If I understand your question correctly, I'd have to say "The Exorcist". From Roger Ebert's 1973 review: "Modern medicine has replaced devils with paranoia and schizophrenia, [Father Karras] explains. Medicine may have, but the movie hasn’t. ... The film is a triumph of special effects. Never for a moment--not when the little girl is possessed by the most disgusting of spirits, not when the bed is banging and the furniture flying and the vomit is welling out--are we less than convinced." I think the suspension of disbelief is due to a deep down suspicion that there really is a Satan, in spite of what modern medicine tells us. Most of us grew up having religious folks (real Catholic priests and nuns in my case) tell us that and its hard to shake. And it led to a great *title* for a sequel, "Repossessed".
These are great questions. I'll have to give it some thought.
Regarding favourite films, one of my favourite fantasy films as a teenaged was The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. It is perhaps interesting to compare that with the sequel, Sinbad and The Eye of the Tiger, which I didn't think was nearly such a good film. There are many similarities - same studio, Ray Harryhausen doing the stop motion effects in both. The differences are the cast and the story. While I don't think the cast is as good as the earlier film, it is really the story that didn't engage as much and seemed more forced. I am sure there are other similar examples - particularly with sequels where the first was good and successful, but then any sequels just get less and less interesting.
In a different area, many of the devices in Sci-Fi movies and TV series were developed as a way to overcome the difficulties of reality in order to tell the story. Warp drive is a necessary construct if a ship is to travel between stars before the cast has died long ago! "Beaming down" to a planet's surface was devloped so that you wouldn't have to have a tedious shuttle sequence in every episode. Artificial gravity enables scenes to be filmed without needing to reproduce weightlessness in every shot. So these things enable the story to proceed, at the expense of some realism. If the story is absorbing enough, you will just go with it - or think "wow, that is cool"! rather than than worrying too much about how a transporter actaully works, or whatever.
Fun topic! You've got me thinking on a few things.
To some extent; Moving faster than light speed is already happening all around us. Relative to someone somewhere in the now unobservable universe, you are already moving faster than the speed of light. Fact is; Dark Energy has shown itself to be capable of propelling objects away from one another at speeds exceeding that of the limitations of light. The Dark Energy field needs a span the size of the visible universe to bend space enough to gain this ability, but it has been shown to exist. In fact, faster than light behavior seems to occur at the largest and the smallest scales quite readily, it's this middle area where the rules seem to be fixed.
Consider this. If it were true, that objects cannot move away from one another at the speed of light or greater regardless of the frame of reference or scaling reference... no matter what, then the night sky would be totally white at all times. This is because all those distant galaxies that have long ago red shifted out of our current view would have instead become "frozen" in time along the Light cone "event horizon" edge of our observable universe. Due to the fact that there are infinite galaxies, even if they were all red shifted to near infinitely low energies relative to us their compound energies would still make the night sky glow into the visible ranges and probably much more. This frozen in place ideal is also thought to occur to objects falling toward a black hole. At the point of arriving at the event horizon, when in reality the item gets spaghettified, to an outside observer the object might continue to appear whole if it approached the back whole with enough of its own internal momentum not to be torn apart by the black hole long before reaching the horizon. Another consequence of moving at near light speed is that it gives you some degree of resistance against being ripped apart by a black hole if you happen to come close to one. So long as you don't get too close to the event horizon.
Its probably a good thing for us right now that Dark Energy can break the light speed threshold to help disperse energy. This is especially true in an infinite universe where there is enough energy to fill every point in space with the energy of the big bang, but the same would be true in a finite universe. Consider this: If not for Dark Energy, then even the finite observable part of the universe could only expand to a certain point from our perspective. Like discussed above; It would mean the distant galaxies would continue to redshift forever, but would never become lost from view completely. This would mean that with a powerful enough telescope that could boost the images, you could look all the way back to the moment of the big bang itself. And looking directly at a singularity is....forbidden! But we dont find a burning night sky. Space is "dark." It appears as if distant galaxies are really moving away from us so fast that light itself cannot keep pace so no telescope could ever catch a glimpse of them. This also makes this "moment" in time distinct from the one previous and from the one to follow in a way that cannot be reversed, thus helping to give time its arrow. Dark Energy seems to have many consequences.
So depending on the type of "force" that is lending you its momentum, and the relative reference frames chosen to be relevant; the total possible rate of movement could potentially be unlimited. All we know for sure are the limits of electromagnetism, we don't know the limits yet of gravity (what actually happens inside the event horizon of a black hole) and we dont know much of anything about Dark Energy (what happens to objects which fall outside our observable light cone horizon). The secrets to these two natrual phenomena (if they are indeed different, I swear dark energy and gravity are actually the same phenomenon..I digress again. Sorry. Those secrets could enable us to do the impossible. Dark energy seems nearly unlimited. Tapping into that makes most anything possible.
Imagine if we could one day build a space ship with a "sail" that was capable of hitching a ride on the dark energy flows that are expanding the universe, like fish riding the undertow in Finding Dory. Such a virtual sail could propell us to any point in time or space with no problem if it was efficient enough at harnessing said dark energy. We'd have all the enrgy needed to speed up and slow back down again and could get places well within lifetimes.
Light speed limits are real, I don't mean to say they aren't. We know that charged particles cannot ever move faster than light, at least not by electromagnetic interactions alone. Think of it this way; You'd need a magnet with infinite positive charge to attract an electron toward it at the speed of light. The only "force" that can compress that many positively charged self repelling particles into such a state is a powerful gravitational field like a singularity. And quanum forces wouldnt allow the positively charged particles to remain distinct at such close proximity, some collisions would occur setting off chain reactions, and would end up converting those like charged particles them into some other more stable form of energy that includes particles with negative charges, thus causing our once powerful magnet to spontaneously change itself into a mini neutron star type of object of neutral or nearly neutral charge, doing most of its work on the incoming electron via gravitational interactions instead of with electrical charge.
Gosh, can't quite believe I wrote all that out. I'm a geek, and a dreamer too. Please don't send me home.
(I'm probably going to edit this post lots before I hit the Post button)
Although not asked, I love movies that make an effort to get the physics real -- 2001, 2010, Apollo 13, Gravity, The Martian ... and I can forgive them the odd error or foible (for instance the entire inciting incident of The Martian is based on the notion that Mars has enough atmosphere to generate a storm capable of destroying the base. It doesn't. In reality the worst storm would barely be a gentle breeze).
Moon worked for me. Essentially a one-hander starring Sam Rockwell, with Kevin Spacey voicing the computer. Lots of good science, which sold the speculative/iffy. Passengers worked quite well too. Essentially a three-hander set on a generation ship, when disaster strikes some way into the voyage. They made a good stab at spinning rings for gravity, although I think some of their deck orientations were wrong (at least they had me a bit confused). And there are films of my youth which I loved, although I haven't seen them in decades - Silent Running, Outland, Logan's Run, Westworld (haven't seen the new TV series), The Black Hole, Dark Star.
In real terms, mankind's journey to the stars depends as much, if not more, on political will and money as it does on science. The science is "close" even though there are huge obstacles to overcome. The Alcubierre Drive could get a ship to the nearest stars in a matter of weeks. If it ever works and we can capture enough exotic matter (not just antimatter, but tachyons and stuff that's still only theoretical!). Plus we need to develop those really efficient constant thrust engines for in-system use. Two weeks to alpha centauri doesn't sound so good when you add on the 10 years to cruise to/from a safe distance from the planet to fire up the engine! But we already have the ability to detect warp fields, so we'll know if one ever appears.
There hasn't been a world leader with any kind of vision for the future (beyond their own reelection and/or despotism) since JFK. I firmly believe that if Kennedy had lived, we'd have moonbases, big orbital stations, and people on Mars by now. And they'd be paying for themselves. Realistically, I think any viable starship design is more likely to come from the military than from NASA (which means it'll have been operating for decades at least before we even get to hear about it). But it'll have cool laser weapons!
The worst films for shattering my suspension of disbelief are the Marvel superhero films. They just blatently disregard the laws of physics, sometimes in the most rediculous ways (pitched battles in a town that's been hurled 3 miles up into the sky? That's higher than Everest Base Camp, yet they fight like they're at sea level. And even the eventual rescue barge has sailors standing around in shirtsleeves like they're sailing into Pompey harbour on a warm summer afternoon. Is anyone treated for hypoxia? Of course not! That's just one example out of hundreds) The only Marvel films that have worked for me have been Deadpool (its self-awareness is its redeeming feature) and Guardians of the Galaxy (at least it's not blatently giving physics the bird)
I'm wowed by the modern claymation films (okay, they're 3d printed models now with interchangeable parts, rather than the old-style plasticene), and especially those coming from Laika Studios (ParaNorman, Boxtrolls, Kubo & the Two Strings). They work because the world they live in, although obviously fake, is believable and consistent.
So, what do you all think where my favorite director's ( Danny Boyle ) film Sunshine (my very favorite SciFi movie of late) fits in regarding "story vs VFX" ?
http://www.awn.com/vfxworld/sunshine-2057-vfx-odyssey
Cheers
I'd forgotten about that. I remember seeing it at a cinema in Wellington, New Zealand, not long after getting out of hospital, but I haven't watched it since. I'll have to track down a copy and watch it again.
Gravity (the film, not the force!) was touted as being based on real physics - I'm afraid that I found it too far fetched for that, more so as it went on. But then I have real issues with a lot of physics on a very large scale - Dark Matter and Dark Energy are really fudges to match the equations to the observable universe. No-one can say what they actually are. I think it is much more likely that there is something wrong with the underlying assumptions, I'm just not clever enough to say what!
Rashed,
Interesting concept.If I understand you correctly,.that red shift light can be compounded to increase its energy back up to visable light. Or put differently the wave length can be shrunk back to visable light...Is this is like saying if you get enough red flashlights and turn them on all at once they will appear white. I really don't know much about this so I have to apply what logic I have of basic physics. In my view as the source of light moves faster and faster from the observer the wave length is stretched so that it appears to move towards the red end of the spectrum. As the source continues to move faster away the light will continue to be stretched until it passes beyond the red sector of the spectrum and still it will be stretched further..until it enters the radio wave length.. Which might explain why only radio telescopes might see the more distant parts of the universe.... If this concept is so.and it keeps stretching the wave length will it eventually stretch to a straight line... That is very interesting Rashed..never thought of that before.
I agree with Phil that theoretical Physicists invents concepts to explain mathamatical models they have created. They are like my wife who is constantly trying on new clothes when we go shopping, trying to get that certain perfection. There are buzz words that are in vogue..If you go back to books written in the early part of the 20th century, radio waves had to have "Ether" to be transmitted through.That concept came and went as many of today's will. Worm holes, dark matter, etc it is all parts of the struggle to understand the universe......We are going to be trying on many coats and sweaters, get used to sitting it out like a good husband.
All I know is this, when they acccelerate large particles at the Large Hadron Collider (CERN) and these particles meet other particles at high speed the greeting can be quite disruptive... The closing speed is not even at the speed of light, but oh what a show. Moving a space ship through space even near the speed of light and hitting just a stray carbon atom could be a mini-supernova event. However, in my imagination, as I think about this idea of cold matter..thats us, approaching the speed of light, something has to happen to the matter itself. The atoms themselves must undergo something strange.... would electrons still remain loyal to their parents.. would neutrons remain neutons or decide to become protons and start their own families ? Would matter become a sort of plasma..half light half matter.....Do we know anything at all about this.. I know I don't.
The nay-sayers were right.. man can't fly....He still can't. His machines can and do...whether we are aboard or not...the machines can fly - I know I have seen them. We have to make compromises to get what we want. If we want to put man on far away planets we will I suspect have to play by the rules of the game. The idea of shipping all the deadweight of matter in the shape of people across intersteller space is itself absurd. ..Lets say we had a colony on the Mars and you wanted to build a mechanical device.. would you ship all the parts from earth at huge expence or would you use a 3D printer and create all the parts there from the matter that is already on the Mars. That is our doorway to placing people on far, far away places...it conquors time and distance. We just have to compromise...Man and women as a species goes, but not man and women as individuals.
Anyway Rashed, you got me thinking also...thanks.
TangoAlpha..
Another mistake is in 2001..when they take the Sphere from the Earth orbit wheel station to the moon.. When they come to land on the moon the spheere deploys landing legs...Errr there is no air friction in space ..why would you retract and deploy landing legs ? Outside of that for the first time a movie showed us a fairly realistic view of what space could be like....
I am an old fogey so I was around when JFK gave that speech..."to land man on the moon within the decade"... Considering what was hardware was availaable at the time.. it was an audacious reach.. Years later I visited Cape Kennedy and saw the Jupiter C....WOW what a monster... I stood for about ten minutes just looking at all the pumps and plumbing that led to the rocket motors .. trying to figure it out.. What an amazing piece of engineering. So much could go wrong....and yet they pulled it off.
Even the NASA IXS Enterprise mockup has the crew cabin oriented on the spaceship's normal axis (like a yacht), whereas its engines are oriented on the longitudinal axis, so "down" will only ever be towards the back of the cabin, and there is no phase of flight ever where the "floor" will be anything other than a wall.
Monkey bars to get to the front -- sorry, top -- seats maybe?
The funny thing is that, these unreal ideas are giving scientists true directions to look to. Warp Drive is an idea that they are giving serious thought to, although likely not at all the same as used in Star Trek. String Theory is such an idea to open up possibilities of many things we all "Know" to be unreal, though, if it (string theory) truly is real, than our unreal is no longer nearly as black and white as we make it.
I am not physicist, but I do enjoy watching their movies on science and speculations. It's... how should I put this... A real Blast!
Rashad, I see that sometimes you're see the story, or lack of a story, as an effect, and sometimes seeing effects as a story. And this can be understandable - especially in this "Information Age"
With so much ability to post anything we want to the internet, we get folks doing just that. Sometimes it's a really bad thing, but it's also propelling us into the possibilities of being able to do things that we never could before... like make an effect and show it to everybody - just the effect alone.
In our field, we may easily fall into a trap of looking at far too many of these effects shots. So we have a danger of getting sick of them much quicker and easier than te next person, I'm imagining.
Diomede! Wonderful post! I love it - wholeheartedly!
FifthElement, Rosie and I found ourselves on the edge of our seats several times in that one. What a great example. Like ALL STORY meets ALL EFFECTS together in one - and yet they've pulled it off quite well - even in getting us to drop our guard as to what is truly possible and what is not.
In fact, we Humans, as we get more and more intelligent, so they say... should begin to understand that "Impossible" is a definition that changes as time goes by.
Like Diomede, I really hope that I can convincingly ask my audience to let down their guard, and maintain that throughout.
...and if I cannot, at least they'll know, right from the start, what they're getting themselves into.
Of course, Caroline Munro had nothing to do with us warm-blooded youth males liking the flick either, did she?
She's a bit of a visual effect all her own!
The fact that they are calling it a warp drive, warp bubble etc., is directly down to Star Trek. Of course, it may never happen, at least not in our lifetimes. But it's still cool nevertheless. Star Trek has inspired a lot of real science, scientists and inventors.
Just come back from watching Logan this evening. Suspension of disbelief intact. Mind you, it was much more of a character piece than previous films (it was also a 15 certificate, compared to the more usual 12A - more swearing and lots of slashy slashy)
15 certificate and 12A - Must be UK terms?
Right. Which is my point. So often folks dismiss fiction as being an impossibility, so they choose to dislike it. But then Science comes along and makes some of the most far-fetched ideas a reality.
Personally, I don't care about how 'possible' things are. If the movie is fun, I usually have fun. But I have my taste issues too, so I can't knock other people's ideas of what they like and dislike - nor the reasoning behind it. I have no idea why I simply cannot stand watching a lot of comedy movies, even though I love comedy when it comes into the non-comedy movies that I watch. sometimes I might object a little, but for the most part I just laugh and enjoy it. But movies based on comedy as the central format generally turn me off - but not all. I loved Airplane and the Naked Gun series and Hot Shots, for example.