This is the final part of a 4 part series this person did.
If you haven’t seen any of the others … here’s the playlist on youtube
You should check it out. Basically a VFX artist calling bullshit on the whole “we did it all practically without any CGI” marketing and fan hype as the lies they are. The key take away being that so much CGI is actually really hard to spot and everywhere and all of those who say they can easily spot CGI are just catching the obvious things and full of themselves.
The rest of the CGI in films is just flatly lied about by the studios. Parts 3 and 4, IIRC, do a good job of recounting how this is an old behaviour from way before CGI all tied up with the marketing (ie lying) impulses of the studios and also likely with their greed. You’ll see (in part 1 I think) a particularly egregious example of lying (or being deceptive) about CGI usage.
As part 4 concludes with, you can’t trust hollywood on whether they’re using CGI … they’re much more interested in lying to you than being open about how they do things … and second, the industry is now stuck in an anti-CGI hype cycle, where the audience think they know what “no-CGI” looks like because they’ve been influenced by the studios’ lies which has now created expectations that can’t be disappointed which continues the studio lies and audience misconceptions.
For me, the insidious part here is that there is a whole industry of artists being swept under the rug while also being absolutely essential to what we enjoy about films today. That they have fair compensation issues cannot be a coincidence at all. So, for me, anyone who’s all about “no-CGI” in films is really part of something rather hauntingly dumb and sinister.
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Most people definitely don’t realize how much of what they’re watching is CGI. I remember watching some random documentary about it years ago and it was going through examples of romcoms, of all things. Even those are absolutely filled with CGI, and have been for decades.
It’s honestly pretty impressive. It’s amazing to me that everything Hollywood puts out relies so much on the stuff while the people who actually do the work get crapped on by the studios.
reminds me of this article https://www.ign.com/articles/godzilla-minus-one-did-vfx-the-90s-way-and-thats-why-it-won-an-oscar
about how the director of Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki) actually appreciates the art of CGI/VFX, and that’s part of why they won the Oscar
Yep!
The lack of any “we did CGI right” and the “vfx artists did an awesome job” from the studios is a massive red flag that they are happier to throw an industry under the bus than put up any quality control in the way they make films … where, AFAICT, hollywood does a weird thing with VFX by auctioning off jobs to the lowest bidder and so treating VFX like a construction project rather than an art work.
These videos were really interesting and I really enjoyed the way he presented it. I’m looking forward to whatever he puts out next!
Yea it’s really interesting whenever a professional with experience decides to put up a YouTube channel and just share stuff.
