Mackey.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA (12/28/83)
From: Kevin <Mackey.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA> Reply to messages in V8 #133 Holy hologram! Everybody's finding computer effects in movies! Even where they may not exist! "I found the movie a bit [ROTJ] dull, but spent lots of time looking at the rasters in the images." -- Dave Mason, U. Toronto CSRG ". . . seemed obviously computer-generated to me: Indiana Jones dropping the staff down into the buried room. . ." -- hplabs!hao!seismo!rochester!bukys @ Ucb-Vax Anything that looks grainy or is just a poorly done special effect has the "computer look." Like the "ground effect" around the vehicle escaping from Jaba's barge (mentioned by Dave Mason above). And things that were *not* done by computer are mistaken for computer effects. For instance, the projection of Princess Leia (sic?) from R2D2 in SW. In the documentary about the movie they *say* they filmed a TV image of her, and that's what gave it the holographic quality. Yet I still hear several people referring to that as a computer generated image. I'm not a computer special effects expert, but I don't like people getting so obsessed by computer effects that they start finding them everywhere, ignoring the fact that the scene was poorly filmed, not giving credit to the ingenuity of doing it another way (the Leia image), not paying attention to the movie itself, and spreading a kind of computer illiteracy by attributing to computer technology what some creative people can do with stone knives and bear skins. As a side note, I was disappointed by the lack of better effects in ROTJ. It seemed like just more of the same, but just done better. I suppose when you use the same people you get the same look. I was also disappointed by the small number of computer effects. While it's true that they shouldn't just throw the effects in to have them, and the wire diagram fits the need of the scene, I was looking forward to seeing some new things, especially after hearing talks by some Lucasfilm people. Maybe they're still developing some effects. Maybe they'll give us something like "The Works" since it seems the New York Institute of Technology will complete "The Works" in 1995 if they can only finish a few (though from what I've seen from stills, excellent) minutes a year. It's going to take an organization like Lucasfilm, with the people, money, and name, to get a fully computer generated film to a theater near you. ~Kevin
mason@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Mason) (01/02/84)
Kevin is quite right, the rasters do not imply computer generated, merely
computer massaged. There were (it seemed) virtually no computer generated
images. The rasters (and the ground effects around aircars) are the results
of a sloppy job with the blue-screening machines (as opposed to the blue-
meanie scrachines). The interesting question is: once they get the images
into a computer (as opposed to generating them) what is the limit to what they
can do with them. As mentioned, the current state of the art with truly
computer generated images is SLOW (though high quality), but why not use that
horse-power to do neat things with video-taped images. As an example of the
short term future, go to see TRON: the story's a little (a LITTLE?) weak,
but the graphics are great, an the innovative combination of computer
generated with computer mangled images is quite effective.
--
-- Dave Mason, U. Toronto CSRG,
{utzoo,linus,cornell,watmath,ihnp4,allegra,floyd,decwrl,
decvax,uw-beaver,ubc-vision}!utcsrgv!masonmsc@qubix.UUCP (Mark Callow) (01/02/84)
The rasters do not even imply computer massaged. The image of Princess
Leia "projected" from R2D2 never went anywhere near a computer. They
merely ran the film of Leia through a telecine machine to get
the rasters so it would appear to have been generated by an electronic
scanning system (not necessarily a computer). They then superimposed
the result on the scene of the watchers.
--
From the Tardis of Mark Callow
msc@qubix.UUCP, decwrl!qubix!msc@Berkeley.ARPA
...{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!qubix!msc, ...{ittvax,amd70}!qubix!msc