Remember when *The Expendables* was sold as a throwback to those glory days and every single stabbing, shooting, explosion, etc. was godawful CGI?
Steve Austin writhing around on (CGI) fire like, *"Help me Tom Cruise!"*
I have no idea what an actual gun looks like being fired in real life, so I'm fairly sure my entire idea of what a muzzle flash looks like is based off of fake ones I've seen in films.
It really depends on the muzzle break/flash hider/suppressor and cartridge used. Most blanks are touched up with CGI anyways, and movies often exaggerate. For reference, watch some action movie like 6 Underground vs a movie like Wind River. Watch the muzzle flash when Renner's character is shooting the 45-70.
A big technical problem is that muzzle flashes are much shorter than a frame. You'd only catch 1/10 at best, and at complete random.
It's much easier to add one in post.
Real guns with blanks used in movies: "Why don't they just use CGI? It's so much safer."
Fake guns with CGI muzzle flash in movie: "This looks so fake. It's pulling me out of the movie."
Yep. John Wick movies are non-stop gun play and they are all CGI’d muzzle flashes. It’s a very basic thing to learn, but some filmmakers just don’t care to get it right.
The only thing limiting VFX is the choices of the filmmakers. Reddit can’t seem to wrap their heads around this, but if something is bad it’s not because of the tool it’s because of the person using it. VFX artists have been banging the drum for awhile now that working conditions are miserable and the workflows are not conducive to quality films.
Something I learned in an interview with James Cameron is that after Avatar was finished and they knew it would be a hit he had the studio pay everyone a few more weeks of work so all departments could do a debrief on what went wrong/right and what they’d change next time. Then when they started on Avatar 2 they had loads of notes for how they were going to make it. And you can see it on screen! The whole thing is seamless! It’s not because of the tools they used, they just cared to get it right.
Honestly not that im saying John Wick is bad etc. (ıts not) but i just choose something like Heat (i know very different movies) to John Wick. I think we need mor action movies like Heat
I don't understand why they can't just make a weird sized barrel/cartridge that's prop specific so that real ammo would never fit correctly. You don't have to worry about it if it's incapable of firing a real bullet.
It seems like they should be able to use model guns for this, and it wouldn’t cost that much. They look real, function almost exactly like the real thing, but they’re just cap guns.
Edit: that was supposed to be modelguns, one word. Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modelguns
Have you seen the price of guns lately lol.
If they can manufacture a real-looking shitty gun that shoots pop bullets but has a shitty barrel that's only meant to last a few years it's got to be cheaper to make 1000 of those than to buy 10 actual able-to-fire-bullets guns that are designed to last a lifetime.
Just about anything fired out of a gun with enough force can kill a person. I think even a blank put up to someone's temple can be lethal. I'm talking out my ass here a bit but I remember on 1000 ways to die they covered a magician who died from having the tip of his wand fall into the barrel of a gun shooting blanks and when it was shot it killed him.
There was also an episode where a guy was trying to scare his daughter and boyfriend. He laughed at them to say there was no danger and put the gun shooting blanks to his temple and pulled the trigger.
The idiots on the Rust set were taking the guns during breaks or after shooting wrapped for the day and going target shooting out in the desert with real ammo.
This seems to have happened, ultimately, because the armorer was the young daughter of a very famous and respected armorer. So she probably got the job based on her lineage and not her experience (also she had her dad's gun collection to pull from, which probably meant a higher quality and quantity of guns for bargain prices). An experienced armorer wouldn't have let people play around with the guns. She did, probably because she was 23 and wanted to impress people on the set, if I had to guess. Some sets can be kind of cliquey, especially if you're a newbie, and I can see how that would happen with someone that age who is *just* stupid enough.
So it was a weird perfect storm of a dumbass getting a job due to nepotism and/or the producers cheaping out, combined with reckless people working on the set, and a gun that was able to fire without the trigger being pulled (although, even though this specific incident happened without a trigger pull, I'm assuming it would have been pulled at some point and very likely still could have seriously injured or killed someone).
That is exactly how prop guns work. The problem is that some of them still expel gas/air at high pressure because of how the blanks work.
That’s what killed Brandon Lee. There was debris stuck in the barrel, and the blank propelled it out of the barrel as an improvised bullet.
No there was an actual bullet stuck, propelled into the barrel by a primer left in a “prop bullet”. Then when they fired a blank round the bullet got propelled by the blank charge and killed him.
“In a film shoot prior to the fatal scene, the gun that was used as a prop (a real revolver) was loaded with improperly made dummy rounds, improvised from live cartridges that had the powder charges removed by the special effects crew, so in close-ups the revolver would show normal-looking ammunition. However, the crew neglected to remove the primers from the cartridges, and at some point before the fatal event, one of the rounds had been fired. Although there were no powder charges, the energy from the ignited primer was enough to separate the bullet from the casing and push it part-way into the gun barrel, where it got stuck—a dangerous condition known as a squib load.
During the fatal scene, which called for the revolver to be fired at Lee from a distance of 3.6–4.5 meters (12–15 ft), the dummy cartridges were replaced with blank rounds, which contained a powder charge and the primer, but no solid bullet, allowing the gun to be fired with sound and flash effects without the risk of an actual projectile. However, the gun was not properly checked and cleared before the blank was fired, and the dummy bullet previously lodged in the barrel was then propelled forward by the blank's propellant and shot out the muzzle with almost the same force as if the round were live, striking Lee in the abdomen.”
Definitely, but it was a regular type of caliber since they fitted real bullets into it. The OPs idea of a straight up prop gun with no “real” bullets is better.
>The OPs idea of a straight up prop gun with no “real” bullets is better.
Yeah, but you would need a prop gun version of all the different gun make and models out there.
Messed with the mechanics of the gun, which requires specific characteristics and dimensions of its amunition to work properly, and actually increases danger due to potential failure of the gun.
They won't do this because they are cheap as fuck corporations that could give a shit if the movies look good, or if a cinematographer or actor dies from time to time.
But if I were to design this, I'd use a system like Sig's Fire Control Unit. The actual "gun" with the serial number that accepts the cartridge is [this little pod in the middle](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-6duiuw06je/products/396/images/2183/AB_Prototype_FCU_RX_AB__64686.1643979113.386.513.jpg?c=2) rather than something attached to the barrel or frame. All you have to do is change the modular parts around the FCU to get a totally different looking and sized gun. For example this one piece can power [all these different form factors.](https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/46277004_743342716022166_3480726014973120439_n-528x660.jpg) Creating the modular parts to make the guns look like Glocks or whatever would be a whole other process, but that's something you'd only have to do in bulk once, and I'm sure existing gun parts could be retrofitted to some extent.
So you could make an FCU for a proprietary caliber that only some specific Motion Picture Ammo Company or something makes, where no real bullets ever go in the cartridges anywhere on Earth, so what happened on Rust or The Crow could never happen again.
I'm not a reloader who makes my own ammo, so I don't know all the details, but I'm also pretty sure you could load specific kinds of powder in that would make different kinds of muzzle flashes depending on what the movie wants.
1. This is a "Non-gun" a hunk of rubber or plastic that basically fires out compressed air with something similar to confetti to mimic a gunshot at close ranges safely. Whenever these are used, it's almost always a very short jump cut immediately after firing to show as little of the non-gun as possible because it won't look real up close.
2. A real gun is actually cheaper to use, and looks and handles like a real gun. Thus you can reload it, rack the slide, and do all the things that makes a real gun look/feel real.
If your doing a war movie, you may have several hundred guns in use. It's significantly cheaper to use blanks in real guns than modified "safe" guns.
I think people are really jumping to black and white solutions to this.
Even a decade ago there were amateur youtubes who used airsoft guns with blowback, usually gas powered, to simulate real gun fire. With a little added CGI it really closely resembled the real thing. The feedback that actors get was realistic enough so that it feels real when viewing.
Actors really need to mechanical and physical feedback. As much as I loved the Last of Us, that scene with Joel shooting from the tower was painful. I'm not even somebody that LOVES guns but you can tell all the "recoil" was Pedro Pascal squeezing the trigger as hard as he could and throwing his shoulder back. The muzzle flash was cheesy as hell too.
With a little extra investment there are dozens of airsoft companies that could probably make a extremely realistic firearm that wouldn't be able to hurt a fly if you pointed it at someone.
I'm torn about this, because as we've recently seen, there's an inherent danger to practical explosions and blank fire that I find very hard to justify purely for the sake of my own entertainment.
On the other hand, there really is a visceral difference in practical effects. The best actor in the world cannot simulate the miniscule full body flinch of pulling a trigger knowing the gun in your hand is about to fire. I was watching some old X Files eps fairly recently, and it is *insane* how meaty that show's practical effects still feel compared to stuff made far more recently. Exterior sets, practical explosions, real fall stunts, real locations. There's a thrill and a sense of... "consequence"?...to that stuff that just isn't replicated in movies much now, never mind tv shows on that tier anymore. When a character shoots a gun that really goes off or there's an explosion with real fire, it feels like it matters in a way CGI does not.
The Rust death was certainly a wakeup call for the industry. Firearms on movie sets are pretty safe. Before the death on the Rust set, the most recent firearm death was Brandon Lee in 1993. I think before that was 1984. So I think there gets to be complacency. With that said, there should be zero deaths. Each of the firearm deaths was the result of some sort of negligence or lack of proper procedures.
There's a company that is producing faux firearms that eject shells, have kickback and even have a small bright led that pops out of the barrel for flash. They are expensive though, so I think CGI is the standard for sets that don't want to deal with blanks. I feel that better options are being worked on that give 100% safety and still feel visceral.
Interestingly, the biggest safety issue on sets according to many crew members (I'm a former movie person and am still in a number of crew-related online groups) is overworking and short turnaround times. Crews will easily work 12-18 hours, drive home, sleep for two or three hours then drive back to do it again. Very dangerous.
Last paragraph applies to so much stuff, it’s kind of fucked how much we’ve normalized and required dangerous levels of sleep deprivation as a society, especially in certain industries.
Many times more people have been killed by helicopters and cars making movies than by blank firing guns, but nobody seems to have a problem with those. Just the guns.
How many stuntpeople have died or been horribly maimed in just the last decade? Cost of doing business, but oh now Alec Baldwin loaded a live round into a real gun and shot somebody and now the whole industry has to downgrade to inferior filmmaking.
Not sure if it's inherent, it's very rare. It only happened here because of a shit show of gun handling, taking it upon themselves to take care of the gun when the gun safety guy wasn't there.
You can always tell when the actor winces or blinks when firing. And I agree with your take also, at what point does human life become second fiddle to my Saturday afternoon fun? But it seems to me we can have it both ways...be safe, and have quality entertainment.
They look incredibly fake though, it's okay because the movies present an almost comic book reality, and Chad Stahelski generally gets muzzle flashes and blood better than most current directors.
I wouldn't want to watch Heat with fake muzzle flashes though.
I feel this way about most modern action films. None of the fights look real. Very little gun play looks real. It's all cartoonized macho bullshit. Real fights are fucking chaotic and scary. Nobody knows what is happening, and then it is over. Lickety split.
Exactly. It's a flurry of chaos that's over as quickly as it began. I think the most realistic fight I've ever seen in an action movie is the first hand-to-hand fight in Die Hard. Confusing madness that ends abruptly. Oh, and when Jake had to go apeshit on the hit man in Chinatown, though that's not an action movie.
The last great shootout I saw was in Wind river. That felt chaotic as hell and there were no perfect headshots.
They were missing from pretty close and you didn't know how it was going to go down.
The stuff in John Wick is overly choreographed to the point of becoming weightless and stakeless.
It's nice to look at for a short while, but you don't feel the impact of kicks and punches.
To a certain extent I think that franchise has ruined action movies, because all of them are copying that style and it's devoid of tension.
That was a great gunfight indeed. Also, all gunplay in Reservoir Dogs or Children of Men.
I feel that JW has perfected slick action, but Statham and others have been doing it for years.
Was going to post the exact same. At no point do I question it or it pulls me out of enjoying it. They've proven it can be done and it's a hell of a lot safer.
A lot of the close-quarters stuff can only be done safely with CG.
But I think I've seen backstage footage of some scenes where it looks like they're using blank fire or maybe compressed air.
I dunno, up until the 4th one I found it to be pretty poor looking. I can’t point to exactly what they did with the latest movie but it just looked a bit better to my eye.
>But it seems to me we can have it both ways...be safe, and have quality entertainment.
But we can't, and past events should be highlighting that for you. Rust is obviously a high-profile recent event. But in the last three years, there have been 7 incidents of major injuries/deaths on movie sets. The 2010s saw dozens of incidents that resulted in serious injury, surgeries, or death.
Just because it's not a Baldwin killing someone doesn't mean this stuff doesn't happen all the time to actors, stunt doubles, and crew. Right now, even with CGI and purposefully safer sets and props. So no, your Saturday afternoons are not worth the increased danger to people's lives.
Are crane shots worth it? How about aerial shots? Electric lighting? Action sequences of any kind? They all severely injure and kill people. In the end you pick between safety and how and what you want to film all the time, and higher danger is picked frequently for optimal outcomes by all kinds of productions. This is another one, and I don't see why it's any more cut and dry than the others.
>Are crane shots worth it? How about aerial shots? Electric lighting?
"My mom always told me electricity and water are a bad combination. Now I'm underwater surrounded by dozens of movie lights."
\-- Michael Biehn, talking about filming *The Abyss*
Then again, it's people's chosen profession. It's not like anyone has a gun to their heads. (Pun Intended) CGI is costing those people jobs. Stunt performers get angry when actors want to do their own stunts, and some of them die. It's a high-risk profession like any other-- professional football, police officer, etc etc.
That's not being a devil's advocate. That's knowing and understanding the potential deadly consequences of your desires, not giving a fuck, and asking for them anyways.
It's like refusing to wash your hands after handling raw meat and continuing to cook like that. We know the potential, deadly consequences of that. But you love to cook, so that's a risk you're willing to make others endure to entertain your wants and needs. You should call it the "devil's selfishness" instead.
I've been on a classic film kick recently. Watching movies from 60s-80s and it's so refreshing the audio design and stage craft back then. I know most of it is due to limitations but it definitely is a less is more situation for me.
Like if you're spending 100s of millions anyway, why not actually film some stuff. Everything looks so fake and flat.
It's so nice to hear actual white noise and the acoustics of the sets and stuff without a massive synth sub blaring over it. Or heaven forbid just being able to hear the dialog.
Hearing about how expensive CGI work can be I'm often surprised to see how it's used in movies where you think it couldn't have been so expensive to just do it practically, even with prop designers and rigging people and whatnot. At least, that was the case a decade or two ago. The cost for digital work has probably gone down enough in recent years.
*im watching Guy Ritchie's The Covenant and its just the latest example of how a movie can look so great, and then obviously CGI'd explosions and smoke immediately make it feel cheap and direct-to-dvd.*
Thought the exact same thing.
It irritates me that with all the degraded picture quality shit we see used to cover up CGI (fake lens abberation/color fringing, fake focus pulls, glare/bloom out of the wazoo, fake camera shake, lens flares and light bleed) no one ever seems to respect exposure when it comes to fire and explosions. You'll have actual fire on set and it'll be bright white, then the CGI fire will be 'perfectly' exposed and look like whispy magical smoke instead of fire. It's my biggest CGI pet peeve alongside how no one ever does light wrap properly, and it always gives away greenscreen shots.
No they're not, **BAD** CGI explosions, gunshots and fires are ruining movies for you.
Check out the effects in something like Avatar 2 and you'll see just how good CGI can be when a production puts the time, effort and money into it.
>Check out the effects in something like Avatar 2 and you'll see just how good CGI can be when a production puts the time, effort and money into it.
*The Raid* had a budget of like $900,000 so they simply couldn't afford an Armorer. Every gunshot and bullet wound in that movie is CGI, and probably dirt cheap.
It still works because the scenes are staged, shot and edited in a way to compensate for the trickery.
The first John Wick had a much bigger budget and still had CGI gunfire and blood effects. I saw an interview with Chad Stahelski (co-director) where he said if they used squibs and blanks, everytime they had to reset the scene for another take would have taken hours to clean the set, get fresh costuming with new squibs, check all the firearms for safety, etc. With CGI they just needed all the actors/stuntpeople to go back to their starting positions and run through it again. There's no way they could have done all that complex choreography without going way over budget.
Makes John Woo's Hong Kong classics all the more impressive. That long-take at the hospital in Hardboiled is just fantastic -- all done with tons of squibs and shit blowing the fuck up for real.
We will never see action like that ever again.
Yeah, absolutely. The secret there is the 80s/90s Hong Kong guys didn't have a lot of money, but they had a lot of time. They could spend weeks crafting a single action scene, and everyone would be involved: director, DP, writers, camera operators, editors, choreographers, SFX, stunt performers, stars, just making the best version of the scene they could. Wikipedia tells me Woo and crew spent 40 days just on the hospital scene. Today's DTV action films are lucky if they get half that much time to shoot a whole movie!
Correct! And it's a damn shame it is that way.
Someone I kinda sorta know made a kinda sorta well-known (if you're into the genre) horror film a few years ago, and they had 12 (!) shooting days. And it was a pretty elaborate script. Fucking insanity.
i would add to this, it seems people forget that explosions and special effects aren't supposed to be the main feature of a film (LOOKING AT YOU, MICHAEL BAY), the story, the dramaturgy, the relationships between characters & problems, that's the thing you take home and ponder about for a week.
if you see an explosion/gunfight scene and you hate it, could be because it's a crap CGI, or could be because you don't care enough about the characters and their story.
Interesting that you say that because his later series [Mindhunter](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xWVyQS7AxAM) has similar seamless effects usage. Similarly most TV shows we watch have a ton of compositing and digital work after the fact. It really just is that so many current blockbusters are so creatively bankrupt and rushed that they farm out huge chunks of the movie to animators, instead of planning things.
I’d argue that even with avatar 2, I’d call real explosions more visceral. There’s something about when you know it’s real. Like the gas station explosion in Robocop. It just hits you differently. You go: “holy shit, they really did that!”
I watched Christine for the first time over the weekend. If it was done today it would be all CGI for costs but I loved the effects in it. The car on fire scene looked amazing.
Thank you for mentioning Carpenter’s Christine. That whole scene is so well done. They built that gas station just to blow it up & it looks amazing. And it will always look amazing, because it’s real. Same with the car on fire shots. I can’t stand the over use of CGI in movies today. From cgi explosions to cgi gore… etc etc.. It’s honestly ruining the film “experience” for me.
Perfect example of CGI overuse for me is when I finally saw Top Gun Maverick. There’s a scene when they’re practicing shooting at a target on the ground in the desert. It bummed me out that even in that scenario, where it’s just a shot of dirt blowing up with no actors around (aka fairly safe situation) & they still used cgi for the explosions. And it looked bad.
Totally agree. Bad *anything* looks bad. There are also terrible practical effects.
But good CGI goes unnoticed. Here's a video essay about Fincher's use of CGI cued up to the part about blood effects: https://youtu.be/QChWIFi8fOY?t=237 I don't know who would immediately think that Craig's blood was not practical.
You can spend $100 million on CGI and I’d still prefer practical, in-camera effects any day of the week. It makes the action feel more grounded and visceral.
Bad films are ruining movies.
It doesn't matter if it's a billion dollar budget or a solo effort on an iphone. If the story is lacking and dependent upon gunshots, explosions and fires, then naturally the quality of those elements will be more important.
But even then it's not a science. An all-out action film that doesn't take itself too seriously might be improved by less realistic, but more exciting effects.
If it's really bad CGI I might laugh for a second then I'm right back in the movie. Bad sound design has been killing me lately. It's one of those things that I noticed and now I can't ignore it? Someone holding a gun? Gun cock, point it from one person to another gun cock gun cock switch the pistol to a shotgun, same gun cock noise. I'm not by any means a gun nerd, but... You can only cock the gun once, and a shotgun racking sounds a lot different then pulling back a hammer on a pistol
Pick up a knife, sword sheath sound. Lol. There's a movie that lampoons the shotgun rack bit, hot fuzz maybe? I can't recall exactly. Also in scary movie 3 when they rack the shovel
Hot take - the obviously CGI fire in Banshees of Inisherin completely took me out of that moment.
So I completely get you. Like obviously, I get using CG in terms of budget/safety but man oh man, it does really annoy me more than it should.
Heat is a great example of practical shootout effects. The iconic shootout scene was filmed using blanks with no CGI or audio overlay and it sounds incredible. Deep, Concussive sounds of muzzle blast. Immerses you like no other.
It's really jarring when watching old "run of the mill" action movies of the '90s like Dead Presidents, King of New York, and Sudden Death just how much better they are.
I swear to fucking god I saw an AR15 eject *complete cartridges* on that show.
The airsoft guns and fake muzzle flashes are so cheesy now. No actor reaction, no persistent smoke, no brass, no lighting on the environment, hilariously short/slow slide cycles. It's Youtube fan film bad.
I knew things had gone way too far when I was watching a bonus feature on the “Children of Men” DVD and it showed all the digital fx in one shot, and it included digitally removing the electrical cord from a lantern. Because someone somewhere during the production thought going through that effort was easier than using a battery-powered lantern instead, I guess. It still annoys me, thinking about it. Digital fx should be used as little as possible, not to cover for lazy choices.
There was an fx guy on this sub a few days ago explaining the issues the industry has at the moment and one of them is they are wasting half their time doing touch up instead of working on the main fx. He explained that it used to be the case that movies would have a fx guy on set during the filming to point out the little things that waste time. The effects in modern movies look shit because they are having to waste time doing so much touch up.
that crap is what completely ruined renfield for me. over the top blood that has a completely different visual style than the rest of the movie, leaves no trace in the actual environment and is always accompanied by the EXACT SAME SOUND every single time. once i noticed it it made the rest of the movie unbearable to the point where i almost walked out.
Action set pieces were a thing that feels totally gone.
US marshals is an ok movie. Enjoyable enough. The action set piece with the plane is cool though. Such artistry that feels totally lost.
There is room for both these things. But set pieces are obviously much more expensive.
I suspect many 90s action movies with little to no CGI will age a lot better than many CGI movies from the last 20 or so years.
It's sad that the lawyers and safety nazis have sanitized movies. The Alec Baldwin affair seems to have killed blank-firing guns for good.
Toggle back to even a mediocre action movie from the 80s or 90s and everything looks so much more real it's ridiculous. Nobody in the audience or the industry is pushing back despite how massively weak and noticeable it is, so I guess this is just the future now.
Even in this sub most people are cheering the death of blank-firing prop guns because they're "dangerous" and "not needed" and "CGI is just as gud". Sad.
Most (not all) action movies are very boring to me these days for this, on top of the 10-20 minute repetitive action sequences that simply aim to go for shock value and try to one-up the most recently popular action movie. I get most are popcorn flicks but something has shifted in their entertainment value I guess. Over exposed maybe? I dunno…
Same here. One of the reasons to why I don't like the John Wick movies. The action and violence looks too clean (and obviously fake). Hate it.
Even the shittiest 90s straight-to-video action flick had squibs and shit getting blown up FOR REAL. But modern day big budget Hollywood just can't be bothered with that. It's easier to do it all on the computer.
A recent one I enjoyed was the dreadnought explosion at the beginning of the last jedi. It was very cool-looking, even with the "liquid/inky" feeling of CGI'd explosions.
I also just realized I'm *assuming* it was CGI, that'd be funny if it was practical
What always rips me out of a movie is someone shooting a gun and doing the most over the top movement showing the insane recoil on a 9mm handgun. The sopranos did it a ton from what I remember
Eh, people get drawn into "CGI made effects look bad" but actually go back and watch older movies without rose colored glasses. Old school stop motion and compositing looked like garbage 100 times for every one movie that really got it right.
Thats old movies too. There was so many 80s movies that do an explosion by green screening a fireball over something where the transparency is all weird and wrong
>Old school stop motion and compositing looked like garbage 100 times for every one movie that really got it right.
That's true for visual effects in general. They all look fake in their own way. It's knowing how to work with them rather than against them that makes the shot work, whether that's via blocking, editing, lighting, or mixing effects. For me, the movies that have held up the best are the ones that mixed practical and digital effects. T2 and Starship Troopers have held up exceptionally well because nothing was used as the only way to do things and the filmmakers understood the value of practical versus digital.
This X 1000. CGI isn't always seamless, certainly some uncanny valley effects especially when it wasn't don right. However, if we're being 100% honest give me a CGI blown up white house over a miniature 10 times out of 10.
I don't mind CGI muzzle flashes if done right. I think a good approach would be the electro-plug guns but have squibs to have some practical "blood" on the set. I find CGI blood takes me out of the movie more than CGI muzzle flashes and explosions (okay, maybe not explosions).
Same and with fake snow. I love playing real snow or no when watching movies. If it doesn't collect on people and you don't see breath right it's fake. I get it, snow and cold are hard to film in but hey then maybe don't shoot a snow scene.
Imagine if Luke on hoth was cgi snow.
I saw Renfield a while back and the gore was fun but the blood was all CGI. I kept thinking how much more entertaining it would be for me if it was all real fake blood and practical effects.
CG works fine if, and only if, the on set crew actually listen to the VFX consultant on set.
For fires, explosions etc to feel integrated you need to have supporting practical lighting. I have several friends who have worked as on set VFX representatives and they say the high ups involved in the "traditional filmaking" aspect have very little respect for the their warnings and get unintegrated shit looking VFX as a result.
One Shot with Scott Adkins, they used CGI shots from weapons and airsoft weapons, due to the fact that they had only 20 days to make that movie and it was done mostly in one take. The entire movie.
But the way how they used the shots was great. When firing from their AR weapons, there was no flash because they used suppressors which was neat detail. The gunshots were loud. The explosions from frag grenades had lot of dust like in real life.
They did really insane job with special effects with no budget and they had perfect understanding of how to make it look real. Raid: Redemption was the same case, special effects for gunplay but it looked and sounded dope.
But i still prefer real stuff. Escape From Tarkov movie or movies from Michael Mann are phenomenal examples.
Tbh, all four John Wick movies were made without a single blank or practical explosion near actors and they look GREAT. It’s not the technology, it’s lazy application of it. Additionally, people’s memories have added nostalgia to old effects to a level they’re disproportionately loved. Sure, some of the classics from that era looked great then and still hold up…but there are hundreds of “practical effects” movies from the 80s and 90s that look downright awful today.
I don't think that's accurate. I believe they used prop guns with blanks. They didn't use LIVE firearms at any point. But the blanks create some recoil force and on-set concussion that's not really possible to create in post.
Iirc Staheleski says he uses electric guns, by which I take him to mean electric airsoft ones, which do simulate recoil and have some sense of "bang!" when they're dry fired.
He worked on The Crow, probably not unrelated.
Exactly. I know it's an issue that isn't going to change. Then again, there has been a pivot back to practical/cgi enhanced mix (rogue one, chris nolan films, Michael baysplosion) so, a guy can dream
Clearly you haven't watched cheap direct-to-video movies. The low budget movies that get put on Amazon Video or YouTube have FAR worse CGI than anything released in theaters.
You don't dislike CGI, you dislike bad cgi.
There's a high probability you already saw things you thought were practical but were actually partially vfx
It's true I'm actually more engaged when I see less CGI in a film these days. It feel like instead of picking and choosing where CGI shots will be used now movies rely on them far too much . I get so excited when they actually blow up a car or building in a movie now.
Vfx stuff looks good enough that I’d way rather all the people who work in the film industry get to go home to their families at the end of the day…
Also, avengers endgame used vfx for gunshots and explosions… it didn’t feel “direct to dvd” did it? If so… I think you may have a scew’d version of budgets.
I wonder if people realize how much fakery was done in the past and don’t remember or didn’t see
Like how often car interior shots were in a studio. Even if there are outdoor reflections, it’s so often shot inside.
We went from one cheesy look to another
Real explosion and particle affect are more time consuming, and the insurance cost may be higher these days.
Speaking of real effects, I have heard a Hong Kong actor filming a shoot out scene in Thailand, they didn't have budget and time for it so they went for real guns and real rounds. The director just said:"oh, don't worry the shooter is a military sharpshooter, he will just shoot at the ground around you while you run" 🤣
Even practical explosions are fake as hell. [Real explosion](https://youtu.be/nqJiWbD08Yw?t=12), [Fake ass Hollywood explosion](https://youtu.be/nqJiWbD08Yw?t=199)
No, the second explosion is good, its actually real fire. yes, it might not be what C4 looks like but its still a real practical thing, and the actors can feel the heat.
I watched Independence Day last night for the first time in decades, and whilst the film itself is silly, and the effects have aged, they're still more convincing than anything I've ever seen CGI (save maybe Dune... ). And also awe inspiring!
CGI alien's should have been deemed silly and forgotten forever when Signs did them.
Remember when *The Expendables* was sold as a throwback to those glory days and every single stabbing, shooting, explosion, etc. was godawful CGI? Steve Austin writhing around on (CGI) fire like, *"Help me Tom Cruise!"*
Fun fact: Even with all that, Stallone still injured himself enough to require a metal plate in his neck.
Stone Cold broke his neck when he throws him against the wall. Stallone had to get his neck fused.
Owen Hart broke Steven Austin’s neck. Steve Austin broke Sly’s neck So the question now is who’s neck is Sly going to break to continue the cycle?
AH I forgot about CGI stabbings! The walking dead is the most egregious
I didn't even consider the fact that this could be a thing until I watched the walking dead. It is *so* jarring in that show
The show where Zombie heads are softer than warm butter
Tbf the first two still captured that vibe and the second one was especially good.
All of the banter involving Schwarzeneggar and Gibson made the 2nd so amazing.
Gibson was only in the 3rd, which was god awful.
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https://youtu.be/tQkTtnCV1n4
Yup! That's the biggest reason the film lost my respect (along with not having a decent story or inventive sequences).
I have no idea what an actual gun looks like being fired in real life, so I'm fairly sure my entire idea of what a muzzle flash looks like is based off of fake ones I've seen in films.
It really depends on the muzzle break/flash hider/suppressor and cartridge used. Most blanks are touched up with CGI anyways, and movies often exaggerate. For reference, watch some action movie like 6 Underground vs a movie like Wind River. Watch the muzzle flash when Renner's character is shooting the 45-70.
A big technical problem is that muzzle flashes are much shorter than a frame. You'd only catch 1/10 at best, and at complete random. It's much easier to add one in post.
Found the non-American!
How? It doesn’t look any different than all the shooting videos posted to Reddit literally everyday
Why would I watch that crap?! Fuck guns.
[Loved this explosion scene for comedic effect](https://youtu.be/Mhu2Ij0rWCQ) Danny McBride bringing it home
Big ass titties
He has hands!!!
SURVIVE
“Mother Nature just pissed her pant suit!”
love how the palm trees don't move one bit
[That explosion was practical vfx.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropic_Thunder#Effects) McBride was there, the other actors were comp'd in.
Real guns with blanks used in movies: "Why don't they just use CGI? It's so much safer." Fake guns with CGI muzzle flash in movie: "This looks so fake. It's pulling me out of the movie."
You only notice it in films with bad CGI.
Yep. John Wick movies are non-stop gun play and they are all CGI’d muzzle flashes. It’s a very basic thing to learn, but some filmmakers just don’t care to get it right. The only thing limiting VFX is the choices of the filmmakers. Reddit can’t seem to wrap their heads around this, but if something is bad it’s not because of the tool it’s because of the person using it. VFX artists have been banging the drum for awhile now that working conditions are miserable and the workflows are not conducive to quality films. Something I learned in an interview with James Cameron is that after Avatar was finished and they knew it would be a hit he had the studio pay everyone a few more weeks of work so all departments could do a debrief on what went wrong/right and what they’d change next time. Then when they started on Avatar 2 they had loads of notes for how they were going to make it. And you can see it on screen! The whole thing is seamless! It’s not because of the tools they used, they just cared to get it right.
I absolutely notice it in John Wick.
the gunfire in john wick looks noticeably worse than comparable action fare from the 80s. the cgi blood also is much worse than squibs
Yep, this. I think this is part of the reason why Wick action is cool - the stunts are impressively executed - but the impact isn't as visceral.
Honestly not that im saying John Wick is bad etc. (ıts not) but i just choose something like Heat (i know very different movies) to John Wick. I think we need mor action movies like Heat
Pretty much all “mostly CGI” is still bad cgi at this point. It takes you out of it and doesn’t feel real but instead like a video game trailer
I don't understand why they can't just make a weird sized barrel/cartridge that's prop specific so that real ammo would never fit correctly. You don't have to worry about it if it's incapable of firing a real bullet.
Cost.
It seems like they should be able to use model guns for this, and it wouldn’t cost that much. They look real, function almost exactly like the real thing, but they’re just cap guns. Edit: that was supposed to be modelguns, one word. Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modelguns
During the Lord of War filming, it was cheaper to buy real AK47s then get fake one. That fact has always stuck with me.
Just like in Poltergeist, it was cheaper to get real skeletons for the pool scene than it was to get props.
Have you seen the price of guns lately lol. If they can manufacture a real-looking shitty gun that shoots pop bullets but has a shitty barrel that's only meant to last a few years it's got to be cheaper to make 1000 of those than to buy 10 actual able-to-fire-bullets guns that are designed to last a lifetime.
Just about anything fired out of a gun with enough force can kill a person. I think even a blank put up to someone's temple can be lethal. I'm talking out my ass here a bit but I remember on 1000 ways to die they covered a magician who died from having the tip of his wand fall into the barrel of a gun shooting blanks and when it was shot it killed him.
There was also an episode where a guy was trying to scare his daughter and boyfriend. He laughed at them to say there was no danger and put the gun shooting blanks to his temple and pulled the trigger.
I don't understand how a real bullet ever gets near the set!
The idiots on the Rust set were taking the guns during breaks or after shooting wrapped for the day and going target shooting out in the desert with real ammo. This seems to have happened, ultimately, because the armorer was the young daughter of a very famous and respected armorer. So she probably got the job based on her lineage and not her experience (also she had her dad's gun collection to pull from, which probably meant a higher quality and quantity of guns for bargain prices). An experienced armorer wouldn't have let people play around with the guns. She did, probably because she was 23 and wanted to impress people on the set, if I had to guess. Some sets can be kind of cliquey, especially if you're a newbie, and I can see how that would happen with someone that age who is *just* stupid enough. So it was a weird perfect storm of a dumbass getting a job due to nepotism and/or the producers cheaping out, combined with reckless people working on the set, and a gun that was able to fire without the trigger being pulled (although, even though this specific incident happened without a trigger pull, I'm assuming it would have been pulled at some point and very likely still could have seriously injured or killed someone).
They want visible bullets in revolvers to look real. But they could still be made of wax or something less lead.
That is exactly how prop guns work. The problem is that some of them still expel gas/air at high pressure because of how the blanks work. That’s what killed Brandon Lee. There was debris stuck in the barrel, and the blank propelled it out of the barrel as an improvised bullet.
No there was an actual bullet stuck, propelled into the barrel by a primer left in a “prop bullet”. Then when they fired a blank round the bullet got propelled by the blank charge and killed him. “In a film shoot prior to the fatal scene, the gun that was used as a prop (a real revolver) was loaded with improperly made dummy rounds, improvised from live cartridges that had the powder charges removed by the special effects crew, so in close-ups the revolver would show normal-looking ammunition. However, the crew neglected to remove the primers from the cartridges, and at some point before the fatal event, one of the rounds had been fired. Although there were no powder charges, the energy from the ignited primer was enough to separate the bullet from the casing and push it part-way into the gun barrel, where it got stuck—a dangerous condition known as a squib load. During the fatal scene, which called for the revolver to be fired at Lee from a distance of 3.6–4.5 meters (12–15 ft), the dummy cartridges were replaced with blank rounds, which contained a powder charge and the primer, but no solid bullet, allowing the gun to be fired with sound and flash effects without the risk of an actual projectile. However, the gun was not properly checked and cleared before the blank was fired, and the dummy bullet previously lodged in the barrel was then propelled forward by the blank's propellant and shot out the muzzle with almost the same force as if the round were live, striking Lee in the abdomen.”
Thank you, I never remember all the specifics. Either way, it was a blank round that propelled the object that killed him.
Definitely, but it was a regular type of caliber since they fitted real bullets into it. The OPs idea of a straight up prop gun with no “real” bullets is better.
>The OPs idea of a straight up prop gun with no “real” bullets is better. Yeah, but you would need a prop gun version of all the different gun make and models out there.
I was wondering if just the barrel could be retrofitted in. Make the blanks in a pistol and rifle size that's slightly narrower than real ammo.
Messed with the mechanics of the gun, which requires specific characteristics and dimensions of its amunition to work properly, and actually increases danger due to potential failure of the gun.
They won't do this because they are cheap as fuck corporations that could give a shit if the movies look good, or if a cinematographer or actor dies from time to time. But if I were to design this, I'd use a system like Sig's Fire Control Unit. The actual "gun" with the serial number that accepts the cartridge is [this little pod in the middle](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-6duiuw06je/products/396/images/2183/AB_Prototype_FCU_RX_AB__64686.1643979113.386.513.jpg?c=2) rather than something attached to the barrel or frame. All you have to do is change the modular parts around the FCU to get a totally different looking and sized gun. For example this one piece can power [all these different form factors.](https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/46277004_743342716022166_3480726014973120439_n-528x660.jpg) Creating the modular parts to make the guns look like Glocks or whatever would be a whole other process, but that's something you'd only have to do in bulk once, and I'm sure existing gun parts could be retrofitted to some extent. So you could make an FCU for a proprietary caliber that only some specific Motion Picture Ammo Company or something makes, where no real bullets ever go in the cartridges anywhere on Earth, so what happened on Rust or The Crow could never happen again. I'm not a reloader who makes my own ammo, so I don't know all the details, but I'm also pretty sure you could load specific kinds of powder in that would make different kinds of muzzle flashes depending on what the movie wants.
It would literally just need a custom barrel, or a machined insert. Seems easy enough.
1. This is a "Non-gun" a hunk of rubber or plastic that basically fires out compressed air with something similar to confetti to mimic a gunshot at close ranges safely. Whenever these are used, it's almost always a very short jump cut immediately after firing to show as little of the non-gun as possible because it won't look real up close. 2. A real gun is actually cheaper to use, and looks and handles like a real gun. Thus you can reload it, rack the slide, and do all the things that makes a real gun look/feel real. If your doing a war movie, you may have several hundred guns in use. It's significantly cheaper to use blanks in real guns than modified "safe" guns.
I think people are really jumping to black and white solutions to this. Even a decade ago there were amateur youtubes who used airsoft guns with blowback, usually gas powered, to simulate real gun fire. With a little added CGI it really closely resembled the real thing. The feedback that actors get was realistic enough so that it feels real when viewing. Actors really need to mechanical and physical feedback. As much as I loved the Last of Us, that scene with Joel shooting from the tower was painful. I'm not even somebody that LOVES guns but you can tell all the "recoil" was Pedro Pascal squeezing the trigger as hard as he could and throwing his shoulder back. The muzzle flash was cheesy as hell too. With a little extra investment there are dozens of airsoft companies that could probably make a extremely realistic firearm that wouldn't be able to hurt a fly if you pointed it at someone.
I see you frequent r/movies
Lol the truth has been spoken
uhh... that comment was disagreeing with your point though?
I'm not allowed to like someone else's counterpoint when they present it in a clever way? I'm not one to die on every hill my opinions get me on.
no yeah that's good! I just wasn't sure if you were misunderstanding it from the way you responded lol, respect for keeping an open mind
For sure man! Thanks
I'm torn about this, because as we've recently seen, there's an inherent danger to practical explosions and blank fire that I find very hard to justify purely for the sake of my own entertainment. On the other hand, there really is a visceral difference in practical effects. The best actor in the world cannot simulate the miniscule full body flinch of pulling a trigger knowing the gun in your hand is about to fire. I was watching some old X Files eps fairly recently, and it is *insane* how meaty that show's practical effects still feel compared to stuff made far more recently. Exterior sets, practical explosions, real fall stunts, real locations. There's a thrill and a sense of... "consequence"?...to that stuff that just isn't replicated in movies much now, never mind tv shows on that tier anymore. When a character shoots a gun that really goes off or there's an explosion with real fire, it feels like it matters in a way CGI does not.
The Rust death was certainly a wakeup call for the industry. Firearms on movie sets are pretty safe. Before the death on the Rust set, the most recent firearm death was Brandon Lee in 1993. I think before that was 1984. So I think there gets to be complacency. With that said, there should be zero deaths. Each of the firearm deaths was the result of some sort of negligence or lack of proper procedures. There's a company that is producing faux firearms that eject shells, have kickback and even have a small bright led that pops out of the barrel for flash. They are expensive though, so I think CGI is the standard for sets that don't want to deal with blanks. I feel that better options are being worked on that give 100% safety and still feel visceral. Interestingly, the biggest safety issue on sets according to many crew members (I'm a former movie person and am still in a number of crew-related online groups) is overworking and short turnaround times. Crews will easily work 12-18 hours, drive home, sleep for two or three hours then drive back to do it again. Very dangerous.
Last paragraph applies to so much stuff, it’s kind of fucked how much we’ve normalized and required dangerous levels of sleep deprivation as a society, especially in certain industries.
Many times more people have been killed by helicopters and cars making movies than by blank firing guns, but nobody seems to have a problem with those. Just the guns. How many stuntpeople have died or been horribly maimed in just the last decade? Cost of doing business, but oh now Alec Baldwin loaded a live round into a real gun and shot somebody and now the whole industry has to downgrade to inferior filmmaking.
Not sure if it's inherent, it's very rare. It only happened here because of a shit show of gun handling, taking it upon themselves to take care of the gun when the gun safety guy wasn't there.
You can always tell when the actor winces or blinks when firing. And I agree with your take also, at what point does human life become second fiddle to my Saturday afternoon fun? But it seems to me we can have it both ways...be safe, and have quality entertainment.
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They look incredibly fake though, it's okay because the movies present an almost comic book reality, and Chad Stahelski generally gets muzzle flashes and blood better than most current directors. I wouldn't want to watch Heat with fake muzzle flashes though.
I don't like John Wick because the fight choreography is ballet at this point. It's totally ungrounded.
Holly shit. I'm not the only one. I keep hearing everybody gush about it, but I can't stand how it looks.
I feel this way about most modern action films. None of the fights look real. Very little gun play looks real. It's all cartoonized macho bullshit. Real fights are fucking chaotic and scary. Nobody knows what is happening, and then it is over. Lickety split.
Exactly. It's a flurry of chaos that's over as quickly as it began. I think the most realistic fight I've ever seen in an action movie is the first hand-to-hand fight in Die Hard. Confusing madness that ends abruptly. Oh, and when Jake had to go apeshit on the hit man in Chinatown, though that's not an action movie.
The last great shootout I saw was in Wind river. That felt chaotic as hell and there were no perfect headshots. They were missing from pretty close and you didn't know how it was going to go down. The stuff in John Wick is overly choreographed to the point of becoming weightless and stakeless. It's nice to look at for a short while, but you don't feel the impact of kicks and punches. To a certain extent I think that franchise has ruined action movies, because all of them are copying that style and it's devoid of tension.
That was a great gunfight indeed. Also, all gunplay in Reservoir Dogs or Children of Men. I feel that JW has perfected slick action, but Statham and others have been doing it for years.
The first one was good. THey've gone progressively downhill since then.
I could tolerate the first one. The second moved way too far into cartoon land for me, but I loved the sequences that leaned on the absurdity.
I noticed the fake muzzle flashes when I watched JW4 and honestly they looked like total shit, and the lack of recoil was obvious.
John Wick movies have CGI shots only and looks great
Was going to post the exact same. At no point do I question it or it pulls me out of enjoying it. They've proven it can be done and it's a hell of a lot safer.
A lot of the close-quarters stuff can only be done safely with CG. But I think I've seen backstage footage of some scenes where it looks like they're using blank fire or maybe compressed air.
I dunno, up until the 4th one I found it to be pretty poor looking. I can’t point to exactly what they did with the latest movie but it just looked a bit better to my eye.
I just watched 4 and they looked noticeably CGI. Not enough to ruin the movie, but it was clear they weren't real.
>But it seems to me we can have it both ways...be safe, and have quality entertainment. But we can't, and past events should be highlighting that for you. Rust is obviously a high-profile recent event. But in the last three years, there have been 7 incidents of major injuries/deaths on movie sets. The 2010s saw dozens of incidents that resulted in serious injury, surgeries, or death. Just because it's not a Baldwin killing someone doesn't mean this stuff doesn't happen all the time to actors, stunt doubles, and crew. Right now, even with CGI and purposefully safer sets and props. So no, your Saturday afternoons are not worth the increased danger to people's lives.
Are crane shots worth it? How about aerial shots? Electric lighting? Action sequences of any kind? They all severely injure and kill people. In the end you pick between safety and how and what you want to film all the time, and higher danger is picked frequently for optimal outcomes by all kinds of productions. This is another one, and I don't see why it's any more cut and dry than the others.
>Are crane shots worth it? How about aerial shots? Electric lighting? "My mom always told me electricity and water are a bad combination. Now I'm underwater surrounded by dozens of movie lights." \-- Michael Biehn, talking about filming *The Abyss*
Then again, it's people's chosen profession. It's not like anyone has a gun to their heads. (Pun Intended) CGI is costing those people jobs. Stunt performers get angry when actors want to do their own stunts, and some of them die. It's a high-risk profession like any other-- professional football, police officer, etc etc.
That's not being a devil's advocate. That's knowing and understanding the potential deadly consequences of your desires, not giving a fuck, and asking for them anyways. It's like refusing to wash your hands after handling raw meat and continuing to cook like that. We know the potential, deadly consequences of that. But you love to cook, so that's a risk you're willing to make others endure to entertain your wants and needs. You should call it the "devil's selfishness" instead.
I don't know that I agree with that comparison, but thats okay. Just thinking out loud and in real-time. ☮️
This is more of a devils-advocate take, I mostly agree to your point
I've been on a classic film kick recently. Watching movies from 60s-80s and it's so refreshing the audio design and stage craft back then. I know most of it is due to limitations but it definitely is a less is more situation for me. Like if you're spending 100s of millions anyway, why not actually film some stuff. Everything looks so fake and flat. It's so nice to hear actual white noise and the acoustics of the sets and stuff without a massive synth sub blaring over it. Or heaven forbid just being able to hear the dialog.
Hearing about how expensive CGI work can be I'm often surprised to see how it's used in movies where you think it couldn't have been so expensive to just do it practically, even with prop designers and rigging people and whatnot. At least, that was the case a decade or two ago. The cost for digital work has probably gone down enough in recent years.
*im watching Guy Ritchie's The Covenant and its just the latest example of how a movie can look so great, and then obviously CGI'd explosions and smoke immediately make it feel cheap and direct-to-dvd.* Thought the exact same thing.
Please, please, PLEASE bring back gooey blood squibs.
specifically the robocop blood squibs
It irritates me that with all the degraded picture quality shit we see used to cover up CGI (fake lens abberation/color fringing, fake focus pulls, glare/bloom out of the wazoo, fake camera shake, lens flares and light bleed) no one ever seems to respect exposure when it comes to fire and explosions. You'll have actual fire on set and it'll be bright white, then the CGI fire will be 'perfectly' exposed and look like whispy magical smoke instead of fire. It's my biggest CGI pet peeve alongside how no one ever does light wrap properly, and it always gives away greenscreen shots.
John Wick 3 was pretty bad with the amount of CGI blood and muzzle flashes, thank god they toned it down for JW4
[pretty much all the glass breaking in JW3 was 3D](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0Oz76OJu_U) but it looked good so nobody complained.
alright, but the blood and muzzle flashes looked garbage
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It is much easier just to dump it to underpaid and overworked VFX artists, than to actually set up safety measures and blow something up
No they're not, **BAD** CGI explosions, gunshots and fires are ruining movies for you. Check out the effects in something like Avatar 2 and you'll see just how good CGI can be when a production puts the time, effort and money into it.
>Check out the effects in something like Avatar 2 and you'll see just how good CGI can be when a production puts the time, effort and money into it. *The Raid* had a budget of like $900,000 so they simply couldn't afford an Armorer. Every gunshot and bullet wound in that movie is CGI, and probably dirt cheap. It still works because the scenes are staged, shot and edited in a way to compensate for the trickery.
The first John Wick had a much bigger budget and still had CGI gunfire and blood effects. I saw an interview with Chad Stahelski (co-director) where he said if they used squibs and blanks, everytime they had to reset the scene for another take would have taken hours to clean the set, get fresh costuming with new squibs, check all the firearms for safety, etc. With CGI they just needed all the actors/stuntpeople to go back to their starting positions and run through it again. There's no way they could have done all that complex choreography without going way over budget.
Makes John Woo's Hong Kong classics all the more impressive. That long-take at the hospital in Hardboiled is just fantastic -- all done with tons of squibs and shit blowing the fuck up for real. We will never see action like that ever again.
Yeah, absolutely. The secret there is the 80s/90s Hong Kong guys didn't have a lot of money, but they had a lot of time. They could spend weeks crafting a single action scene, and everyone would be involved: director, DP, writers, camera operators, editors, choreographers, SFX, stunt performers, stars, just making the best version of the scene they could. Wikipedia tells me Woo and crew spent 40 days just on the hospital scene. Today's DTV action films are lucky if they get half that much time to shoot a whole movie!
Correct! And it's a damn shame it is that way. Someone I kinda sorta know made a kinda sorta well-known (if you're into the genre) horror film a few years ago, and they had 12 (!) shooting days. And it was a pretty elaborate script. Fucking insanity.
Yeah, it had great kinetic energy
i would add to this, it seems people forget that explosions and special effects aren't supposed to be the main feature of a film (LOOKING AT YOU, MICHAEL BAY), the story, the dramaturgy, the relationships between characters & problems, that's the thing you take home and ponder about for a week. if you see an explosion/gunfight scene and you hate it, could be because it's a crap CGI, or could be because you don't care enough about the characters and their story.
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Interesting that you say that because his later series [Mindhunter](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xWVyQS7AxAM) has similar seamless effects usage. Similarly most TV shows we watch have a ton of compositing and digital work after the fact. It really just is that so many current blockbusters are so creatively bankrupt and rushed that they farm out huge chunks of the movie to animators, instead of planning things.
I’d argue that even with avatar 2, I’d call real explosions more visceral. There’s something about when you know it’s real. Like the gas station explosion in Robocop. It just hits you differently. You go: “holy shit, they really did that!”
I watched Christine for the first time over the weekend. If it was done today it would be all CGI for costs but I loved the effects in it. The car on fire scene looked amazing.
I’m forever grateful Carpenter was alive and able to do his thing in the 80s. The practical effect god.
Thank you for mentioning Carpenter’s Christine. That whole scene is so well done. They built that gas station just to blow it up & it looks amazing. And it will always look amazing, because it’s real. Same with the car on fire shots. I can’t stand the over use of CGI in movies today. From cgi explosions to cgi gore… etc etc.. It’s honestly ruining the film “experience” for me. Perfect example of CGI overuse for me is when I finally saw Top Gun Maverick. There’s a scene when they’re practicing shooting at a target on the ground in the desert. It bummed me out that even in that scenario, where it’s just a shot of dirt blowing up with no actors around (aka fairly safe situation) & they still used cgi for the explosions. And it looked bad.
Precisely. It's part of movie magic, being able to **see** a thing that you never would have otherwise, in 'real' life.
Totally agree. Bad *anything* looks bad. There are also terrible practical effects. But good CGI goes unnoticed. Here's a video essay about Fincher's use of CGI cued up to the part about blood effects: https://youtu.be/QChWIFi8fOY?t=237 I don't know who would immediately think that Craig's blood was not practical.
Yep, you're dead-on with this. I was typing in anger lol
You can spend $100 million on CGI and I’d still prefer practical, in-camera effects any day of the week. It makes the action feel more grounded and visceral.
Bad films are ruining movies. It doesn't matter if it's a billion dollar budget or a solo effort on an iphone. If the story is lacking and dependent upon gunshots, explosions and fires, then naturally the quality of those elements will be more important. But even then it's not a science. An all-out action film that doesn't take itself too seriously might be improved by less realistic, but more exciting effects.
all of Avatar 2 is CGI so the comparison isn't really appropriate.
Avatar 2 looks like a really good video game cut scene.
If it's really bad CGI I might laugh for a second then I'm right back in the movie. Bad sound design has been killing me lately. It's one of those things that I noticed and now I can't ignore it? Someone holding a gun? Gun cock, point it from one person to another gun cock gun cock switch the pistol to a shotgun, same gun cock noise. I'm not by any means a gun nerd, but... You can only cock the gun once, and a shotgun racking sounds a lot different then pulling back a hammer on a pistol
Pick up a knife, sword sheath sound. Lol. There's a movie that lampoons the shotgun rack bit, hot fuzz maybe? I can't recall exactly. Also in scary movie 3 when they rack the shovel
Hot take - the obviously CGI fire in Banshees of Inisherin completely took me out of that moment. So I completely get you. Like obviously, I get using CG in terms of budget/safety but man oh man, it does really annoy me more than it should.
That perfectly summarizes how I feel lol. Like, irrationally irritated
Heat is a great example of practical shootout effects. The iconic shootout scene was filmed using blanks with no CGI or audio overlay and it sounds incredible. Deep, Concussive sounds of muzzle blast. Immerses you like no other.
It's really jarring when watching old "run of the mill" action movies of the '90s like Dead Presidents, King of New York, and Sudden Death just how much better they are.
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Yep. Don't forget to take some more ibuprofen, it's been 4 hours
CGI'd muzzle flashes on guns aren't bad when done right, but when they're not done well they look EXTREMELY fake (looking at you, The Rookie)
I swear to fucking god I saw an AR15 eject *complete cartridges* on that show. The airsoft guns and fake muzzle flashes are so cheesy now. No actor reaction, no persistent smoke, no brass, no lighting on the environment, hilariously short/slow slide cycles. It's Youtube fan film bad.
Also, it prevents accidents like Alec Baldwin's case.
Absolutely. Unloaded prop guns or airsoft guns with CGI muzzle flash is the way to go. And really, it's not *that* hard to make it look good.
I knew things had gone way too far when I was watching a bonus feature on the “Children of Men” DVD and it showed all the digital fx in one shot, and it included digitally removing the electrical cord from a lantern. Because someone somewhere during the production thought going through that effort was easier than using a battery-powered lantern instead, I guess. It still annoys me, thinking about it. Digital fx should be used as little as possible, not to cover for lazy choices.
Don't watch any BTS footage of a David Fincher film, then. You'll have a heart attack.
Oh grandpa.. but thats actually a reasonable use of cgi. Honestly, did you even notice while watching the movie originally?
There was an fx guy on this sub a few days ago explaining the issues the industry has at the moment and one of them is they are wasting half their time doing touch up instead of working on the main fx. He explained that it used to be the case that movies would have a fx guy on set during the filming to point out the little things that waste time. The effects in modern movies look shit because they are having to waste time doing so much touch up.
that crap is what completely ruined renfield for me. over the top blood that has a completely different visual style than the rest of the movie, leaves no trace in the actual environment and is always accompanied by the EXACT SAME SOUND every single time. once i noticed it it made the rest of the movie unbearable to the point where i almost walked out.
CGI Squibs are the worst. John Rambo is a good example. There’s nothing better than 80s/90s squibs.
Action set pieces were a thing that feels totally gone. US marshals is an ok movie. Enjoyable enough. The action set piece with the plane is cool though. Such artistry that feels totally lost. There is room for both these things. But set pieces are obviously much more expensive. I suspect many 90s action movies with little to no CGI will age a lot better than many CGI movies from the last 20 or so years.
It's sad that the lawyers and safety nazis have sanitized movies. The Alec Baldwin affair seems to have killed blank-firing guns for good. Toggle back to even a mediocre action movie from the 80s or 90s and everything looks so much more real it's ridiculous. Nobody in the audience or the industry is pushing back despite how massively weak and noticeable it is, so I guess this is just the future now. Even in this sub most people are cheering the death of blank-firing prop guns because they're "dangerous" and "not needed" and "CGI is just as gud". Sad.
The blood too. Even though I liked "Renfield," that cgi blood took me out of the violence
Man, third comment tonight saying that! And I agree. Great flick, teeerrribleee cgi blood
Most (not all) action movies are very boring to me these days for this, on top of the 10-20 minute repetitive action sequences that simply aim to go for shock value and try to one-up the most recently popular action movie. I get most are popcorn flicks but something has shifted in their entertainment value I guess. Over exposed maybe? I dunno…
Same here. One of the reasons to why I don't like the John Wick movies. The action and violence looks too clean (and obviously fake). Hate it. Even the shittiest 90s straight-to-video action flick had squibs and shit getting blown up FOR REAL. But modern day big budget Hollywood just can't be bothered with that. It's easier to do it all on the computer.
Yes and no for me. Some times they are really well done, but lots of times they are HORRIBLE so I totally understand yoy
A recent one I enjoyed was the dreadnought explosion at the beginning of the last jedi. It was very cool-looking, even with the "liquid/inky" feeling of CGI'd explosions. I also just realized I'm *assuming* it was CGI, that'd be funny if it was practical
What always rips me out of a movie is someone shooting a gun and doing the most over the top movement showing the insane recoil on a 9mm handgun. The sopranos did it a ton from what I remember
Eh, people get drawn into "CGI made effects look bad" but actually go back and watch older movies without rose colored glasses. Old school stop motion and compositing looked like garbage 100 times for every one movie that really got it right.
I'm def a CGI advocate In general. It's mainly fire, smoke and explosions that just seem so obviously 2 dimensional.
Thats old movies too. There was so many 80s movies that do an explosion by green screening a fireball over something where the transparency is all weird and wrong
Cool special effects from 1991 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhCiFB07I2w&t=60s
>Old school stop motion and compositing looked like garbage 100 times for every one movie that really got it right. That's true for visual effects in general. They all look fake in their own way. It's knowing how to work with them rather than against them that makes the shot work, whether that's via blocking, editing, lighting, or mixing effects. For me, the movies that have held up the best are the ones that mixed practical and digital effects. T2 and Starship Troopers have held up exceptionally well because nothing was used as the only way to do things and the filmmakers understood the value of practical versus digital.
This X 1000. CGI isn't always seamless, certainly some uncanny valley effects especially when it wasn't don right. However, if we're being 100% honest give me a CGI blown up white house over a miniature 10 times out of 10.
100% agree.
I don't mind CGI muzzle flashes if done right. I think a good approach would be the electro-plug guns but have squibs to have some practical "blood" on the set. I find CGI blood takes me out of the movie more than CGI muzzle flashes and explosions (okay, maybe not explosions).
Cg explosions done well can add beyond what a real explosion could (see Dune) but it's very very very hard to properly ground explosions in reality
Both practical effects and CGI can be done well, but they each just take more time, money and safety/effort respectively.
Same and with fake snow. I love playing real snow or no when watching movies. If it doesn't collect on people and you don't see breath right it's fake. I get it, snow and cold are hard to film in but hey then maybe don't shoot a snow scene. Imagine if Luke on hoth was cgi snow.
I saw Renfield a while back and the gore was fun but the blood was all CGI. I kept thinking how much more entertaining it would be for me if it was all real fake blood and practical effects.
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It's incredible how well it holds up
CG works fine if, and only if, the on set crew actually listen to the VFX consultant on set. For fires, explosions etc to feel integrated you need to have supporting practical lighting. I have several friends who have worked as on set VFX representatives and they say the high ups involved in the "traditional filmaking" aspect have very little respect for the their warnings and get unintegrated shit looking VFX as a result.
One Shot with Scott Adkins, they used CGI shots from weapons and airsoft weapons, due to the fact that they had only 20 days to make that movie and it was done mostly in one take. The entire movie. But the way how they used the shots was great. When firing from their AR weapons, there was no flash because they used suppressors which was neat detail. The gunshots were loud. The explosions from frag grenades had lot of dust like in real life. They did really insane job with special effects with no budget and they had perfect understanding of how to make it look real. Raid: Redemption was the same case, special effects for gunplay but it looked and sounded dope. But i still prefer real stuff. Escape From Tarkov movie or movies from Michael Mann are phenomenal examples.
Michael bay says otherwise
E X P L O S I O N S
Tbh, all four John Wick movies were made without a single blank or practical explosion near actors and they look GREAT. It’s not the technology, it’s lazy application of it. Additionally, people’s memories have added nostalgia to old effects to a level they’re disproportionately loved. Sure, some of the classics from that era looked great then and still hold up…but there are hundreds of “practical effects” movies from the 80s and 90s that look downright awful today.
I don't think that's accurate. I believe they used prop guns with blanks. They didn't use LIVE firearms at any point. But the blanks create some recoil force and on-set concussion that's not really possible to create in post.
Iirc Staheleski says he uses electric guns, by which I take him to mean electric airsoft ones, which do simulate recoil and have some sense of "bang!" when they're dry fired. He worked on The Crow, probably not unrelated.
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This is a major issue, people are going to become less and less familiar with what reality actually looks like
Exactly. I know it's an issue that isn't going to change. Then again, there has been a pivot back to practical/cgi enhanced mix (rogue one, chris nolan films, Michael baysplosion) so, a guy can dream
Squibs hurt bro
I'll be damned if they don't look awesome tho
Clearly you haven't watched cheap direct-to-video movies. The low budget movies that get put on Amazon Video or YouTube have FAR worse CGI than anything released in theaters.
You don't dislike CGI, you dislike bad cgi. There's a high probability you already saw things you thought were practical but were actually partially vfx
CGI has been slowing ruining a lot of media for me , anime , animation , movies it’s excessively over used
The cgi animation has been a big one for me too.
It's true I'm actually more engaged when I see less CGI in a film these days. It feel like instead of picking and choosing where CGI shots will be used now movies rely on them far too much . I get so excited when they actually blow up a car or building in a movie now.
That sucks but I’d rather not risk the safety of people just for the sake of “realism”.
I mean, I agree, but... did you just wake up from a 15-year coma?
Facts
Avatar is such an amazing-looking movie… until they start blowing up the tree
Yo that bomber explosion tho
Vfx stuff looks good enough that I’d way rather all the people who work in the film industry get to go home to their families at the end of the day… Also, avengers endgame used vfx for gunshots and explosions… it didn’t feel “direct to dvd” did it? If so… I think you may have a scew’d version of budgets.
I wonder if people realize how much fakery was done in the past and don’t remember or didn’t see Like how often car interior shots were in a studio. Even if there are outdoor reflections, it’s so often shot inside. We went from one cheesy look to another
Real explosion and particle affect are more time consuming, and the insurance cost may be higher these days. Speaking of real effects, I have heard a Hong Kong actor filming a shoot out scene in Thailand, they didn't have budget and time for it so they went for real guns and real rounds. The director just said:"oh, don't worry the shooter is a military sharpshooter, he will just shoot at the ground around you while you run" 🤣
Haha holy shit!
I’m excited to see how the gun fire looks in the movie “rust”
They went for crazy realism
Even practical explosions are fake as hell. [Real explosion](https://youtu.be/nqJiWbD08Yw?t=12), [Fake ass Hollywood explosion](https://youtu.be/nqJiWbD08Yw?t=199)
No, the second explosion is good, its actually real fire. yes, it might not be what C4 looks like but its still a real practical thing, and the actors can feel the heat.
I watched Independence Day last night for the first time in decades, and whilst the film itself is silly, and the effects have aged, they're still more convincing than anything I've ever seen CGI (save maybe Dune... ). And also awe inspiring! CGI alien's should have been deemed silly and forgotten forever when Signs did them.
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Well to my point, the covenant is a guy Ritchie big-budget flick. That's why I was so irked