Happy that Lucas Film eats humble pie

[Bobby]

Good for Matrix on winning multiple Oscars and bypassing Phantom Menace. Not the only definative digital show in town.

You know I remember a time when Star Wars meant Cutting edge special effects. I guess now I'm going to have to wait for the next Matrix movie to come out to see something like that again.

Mabey, people at ILM will have to start going to classes at the Matrix production comapany, Or hire them. I'm shure Luca$ has the money to buy them out.

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See What's New at 8-Track Productions

[Sid]

I dont think either of them had good FX at all. well the academy at least knows a little something with American Beauty winning best film

[Dominik Pfleghaar]

What's wrog with the The Phantom Menace SFX? I thought they were pretty impressive.
Take JarJar as an example. While the character himself may be a bit annoying, the SFX are top, IMO. I for one couldn't tell it was a CGI character if I didn't know he was.

But I know, it's not 'en vogue' to like TPM...

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Unca Dom, DDS-088
dvdfile.com administrator
dominikpfleghaar@netscape.net

[Blade]

I'm not really surprised at the Matrix's wins over Star Wars.

Star Wars was basically just CGI (very well done and massively used, but still CGI).

The Matrix's Bullet Time was a new filming technique that was so effective I didn't ever realize it was a special effect until I started watching the featurettes on TV.

And I thought Star Wars was supposed to be about the story with the S/F supporting it?

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-David

zackys, do you need the AMPAS telling you what you like?

Blade, you obviously know nothing about SFX

Dominik Pfleghaar, at least you know what you are talking about.

[Taxi]

Bullet time wasn't a first for the Matrix, they just took it to another level. I can see why the Academy would go with the Matrix for best visual effects, however I disagree with that choice.

The one I don't get was best sound. The Matrix didn't even come close to TPM in this category. I have a feeling the Academy had an anti Star Wars bias this year, because of all of the hype.

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Taxi
DVDFile.Com Moderator

[This message has been edited by Taxi (edited 03-27-2000).]

Taxi, I can understand how the acadamy chose Matrix over Phantom. Think about it. The Matrix preview came to them as a 5.1 dvd. While Phantom came with stereo surround on vhs. Or the academy members are dvd fans and are pissed off at Lucas.

[Dehrian]

Lucasfilm really didn't go after the Oscars at all. They didn't even release screener copies of the film on VHS until after the nominations were announced. They showed a decided lack of enthusiasm, so their loss is understandable.

As for the awards themselves, I can see how Matrix might win sound, but the rest were completely undeserved. TPM should have taken home Visual Effects and Sound Effects Editing (Jar Jar, Watto, and Sebulba; and the podrace alone, respectively, are better and more advanced than anything in Matrix), and The Insider should have taken home Best Editing. When Matrix won that one, I knew they were just on a pro-Matrix bandwagon, because giving that award to Matrix was total b---s---.

I would have been happy if I like shameless bias and adherance to backlash.

Or if I was impressed by visuals that I've seen already in countless TV commercials and rock videos and (guh!) Wing Commander.

Or if I liked people taking FX techniques created by other people, calling it another name and taking personal credit for it. The so-called "bullet-time" was created in 1994 by Dayton Taylor (who incidentally was not thanked at last night's ceremony) and is in fact called Virtual Camera Movement or Timetracking. If you want more info go to:
http://www.virtualcamera.com

[Taxi]

I think the technical categories have to be screened in a theater, not at home. Maybe that only includes the categories that are given away at the science awards, not the arts awards (last night.) It would be a travesty if TPM on VHS was the sole criteria for sound.

And yes, the Pod Race is the scene that I'm thinking of when I say that I think TPM should have won (Best effects/sound/sound editing...take your pick). As well as the final sabre battle. Well, and just about the whole damn movie!

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Taxi
DVDFile.Com Moderator

The Phantom Menace is the greatest achivement in special effects yet. Period.
The quality of the cgi and the fantastic animation.. it should have won the Ocsar!

Not to mention sound effects editing.. All the different creatures, pod racers, hover tanks, even the lightsabers sound fantastic..

Dennis

[Sid]

Well TPM did have better FX than Matrix, but I just find FX lacking lately. The duel and Jar Jar looked good

[willb3d]

Phantom Menace should have been nominated as best animated film, if there is such a category. All the cheesy, cartoon-ish CGI effects were essentially a cartoon, with some live actors walking through it. The Matrix was, as the egotistical special producer put it (correctly, despite his ego) the Matrix effects were "effects in service of a story," and I think that made a difference. About the guy's ego though, his racing car outfit in the Making of featurette on the Matrix DVD was bad enough, now he's dressing like a vampire-priest. Sheesh. It offends me only because vanity suggests he values himself more than the team. And all he really did was improve the effects of that "jumpin jive" GAP commercial that everyone loved so much!

Well forgive me for saying so, but I happen to think I know a thing or two about effects.

On a purely technical level...

Nothing on Ep. 1 was truly groundbreaking in the effects sense. It was the culmination of several years of admittedly hard work and
trial and experimentation. But for the most part, even the bizarre editing techniques like cutting and pasting a mouth from one shot into another, a lot of the knowledge came from Young Indy Jones and that film about radio that no one saw.

Having sat through a lecture by the art direction team, I feel that Ep. 1 in many ways actually played up in the media in many ways how much in the film was CGI - despite Lucas' insistence he doesn't care about effects. There was still a ton of kluge built physically and practically, and on a very small budget compared to the effects budget. Oh yeah, and there were actors in the film as well.

As far as the Matrix goes, every brainwashed and zombified Lucas fan still thinks that The Matrix's main accomplishment was
something ripped from a Gap ad, whereas the really groundbreaking stuff was in the film's interpolation software for rendering non existent frames from the still camera data, and most importantly the generation of 3d models from still photographs from plates taken on the sets. This is truly groundbreaking and will be a boon to the effects industry - a simple series of controlled still photography will
allow effects technicians to capture fully textured and mapped sets for later manipulation. You can even tweak the placement of lights and shadows. Considering that Manex was a newly formed independent startup, their win is a boon to the effects industry - offering hope and recognition to the smaller more innovative botiques that fight bankruptcy every day in the face of juggernauts like ILM and D2.

As far as "bullet time" and "flo mo" go - I've seen three seperate people in three seperate countries claiming to have invented it all at around the same time. Well, if you really think about it, Edward Muybridge invented it ever so long ago - before the invention of the cine camera. There were new elements to this process introduced by the Manex team featuring new complexities, so I've no problem with them refining it and calling it something else.

And on a purely eye candy level, The Matrix's visuals were new in a sense that the aesthetic of anime had never really been done photorealistically before. The Phantom Menace offered plenty of what we'd seen before, just done on an extremely large scale.

[Blade]

Originally posted by RoArKe:
Blade, you obviously know nothing about SFX

Ooh! Ya got me! I'm seeing stars! The world is going dark...

Goodbye cruel world...goodbye...



Chill out, man. It's just an opinion. One I'm not alone in holding, or without arguements in its defense.

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-David

[jb523]

Personally, my biggest problem with the Phantom Menace was that it reeked with CGI. It was all very impressive, certainly beyond pretty much any film I had seen thus far, but it still looked like CGI. Jar Jar especially--his movements were so cartoonish, and all the other characters were looking right through him. The film was nowhere near as slick as I'd hoped. The Matrix, on the other hand, was one of the slickest films I've seen in a while. The Matrix is about as good as thoughtless, but stylized action films get (as opposed to the Phantom Menace, which is the same, but leaves much to be desired). Lucas may have the biggest CGI dick, but the Wachowski brothers knew how to use their's. While I don't really think terribly much of either film, the Matrix to me represents what I hope will be the future of Hollywood action flicks, as opposed to these enormous, awkward, unfulfilling and (mostly) unentertaining films like Armageddon or The Phantom Menace.

[willb3d]

I'm not a brainwashed Lucas fan, I am a Matrix fan, I've got a Trinity action figure staring at me right now... And I still say all they did was perfect the "Jumpin Jive" GAP commercial. That was a great commercial, and it made a great film.

Funny I didn't know that making a software program for smooth transitions between still frames in a "timetracking" fx move earned an oscar.
I'm not a Lucas zombie by the way, I didn't like Episode 1 very much but I think the FX were deserving of an oscar for their beauty & scope alone. At the very least it deserved the Sound effects oscar for the Pod race alone.

Now you can go off on more exposition about how The Matrix was ground breaking & how I am wrong but it won't change my opinion about what my eyes can see for themselves.

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-Dougpirana
"all right you primitive screw heads Listen up! "

[1138]

Well sure Jar-Jar and other parts of Episode 1 were very obvious CGI and looked it. That's what happens when you slap up right next to live real things. It's real easy to see the flaws. However, everybody seems focused on the obvious glaring examples when there are so many times in the movie when the CGI is not easily noticeable and/or bad. The landscape shots of the Queen's homeworld look beautiful. The droidicars that attack Quigon and Obiwan at the beginning looked very good. There's just so many tiny little things that add up for a great atmosphere for the movie. These tiny little nuances really come together well. The melting metal when Quigon is cutting through the blast doors at the beginning, the constant busy backgrounds that really add enviroment to completely imaginary places, and lots of other little things I just haven't noticed because they're done so well. The Matrix isn't exactly free of horribly obvious CGI either. The scene where Mr. Anderson's mouth is literally shut was pretty cheesy looking. The very easy and unoriginal silver liquid effect that engulfs Neo is from Terminator 2 days.

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Floyd is pink.
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Lot/3924/

[RegniL]

Star Wars Episode 1....
yes, cgi should be utilitized for effects.. but not things in the foreground..
still following me?:P
i really don't believe in using cgi characters... it really really looks fake.. you can't fake characters... looks awful
but, using cgi for effects... (like the melting door as stated above w/the lightsaber) and backdrops... those are beautiful...

[RegniL]

oh yeah.. don't you think the bias towards GL had something to do with that vote?
i mean, seriously.. the matrix is a great movie.... but no way can compare to episode 1 when it comes to special effects... just the number of effects used by episode 1 is crazy.. and most of them are very very good.. just you guys can't see that, because jar jar gets in the way (yes, i hate jar jar!!) but still.. i think the matrix only one over episode 1, because there was some grudge against george lucas..... ??

[Dehrian]

It's very much like 1977 all over again. IMO, Star Wars should not have won that year. Close Encounters should have. The effects in Close Encounters still look good, even by today's standards.

But the Academy gets on a bandwagon and throws all the technical awards at one film. Twenty-some-odd years ago it was George Lucas's turn. Not it's--- whatever their names are.... Wackoffsky. Whatever.

[jb523]

I grant you that some of the CG background scenery in Phantom Menace was very nice, but none of the shots were held for more than 4 seconds, and we never really got a chance to observe it (short takes: one of my biggest pet peeves--though there are many times when it is appropriate, any self-proclaimed epic is not one of them). The point is that while the Phantom Menace was saturated with special effects, sometimes used tastefully, sometimes not, the Matrix applied special effects in a new and interesting way, allowing them to choreograph scenes that John Woo up until now could only dream of (I give the Matrix a plus for being the one hollywood film that captures the spirit of John Woo the best). In fact, with the Matrix, is not just the innovative use of special effects, but a mixture of special effects and filmic effects that make it interesting.

What has Star Wars done that was new and interesting? JarJar? CGI landscapes (to replace the more obvious paintings in the original)? Eliminate the need for models? Jar Jar aside They're basically replacing the same effects with CGI; not very creative, but it has some merit to it. I can see why Star Wars would be nominated (I'm sure anyone can), but I think that the Matrix is clearly the choice unless the only thing you're interested in is how much money they threw at it.

As for Keanu getting his mouth covered up, that had the distinction of being diegetic CGI--that is, the whole Matrix is a world of special effects, and essentially what Mr. Anderson is doing to Keanu (the mouth as well as the bug) is in the context of the film computer generated, and so it is in some sense appropriate (though certainly it would have been slicker for them to do it in a more convincing fashion. It looked a little to much like the photoshop 'smudge' tool). The scene with the mirror is better, because it contrasts the bizarre reality that the matrix is (it is similar to the helicopter crashing into the building: also clearly intentional) with the reality that follows, where everything isn't green. The point in the Matrix is that these things can't happen in real life, only in the computer generated world, whereas Star Wars sets up it's own world, one which is not intended to be artificial (and thus has no business looking artificial).

[Taxi]

A few comments...

Don't get hung up on "who did the newest stuff" thread. The award is for BEST visual/sound effects, not newest/latest/never been done before.

The Pod race scene, like the Millenium Falcon space battles from the "old" Star Wars saga, is some of the best visual effects sequences ever. Combining so many different elements to make an awe-inspiring 15 minutes of film, not the least of which are some amazing sound effects by Ben Burtt, who I think should have taken home the Oscar last weekend.

Finally, don't get me wrong. I loved The Matrix. It's easily the best 90s FX extravaganza on DVD, narrowly beating out my beloved Contact. It's just that I thought Star Wars: TPM really raised the bar.

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Taxi
DVDFile.Com Moderator

Good point Taxi. It's not called "The Oscar for newest Special Effects" it's called "Oscar for Best Special Effects".
......Of course this won't stop debate,only whittle it down to everyones personal taste as to what looks "best".

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-Dougpirana
"all right you primitive screw heads Listen up! "

[RegniL]

yes.. TPM should have won the award.
people are just anti-star wars..
matrix is a great movie.. and the effects complement the movie well..
but that's not the award.. the award is for BEST... like what taxi said.. i'm re-reading thru all the posts, and most of you guys only have reasons like "it looks too cartoonish" or... "cuz GL sux!" okay.. maybe not the second one.. but i know that's what you're thinking!
the truth is.. tpm kicked the matrix's ass when it comes to FX.. hands down... i don't know what everybody is talkin about when they thought that was a good choice when matrix won.

[clortho]

Let me first say this...I liked TPM, and want it on DVD as much as Taxi (well, ok, maybe not THAT much.. ).

That being said, my picks were for Matrix on the FX and TPM on the sound categories. Reason being, as far as look and the effects (not just the bullet time), all the model and cg elements blended together VERY well. To me, even though it looked beautiful, some things in TPM almost looked like an effect just for the sake of having a cg element in there. However, in the sound areas (specifically the pod race...and why oh why did the Star Wars Pod Race game not have all the unique engine sounds!) TPM just blew The Matrix away in my opinion.

Well thats my little 2 cents into this, and I am not a GL basher or hater...it was only that one time, I swear!

Clortho

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I am the Keymaster
clortho@hotmail.com

[jb523]

You're right, the category is for "best" special effects, which of course takes any objectivity out of the choice. But in the spirit of "best" I would lean towards the interpretation of "most innovative" or "most appropriately used throughout the film" or "most artistic", not "most impressive" or "biggest budget spent on special effects". Of course that's just my feeling for it, your mileage may vary. "Best" is just a silly word that points out that it's all entirely subjective and therefore meaningless (not totally meaningless, it has some value on a personal level).

My breakdown:

[*]Most innovative: Matrix[*]Most artistic: Matrix[*]Most likely to be influential: Matrix[*]Most special effects: Star Wars[*]Biggest Budget: Star Wars[/list]

[Bobby]

my original thought would that he would reconsider putting PM on dvd then. I have not heard record breaking pre-orders for PM.
CG effects are great but it can never replace live scale models.
Bottom line, I still believe rubber suits should NEVER go away for digital. Some of the best prosthetics, models, masks and animatronics have given us the best sci-fi and horror flicks that we enjoy so much. Would Tremors be as fun if the worm was digital? CG should supplement not to replace.
my 2 cents.
Has digital effects gotten sloppy after Jurassic Park?

I heard a Matrix cut that rang true with me.
"Take away Bullet-time & you've got John Woo's Dark City."
I mean what do we have? We have an "every-man" fighting to free himself & His people from an alien power which is keeping the truth of the humans enslavment(& their true environment) hidden from them aside from a few who can see the truth. The enemy has "super powers" that our hero also has but must learn how to use in order to beat them....Nahh that's nothing like Dark City!

But this has nothing to do with the FX......I'm sorry what was the topic?

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-Dougpirana
"all right you primitive screw heads Listen up! "

[This message has been edited by dougpirana (edited 03-31-2000).]

[P7A77]

Not to completely beat on a dead horse, but here's my take...

Sure, The Matrix didn't have anything /that/ groundbreaking, and sure, the CGI characters in TPM were fairly impressive (tho' I never for a minute didn't think they weren't CGI, which was very distracting). However, in The Matrix, they were used less frequently, and were used when needed and only when a specific effect was needed (or, in a few cases, just to look cool, but not that much). In fact, the filmmakers went to great pains to get as much as they could practically, with training the actors for months before filiming, and with complex blocking to get all of the jumping and movin' around all slippery like. The digital side was an enahncement, not a replacement.

THAT's what the award was for. THAT's how digial effects should be used. And yes, the argument could be made that the whole movie was built around a Gap ad effect, and maybe it was, but that doesn't change the fact that they still went to all that trouble to have as much practical as they can, rather than just shooting on sets that were only seven feet tall and not bothering to get things perfect because it could just be photoshopped out later.

And I know they likely didn't use Photoshop, so don't jump on me for that.

By the way,why is this thread in "software"?

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-Dougpirana
"all right you primitive screw heads Listen up! "

[Taxi]

Uh, because we moderators have been slacking off?

(I'll move it to the Soapbox, where it belongs.)