Special effects makers

[poxpower]

Did anyone else ever notice how these people never even get mentionned? OH PETER JACKSON YOU ARE SO BRILLIANT! YOU TOOK A HIT FANTASY NOVEL AND MADE A MOVIE WITH IT WOW THAT'S SOMETHING NO ONE ELSE CAN DO!!!
the man doesn't even cast his actors. What does he do anyways?? No one knows. In the meantime, you have thousands of people who have to make his movie for him.

Same with the guy who played Gollum. I saw him on Conan yesterday, because he played King Kong (mad props btw it takes a genius to play a fucking monkey) and he gets his pole duly smoked all the time when all the sweaty pizza-fueled fat men in the computer room who spend actual time WORKING insted of visiting the zoo flirting with gorillas get ignored.

FUCK ACTORS AND DIRECTORS AND THOSE ASSHOLES. I wish just once they would invite a 3D modeler to a show or something instead of saying how brilliant a man is for writing things. Anyone can write, it takes a MAN to computerize a dinosaur fighting a gorilla.

[bigbadron]

dude, special effects people are slacking. there used to be some cool rendered shit. now, a lot of it looks totally fake.

[many-monkeys]

you are right!

[poxpower]

At 1/6/06 04:35 AM, bigbadron wrote: dude, special effects people are slacking. there used to be some cool rendered shit. now, a lot of it looks totally fake.

that's the director's fault.
"hey guys how about they run and then they are chased by 10 dinosaurs and then one dinosaur sumersaults around the other one's neck and then camera would like 360 around that alright, and then they land under another one's legs and then like 3 of them smash together and they all trip and then there is an avalance -camera does 3 more 360s at this point- and then all the dinosaurs fall LOL SO AWESOME".

The specials effects guys have always been able to bend to every whim of the writers and directors but now those guys are getting stupider by the second and ask for stupid shit with infinite rotatin camera angles and X-TREEM ACTION bullshit instead of simply showing how it would LOOK like in real life. They get cocky knowing how AWESOME specials effects people are and show how bad they are at making movies :o

ESB is 20 years old and its effects are flawless because George didn't ask them to make Yoday summersault and lightasber fight Mark Hammill while riding an X-Wing which would rotate around the Millenium falcon while destroying a Star Destroyer.

[El-Sammo]

Directors are responsible for everything during a movie, they dont go hands on and do every little detail they tell people whats to be done and wat is gonna happen. Directors get all the attention because they are working harder than everyone on the movie. If they just let the Special Effects people have free reign then King Kong would be holding a lightsabre and Adrian Brodies head would be replaced by some greasy looking doosh bag.

And these people dont get invited onto talk shows because:

1. They would be boring as all fuck
2. Most people watching these talk shows are dumb people and wont understand a word of what they are saying
3. They would get sunburnt from the stage lights.

This is why they have their own domain and that place is called the Special Features on a DVD.

[MortalWound]

You can not have a movie without a director or actors. Just get the special effects guys to do it you say? you can't do that because then you would have actors and directors. And it isn't like one guy is doing the special effects. you have a team of like 30 guys working on animations, 3d effects, etc.. so quit comoplaing about just the director and actors.

[poxpower]

At 1/6/06 04:51 AM, El_Sammo wrote: Directors are responsible for everything during a movie, they dont go hands on and do every little detail they tell people whats to be done and wat is gonna happen.

that's why they are way overrated IMO :o
"ok guys do this". "is it good now?" "hmmmmm NO TRY AGAIN. Whew I need my demineralized water bottle and FAST from all this work".
pfffff. They don't have to figure ANYTHING out. They don't even have to solve ONE problem. There is a team of a hundred people to catch them when they fall.
And shitty movies are still being made. :(

Directors get all the attention because they are working harder than everyone on the movie.

pfff if ordering people around is considered working. They probably have the best job you could ever have: tell people how to make the movie of your dreams and get millions for it and a lot of acclaim from people.
I can't even think of a better job to have for a creative type :o OR ANY type :o

If they just let the Special Effects people have free reign then King Kong would be holding a lightsabre and Adrian Brodies head would be replaced by some greasy looking doosh bag.

Yeah :o But now King Kong does stupid stunts and a million trademarked Disney Expressions per minute, thanks in no small part to the genius man who studied monkeys in a zoo for a month. THANK YOU SIR YOU CAN FROWN LIKE NO OTHER. No one's perfect but I would rather get a million dollars and some press for making something suck insted of being the guy who's ignored.

1. They would be boring as all fuck

who knows, they are never on shows :o

2. Most people watching these talk shows are dumb people and wont understand a word of what they are saying

just show cool footage of them playing around and putting a pirate hat on King Kong. That's better than ANY celebrity interview.

3. They would get sunburnt from the stage lights.

We all have to get sunburned at one point in our lives. Better if its on a stage playing with a gorilla maquette and showing people what would happen if a raptor had lazer eyes.

This is why they have their own domain and that place is called the Special Features on a DVD.

who buys DVDs??

[ArtistJ]

At 1/6/06 04:51 AM, El_Sammo wrote: Directors are responsible for everything during a movie, they dont go hands on and do every little detail they tell people whats to be done and wat is gonna happen. Directors get all the attention because they are working harder than everyone on the movie.

no. the lower on the chain in society you go the harder the work is. Seriously. Its the guys that get paid minimum wage that work the hardest ( that entry level kid at UPS) and the guys who make slightly more than those guys are there bosses, and they do less work and act as managers. Keeping records and bossing people around is half the challenge of physicaly doing it.

as you move up the corperate ladder and people sit as desks doing any kind of desktop publishing, those guys work harder than their superiors but not as hard as the guy breaking his back on the boxes a few steps on the ladder down.

Because Director and actors are the very top of the ladder, they do the least work. But, because they are the top of the ladder, they take all the credit for it.

And these people dont get invited onto talk shows because:

the general public are morons. they idolize athletes and celebrities, the laziest sacks of shit in our society, and its the same reason why the radio plays bad music. People with money are in control; not people who work hard.

on a side note, the effects and animation are always the least important part of a film because often the director abandon's a decent script, decent acting, decent anything in favor of using these effects to make the movie interesting, if only in a cheap, aesthetic sense. thats why fast and the furrious and XXX were given budgets.

[JeremyLokken]

Why does the general public idolize the kind of people that have no values? I found it pretty easy to turn off MTV, back in the 90s. Never watched VH1. Those shows that are built around a celebrity's clothing or lifestyle are stupid. There should be a show that outright makes fun of them, without the "we love you anyway" attitude. Man, TV really is ruining our culture. Forget the show, forget it all!

[HeinousDude]

At 1/6/06 04:32 AM, -poxpower- wrote: FUCK ACTORS AND DIRECTORS AND THOSE ASSHOLES.

The director directs. He controls everything under the limitations of the producers. Which sound effect occurs when, how a special effect should appear where, and which lines should be spoken when are all in the way the director wants it.

Or at least directors other than jackson. Personally I think the LOTR trilogy was crap.

[capn-g]

Speaking as someone who has worked in the 3D field, I gotta tell you it's getting to be less and less work all the time. Motion capture means animators are now animation clean-ups. Advanced rendering software means secondary motion like hair and jiggle are now done for you. Most of the time you spend twiddling your thumbs waiting for the animatic to process and trying to figure out why the fuck the program isn't doing what you told it to. It's occaisionally fun but 90% of the time it's tedium beyond tedium.

[Blackanese]

At 1/6/06 05:54 AM, JeremyLokken wrote: Why does the general public idolize the kind of people that have no values? I found it pretty easy to turn off MTV, back in the 90s. Never watched VH1. Those shows that are built around a celebrity's clothing or lifestyle are stupid. There should be a show that outright makes fun of them, without the "we love you anyway" attitude. Man, TV really is ruining our culture. Forget the show, forget it all!

Yeah I'm going to have to highly agree with this one.Considering all these shows about celebs just showing how rich they are gets old and annoying FAST.Maybe if they just had a show with a different celeb every couple of days who had to live a normal life.Nah,they probally wouldn't even last 2 hours.

[HeinousDude]

At 1/6/06 06:00 AM, capn_g wrote: It's occaisionally fun but 90% of the time it's tedium beyond tedium.

So poxpower next time you see an animatist scream "get off your ass and do something you lazy bum!"

[Digitalicious]

At 1/6/06 05:58 AM, HeinousDude wrote: The director directs. He controls everything under the limitations of the producers. Which sound effect occurs when, how a special effect should appear where, and which lines should be spoken when are all in the way the director wants it.

That takes no real talent. =/ Sure you need someone to take control, but they get way too much credit for a lot of the stuff they don't do. More enphasis should be put on the thee dimensional artists, the camera crew, the guy that worked on the Matrix filming that built the rig that did that one cool first scene of the first movie...Those guys are real artists.

[ArtistJ]

At 1/6/06 06:02 AM, HeinousDude wrote:

At 1/6/06 06:00 AM, capn_g wrote: It's occaisionally fun but 90% of the time it's tedium beyond tedium.

So poxpower next time you see an animatist scream "get off your ass and do something you lazy bum!"

no, they are working pretty well, when they arnt browsing the web at work.

Its not their fault that even the sweet dual screen quadprocessor Mac G5 with 8gigs of ram and a terabyte of internal scratch disc space lags when they are renderning...

[poxpower]

At 1/6/06 05:54 AM, JeremyLokken wrote: Why does the general public idolize the kind of people that have no values? I found it pretty easy to turn off MTV, back in the 90s. Never watched VH1. Those shows that are built around a celebrity's clothing or lifestyle are stupid. There should be a show that outright makes fun of them, without the "we love you anyway" attitude. Man, TV really is ruining our culture. Forget the show, forget it all!

I don't think there's anyone in the 20-30 age range who still watches tv :p
ONCE YOU GET THE INTERNET, YOU NEVER GO BACK.

And the internet is another proof that writters and directors are wankers. There's dozens of people who write side-splitting comedy on the net. Like I-Mock, Seanbaby, PBF, SomethingAwful, Pure Pwnage etc etc. All free too :o
HELLYEAH

At 1/6/06 05:34 AM, JustinBianchi wrote:

no. the lower on the chain in society you go the harder the work is.

I think he meant more like "they are always on set". For instance, the special effects people probably will work from 9 to 5 every day but the director will hang out at the studio 12 hours a day. But he gets most of the money and fame and if he really didn't want to be there, he woulnd't be doing it because he's got financial security (well, when you're Peter Jackson or George Lucas, you have financial sexurity :p ). Same with actors. Oh BOO HOO you have to stay 5 hours for makeup!!!! WELL SOMEONE HAS TO APPLY MAKEUP TO YOU FOR 5 HOURS AND YOU DON'T HEAR THEM COMPLAINING, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS SIT THERE.
I swear :o

At 1/6/06 06:00 AM, capn_g wrote: Speaking as someone who has worked in the 3D field, I gotta tell you it's getting to be less and less work all the time.

True, 3D animation is just so impossible difficult that there's a lot of people teamworking on it to make the whole process easier and easier.
But you can't ignore the work that's been done to get those advancements :o And when you think about it, 99% of all advancements in movies are due to people we've never heard of while directors take advantage of it all.
But still 3D animating looks boring :o Just texturing shit all day long and cleaning up what the computer does. That's definately a field I am steering clear of. I would rather be the guy who drew up the LOTR armor and all that shit. This man MADE the movie's look more than that twat peter Jackson ever did :o

[El-Sammo]

Its the directors vision, with everyone else getting very little creativity. The actors probably getting the second largest amount of creativity so thats why the directors and the actors get the limelight.

If you get some guy like Special effects guy, or the editor or the camera guy all you get them saying is, "I did wat the director told me to do", "Yeah the director wanted this." Wat a piss poor interview that would be

[HeinousDude]

At 1/6/06 06:04 AM, Digitalicious wrote: That takes no real talent. =/ Sure you need someone to take control, but they get way too much credit for a lot of the stuff they don't do. More enphasis should be put on the thee dimensional artists, the camera crew, the guy that worked on the Matrix filming that built the rig that did that one cool first scene of the first movie...Those guys are real artists.

I have taken film classes and I can assure you directing takes talent. Camera angles, soundtrack, lighting, and all other factors make a difference in the mood of every single shot. Without talent you can't tell which positions of those will make the movie more intense/sad/frightening or whatever mood the scene is supposed to give out to make the film great.

Then again, my definition of directing means the one in control of all those things, cuz that's what I did as the director in class. Directors in real life might just assign different people for different aspects and call it a day. The only talent those directors have is choosing the right people.

Actors are just parrots and are replacable.

[Ben]

They are kind of like sports managers and the actors are the star players.

They get all of the credit for it, but what you don't see in the background are the physiopherapists, the fitness trainers, their mentors and all the others involved with the development and improvement.

[Yiffy]

I made a special effect.

[capn-g]

At 1/6/06 06:16 AM, -poxpower- wrote:

True, 3D animation is just so impossible difficult that there's a lot of people teamworking on it to make the whole process easier and easier.

I never said it was getting easier. The workload is the same it's just now more and more of the cool stuff is being done with code and the modellers and animators are relegated to touch up. It's getting to be almost like factory work, mere human cogs.

But you can't ignore the work that's been done to get those advancements :o And when you think about it, 99% of all advancements in movies are due to people we've never heard of while directors take advantage of it all.

You've heard of them if you care. Steve Williams for instance, heard of him? He basically created the whole CGI revolution. Sam Winston? Phil Tippet? No? I know of these people because it's related to my field but I knew of them beforehand too simply because I took the time to find out about them.

But still 3D animating looks boring :o Just texturing shit all day long and cleaning up what the computer does. That's definately a field I am steering clear of. I would rather be the guy who drew up the LOTR armor and all that shit. This man MADE the movie's look more than that twat peter Jackson ever did :o

3D animating is actually fun. Editing motion capture is not. Designing textures is fun. Skinning models is not. Modelling characters is very enjoyable. Rigging them for animation is an absolute fucking nightmare...

[poxpower]

At 1/6/06 06:37 AM, El_Sammo wrote: Its the directors vision, with everyone else getting very little creativity. The actors probably getting the second largest amount of creativity so thats why the directors and the actors get the limelight.

:p
Ok, I will stop being a douche now and tell it straight to you ( and Heinous).
Directors DO deserve a lot of credit, as do actors, in most movies. But in big special effects showarama, they often seem to get just as much credit.
For instance, I would give a LOT more mad props to Quentin Tarantino for Pulp Fiction than 5 Peter Jacksons for the LOTR trilogy. The bigger the production, the less things the Director can be in control of unless he extends the budget a lot and spends all his time on the set :p

It just doesn't seem that fair to blow his balls constantly when there's a giant team of people creating the visuals for the movie.

And with those pictures, camera angles and lighting etc. become a lot easier to control. So I can't really give them a lot of credit :p In short: directors now probably suck as bad as directors from 1930s but the movies now are so much better because of all the talented and trained people at their bidding.

And yes, interviews with "that guy who textured King Kong's left arm in fight scene3" probably would suck. But I would like to see more music composers and art directors on shows. You know, animal trainers, maquette builders, makeup artists. Its not fair that in the entertainement industry, 90% of airtime goes to people with the face. :(

[BlueFlameSkulls]

I see what you're saying

It takes absolutely no skill to act, as acting is basically preforming emotions in a short range of time. Any one can fucking cry on screen, just get some mace.

I can fucking act but according to those who teach people to act, I'm not good enough to do a certain scene. Then I see a guy who acts like a twit and speaks like no one in the real world would although acting is expression real world emotions.

Where are the people who actually work their arse off to make a good movie? They're hidden in the credits halfway through which nobody sees anyway. Actors get far too much pay to lounge about and speak and make funny squinty eye movements.

What the fuck is a best boy anyway? If he actually does some work then he should be filling in for Brad Pitt.

[capn-g]

At 1/6/06 06:50 AM, BlueFlameSkulls wrote: What the fuck is a best boy anyway? If he actually does some work then he should be filling in for Brad Pitt.

Best boy is the set gopher. He runs around and tells people when they have to be on set, gets the director coffee and generally gets spat on and ignored by everyone else. The title might as well be "Whipping boy".

[poxpower]

At 1/6/06 06:45 AM, capn_g wrote:

I never said it was getting easier. The workload is the same it's just now more and more of the cool stuff is being done with code and the modellers and animators are relegated to touch up. It's getting to be almost like factory work, mere human cogs.

you said "less and less work all the time". And now you just said its becoming easier since its "factory work" and anyone can do that :o
HA-HA!
And I get what you're saying. Its like the people who have to color animation cells :p Or draw the arms. Or the apprentices in the rennaissance who painted jackets and shit. In fact there's always been people like that in art :o

You've heard of them if you care. Steve Williams for instance, heard of him? He basically created the whole CGI revolution. Sam Winston? Phil Tippet? No? I know of these people because it's related to my field but I knew of them beforehand too simply because I took the time to find out about them.

Well duh, but they get ZERO general reckognition. I never heard of them. Ever. But most of them are probably responsible for making half the games of today :p That's what's wrong. When I really think about it though, the only people the public knows are actors :o
:o
ITS THE FACE I TELL YOU

3D animating is actually fun. Editing motion capture is not. Designing textures is fun. Skinning models is not. Modelling characters is very enjoyable. Rigging them for animation is an absolute fucking nightmare...

I have no idea what you are talking about :(
:(
I can only draw things. DRAWING IS HARD TOO YOU KNOW :( 3D animating sounds more like programming than actual drawing.

[BlueFlameSkulls]

At 1/6/06 06:53 AM, capn_g wrote: Best boy is the set gopher. He runs around and tells people when they have to be on set, gets the director coffee and generally gets spat on and ignored by everyone else. The title might as well be "Whipping boy".

more work than these actor bitches then?

[poxpower]

At 1/6/06 06:50 AM, BlueFlameSkulls wrote:

It takes absolutely no skill to act

NO THAT IS WRONG :o
Kids can't act. But it takes a lot less skills than people try to say. I am so tired of everyone saying how everyone else is a "bad actor". That just doesn't even mean anything anymore. Shit, everyone under40 or who has been in a stupid movie is a "bad actor" now.

Then I see a guy who acts like a twit and speaks like no one in the real world would although acting is expression real world emotions.

:p
well you have to exagerate for the movies or else it looks boring. But sometimes its overdone. I blame the director, if anyone, since we have digital cams now, they have no excuse for letting a bad scene go. But anyways, "bad acting" is not something I notice often, more like "bad dialogue". For instance, Anakin in episode 2 and 3. I can't tell you if he's a bad actor, since every line he has is stupid-sounding. No one could make him not sound retarded :o

[capn-g]

At 1/6/06 06:56 AM, -poxpower- wrote: And I get what you're saying. Its like the people who have to color animation cells :p Or draw the arms. Or the apprentices in the rennaissance who painted jackets and shit. In fact there's always been people like that in art :o

I'm not actually sure that you are getting what I'm saying, so I'll re-itterate one more time to be crystal clear: all the slow, tedious laborious shit: YOU STILL HAVE TO DO THAT. Anything which might have been fun or challenging is now done by the computer. For instance, no one textured Kong. Some poor shmuck had to spend hours carefully mapping out where the fur went and then hit the "add fur" button and then twiddled his thumbs for two hours. Then he had to go back and tweak it and try again. Texturing the fur would have been more fun (strange as that sounds).

Well duh, but they get ZERO general reckognition. I never heard of them. Ever. But most of them are probably responsible for making half the games of today :p That's what's wrong. When I really think about it though, the only people the public knows are actors :o

Because the public are morons. This shouldn't be a revealation...

o

ITS THE FACE I TELL YOU

If the wind changes you'll be stuck like that you know...

I have no idea what you are talking about :(

(

I can only draw things. DRAWING IS HARD TOO YOU KNOW

You don't say? (glances over at art and design diploma) ;P

( 3D animating sounds more like programming than actual drawing.

It's actually more like sculpting except your hands are in a box and you can't see what your sculpting except for a camera that projects it onto a monitor.

[poxpower]

At 1/6/06 07:04 AM, capn_g wrote: YOU STILL HAVE TO DO THAT. Anything which might have been fun or challenging is now done by the computer. For instance, no one textured Kong. Some poor shmuck had to spend hours carefully mapping out where the fur went and then hit the "add fur" button and then twiddled his thumbs for two hours. Then he had to go back and tweak it and try again. Texturing the fur would have been more fun (strange as that sounds).

haha ok :o I see.
Well at least he gets to sit around, right? And now they don't have to do the fur in every scene if they map it on the base model, right? Well I imagine that's how it works, or else, why would they do that? :o

You don't say? (glances over at art and design diploma) ;P

art and design doesn't teach anyone to draw :( Well not my classes. Or anyone I have seen. I am in "comics" concentration in graphics design and I have to learn everything myself. But anyways, what have you drawn that you like? :o
You're 10 years older than me so you can probably help me out some time : )

It's actually more like sculpting except your hands are in a box and you can't see what your sculpting except for a camera that projects it onto a monitor.

haha :p
Animating is the same thing when you think about it :o You can't see what it looks like until you've worked on it some :o

[Fatboy]

You know that there's a cult following of special effects guys right? Not so much 3D modellers, but the old school, gore/weird/awesome effects of the 70s and 80s. Heard of Tom Savini? Started off as a lowly effects artist, now he's one of the big "go to" guys in movies. Check out this from his biography:
"Only man in Hollywood who can claim all four titles of stuntman, make-up artist, actor, and director. Only man has come close: makeup artist, actor, stuntman Lon Chaney - Tom's influence and childhood idol."

People are used to CG effects being able to do anything now, although very rarely it's done seamlessly, back in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, it was an artform. Heck, ILM started as the guys who did models in the Star Wars films, and now they're probably the biggest digital effects companies.