Original subtitles

Hey, remember that time a guy did a fantasy trilogy filled with visual effects and everybody

loved it, and they wanted more -- but then he came back with

a prequel trilogy filled with CGI and people were like "NOPE"

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to part four of "No CGI is really just invisible CGI"

I'm Jonas and I have been making CGI for film and TV for 19 years

Today we're looking at why CGI fell from grace in the first place and why studios think they have

to lie about it, and I'll admit that maybe there is something to the whole "too much CGI" thing.

I promised you I was going to save the best for last, so today we're also taking a look at that

one project that has more no CGI than any other "but we're not using CGI on this one"

But first, let's start on a positive note for once.

Here are some people who are not afraid to talk about CGI.

I mean I wept when I was looking at the credits of the of the CGI team. I was just like "look

at all these people that made this movie" You guys have done such an extraordinary

job. For those of you who haven't recently watched Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3,

watch it again just with the VFX in mind, and you will be blown away. It's truly a master class

This is a shot we did practically. No I'm just kidding, this is a CG shot.

Junior is not de-aging - so it's not my face and then

they smoothed it out. It's a 100% digital human. Seth Macfarlane has repeatedly praised Framestore

for their great work on his Ted show. Juan Antonio Bayona makes no effort

to hide that CGI is present throughout his Netflix drama Society of the Snow,

releasing several promos that celebrate the teamwork between stunts, special effects, visual

effects and even previs. That was great to hear, but quite frankly it also makes it all the more

embarrassing to listen to those who are ashamed to talk about visual effects. Check this one out:

Besides the more obvious use of computer animation, Gran Turismo also features green

screen shots, crowds, stadiums and environments, and as VFX supervisor Victor Miller says to Ian

Failes from Befores and Afters, lots of shots with CG cars in liveaction plates

and even completely digital shots. Neill Blomkamp has a history of

making great looking visual effects films so it's no surprise he would repost the article

about the great effects in Gran Turismo, repeatedly praising the visual effects team.

But it gets weird when Sony releases their promo about the film, stating "no green

screens - that's just how Neill Blomkamp rolls" He wanted to make it really practical and shot.

The temptation is to go all digital. The cars could be animated, you could film the tracks

as background plates and do digital cars. But in this case -- everything is real.

Actors and directors are still at work when they give interviews and sometimes it sounds

almost as if they're reading from a script. This is Gran Turismo's production notes from

the official press kit, and anyone from the trades who wanted to write about how the film

was made would only have this to go on: The temptation is to go all digital.

You could film the tracks as background plates and do digital cars. But in this

case -- everything is real. It's always a treat for an

audience when something feels more real. Shooting this movie without green screens.

It's very practical that's what I got from Neill when I met him, to make it as real as possible.

It's funny because you hire a guy who's primarily like a Sci-Fi guy and when we

showed up on set he just wanted everything to be real. He didn't want any CGI in this movie.

How did we get here? When I saw the Super Bowl trailer for

Independence Day in 1996 the whole theater lost their minds over this one shot but the days when

you can impress the audience with a single shot like that are over computer graphics for movies in

the 80s was very experimental and the effects were supposed to stand out as obvious effect shots but

not in a bad way the '90s gave us the revolutions we needed to get to where we are today with

Jurassic Park introducing photo real creatures twister freed the camera by integrating 3D

animations in completely uncontrolled camera moves and the Star Wars special editions experimented

with just how much you can aler footage that wasn't shut with visual effects in mind the

2000s used this new tool to do a complete reboot of superhero movies fantasy movies action movies

period pieces warror movies horror movies science fiction monster movies and disaster movies CGI

was the new hot thing in film making and DVDs were loaded with bonus material boasting how extensive

it was used so far people were very happy with how it was used to make new adventures possible

and expand characters story and World building the Cinematic superhero universes exploded in the

2010s and people were on board for the most part because these superhero comic book panels were

never particularly grounded in reality and they have never been Faithfully put on screen before

they could get the scope that only CGI could give them but with a Whole Decade of digital effects

used to turn every single salmer Blockbuster up to 11 with wall to- wall spectacle slowly we began to

realize we'd seen it all and the days when you can blow our socks off with a single shot like

this arone CGI had no limits and filmmakers had learned that they could do whatever they

want but as it turns out for some filmmakers whatever they want isn't necessarily something

we want to see I am directly the oh enemy SC and with some clear onetoone examples of the

animatronics predecessor being more popular with audiences than the new

CGI version the audience understandably started to notice how all movies look

like CGI these days and they wanted less of it the problem is that's not really how CGI

looks all the way back in the '90s when you were busy talking about T2 and Jurassic Park

George Lucas slipped under your radar with the radioland murders secretly showing audiences the

first seamless 3D set extensions that no one had any clue where it film for real the young Indiana

Jones Chronicles had more invisible digital effects than any average viewer would have

been able to comprehend if you had told them and laid the Revolutionary groundwork for how movies

have been made since and are still made to this day Forest gum won the visual effects Oscar for

its mostly invisible visual effects and parallel to the revolution of CGI spectacle and Magic invis

ible CGI has been essential to both big budget and lowbudget movies for three full decades now

and there's no way film making is letting go of it visual effects artists have been omitted from

the credit since matte painting to maintain the illusion that everything was filmed for real but

it goes much deeper than that but the train crash in The Fugitive Horner brothers were proud to use

only a fullscale train and not cheat with any miniature work this is in the era before digital

effects really were in their Forte we decided in in general that we would create a real train

crash but the crash didn't go as planned and they had to resort to a visual effects combination of

the full scale train and miniature effects but no one outside the production would ever know

about it well we weren't allowed to talk about it and mention that there was visual effects on

the movie W of Brothers had it in our contract because we did crash a train but unfortunally um

it didn't work it jumped the track and dropped too early but hey that that miniature crash is

still practical and not CGI so it's a different conversation right not really the studio wanted

you to believe that what they did was more real than all the miniature work and trick photography

everyone else was using so when they ended up using the same miniature effects and trick

photography as everyone else they lied we used an actual railroad this was not Miniatures it

was not trick photography so it was fairly easy for the studios to respond to the misconception

that CGI looks like this but telling you what you want to hear real sets practical effects there was

a feeling when I was a kid when I saw Star Wars for the first time that it was all practical and

real JJ's trying to make sure these movies have a physicality to them the ability to have an actual

physical Droid on set animating as he would that was as real as anyone else that was an incredible

goal industrial lightting magic recently marked the anniversary of Steven Spielberg's Empire of

the Sun by remember remembering the visual effects which included Miniatures Optical compositing mat

paintings and probably the world's first CD formation of airplanes flying over Shanghai

the film's producer Frank Marshall literally the Same Day celebrated the film as all real

no visual effects this film is from 1987 why lie about it now it's not like you're boosting

ticket sales in the Revenant Leonardo DiCaprio fights a completely realistic Island bear in an

Incredible 4minute One Shot which should have put the final nail in the cofin for anyone who

says CGI doesn't look real or scary doesn't have weight because short of fighting an actual bear no

practical film making methods could ever produce a scene as real as this 20th Century Fox celebrated

this mind-blowing milestone in visual effects by going behind the scenes of the bear attack

in a two-minute promo titled bear attack behind the scenes and it plays out like this the makeup

in this movie is the most incredible makeup I've seen probably in my life the whole of Leo's body

was covered with prosthetics there attacks his arm so he had an appliance for his arm and also his

hand and his leg gets dislocated it took us 4 and 1/ half hours to apply all that matters is what

they get on camera the makeup is so important you could see the journey in his face yeah no

the promo titled bear attack behind the scenes doesn't actually show you in a single image how

they filmed the bear attack because then you would have seen this guy and then I the bear SC that was

the best use of special effects I think I've ever seen he never lets me talk about how exactly he

pulled this off since the studio has all bragging rights to how great everything in the film turned

out including the visual effects the promo really should have mentioned the CGI Bearer for [ __ ]

sake ilm compositor tot vieri has documented this as the VFX cycle of misinformation and it

goes something like this stage one the studio releases promos and interviews emphasizing the

Practical side of filming we had these physical locations we had the real mountains the real woods

the real River the real Snow you dressed entire areas of the downtown like Calgary and Edmonton

and a stretch of highway stage two online media demonstrates astoundingly horrendous journalism

in a series of Articles and videos stating how this show is different from other shows because

they prefer practical effects Mazen insisted that the infected not be created with visual

effects for fear of them looking cheap he was dead set on using practical effects stage three

you gobble up these articles and generate free hype for the show by raving about how good it

looks because it's practical instead of CGI while literally talking about shots that are

full CGI stage four after release the visual effect Studios release breakdowns that show

the mind-blowing amount of great CGI used but the average viewer will never know feeling confident

that they should continue to demand practical effects because that's got to be why this show

looked so good right every shot that we shoot needs to be touched in some way by visual effects

there's everything on this show from airplane crashes to war torn destruction in Big City

alien Romulus is going through these stages as we speak stage one director fed Alvarez saying

in interviews that all aliens had a practical puppet version and he has this obsession with

no green screen and if you took the VFX out of of the film you wouldn't miss much stage

two news outlets like discussing film take this to mean that all sets and creatures in the film

are practical stage three users pick up the bait and claim finally a movie with practical effects

this guy gets it for only the 17th time in the last year the puppets and animatronics and alien

ramulus are being made by some of the best people in the world and I have no doubt they're going to

be absolutely amazing but when your visual effects workload is so big it has to be split between all

these visual effects vendors I guarantee you that's a lot of no CGI since actors have no

idea what goes on in post- production it's easy to toss them at the press in stage one to talk

about all the CGI they didn't use for filming because how could there be CGI during filming

it's not like the animated characters walk around on the set Michael Katon launched stage one for

the upcoming Beetle je sequel simply by saying it had to feel handmade which got sent straight to

stage two by the media and the users played their part by exploding into stage three generating free

hype for Warner Brothers I'm sure it will have stop motion and awesome practical effects but

the visual effects credits include CG generalists 3D modelers riggers animators and groom artists

everything you need for CG environments and characters so make of that what you will Timothy

Shamy made similar headlines for Dune part two by saying the worm he writes is completely practical

causing a similar response from the crowd and of course there was a practical rig for shooting and

parts of it undoubtedly made made it into several shots but no obviously that doesn't mean the worm

he writes in the film is completely practical hang in there people we're almost at the end

I'm just going to bust some myths CGI doesn't require skill Artistry craft or Talent digital

sculpting requires the same human talent and Artistry as any physical media as does all other

aspects of CGI texturing a 3D object takes the same skill and attention to detail as painting

a practical model 2D animators 3D animators and stop motion animators are all animators

and they've studied the exact same animation Bibles on timing weight and movement the Old

Masters used the best state-of-the-art tools they had available to them at the time and the

idea that they wouldn't Embrace new technology if they were here today is ridiculous as seen

in this historically accurate documentary from 1989 anything fake immediately takes me out of

the movie yeah people who grew up in the ' 80s or earlier never had any such weakness

practical effects and Optical compositing really weren't usually as good as people remember them

but we didn't have a problem with it back then because we went to the movies for the stories I

can always tell when something is CGI this is cute what happens is people will go to the movies and

say this is CGI this is CGI that CGI that CGI and they will look at their list and say oh look I got

them all I can always tell when something is CGI this is confirmation bias also known as the two-

pay fallacy if you still think you can spot all the CGI follow me around the room this house is

CGI this house is CGI this jet is CGI the cave is CGI this jet is CGI these guys are CGI these guys

are CGI those guys are CGI these guys are CGI this line is CGI this line is CGI no wait that was the

reference this line is CGI that jet is CGI these cars are CGI these cars are CGI those cars are CGI

and these these cars are CGI actually the entire bottom half of the shot is CGI this jet is CGI

this snow is CGI these jets are CGI almost all the cows are CGI this hat is CGI Michael Fender is CGI

and this dress is CGI okay are you making some of those up nope they're all real probably worth the

Google when I said I was going to save the best for last this is it in 1982 the public

driven film The Dark Crystal directed by Muppet veterans Jim Henson and Frank O

opened to mixed reviews but eventually grew a cult following a prequel series premiered

on Netflix in 2019 promoting itself on matching the look of the old movie by using these greatl

looking puppets the Project Director Lou L who is already famous on this channel with

his practical approach to fast X presented the project with Jim Hanson's daughter Lisa Hansen

at ComicCon with these words I mean listen I I love CGI but we're not using CGI on this

one okay let's hear what the show's visual effects vendor deck has to say episode one draws us deep

into the heart of this world introducing us to many of these diverse Landscapes and creatures a

significant number of shots required us to create a variety of CG set extensions as well as several

fully CG environments it was decided not to build the a as a practical set but to instead

create it as a fully asset additional layers of detail were however implemented into the design

simply not possible with the technology and tools of 1982 a global team of talented artists and

technicians created these visual effects in over 4,200 shots across the whole series but we're not

using CGI on this one H weird but maybe he was just talking about the puppets it's puppets man

puppets it's all puppets that's it he just meant the characters are puppets no CGI and the Jets I

mean puppets in addition to the environment work across the whole show we also created around 50

CG characters and creatures from Digi doubles of hero puppets to original and bespoke full

CG creatures these were all model textured rigged and animated to emulate and integrate seamlessly

into the puppet world of which they were a part we you know we're Hing here there things you know

rasing rods erasing a rod here and there Louie is referring to rig removal a great way to make more

elaborate puppets and then remove the rigs and post an option that films before the digital age

didn't have but this is not rig removal these are completely computer animated Hero characters that

Lou ler relied on to tell his story film sites like Bloody Disgusting reposted L news that the

show will be pure puppetry with no CGI the article is still up even though they should know by now

how ridiculous it is check out the comments thank you about time a movie does away completely with

CGI I would have boycotted the film if it was shot with CGI do you want to tell him or should

I the highest praise for a stunt people is if the viewers had no idea they were there never

realizing that the movie cheated and swapped the main actor with a standin if the audience thinks

rer Mo did this job well done so why is this any different in visual effects why do you have to

know that top gun Maverick has more visual effect shots than black panther simply put you don't if

you thought these Jets were real these sets were practical and that the racing scenes in

Fort versus Ferrari and Gran Turismo were captured in camera great hats off to everyone who worked on

the film for collaborating on a great end result when I saw Jurassic Park in 1993 I knew there were

going to be some computer an animated dinosaurs but I saw nothing in the movie that reminded me

of what I knew computer animation looked like so my brain didn't understand what was going on

I had no idea where animatronics ended and CGI began and to me they were all just dinosaurs if

I'd seen the behind the scenes footage before I saw the movie I wouldn't have been nearly

as emerged in the film so I understand the need for some secrecy up until a movie is released you

don't necessarily need to see what's behind the curtain but it's one thing to just make your move

with CGI so good the audience doesn't notice it's another thing to respond to the audiences we want

less CGI by making your movie with a ton of CGI but promoted as no CGI causing the audience to

think that's it it's good because it's practical therefore we want less CGI and now the studos are

caught in a no CGI Loop they can't get out of to the point where no one outside the movie industry

knows anything about how movies are made anymore because the behind the scenes footage itself

is now visual effects footage that hides what actually happened behind the scenes if you're

fine not knowing how movies are made and just want to be entertained that's cool but if you do want

to know Hollywood isn't telling you make up your own mind about CGI but remember when a director

says they like to get things in camera when an actor says they didn't use a lot of CGI when the

media says a movie preferred practical effects and when anyone says they can always but CGI know this

that is one big pile of [ __ ] that's it that's the takeway thanks for watching what I did not

know 6 months ago that at the end of this series I'd have 75,000 subscribers and 2 million views

a heartfelt thank you to all of you for exploding this channel unless people continue with a no CGI

nonsense this no CGI series is over but if you want to continue down the movie rabbit

hole and get nerdy about screenwriting action movies science fiction explosions editing then

ladies and Gentlemen please do hit like And subscribe because we are just getting started