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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2025
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Asklemmy
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CGI. When people say "there was too much CGI" they just mean "there was bad CGI" because the good stuff is imperceptible.
And often that's not because the CGI itself is bad quality, but because the effects team was asked to do the impossible with half the tools necessary. The "fix it in post" mentality.
Even small things like having reference lighting examples from the set can be the difference between an okay outcome and something almost imperceptible.
One time I worked on something where a character threw a spear. For some reason they didn't have a spear on set and asked the actor to just pretend. Then our instructions from the director were to make the actor twirl the spear before he threw it. Just because it looks super cool to twirl stuff, I guess.
Not only did the actor not pretend to twirl it, the shot was about 30 frames long (one second is 24 frames). So we had like 15 frames to make him twirl this giant spear, which the actor didn't do. It was either make it look like dog shit or make a full, hero digital double and completely re-do the shot as 100% CGI, which there wasn't time or budget for.
Yeah, it looked like dog shit. The whole project did.
Absolutely. On the Team Deakins podcast they (Roger and his wife James) said they try to be involved in post as much as possible, because when animators and DPs don't communicate, the digital elements are lit differently and end up looking cartoonish.
The reasons why CGI is bad doesn’t matter. If the CGI is bad it is bad.
I'd argue it matters quite a bit. It shows producers, and by extension a studio, that can't manage production effectively, and that almost always extends to the rest of the movie. "Bad" CG is rarely the only issue with those movies, it's just what you remember most since movies in general require the suspension of disbelief and that pulls you right out of it.
That the CGI is bad is what matters the most. Why it is bad changes nothing for the viewer.
Not sure why you are being downvoted for this. It’s true. The takeaway should be “producers shouldn’t rush their VFX and listen to time and budget projections” instead of thinking they can get something for nothing.
The downvotes are probably because they're just stating something obvious. No shit, bad looking CGI looks bad, that doesn't mean the actual CGI itself is necessarily bad. Small things like wrong lighting can make otherwise great CGI look terrible. The reasons DO matter, even if the average person may not really care and just has the takeaway of "bad CGI".
Posting that type of response is not actually providing anything to the discussion, it's a useless comment that provides no value. Not all comments and opinions are valid or constructive. The voting system is not really for agree/disagree, but whether a post adds to the discussion.
Like plastic surgery
That's a good one. I like this guy's series on the topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo
I was also going to post the Down The Movie Rabbit Hole series! It’s a very interesting series and well worth watching to understand the “no CGI” claims too.