CGI Killing Photography?

Ditto. The more money there is in the budget the poorer is the resulting movie in my experience. There are only a few exceptions. But mostly, movie makers who place great store by CGI effects place less importance on you know those unimportant details like a good script and good supporting actors. By the time 80% of the budget is spent on a big name lead (no matter how suited or unsuited they are to the role - but an essential part of this formulaic approach to movie making) and CGI effects there is not much left over for the rest after all. CGI breeds cruddy movies suited only to 13 year old boys and their oh so mature tastes - car chases, explosions and tissue thin one dimensional comic book heros and villains. Hollywood and its derivatives have a lot to answer for.
 
Renderers are getting very advanced but good CGI - particularly humans in motion - is hard to nail. And the talent which can produce high end CGI isn't cheap.

There are absolutely times, products, shots, etc where it makes sense and is cheaper than using actual products and models. And the cutting edge tech is very good. It allows the people with the vision to get as close as they want to their vision as long as they employ sufficient talent.

But I don't think its ever going to get cheap for more traditional work. Having to author everything in a scene - creating all the props which are easily accessible in real life - takes time and costs money. Or are pulled from off the shelf, preexisting models.

Its just a tool, just like everything else.
 
CGI has killed most product photography - when there already is a perfectly detailed CAD file from the design process, rendering the product literature and advertisements is much cheaper.

But it certainly is not going to move much in the world of portraits - modelling and animation costs extra money while photographing a real subject is free. Even in the remote future you won't hire a animator except for situations where you currently would employ a actor to perform as your subject.
 
CGI will do to photography what photography has done to painting... It will not kill it, but it they will influence each other (they already did) and there will be a shift in themes and subject for both.
 
Cmon guys, CGI is so unrealistically perfect that will never even touch the very basis of the feeling a photo creates. We all have been through something similar. We have been thrilled by the hitech gizmos and now seek that special feeling film photography emits.
CGI for sure will make movies more spectacular, but CGI photos always look cheap and even unrealistically perfect.
 
Nikos72 said:
but CGI photos always look cheap and even unrealistically perfect.
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There are fields where nobody would mind that - but only a very tiny fraction of all photography or cinematography involves top models and super star actors.
 
I'm not sure CGI will always look unrealistic and perfect. It's early days, in the future CGI will deliver a new Elvis film, with sound and mannerism photo's will have imperfections built in the same way NIK effects for some has made film redundant.
I don't think CGI will ever kill stills for Joe public, (Video will do that) what it will do is allow people to create virtual subjects for advertising.
But hey they've been doing this for years and they're already realistic.

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There's a lot of work goes into a 'fake' like above, but yes you can create anything you want in a computer that looks just like a photo, this will become easier overtime and in the future will be even more common.
 
I have noticed that CGI effects look good on the big screen - but often looks absolutely ridiculous when shown on a TV. I remember the first time I saw the new Star Wars movies on TV - all the CG scenes looked cartoonish and created discord between the live action sequences. I had barely noticed it at all in theaters (perhaps it is because it was projected from film?) but on a small screen it looked atrocious - embarrassing - I felt second hand embarrassment for George Lucas of all people.
 
I expect CGI will continue to make inroads into Hollywood and the like, and for some commercial work, but for stills of people it seems to be vastly over-complicated for what is a very simple task. Unless you're doing sc-fi or something, it must be so much cheaper and easier just to hire an actor for what you want to do.

I think in end though, cheap wins, and it does not matter how bad some digital/CGI film looks. I remember seeing "Public Enemies" at the cinema, and parts of that were shot on digital and it looked terrible, amateur, and jarring. Technology has moved on I'm sure. But the point is that 99% of film goers won't care, or notice. They may notice something looks different or odd, but can't place their finger on it.
 
Hmm, great.. another way to make things look 'perfect'.. how long will it be before the majority of commercial images we see are fake or unreal, I wonder. Seems magazine covers are already there, along with a growing amount of advertising, that for example finds it ethical to utilise hair extensions on a model to highlight the alleged benefits of their hair product.
 
Murchu said:
Hmm, great.. another way to make things look 'perfect'.. how long will it be before the majority of commercial images we see are fake or unreal, I wonder.
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The question you should be asking is how long before those 'fake, unreal' images start showing up with Instagram™ type or NIK® enhancement to make the look retro...
[sarcasm]
Software can do anything makes you digital look just like 'real film'....[sarcasm\]
 
CAD moved into the engineering design process, and displaced the traditional pencil & drawing board design method. The experienced Designers hated hated it; said that it de-humanized their work.
Computational computer programs replaced the slide rule calculation process, and lots of the old timers resented that their expertise and the data they stored in personal notebooks was now coded into computers for everyone to access.
That was back in the 1960's - 1980's, and those process changes allowed a new, young generation of designers and engineers to "take root and make a new forest".

Today it's taken for granted that things get designed and engineered by computers, not nerds with slide rules, pencils and pots and pots of coffee.

So . . the industrial photographic process is changing . . . so what? What process doesn't change ?


Footnote: It is not CGI technology that produces movies - it's the movie business and the marketplace.
 
Nothing is killing photography. The only thing that might be happening here, way into the future, is that product photography will become a much smaller field of commercial photography than it is now. That's all.

Now stop panicking and go back to sleep.
 
jsrockit said:
Who cares what advertising is doing...
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Surprisingly narrow remark. Whether we like it or not, advertising plays its role in informing modern culture and influencing popular aesthetic. I would have thought its tendrils would have been clear..
 
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