Ever since blue screens became green screens and CGI backdrops became run of the mill something bugged me..the CGI skies. I never really got why if you are trying to create realistic fx would you fill a good portion of the screen with something so clearly digital when you could composite a real horizon.
The idea it seems it the the director can "direct the sky" picking and choosing his colour palette and time of day. If so why do so many make terrible choices!,I genuinely don’t think directors think much into it other than "its sunrise..beams of light" or "sunset..beams of light" because that seems to be the default.
George Lucas is a pretty easy example with the Star Wars prequels offending with every combination of sunset/sunrise with every actor in dire need of some gamma correction and every edge looking blurred out,if you look back to the original star wars you will see largely real sky’s (some matte painting) and the contrast is pretty interesting ,It grounds the actors and the fx in a real environment.
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| "I'm gonna look at that damn sunset" |
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| "Anakin! lets stare at the unconvincing horizon" |
Lucas isn’t the only offender though,Peter Jackson's King Kong remake is a prime offender with so much of skull island green screened. The trouble is that with all this visual control it all ends up looking contrived,in movie world an amazing sunset is so common that no one would ever stop to look,Luke Skywalker would never stop to stare at the sunset.
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| Skull island:Terrible monsters,great sunsets. |
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| Spiderman 3, wasn't it night like 2 mins ago? |
1 comments:
Totally agree.. I was thinking maybe it's just because I do VFX and I really want to do matte painting that I'm harsher when I watch films, but I don't think it is!
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