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Comment by fvdessen | Hacker News Reader

You don’t have to not notice it for the cgi to make the film worse.

You could certainly for example, film ‘once upon a time in the west’ in a green room and overlay the actors upon a western themed cgi environment, and have it look believably realistic.

But are the actors going to act as if they were under the burning sun as believably ? Will they avoid looking at the sun ? Will they tend to seek the shadows ? Will they sweat ? Probably not, and the feeling you’ll get from the film will be different, without you being able to know why

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Not to defend the practice of "CGI everything," but there's a new-ish technique which I first became aware of from the Mandalorian, where the actors actually see the rendered CGI on massive screens around them - think the holodeck from Star Trek TNG. The physical props exist between the characters and the huge display, and the projection is even bright enough to (partially) light the scene. You can see this technique in the "Making of the Mandalorian" documentary series.

I do think CGI is often overutilized, much to the detriment of many shows and films, especially in genres where practical effects get the job done (i.e. - not sci-fi). However, these techniques are evolving, and the actors can at least start to see visual cues and interact with the same digital elements that the viewer will ultimately be shown.

It's called "The Volume" and it's a true game-changer.

Because the environment projects its own lights, reflections are automatically correct and don't need to be added in post. It also gives huge freedom to the DP for shots because they don't really have to light anything specifically.

And the best thing is that it's comparatively cheap so they can punch way over their budget effects-wise.

To be fair, the volume looks extremely goofy if you're there. The perspective shifts with the camera, and apparently can be close to nauseating if the camera moves too fast, and doesn't feel like a holodeck but instead a room covered in screens. It's game changing for being able to integrate vfx, but it's arguably more distracting for actors than a green screen.

Does that mean they have to do a take per camera? Or have every shot pre planned rather than editing them together I suppose.

Yeah, it's a fundamentally single camera operation.

I think you are confusing CGI with post effects. You can have CGI "in camera" as they call it. The Mandalorian pioneered this. The system uses massive LED displays and Unreal engine. They call it "The Volume". https://ascmag.com/articles/the-mandalorian

On the other hand you can do non-CGI effects in post as well. In fact its super common. Bluescreens, compositing, rotoscoping, etc were all common techniques well before computers had anything to do with film making and can all introduce the problems you describe. It was actually a common problem. People would spend a lot of time tryng to get lighting to match and to line up composited elements.

So its not a CGI problem at all. Its an in-camera versus post effects problem.

I do think the Dune film suffered from this problem. I didn't really believe the actors were actually in an environment like Arrakis.

Arrakis was mostly filmed in a desert, how did it not feel real? The CGI in Dune was pretty decent IMO and the highlight for me was the ornithopters wing flapping. The motion blur of the wings was simply amazing.

From the making of I can see online it seems most of it is actually filmed in studio, especially when actors are involved up close.

It is noticable that it’s not filmed in a hot place because the actors are never sweating, they move too fast, their skin doesn’t have the color and texture of a strong tan, they don’t seem affected by transitioning from hot to cold, they touch sand with naked hands, etc. Compare with western movies that are actually filmed on location, they somehow feel like they’re filmed on a hotter planet than arakis

EDIT: seems that most of the scenes in the desert filmed in situ were also in relatively cold deserts as the filming crew is wearing down jackets

I can't imagine not using on Arrakis any head cover and sunglasses.

Would you sweat on Arrakis? I've never been to a dry desert, but I've heard that sweat can evaporate there very quickly and it's very hard to become sweaty.

As someone who grew up in the United Arab Emirates, being sweaty is your default state of being for most of the year.

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