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Comment by xattt | Hacker News Reader

I would not be surprised if engineers who laid the groundwork for this back then would be happy with this workflow.

I am reminded of an interview I saw about the Stranger Things intro (before mainstream audiences got weird about the show). The producers wanted a practical effects intro, and consulted with people who actually made 1980s intros the show was trying to replicate.

The old guard said the show’s producers were crazy to do it with practical effects and should just use CGI since this was what they would have done, if they had the technology.

Edit: oh god, there is a nearly identical HN post from 2024 from me that I do not remember making. I swear I am not an LLM. I am also hoping that I am not an old man telling his stories over and over either: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40453073

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Is it that surprising that a bunch of old guys don't have the same energy and excitement as the new ambitious up-and-comers?

George Lucas seemed pretty satisfied when filming the Star Wars prequels to plop himself down in a chair in a room with a giant bluescreen set where he didn't have to walk around and direct in a hot, sandy desert for hours like in the original films. But the movies looked a lot worse for it.

"guy with bad knees recommends we all take the gondola down"

And yet, the prequels are still miles better than the sequels!

Episode III was pretty good despite filming in 2K.

"Better than the sequels" is not saying much.

I think Episode 7 is a more competent film than any of the prequels. Though these days I don't want to watch it cause I know it's setting up a story that goes nowhere.

The irony being that a lot of older practical VFX artists aren't able to tell when CGI is terrible. They're often so enamored with what the tech enables, that they're the last to see how quickly it becomes shoddy. Not sure what the equivalent of the hedonic treadmill is for CG, but it ages very rapidly, versus the best practical effects which maintain a charming physicality - even when they're no longer convincing.

> a lot of older practical VFX artists aren’t able to tell when CGI is terrible.

Source? As a CGI VFX artist in a previous life, I disagree vehemently, and I think you’re spinning an untrue narrative. I’ve never met any VFX artists, whether practical or CG (and I’ve met many), who weren’t keenly aware of how bad effects were and how poorly they age. The few practical folks left are way less enamored of CGI than the CGI people, and they were always that way (by definition?), so it seems like you’re mixing them up.

The fact that shoddy effects get used speaks to directors and budgets and production studios and what audiences pay for, it has almost nothing to do with the artists. That said, you’re also comparing bad CGI with good practical effects, which undermines your point. There were plenty of practical effects that lost their charm as fast as any CG ever did, and today there is plenty of CGI that remains convincing; it depends entirely on which effect and which shot in which movie you’re talking about.

Ask George Lucas.

Sorry, ask Lucas what exactly? How would that support parent’s claim that practical VFX artists can’t tell when CG is bad? Lucas hasn’t directed anything for over 20 years, and he was a writer, producer, director, and studio exec. He had already been answering questions about practical vs CGI for decades before he retired. Yes he’s overseen some CGI effects that people complained about a long time ago, and plenty more that nobody complained about, and he was perfectly aware of what people think didn’t age well. More relevantly, I know the artists he employed were aware of what would age well before the films were released.

Yes and in general, taste can deteriorate with age. Just look at what Cameron did with the 4K remasters of his movies.

> The old guard said the show’s producers were crazy to do it with practical effects and should just use CGI since this was what they would have done, if they had the technology.

As always, art benefits from limitations.

From the [dead] sibling

> Those old practical effects were incredibly labor intensive and took so long. The famous sequence where from the movie 2001 where he enters the monolith used slit-scan cameras and took up to 5 minutes per frame.

But those effects still hold up today, unlike most CGI from even decades later. So yes, like most modern "advancements" CGI lets you crank out imitations for cheaper but quality is lost. And the cost is itself a feature - it made directors really think about what effects are actually needed and which ones are just noise that don't benefit the film at all. And of course movie budgets on the whole haven't exactly been going down.

I just watched the entire cycle of Don Quixote films by/about Terry Gilliam. That is a master class in how to ensure that your magnum opus is the worst film you've ever made.

Self-referential art rarely ends well.

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