New Jurassic World Trailer Hides Improved CGI in Plain Sight | Hacker News Reader

New Jurassic World Trailer Hides Improved CGI in Plain Sight

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55 pointsjuliann45 comments

Trailer deliveries are ridiculous. Months of work is put into these trailers, revision after revision, late night after late night, only for the shot to be almost entirely discarded the day after delivery as the look and spectacle of it would look out of place in the context of the final edit. Studios want these trailers to look amazing so they put huge demands on the VFX artists responsible, so yeah inevitably the shots look rushed and obviously will get better before final release.

This is not all together true. Usually trailer shots are called out at some point in the visual effects schedule of a show, and those shots are finished first specifically for the trailer deadline. The shots are not discarded and rarely "different" from what appears in movies, but can frequently be revised. In this case it is easy to see that the pterodactyl shot was a plate that could be used as a POV shot in earlier commercials and now has more of the shot done (and is likely considered to be finished, or labeled CBB - could be better / couldn't be bothered).

Just recently I rewatched the first 3 Jurassic Park movies and found they aged really well. You never have the feeling that there's to much CGI because they striked an awesome balance between CGI, animatronics and sceneography (especially the first movie, but the other two are still above average imho). On the other hand, many of my friends agree that The Hobbit already looked bad when it came out.

The only weird thing about Jurassic Park 2 was the overuse of the T-Rex head. But the rest never feels "Hollywoodky".

Seeing the changes and the trailer, I have little hope for Jurassic World to be a movie where you can immerse deeply and forget that you're watching a movie.

I thought the first Jurassic Park had little to none CGI, going with animatronics, puppets and on-stage vissual effects. Is there any article to read about where and how CGI was used in that movie?

Any shot where you can see the entire T-REX is CG AFAIK. FXGuide is always a great place for VFX related stuff: http://www.fxguide.com/featured/welcome-back-to-jurassic-par...

That was a very good read, thanks for the link.

The canonical source for info would be Cinefex issue #55, which came out at the time and went through all the special effects shots. I think you can get it for $5 through their iPad app.

Apparently it is four minutes of CG out of fourteen minutes of dinosaur effects. But four minutes of CG is a lot of shots for the era.

The new scenes have also changed to the "blue and orange" color scheme of all modern movies.

I noticed that as well. It's one of those things that once it's pointed out to you, it's impossible to ignore.

I for one noticed that they made the water more blue, but didn't connect it to the "blue and orange" color scheme, despite having read about it again just a couple of days ago.

As long as it does not lead to endless edits post release I am fine with tweaking it. However recent CGI-fests like the Hobbit series do make me think some directors don't know restraint.

"some directors don't know restraint."

IMO the Hobbit trilogy was pure indulgence.

I watched all of the special features on the LOTR extended editions back in the day. It seemed like they were extremely proud of their "bigatures". It's a shame that they seemed to have completely abandoned a technique that worked so well.

From what I've read it was not possible to shoot them in the same manner because of 3-D and/or HFPS formats.

If you're not Hobbit-ed out, check out the Tolkien Edit. Some cool guy edited all three films into one 4 1/2 hour epic. Big improvement.

https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/

Peter Jackson is exactly that kind of directors. And he is consistent in that. Even before LoR/Hobbit, check out King Kong made by him. It's like watching Serious Sam, never-ending battle with CGI monsters, boring and pointless (as part of the movie, playing SS games is fun of course).

If you're going to spend / waste time watching old Peter Jackson movies, do yourself a favor and check out Bad Taste.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092610/

When Cloverfield first trailer came out, there was a shot where the Statue of Liberty's head was flung into a street. The first version of it appeared to be a rough cut CGI [1], then the second version came out of the trailer and the head was thoroughly improved[2].

I know that there is a need for buzz to be created, but where does the line between changes and false advertising occur. If for some reason I was super psyched about the dinosaur jumping out of the water and eating the shark and the scene is cut from the movie, then how is this different from car sales saying they have a car with a/c on the lot and then finding it never existed.

1. Trailer 1 screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/bqkryTL.jpg

2. Trailer 2 screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/A9uVtnx.jpg

Movies posters generally don't represent a real scene in the movie, but are staged for a reason. That could be to relay who the actors are, or to set a tone. I'm not sure how trailers are different. I think the problem is that you believe something about them that is not true, which is that they are made up entirely of scenes from the movie. Historically that may have been the case, but it was almost purely because that was the easiest and cheapest way to get a high quality trailer. We've moved past that now, and it's possible to easily represent the feel of the movie using custom material in trailers, like it's always been for movie posters.

Great pro-piracy argument you have in there. Try before you buy, you know, 'cause things aren't how they used to be anymore...

Wasn't there a Bourne movie trailer that contained a scene or quotation that never occurred in the movies?

Just last night I watched the Tangled trailer with my daughter. A large portion of the trailer never happens in the movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCxuxrLNrsw

My guess is that it was going to be part of the movie but ended up getting cut for editing reasons. (The whole "hair as weapon" bit is probably inconsistent with character for the rest of the movie)

I'm not familiar with Tangled, but by the time Disney got to Frozen, there was a trailer with Olaf & Sven that is basically a stand-alone scene not in the movie at all (intentionally). It's impressionistic more than trying to represent the film literally.

I am okay with that as a teaser, as long as it is billed as a short or it is made to be characters doing something.

Doing scenes within a movie and making it feel 100% as a trailer and then cutting it out is different.

Probably. Just like there are movies where their funniest line is only in the trailer.

I was really bummed when Song 2 by Blur wasn't used at all in Starship Troopers. Lying trailer!

you are not alone.

Back in 1991, the trailer for Star Trek VI had a clip of Captain Kirk being shot and vaporized by a phaser [1]. The actual clip of this happening in the movie looks much different [2].

1. Trailer: http://youtu.be/638S8n2_Ab8?t=1m44s

2. Spoiler: http://youtu.be/s2wBtcmE5W8?t=1m28s

Happens all the time, for lots of different reasons. The first time I noticed it was in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" The trailer had a show where Bob Hoskins was wearing a cartoon pig mask, but it wasn't in the movie. The sequence was cut to improve the pacing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJfateiaasY

Very interesting! Thanks!

I didn't notice this in the film because I was too busy fighting back the vomit from motion sickness.

Driving home that night wasn't fun.

Guardians of the Galaxy did the same thing. Every time a trailer was released showing the same shots the CGI was always improved/changed.

Why do the mountains in the background even matter?

More refined sense of scope/scale.

Because now you have a giant mountain (roughly a triangle), and the giant dinosaur (roughly a triangle) pointing more or less together. This helps focus the attention / energy of the shot.

It's definitely subtle, but a good amount of film making (or hell, photography) is that way.

Everything on screen matters. Modern Cinema is a HIGHLY evolved art form. If you have any interest in this at all, YouTube user Every Frame A Painting publishes, short, easily digestible, and well-produced YouTube videos about this stuff that are eye-opening.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual Comedy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FOzD4Sfgag

The Silence of the Lambs - Who Wins the Scene? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V-k-p4wzxg

Michael Bay - What is Bayhem? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2THVvshvq0Q

Thanks for the links - excellent depth in the analysis. Loved the ones on Jackie Chan.

You're totally welcome. I'm not personally involved in that YouTube channel, but I try to spread it far and wide. It's such a great gem of content.

If you're interested in how the original movies had such high-quality effects: http://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2ndx0r/the_full_jura...

> Humorously, a Facebook-esque header on one spectator’s smartphone screen has disappeared.

I didn't notice the header. However, I did appreciate that they changed the mountains on the smartphone picture to match the updated landscape.

They even got the little details right. Check out the spectator in the bottom right taking a pic on his mobile. The image in the screen changed as well.

I'm a bit surprised that it is worth it to rework effects for a second trailer.

The use of "foreground" as a verb in that article really bothers me for some reason.

I have the same gut instinct as you do, but a huge proportion of English* verbs come into being this way, taking over nouns as a shorthand way of expressing the idea.

For a good discussion and some links to background, see this recent Language Log post: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=16394

* I restricted my assertion to English because I don't know one way or the other if other languages tend to this sort of evolution. My impression is that particular languages tend to be open to some types of changes and less open to others, but that which changes varies from language to language.

This reminds me of an old Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin discusses verbing words.

http://assets.amuniversal.com/6f34d860df950131725e005056a954...

That's kind of an amazing aspect of English as a language; you can misuse words entirely, yet still convey a message. I wonder if this linguistic flexibility is due to the fact that our language is a mixture of so many other languages with disparate grammatical rules.

Thanks for the article link.

I think the evolution of English through new word use is generally an excellent and exciting thing. It can just be a little disconcerting adjusting to new usage (at least new for me personally, in this case).

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