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Are
Special Effects, Special Anymore ?
Special
effects have always been a major part of movies right back
to the early days of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. The
effect those effects must have had on the audiences then must
have been quite amazing, must have looked to them like magic,
but are we as impressed nowadays by special effects, do we
even think they are special anymore?
It could be argued quite convincingly that they are not anymore,
for example I take Godzilla, a movie with a huge effects budget,
but the effects were not used in a special way at all. Yes
a huge amount of effort was put into making Godzilla look
as realistic as possible, but should this have been the point
to the effects?
Do we really go to the movies to watch a realistic creature,
for the type of movie Godzilla was trying to be, should the
creature not have been made as exciting as possible? Could
this be because Godzilla was computer animated and the technicians
while technically getting everything correct, such as the
way it swam or walked, were unable to make the creature exciting?
Also for example I take Star Wars Episiode One : The Phantom
Menace and a certain Jar Jar Binks. Now I am not here to criticise
Jar Jar Binks as such but I am sure you will agree with me
after 5 minutes of watching him on screen that you completely
forget that it is a CGI created creature? I know I did, OK,
about this point did he not start to annoy the hell out of
a large chunk of the audience. But the fact remains it wasnt
the effects you remembered about Jar Jar it was other things.
Does this not also add weight to the argument that special
effects are no longer special? Before I show the other side
of the argument it might be an idea to say why I feel special
effects should be special.
Should they not make you go "ooh, look at that!", not "what
a work that took, thats very clever". The words say it all
really don't they - SPECIAL EFFECTS. Maybe we live in an age
where there is nothing new and everything has been done, personally
I dont think so and it would be a shame if we were as blase
as that about things.
For the other side of the argument I will use The Matrix as
example. Why The Matrix as example? well one scene to be honest,
the scene in the lobby where Keanu and Carrie Ann-Moss enter
the building and walk the walls and masonry is destroyed everywhere.
Yes, special effects were used here but were they not used
in such a way that instead of simply portraying the action
realistically, the directors used the tools, to express the
scene as they wanted it expressed with a large amount of style.
Who could ever have said they had seen masonry destroyed in
slo-mow before and it being stylish?
Overall the point I am trying to make is it is not enough
just to spend a fortune on the effects budget. The Director
must use the effects as a tool to express what they want to
say in an artistic sense.
Tall
Guy
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