We often celebrate the best of special effects in film. Movie Magic has taken us to far away places time and time again. Sometimes the magic isn’t very good though and just gives us a good, unintentional, laugh. Let’s watch!
Awesome: Close Up Photography Of Ship Models From The Original Star Wars Trilogy
Sit back, relax, and enjoy this amazing gallery of close up and behind the scenes photos of the ship models of the original Star Wars trilogy.
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Watch This: VFX Breakdown from Only God Forgives
You probably shouldn’t watch this if you don’t like blood and guts and gore but you totally should watch this if you want to see how some amazing effects come together. Remember, it’s all fake. That’s actually the point of this video.
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Wolf of Wall Street VFX Reel Show How To Do Digital Effects Right
There’s a lot of ways that effects are done poorly in films. Obvious compositing or digitally rendering characters, these things can kick you right out of the dream when you’re watching. The most, well, _effective_ effects are the ones you notice the least.
Here’s a whole reel of just that.
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Review: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
I must admit that when I first started hearing about Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters I had some moderately high hopes. You see, there’s a type of movie that I would rather enjoy: the popcorn flick. You know the type; it’s a bit ridiculous, with lots of one-liners and actors having fun. We’re not talking about high art here; we’re talking about fun. Fun at the movies.
We’re talking about the type of movie where you sit down, turn your brain off and enjoy the ride. I was disappointed by a couple of films that promised to be this last year. So, how are we doing with the first big effort this year? Actually, pretty good!
Director Tommy Wirkola’s resume isn’t that long, but he’s best known for the horror comedy Dead Snow, a horror-comedy film released a few years back about a group of kids being terrorized by Nazi zombies. Thinking about that movie now, it feels like a dry run leading up to this. Where that movie faltered mixing up the horror and comedy, this movie has a pretty good mix of action and comedy plus a healthy dose of blood and guts and gore to round things out.
The story is fairly basic. Hansel and Gretel survive the childhood ordeal slightly differently than you remember it from the fairy tale and end up orphan witch hunters who come to a town with a bunch of kids gone missing under mysterious circumstances. Much anachronistic badassery ensues.
There’s not anything here you haven’t seen before, though and at just over 90 minutes long, there isn’t really time for anything you haven’t seen before, either. This movie is short and to the point; what little back story we need is given in a brief prologue and then the beautifully animated credits, and then we jump right into the story.
This is actually one of the film’s major strengths. Previous fairy tale re-imaginings I’ve seen that try to make sure you know they’re serious films end up boring. This movie doesn’t want you to be anything other than entertained, so the plot is kept to a minimum and the action to a maximum, and despite its predictability, it works. When things are revealed, you’re not going to be surprised, but you’ll probably be too busy enjoying a well-staged fight, some well-executed gore, or a zingy one-liner to care.
Speaking of action and gore, there’s a nice blend of practical and digital effects at play, too. Some things are obviously CG, but there’s one big practical effect that I loved. The film is rife with anachronism as well; seemingly set in the early 1800s, but the weapons in Hansel and Gretel’s arsenal appear to be from anywhere from the 1860s to the 1920s, and everyone speaks in a thoroughly modern mode of speech.
I’m sure a lot of these elements are going to wear thin pretty quickly for some. Chalk it up to the film’s short running time that they did not for me.
The film stars do pretty well with what they’re given. Jeremy Renner might be phoning it in, but Jeremy Renner phoning it in is still pretty good. Gemma Arterton plays the whole thing as an over-the-top ass-kicker and gets some great one-liners in, and while Famke Janssen isn’t amazing, her character is such a one-dimensional bad guy that it doesn’t really matter. The bottom line is that it seems like everyone involved is in on the joke, and as such it feels like everyone involved is having a blast making the movie.
Despite being a little repetitive, and a little derivative, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is a solid B-movie, delivering action and effects and, where it needs to, performances. It’s not high art, but it is a good time at the movies.
On Frame Rates
This past weekend, I finally had a chance to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey for the second time and this time, I saw it in the shiny new HFR format. You’ve probably heard, at least in passing, some of the hoopla about this because not only is The Hobbit the first film to be shot and projected this way, but many critics really do not like it.
For those living under a rock, HFR is short for High Frame Rate. Film for my entire life and many years before has been projected at 24 frames per second (FPS). This wasn’t always the case, but suffice it to say that if you’re alive now, chances are you’ve only ever seen 24 FPS projection (except maybe at a museum or something).
Why is this important? Mainly because 24 FPS isn’t really high, and many things in movies work because your brain has to fill in so much information between the frames that many effects –whether practical or digital– only work well because of what isn’t on-screen.
HFR filming and projecting now double that frame rate to 48 FPS, and the result is that, basically, your brain doesn’t have to work as hard, and everything looks much, much, much clearer.
So, what does this mean to me? Quite a bit, as it turns out: I like it. I actually like it quite a bit.
This means I disagree with most of the critics, but from what I’ve read, most are just saying, “It doesn’t look like a movie”, which simply isn’t true. It does look like a movie; it just doesn’t look like movies always have.
There are two noticeable side effects of HFR. The first is that things seem to move faster. This is because your brain isn’t filling in so many gaps like I mentioned above, but honestly, this one goes away quickly. It took me maybe 10 minutes to get used to how things appeared in HFR, but once I was, I felt like I was seeing a movie for the first time.
The other, more significant problem is that because there’s so much more information on-screen and because there are so many effects in this movie, a lot of them are a _lot_ easier to see, and that can sometimes kick you out of the dream, as it were. Some people have complained about being able to see make-up effects and props (hello, rubber swords!) more quickly, but this didn’t bother me as much as the digital effects. Green-screened shots are apparent, and CGI looks… well, not cheap, but certainly easier to spot.
But these quibbles will go away as effects get better, and as more films shoot this way, they’ll have to improve.
I’m not going to lie to you; the technology is new and exciting and not quite there yet, but I, for one, can’t wait until HFR is the norm because all our movies are going to look a hell of a lot better once it is.
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