When I am the increasingly demented ruler of Earth

[james_davis_nicoll]

There will be terrible consequences for filmmakers who cannot justify their poorly lit films. Terrible consequences.

Once they are dealt with, all the gratuitous jerky-cam users can also expect a midnight visit from the James Got a Headache Trying to Watch Your Damn Film Police.

Something I realized watching Snow White and the Huntman: today, CGI means movies don't have to hire Little People any more, as regular actors can just be morphed through special effects. I wonder how long it will take for CGI to be used to eliminate other groups from casting calls?

Comments

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Can you put the people responsible for the whole teal-and-orange thing on your List too?

[(Anonymous)]

Isn't the ultimate ambition of CGI to eliminate those pesky human actors altogether?

Bruce

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Can I make a special plea for the JGAHTTWYDM Police to visit those moviemakers who are attempting to make us all deaf?

MKK

[cmattg.livejournal.com]

I suspect at least some of the blame there rests with the theater owners.

[kowh.livejournal.com]

Also the people who have no idea how to balance audio tracks and put music and/or sfx to 11, and dialog down to 5.

You can't even fix that when watching at home, either you can hear the dialog, or the music/sfx is deafening. I want to relax and suspend my disbelief, not miss things and constantly twiddle the volume.

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

This this this this THIS THIS THIS. With freaking bloody fracking BELLS on. *ahem*

[tandw.livejournal.com]

Even though my hearing isn't that bad, I use closed captioning a lot to compensate for that very thing.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

I do as well. Just watched Eastern Promises for the umpteenth time and had to have the volume almost maxed out for dialogue, then down to 50% for music. I'd say at least half the DVDs I watch or rent are like this. Seems the older DVDs aren't so bad about it; I just watched Joanna, Modesty Blaise, Island of Doomed Men and none had that volume issue.

Hmm. A hypothesis may have been born.

[erikagillian.livejournal.com]

TV shows too. I tend not to notice that much but my sister *hates*. She stopped watching Criminal Minds, granted the kind of music was part of it. I've also noticed some tv channels have the problem, which seems strange.

[andrewducker]

Did you not realise this when watching the LOTR movies?

Or did you avoid those for religious reasons?

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

For the most part the height differences in those were conventional forced perspective - camera and actor positioning created the effect rather than CGI.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

IIRC there was still quite a bit of unhappiness from little actors about the decision to handle it that way - as mmegaera notes they got some body-double parts, but it's not much of a substitute.

[blpurdom.livejournal.com]

True, it's not a substitute. Added to that is that I think I recall hearing that some of the body-doubles were actually children. You have to wonder how cost-effective it is also when, evidently, they had to create both "regular" and large sets for some of the scenes and do extra takes, some with the actors playing Hobbits being depicted in oversized (to them) environments, and then with the actors playing average-sized humans on the same set. They also had to do additional filming in a smaller version of Bilbo's home to get Gandalf banging his head on the ceiling, but of course that wouldn't have been helped by casting, unless they had found an actor 40-50% taller than McKellan to body double him for that shot, in order to use the same set designed for the actors playing Hobbits.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the fact that most of the shots where the supposedly-small characters were next to a normal-sized (or larger) person, they did use actual small people for the shots (see where Bilbo's getting on the ship at Gray Havens in the next-to-last epilog of RotK for an example).

I read somewhere where John Rhys-Davies's small double had more screen time than he did.

Not that the doubles actually got dialog or face shots or anything, but still.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it's likely to be used the other way. We've seen how women's magazines use photomanips to massage real women towards their ideals of beauty, and we've seen books and adaptations where non-Caucasian characters got whitewashed; is there a reason that wouldn't happen to actors once the technology makes it easy?

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it already does happen to some degree. But the only limiting factor would be the cost/benefit analysis of doing that versus just hiring a more bankable actor.

I can imagine some time in the future when an actor's digital model keeps pulling in money while the genuine article's own career starts to go downhill.

Also an interesting (for certain values of interesting) development would be hiring caucasian actors and digitally switching their race around rather than hiring POC. Esentially the million-dollar version of blackface. Some studio's bound to try that in some subtle way and it's bound to fail horribly.

[(Anonymous)]

"An interesting (for certain values of interesting) development would be hiring caucasian actors and digitally switching their race around rather than hiring POC."

The film of "Cloud Atlas" will interest you greatly then. In a sort of Peter Sellers/Alec Guinness-type gimmick many of the actors play 3 or 4 roles in the film's various story strands so that Tom Hanks has a part that looks like it could be blackface, Susan Sarandon plays an Indian man, numerous actors is in yellowface, and Halle Berry is in whiteface.

- matthew davis

[erikagillian.livejournal.com]

And the dreaded coming of using the digital recreations of dead actors. ObSF: Connie Willis' Remake.