I still hope one day someone will raise money to give her a good polish back to copper.
Things you're tired of seeing in movies
- Thread starter Joosh
- Start date
I'm all on board with a revival of 2D animation.
I have come to dislike the 3D animation elements that were spilling into big-budget 2D movies in the 1990s. It sticks out and visually clashes with the traditional stuff when I watch those shows now.
Of course the problem is the sheer cost of hand-drawn work.
It's funny you say that. Didn't this actually happen recently? Like in the past few years or so? I can't remember if it was a Disney production or another company but they brought back retired 2D animators because the current animators weren't well versed in 2D. I can't for the life of me remember what project it was.
I was thinking about this while watching The Iron Giant. How well the 3D elements worked compared to earlier movies where it's more jarring. A giant robot animated in 3D works well in a 2D movie as it adds to his "other worldliness".
You also mention the cost of hand-drawn work. So much is farmed out to Asia these days and has been for a while. It was nice to read the credits and see western named animators. I don't say that as a slight to Asian animators. But unlike so many other sectors of the economy, it's nice to see jobs that aren't outsourced.
I think the reason why it works so well in 'Giant' is partially just because it's consistent. The character isn't hopping back and forth between 2D & 3D animation from one shot to the next.
How good is AI at generating imitations of 2D animation now? Like, the traditional Disney & Don Bluth type of stuff with humans & animals?
2D work needs artistry. That means it's packed full of technical "errors" compared to 3D-modeled objects and physics engines.
I feel like a software could be fed a library of old 2D work and quickly learn to imitate the look of human animators. It seems possible. But you won't get it by pursuing realism.
At 32 feet (9.8 meters) per second, per second
(Why did you ignite this physics class nightmare flashback in my brain?!)
drusselmeyer
Master Member
Because it was funny.
Okay, thanks to some other posts today, I finally remembered by biggest pet peeve of them all: bad foley when it comes to thick liquids.
Time and time again, I'll see something that looks like a single drop of blood or oil in a film or show, and for some reason it's got this complex squishy sound to go with it? WTH? Do some of these foley artists even live in the real world? I've seen it in sooooo many things, but I remember it being especially bad in The Witcher, any time there was a drip of something.
Another example:
youtube.com
The squishy or bloppy sounds come from air bubbles in the liquid. THERE ARE NO AIR BUBBLES IN SMALL DRIPS!
Time and time again, I'll see something that looks like a single drop of blood or oil in a film or show, and for some reason it's got this complex squishy sound to go with it? WTH? Do some of these foley artists even live in the real world? I've seen it in sooooo many things, but I remember it being especially bad in The Witcher, any time there was a drip of something.
Another example:
âï¸ Squishy sounding glue?
5 seconds · Clipped by Bill Smith · Original video "Finn and Man Upstairs - The Lego Movie" by zayd
youtube.com
The squishy or bloppy sounds come from air bubbles in the liquid. THERE ARE NO AIR BUBBLES IN SMALL DRIPS!
drusselmeyer
Master Member
Old people in leads in period films! Old people(over 35) playing roles in the old west or in ancient Greece etc. Most people were dead by 35! History was largely shaped by people under 21. Billy the kid might have been a little haggard, but he was only 21.
Tall people playing normal sized historical figures. Same complaint. Until the 1970s, tall people (6'+) were largely freaks, not average. I recently heard a man talk about how he shrunk an inch and is now short. He is 5'11" currently. In the ancient world, being the height of MJ Fox (5'4") was normal.
Today in H'w'd, 5'7" is " diminutive" as in "dwarf ". Bruce Lee and Tom Cruise are apparently dwarves now.
BTW Alexander the Great was about 5'1", not 6'1".
I suppose if you have to prop up old actresses and stumbling oafs, this works, but I can see mechanical issues with it such as camera angles. In the case of Wizard of Oz, Dorothy was a grown woman of the time playing a little girl. The first choice was Shirley Temple. The film flopped in part because you can only suspend disbelief so far. And of course the implications of H'w'd thinking that Dorothy could even be considered a grown woman was too dark a subject to go into.
I have no solutions about how to fix these attitudes.
Tall people playing normal sized historical figures. Same complaint. Until the 1970s, tall people (6'+) were largely freaks, not average. I recently heard a man talk about how he shrunk an inch and is now short. He is 5'11" currently. In the ancient world, being the height of MJ Fox (5'4") was normal.
Today in H'w'd, 5'7" is " diminutive" as in "dwarf ". Bruce Lee and Tom Cruise are apparently dwarves now.
BTW Alexander the Great was about 5'1", not 6'1".
I suppose if you have to prop up old actresses and stumbling oafs, this works, but I can see mechanical issues with it such as camera angles. In the case of Wizard of Oz, Dorothy was a grown woman of the time playing a little girl. The first choice was Shirley Temple. The film flopped in part because you can only suspend disbelief so far. And of course the implications of H'w'd thinking that Dorothy could even be considered a grown woman was too dark a subject to go into.
I have no solutions about how to fix these attitudes.
On the one hand people were physically younger. On the other hand they would have visibly aged more quickly. It was that way until pretty recently.
This is an early NASCAR racer in 1949. He was 34 years old. Taylor Swift is 34 now.
As for the height issue . . . There isn't much they can do. Casting a whole movie around the height issue would be a poor cost/benefit compromise in most cases.
But I do think it's valid to build oversized sets in historical movies to reflect the scale difference. The grand staircase in Cameron's 'Titanic' was built wider for that reason.
I also think it would be valid to use oversized CGI animals in some cases because of it. I'm thinking of menacing stuff like a Tiger fighting a gladiator in the Collosseum. The Roman-era gladiators would have been around 5'3". A Tiger from 2000 years ago might have been even bigger than a modern one, because humans had not encroached on their habitat and run them down near extinction.
As for Dorothy's age in 'Wizard', yeah, the world was a different place 120 years ago. Especially in rural areas. It was routine for people to legally marry their teenage cousins. There was no birth control so they hitched everybody up pretty quickly. And teenage boys were dying in wars and dangerous jobs all the time. Life was more compressed in general.
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drusselmeyer
Master Member
Let's remember that stars don't just pop out of the ground. Everyone and everything is selected.
No one deselected Johanson because she was 5'2" yet, they did deliberately select actors that were over 6'. This did cause a few issues trying to include her in some of the shots where she might have otherwise disappeared.
Height means next to nothing on camera. Have we forgotten LOTR so quickly? Even there, we can see the obvious problem. Hobbits were never 4' tall. Merry and Pippin were giants )for hobbits) after the Entwine. Jackson skipped over that chapter for whatever reasons.
Sorry, but as a modeler, the out of scale innacuracy thing just really bothers me.
No one deselected Johanson because she was 5'2" yet, they did deliberately select actors that were over 6'. This did cause a few issues trying to include her in some of the shots where she might have otherwise disappeared.
Height means next to nothing on camera. Have we forgotten LOTR so quickly? Even there, we can see the obvious problem. Hobbits were never 4' tall. Merry and Pippin were giants )for hobbits) after the Entwine. Jackson skipped over that chapter for whatever reasons.
Sorry, but as a modeler, the out of scale innacuracy thing just really bothers me.
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drusselmeyer
Master Member
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was less than 100 years ago BTW. The centennial is 15 years from now.
True. But the story was written around 1900 and the movie already had an old-timey feel. By 1939 there were Superman & Batman comics on the shelves. WW2 was starting. All 3 Indiana Jones movies were set before then.
Tom Cruise's career demonstrates pretty well that onscreen height is 'negotiable'.
I'm not sure what's bugging you here. Suppose they cast a whole movie full of 5'4" guys to play ancient Romans. Then they would also shrink the costumes & weapons accordingly, and move the cameras down about 8 inches lower than normal to maintain normal framing . . . and the results wouldn't look very much different from using modern-height actors.
Lightning
Master Member
I thought that was a myth based on a misinterpretation of statistics due to high child mortality. If you made it to Adulthood you had a good chance of actually getting old.
Lots of kids died in their first few years. If you made it to puberty then you had a good chance of living to 50-70 before you died of 'natural causes'. Then you would probably die from your first real bit of trouble. Cancer, stroke/heart attack, etc. People could live relatively healthy lives (if they weren't starving) but the doctors couldn't do much of anything once you had a bodily problem.
Violence & injuries claimed a ton of men in their prime. And big percentages of women died from childbirth. These problems were off the charts compared to today.
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Cephus
Master Member
No, they weren't. Average lifespan might have been young, but that's only because of massive infant deaths. People could and did live into their 80s.
joberg
Legendary Member
Also access to better food/vitamins/health care and other things that we take for granted todayOn the one hand people were physically younger. On the other hand they would have visibly aged more quickly. It was that way until pretty recently.
This is an early NASCAR racer in 1949. He was 34 years old. Taylor Swift is 34 now.
As for the height issue . . . There isn't much they can do. Casting a whole movie around the height issue would be a poor cost/benefit compromise in most cases.
But I do think it's valid to build oversized sets in historical movies to reflect the scale difference. The grand staircase in Cameron's 'Titanic' was built wider for that reason.
I also think it would be valid to use oversized CGI animals in some cases because of it. I'm thinking of menacing stuff like a Tiger fighting a gladiator in the Collosseum. The Roman-era gladiators would have been around 5'3". A Tiger from 2000 years ago might have been even bigger than a modern one, because humans had not encroached on their habitat and run them down near extinction.
As for Dorothy's age in 'Wizard', yeah, the world was a different place 120 years ago. Especially in rural areas. It was routine for people to legally marry their teenage cousins. There was no birth control so they hitched everybody up pretty quickly. And teenage boys were dying in wars and dangerous jobs all the time. Life was more compressed in general.
drusselmeyer
Master Member
Only? Nope. Aside from wars and disease, you had bad water, famine, natural disasters, pollution, bad medicine and bad food, just to name a few items.
Sure people lived to 80, but that has never been average.
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