You're ignoring that movie directors likely know of these anomalies and use artistic license for the shot (in the case of "The Fugitive," a creative use of CGI). With DVD I can see the temptation to go into the slo-mo or frame-by-frame and pick apart a scene. It all happens so fast but I remember in the theaters that I was frozen during that train wreck in the "The Fugitive." Can anybody go through the sinking of the Titanic in all four films? Okay, that's a little off-track (sic), but the reason I ask is that Ballard had discovered the ship did indeed break in half and recent findings show that the rivets were very brittle which were used in the ship and would have failed.
Of course, some movies are train wrecks without any actual train.
On veterans day they had a bunch of WWII movies whose battle scenes were as fake as the Godzilla stompin Tokyo shots.
TThe movie Battle of tthe Bulge where the Germaans try to capture the fuel depot was a really bad one. You could almost read the "Revell" plastic model badges. There was one scene where Telly Savalas plays a tank driver and has a battle going around him . One of the tanks gets hit with some squibbs and the barrel can be seen melting like the plastic it is.
PATTON , also had some bad tank scenes where tthe explosiions were obviously slo mo'd to make them look like real life.
Even cgi has bad features. In the movie Pearl Harbor, a number of scenes looked just too damn cartoonish.
There was one , a silent film in which they staged a crash between 2 actual old "General" style steam engines. TThe reality was actually less impressive because the trains just did a heaad-on, they lifted up in the air and then just settled back and the engines merely broke apart.
As far as the ship in SPEED II, I remember when that ship crashed into the walkway at Jackson Park in New Orleans. The mass of the ship times its velocity squared, drove the ship pretty deep into the Galleria
You're right -- the technique or medium used is not important. It's the artistic use of the technique or medium. If it's done by some contraptunal nuts-and-bolts CGI designer, it can look cartoonish. Basically that is what CGI is -- virtual animation. "Star Wars" used models that were photographed and then manipulated in the computer -- if the models are well done (a true art in Hollywood ever since "King Kong" and culminating in the classic days to "The War of the Worlds," the result is astonishing. If the entire image is created in the computer, it can look quite fake unless there is a kinetic motion that belies instant visual identification.
You're right -- the technique or medium used is not important. It's the artistic use of the technique or medium. If it's done by some contraptunal nuts-and-bolts CGI designer, it can look cartoonish. Basically that is what CGI is -- virtual animation. "Star Wars" used models that were photographed and then manipulated in the computer -- if the models are well done (a true art in Hollywood ever since "King Kong" and culminating in the classic days to "The War of the Worlds," the result is astonishing. If the entire image is created in the computer, it can look quite fake unless there is a kinetic motion that belies instant visual identification.
Star wars used a lot of mat paintings and models also. I saw a show about how they did some of the DEATH STAR shots. It was a big plastic ball thing with lots of gizmos glued to it. I am fascinated by mat (matte?) painting and how they insert stuff into thhe painting gy a blue screen technique.
Matte painting is on glass with a clear space where they are going to insert the blue screen action. One of the most spectacule shot was in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" when the characters imerge from the tunnel on the side of the cliff after the wild mining cart ride.
Ill have to look up about matte painting, some of it is very natural looking and others , of course , look less so
Can somebody tell me why in some movie productions, a blue screen is used and in others, a green screen is used. Why not use a black or white screen?
Im just guessin here but certaain camera film can be made that is blind to blue or greeen, so they could insert a scene into the blind spot. WIZZ! aanswer the man
Always easier to let Encarta explain:
Filmmakers draw upon many other special effects to create illusions in the cinema. Sometimes a film calls for an actor to appear in a place it will be difficult to film, or doing something that is impossible, such as flying. In these cases, the filmmaker uses the so-called blue-screen process, filming the actor in front of a screen that is either painted or lit to match a particular shade of blue. During printing the filmmakers then replace this blue background with a completely different image, creating the illusion that the actors are moving through that setting. In Superman (1978) and its sequels, blue-screen was used to depict the hero's flight. The actor, Christopher Reeve, was filmed with his arms outstretched against a blue screen in a studio, acting as if he were flying. After images of the city (from the perspective of a low-flying airplane) were substituted for the blue background, Superman appeared to be flying over tall buildings.
Another way to place actors in settings that do not actually exist is through matte photography. This technique involves a realistic painting with an area blacked out. The painting is filmed and then, separately, an action sequence that has been carefully framed to fit the perspective and scale of the blacked-out area is inserted. The combination of the two images creates the illusion that the action is happening in the environment of the painting. The paintings used in matte photography range widely in size, and many matte photographers are now using computers to generate the paintings. One use of matte photography occurs in the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). The scene shows a worker pushing a crate through a huge warehouse stocked with all kinds of government-owned objects. Except for the worker and the path he takes, the warehouse is actually a painting.
Green screen is a television process as it's color spectrum charateristics allow the illusion to work with a green screen.
The blue screen and green screen thingies are cool but, let's go back to derailing trains in movies shall we? :wink:
I think we've run out of train wreck movies unless one want's to start digging the bottom of the barrel like "Avalanche!"
just a nitpicky note; the process of employing a specific color as a means by which to later insert independently derived video into a shot is called "ChromaKey"' and any color may be used as the dropout color; green or blue of particular hue, chroma, and saturation being merely the most common. There are technical reasons for those two colors having become more or less default choices, but those reasons relate primarily to the characteristics of silver-halide-based, dye-layer photo-negative film and of conventional analog video ... really math-crazy, nature-of-reflected-vs-emitted-light, wavelength and frequency stuff, so nevermind. The advent of digital video has greatly expanded the available options.
The most common application of ChromaKey is to be found in television news and weather presentations; that weather map the bubbly blond stands in front of and waves her hands over isn't really there, nor is the apparent huge monitor behind the anchor person's shoulder on which is displayed the first few seconds of the clip which then expands to fill your screen at home. It ain't exactly smoke and mirrors, but there's a roomful of folks "behind the curtain" makin' it all seem to work. Pay no attention to them, as The Mighty Oz would say.
Well, timber, blue and green are the choices because they are at the bottom of the Kelvin color temperature wavelength. Violet would have too much red in it even though it's the lowest. The blue is a pure cyan -- why they use green for TV still has to do with the way the cathode tube divides up colors. This also dictates the makeup on live TV. There's been several Oscars given out for the technical perfection of traveling mattes, et al.
I'm still trying to think of train wreck movies but can't help thinking of "Gigli."
BTW, you are right that digital has changed the game. However, as in "Sky Captain," all the actors were being filmed before a blue screen and all the backgrounds were digitally dropped in behind them.
As I stated, I think we've run out of train wrecks. As far as depictions of disasters I am still impressed by the pre-CGI filming on a real set of "The Poseidon Adventure." The movie does go downhill (or downship!) from that point on but the tidal wave and the disaster itself is still impressive. It is being shown in hi-def in a new print on VOOM satellite. The days of the "mega-set" are, I'm afraid, gone as films like "The Lord of the Rings" relied on partial sets with CGI "painting." The huge lodge of the Riders of Rohan was actually built, however.
BTW, in "Speed" the subway train had built up enough kinetic energy to have left the power rail and plow through the station. These films all rely on some judicious exageration (if that's not an oxymoron!)
