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Rising popularity of CGI enhances movies, reality not necessarily a goal

By Laurie Lo

June 13, 2004 9:00 p.m.

Once, the defiance of gravity was exclusively the domain of
those skilled with paper and pencil. And while animators have
always had the ability to bring their most incongruous ideas to
life, transcending the limitations of time and space have now
become a pedestrian feat for live-action filmmakers thanks to a now
well-established technique called computer-generated imagery.

CGI is has become so versatile over the last few years that it
is seen in a variety of movie genres and can be used alongside
traditional two-dimensional animation, such as the kid’s
adventure “Titan A.E.” or the Farrelly brothers’
off-the-wall comedy “Osmosis Jones.”

CGI has even made major live-action films such as “The
Mummy” appear more cartoonish, and animated films such as
“Garfield: The Movie” appear more earthbound and
realistic.

“The major obvious advantage of CGI is that it enables
directors to employ more sophisticated cinematography,” said
Dan McLaughlin, the chair of the Animation Facility at UCLA.
“The process is faster and allows for greater freedoms to
experiment with effects that are prohibited in two-dimensional
media.”

When the use of traditional animation techniques, such as stop
animation, were first incorporated into live-action movies, aliens,
dinosaurs and mythological creatures stumbled their way through
decades of cheesy sci-fi and larger-than-life action movies.

Mostly due to the struggles of many animators in matching live
actors with three-dimensional puppets, there’s still a long
way to go before CGI in movies can look “real”.

“Since CGI is three-dimensional and more lifelike, it
demands a more live-action approach to filmmaking where caricatured
motions do not fit well,” said Dug Ward, manager of the
Animation Facility. “It puts pressure on animators to create
more realistic characters and settings.”

Without the need to draw out every character or scene from
scratch due to digitally saved data, movie companies save time and
money.

“CGI is especially useful in sequels and TV series because
there is a library of characters and motions the animators have
saved and can easily be reused at (their) disposal,” Ward
said.

However popular CGI may be at the moment, just like any fad it
has its inevitable opponents who remain loyal to the 2-D style.

“It makes you concentrate on each frame of your
film,” said animation graduate student Mark Fearing.
“Tedious? Yes, but you develop a greater appreciation of what
each second of a film can accomplish.”

The high amount of control CGI gives to its animators can easily
be interpreted as a flaw of the technique. Since action is dictated
through a computer keyboard and mouse, unexpected elements in
motion are compromised for preciseness.

“CGI has no mass; it has no weight or inertia,”
McLaughlin said. “The creator loses all randomness that is
part of depicting something realistically.”

While the cost of these losses is hard to judge, one thing is
certain; realism is not always what creates a good movie. CGI
supporters believe that the content of the movie ultimately decides
what is deemed successful.

“Most CGI movies are not trying to recreate reality;
otherwise it would have just been made as a live-action
film,” said Connie Kim, a third-year political science
student. “No matter the method used, it still takes an artist
to create art.”

Nevertheless, at this moment, CGI continues to ride its peak,
especially with the success of such CGI-fueled films as
“Shrek” and the “Matrix” trilogy. Through
the eyes of aspiring animators, this spells jobs.

“The movie industry moves in cycles,” said Alan
Estridge, a third-year animation student. “I think it’s
a really good time to be coming out of school right now. The visual
effects industry for live-action is booming.”

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