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New tumblr alert: Before VFX. It’s a revealing collection of pictures that show what movies look like before any sort of visual effects are added. Which basically means it makes every movie, even Oscar-worthy movies, look completely ridiculous. The magic of the movies!
The Before VFX picture collection is growing and range from Life of Pi and Lincoln to The Avengers and Prometheus to The Muppets and John Carter. I want to see every movie before effects are added, so I can laugh when I see actors prance around in half-assed costumes against a green screen. I don’t think seeing beautiful people act ridiculous in a fake room will ever get old.
Lincoln
Another shot of Life of Pi, like the picture up top.
The Hobbit
John Carter (I just enjoy seeing actors face a green screen, acting hard.)
Check out more pictures of movies before visual effects are added here. [Before VFX via Geekosystem]
Movie Sound Effects, Before Soundtracks Existed
The Muppets Movie Wasn't All Puppetry, They Used Special Effects Too
VFX: Add Movie-Style Special Effects to Your iPhone Pics
You’re missing the point of the site a little, Casey.
The idea behind is pretty simple: people don’t give VFX artists enough credit. We’re overworked, underpaid, and simply ignored when it comes to praising pieces of work.
These images show how awfully boring movies would be if they didn’t have the VFX studios behind them, something which made Life of Pi’s award so controversial at the Oscars (with R+H filing for bankruptcy having just won an Oscar).
/soapbox
Sure, but if the green screen wasn’t the best way to achieve the shot they’re after, they wouldn’t be filming in front of a green screen in the first place. Perhaps then the raw footage would look a lot more interesting, as they might be filming on a set or on location instead.
What amazes me about these images isn’t that films would be ‘boring’ without VFX (even though that’s often the case), it’s how much work goes into creating these shots and how much of what we see on the screen is actually the work of VFX artists, even if we (the viewers) don’t realise it. After all, if viewers could easily identify the visual effects in a scene then perhaps those effects aren’t very good.
I don’t think I get the point of your first paragraph.
I’m saying that the green screen might make these images look boring, but the green screen is there to allow the VFX artists to ply their trade.
In other words, these raw images look dull because of the VFX artists, so you can’t hold them up as evidence that films would be dull without VFX artists.
OK, fair enough to a degree, but it’s not VFX houses who have somehow created demand for such VFX heavy films. They exist because studios keep pushing for more and more CGI to have more and more control over the precise look of a film.
So I’d disagree with your assertion that they look dull because of the VFX artists themselves, largely because the phrasing unfortunately sounds like you’re putting the blame on them somehow. The rest of what you say shows you don’t think that, of course, and I agree with that stuff, but… it’s a sensitive topic right now.
Just to be clear, my only assertion is that these raw images look dull because of the VFX artists. I’m certainly not saying that the finished product is dull, quite the opposite.
Personally, I think that most people don’t realise how much VFX adds to a film. Movies such as Life of Pi and LOTR manage to bring an imaginary world to life, and that simply wouldn’t be possible without extensive VFX.
can you haz ‘spiels from them below’?
Shorts from the Suite?
Crow is right to point out that you’re missing the point.
The website Before VFX was started after a monumental snub by the Oscars on Sunday – you can find out more about it here – The Oscars protest that you didn’t know about
A lot of VFX artists are, rightly, up in arms with the state of the industry and the way in which Holywood abuses its position over VFX studios when they make them a huge amount of money.
After clicking through to the website I was shocked to discover that they actually used actors in the Twilight movies.
As opposed to cheese graters? As someone once RUDELY called Robert Pattinson…
Why would anyone call Robert Pattinson a cheese grater? Surely cheese graters are useful and they’re not made from wood…
Don’t people normally refer to people with abs as having cheese graters?
I saw the one where he ran away like an angry teenager and his body resembled more of a mushy blob of tofu…
Yeah, but someone once said R-Patz has a face like as cheese grater, and it stuck.
Oh my god he does.
That’s all I can see now.
…Oh yeah. Cannot unsee.
I completely agree about missing the important point of this blog.
There’s a lot of support for the plight of VFX artists and houses floating around since the insult of The Oscars.
I wrote an article about it and in the 24 hours since I published it there’s been 2000 views – people are sick of getting continually screwed over and this is a way to show people how much of their movies are created by the VFX industry.
if you want to read more: http://coffee-doughnuts.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/will-matte-paint-for-food.html?
Looks like a good article, I’ll no doubt read it at work tomorrow whilst waiting for renders…
Alert ! Revealing ! Completely ridiculous !
Gizmodo, you need to fucking calm down, you are a quarter of century late to the party, don’t hang too strongly onto the idea that you are revealing anything here, FX is not secret, it’s a mature industry with roots going back a hundred years, just because you’ve seen some flckr images of a some movies you remember from your childhood doesn’t mean you’ve chanced upon some revelatory information, I worked in (and left) FX before Gizmodo had begun, to listen to you ‘reveal’ it and then deign it ‘completely ridiculous’ is silly, grow up, stop fucking around like idiots and bring us some really great tech articles that I know you are capable of.
Just to add . . .
You know what, you can do this article without being such tiresome cynically misanthropic wankers.
It’s genuinely an interesting subject I am more than sure your audience would be interested in and would love to read about, so why the need to be so fucking derisory ? Why frame it as yet another Gizmodo “hey look at these pricks” article ? Why not engage you readers in the detail and innovation of visual FX, the history and art, rather than smugly sit behind your keyboards (metaphorically) high-fiving each other at having disparaged another craft you are largely clueless about.
If you are so taken with the idea that the FX industry is populated with guileless idiots you are happy to laugh to yourself about why bother report it at all ? There are much better, more deserving targets for your tedious post teenage misanthropy.
An industry I spent a decade in, while you were most probably masturbating to your Matrix DVD is rendered “completely ridiculous”, an industry my father worked in before is little more than something you “can laugh [at] when [you] see actors prance around in half-assed costumes against a green screen.”.
Really ? You are aware Gizmodo is just a blog, some poorly edited pieces, vaguely centred around tech, peppered with factual errors, poor grammar and inexpert opinion pieces, you do know that don’t you ?
wowsers! whilst the article missed the point you managed to go one step beyond. great post. loving your carefree/bizarre use of the word misanthropic.