Movies - Times Change

Y'know, I don't want to disrespect the work involved in CGI, but I love hearing about physical effects in movies. I haven't watched the others, but the Aliens documentary linked here was a blast for me. Three hours is a long video to watch, but hearing about the behind-the-scenes stuff for a movie that's a favorite of mine is great.

Comments

  1. hotfoot_jacksonMarch 26, 2014 at 2:05 AM

    Indeed. My Brother works in miniatures effects, CGI has been the bane of his life (and will probably close his company down http://www.themodelunit.co.uk/ click the rocket) due to directors who think CGI is automatically better, cheaper and can do anything. Fortunately he's picked up work here and there on the new Dr Who, in building model dioramas for museums and a few other bits and pieces, but it's a hard sell nowadays, even for a BAFTA Visual Effects winner. CGI is great in the right place, and can actually enhance model work, by generating water effects for example which don't scale properly in real life, but a good piece of miniatures effects work can look just as good. You try telling some people that though. For a good, and fairly recent "old school" model effects sci-fi film, try "Moon".

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adventures in Rokugan (ongoing)

 So, yeah, I'm terrible at keeping up with between-session conversations and all the piles of possible channels/servers in Discord - especially when work gives me some time to think, but not Discord access. I believe a question was posed about thoughts on the state and future of the Adventures in Rokugan game, though, so here goes... In general, I'm enjoying the time and look forward to it more than feel burdened by it. The start time is a little earlier than ideal, but I don't mind making it work on Saturdays. So, net positive overall. I'm a touch "meh" on the mechanics of AiR. I like the familiarity of D&D, but the Rokugan-specific stuff doesn't feel very rewarding. Granted, this may just be my pick of a shadow acolyte, but I feel like I'm getting more functional mileage out of the sharpshooter feat than all of the special class abilities and level-ups haven't been particularly exciting. I've been tempted to multi-class into something els
Read more

Harbinger of Chaos (Godbound)

 Last night seemed to be the climactic finale of the ongoing Godbound game. I have some thoughts. The previous session ended with a couple PCs and a shadowy person in the special chamber with access to divine realms and their vacated thrones (in the campaign, the gods were sorta kicked out of their positions, making things up for grabs). Once PC had already claimed a throne. All the others were waiting outside. At the moment the session ended, no one seemed aware that the shadowy figure was Beryn, big-bad threat of the campaign. This is where I feel weird about things, because that little detail came up OOC and it changed everything. If the PCs had been aware at the time, they probably would have started a fight outside the chamber when they saw him. That didn't happen. But suddenly because the players were aware, they wanted to be able to plan before the conflict (with downtime glossed over previous) so they could go into the next session guns-blazing and as prepared as possible.
Read more

RPG Desires?

 So I was asked last night what I actually want in an RPG game/campaign. I came up with a few points, but that's a question I find hard to answer on the spot. It's easy to point at things in an ongoing game that I don't like, and a little harder to point at things I do (darn negative-focused psychology), but making generalizations is more difficult still. It does, however, give me something to focus a little on and ramble about for a time... Story I like a narrative through line - not usually to the point of "railroading," but I want more connective tissue than just returning to a job board after each mission. Sometimes that develops as things go, with character goals shaping things. Setting an end goal at the outset ("defeat the demon lord!") can have ups and downs. However it comes about, I really like to feel there is some forward momentum toward something, though. Consistency This one gets sub-points!  As far as setting, I sort of stopped using the t
Read more