"NO CGI" is really just INVISIBLE CGI (3/4)

CGI is lazy filmmaking single-handedly  responsible for the downfall of cinema. They use it to fake a mansion, a dangerous  ravine, a space hangar even the storm troopers in the space hangar, or just completely  synthetic shots with nothing filmed. Movie making was much more authentic in  the old days when you knew they filmed everything for real -- except of course  when they used a matte painting to fake a mansion, a dangerous ravine a space hangar,  even the storm troopers in the space hanger

, completely synthetic shots with nothing filmed  or just this regular ass room which is a complete painting just because it's cheaper than wood. You know -- movie magic. My name is Jonas and welcome to part three  of "no CGI is really just invisible CGI". Please remember to check out parts one and two. Did you know that Warner Bros is so afraid to talk about visual effects that they'll erase the  blue screens from their behind the scenes footage? Today is going to be super nerdy, we're going to

  talk about what is CGI, what is visual effects, I'll show you that CGI has nothing on matte  painting when it comes to lazy film making and will take the nerdiest deep dive into  every single visual effect in Oppenheimer. For all my ranting against bad journalism I really  want to thank The Hollywood Reporter for inventing VFX Barbie who comes with unionization flyers  and all male co-workers -- "directors will ignore her very existence unless critics point out the  VFX is bad and they'll thro

w her under the bus" On point, Hollywood Reporter, on point. Greta Gerwig's super hit Barbie was another miracle of old school filmmaking  with everyone writing that "there is no CGI in Barbieland" -- "Greta Gerwig decided  to forgo CGI and took a bold stance against modern filmmaking by refusing to use CGI" "Gerwig and Company employed old school filming techniques avoiding CGI in  favor of practical in camera effects" Barbieland was built and shot at  Warner Brother studios in England and a ma

ssive effort was put into building  everything as a plastic fantastic toy world ready to film, with no visual effects needed. This was backed up by set decorator Katie Spencer: "Everybody knows what CGI - your sixth sentence  will tell you - even children will know" The Guardian concluded that Barbie was "leading an  anti-CGI backlash" by using techniques "exactly as they would have done in the 1910s", straight up  featuring a set photo with a blue screen in it You don't know how hard it is to k

ey a blue screen  on black and white film until you've tried it. You may have wondered how these  scenes fit into these sets. Here's what Barbie's first assistant  editor Nick Ramirez and VFX editor Matt Garner have to say about the visual effects: "what maybe 2,000 shots in the movie and a good 1,400 1500 were VFX shots so three quarters  of the the film were processed through VFX" 3/4 of Barbie is visual effects shots - so  where did they go if everything was practical? The background walls we

re originally  intended to be filmed as is - to look deliberately artificial as in The Wizard of  Oz but Framestore's production VFX supervisor Glen Pratt says to Post Perspective: "All that evolved once we got into post and Greta felt it would look more charming  if rather than being a painted Cyclorama it was actually a 3D CGI placement of buildings" DOP Rodrigo Prieto tells British cinematographer: "At one point we discussed doing  a lot of it with Miniatures but there wasn't time to build al

l of them" Glen Pratt also told animation World Network: "Miniatures were constructed for key sections of  Barbieland which allowed visual effects to scan them with photogrammetry and convert them into  CG assets that could be used for set dressing" "There are over 700 shots of Barbieland  which are either entirely CG or needed a lot of additional CG work to finish the picture" I don't see Greta taking any bold stance against CGI here - in fact she's quite open about "It was also about if we wer

e going to do VFX extension of a space is keeping in  the imperfections that would have been there if we had doubled the space  and built it in forced perspective" For a director who's never done a  big visual effects production before Greta Gerwig has an unusually clear  sense of how she wants to use it -- she wants the CGI to look specifically like their  fake sets and backgrounds would have looked if they'd had a much bigger set to work, with which  is probably why it looks so good even the f

ilm's production designer didn't realize they were using  a lot of CGI - as opposed to build everything. "The reason why we built everything - and built  everything as opposed to doing a lot of CGI" There are a lot of Barbies in Barbieland including  Teen Talk Barbie, Growing Up Skipper Barbie, Video Girl Barbie annnd mocap Barbie. A team of mocap actors worked with Framestore to capture animation for  the completely CG Kens and Barbies that populate Barbieland in the wide shots. Weird Barbie's

house was built as an amazing set and from an actor's point of view there's  no reason to assume any VFX were involved, but as you can see that's not exactly  how it ended up in the final film The promos show you that the basis of the  house was a fantastic miniature - and it really was - but what they don't mention is that  in wide shots it's a completely CG environment Barbie driving through Barbie land were  shot on Lux Machina's volumetric V Stage at Warner Studios with real-time CG houses i

n the  background and a CG replacement of the ground The beach scenes were primarily blue screen says  Glen Pratt, as was the transportation scene with Ken and Barbie in the car with the landscape  going into the distance being entirely CG But wait -- if these scenes were filmed on a blue  screen why does the behind the scenes footage show it as an in camera effect? Holy [EXPLICIT] If you are an "I can always spot a bad  effect" type of person - and let's face it, that's why you're here - you ca

n  spot a bad key when you see one This scene was filmed on blue screen. There is a blue screen here. And you can see the badly removed it and  inserted the desert background to look like one of the production department's backdrops. Warner Bros has done a complete blue screen removal on 45 minutes of bonus material  because they'd rather do that than just talk about the tens of millions of  dollars of great visual effects they used for their $1 billion box office success I wouldn't be surprised

if Warner Bros started completely banning their visual effects  vendors from showing breakdowns from their films On some shots it was too complicated to remove  the entire background so they just despilled the blue color into gray instead. You can still  see some of the blue leaking through here Photoshopping blue screens into  gray screens has been the standard for behind the scenes photos for quite a while For this badass shot from Mission Impossible 3, ILM compositor Todd Vaziri thei  has sh

own on the Corridor Crew how he stitched several plates  together to create the final shot. Two different versions of the promo  about the stunt have been released. In the one on the right they painted out  the cable that pulled Tom into the car The image they're viewing on the monitor is the  video video assist, fading two takes on top of each other, but in the one on the right they  inserted the final effect shot on the monitor, creating a narrative where Tom doesn't need cables  and did the s

tunt with the actual explosion. "If it could be filmed for real, it should  be filmed for real" is a critique you often hear on modern films over-reliance on CGI  and if that's your opinion that's cool. Just know that there has never been any time  in film history that would have suited you. Matte painting was to the 80s what CGI is to  the present - the default way of beefing up any over-the-top science fiction or  fantasy movie with synthetic images The idea is to build as small a set as you 

can get away with, just big enough to get your close-ups and mediums, and create the wide  shot in post because it's cheaper and easier But sure those were like the Marvel films  of the 80s, they were fantasy films, they had no other way of getting their shots But that's only the tip of the iceberg The Invisible Art which is *the* definitive  book on matte painting traces the matte painting back to 1905 when still photographer  Norman Dawn painted on a sheet of glass to cover up some rubbish in

front of a house This technique was immediately adapted by the film industry to get enormous production  value for the price of a simple painting with particularly period pieces using  it to recreate historic settings As early as 1939 The Hunchback of  Notre Dame went full James Cameron, filming a plate of people moving through the  street, combining it with a matte painting which was then used as a rear projection in this  shot which was absolutely mind-blowing for 1939 Released the same year t

he color film  Gone With the Wind used dozens of matter paintings but the visual effects  people never made it to the credits. Effects camera operator Clarence  Slifer says in The Invisible Art: "producer David Selznick didn't like it  to get out that we were using any kind of trick work - the minute you mention trick work you  have the idea you're trying to fool the audience, but what you're trying to do is give the audience  a better picture that tells the story better Studios not giving prope

r credit to the  visual effects people and pretending everything was filmed practically - no way The 1944 war drama Since You Went Away used matte paintings throughout the film to  save money by shooting a lot of the film in the same studio and transforming it into  different locations with matte paintings Only the window here is real and everything  else is a matte painting - in the film it is further combined with rear projection  to put this girl and this tree in front Authors Mark Cotta Vaz

and Craig  Barron write in The Invisible art: "In the digital age they call it virtual sets with  actors placed into entirely synthetic environment, but matte painting had always  been creating such environments" Speaking of World War II even propaganda  films like these designed to show the US military's overwhelming might used matte  paintings to exaggerate the number of B17 bombers ready to deploy The 1947 film Black Narcissus takes place in a monastery in India but the  production never left

the studios in England, relying entirely on matte paintings by Walter  Percy "Poppa Day" and miniature sets to give the impression it was filmed on location The visual effects artist were uncredited and DOP Jack Cardiff who won an Oscar for  best cinematography says in the invisible art: "I'm sure many people thought it was my  photography and perhaps I wouldn't have gotten the Oscar if they had known Poppa  had painted the beautiful matte shots" Matte paintings are to Alfred Hitchcock  what le

ns flares are to JJ Abrams - he wouldn't build anything practically if he  could get away with a visual effect shot This mansion in North by Northwest  is fake - it is a matte painting This hall in his black and white thriller  The Paradine Case can barely be called a set bill - almost everything is a matte painting  just because it's cheaper than wood - as is the staircase in the following scene This prison background is added in post And this entire room is literally just a painting This one i

s my favorite - Paul Newman just low-key strolling through a museum in Hitchcock's thriller  Torn Curtain - the set is just the floor and they didn't even build all of it. Look how they made  a hole here between these balusters to see Newman as he walks into the room. This skyline from George Roy Hills The Sting is a matte painting For the cemetery scene in Poltergeist, director Tobe Hooper made sure to start on these physical  graves to sell us the photo realism so we assume the ones in the wid

e shot are also real even  though they're all added in post because obviously this is cheaper than rigging the whole cemetery This skyline from Escape From New York is a matte painting - and it's painted by this dude -  who made this movie - where the background from the final shot is a matte painting No reason to rig up a grand airport scene for the ending of Die Hard 2, the whole scenery  is fake. This painting is extra large to allow for the camera to start close and pull back This is a cool

one. This moment from Who's That Girl looks like a dangerous stunt. In  reality the building is a matte painting with a perfect hole to allow the camera to see  this miniature car and the guy who is - get this - a stop motion puppet. You can see a slight  miscoloring of these bricks because they're from the miniature not the matte painting to allow  for the correct shadows of the moving puppet Matte paintings were not perfectly integrated  simply because matching the black level with optical com

positing was very difficult On this set from the The Empire Strikes Back only the window behind Darth Vader is  part of the build with a blue screen behind it the rest are part of the matte painting In all analog releases of the film before they touched it up there was a visible  difference in black level between his window and the rest of the windows This was mocked in this uber nerdy in-joke in Family Guy's Something Something  Something Dark Side which quite frankly if you got this joke you w

ould deserve a high five Another limitation of the matte painting is that the camera had to be locked off with no camera  movement, often breaking the moving camera of the rest of the film, as 2D tracking was virtually  impossible in the days of optical compositing Movies like Willow were presented  in Cinemascope but the matte shots were filmed in Vista Vision allowing for some  wiggle room to tilt up or down in the image, helping to break free from the static camera You could also create matte

paintings larger than this canvas and paint them in a  fisheye perspective to allow for an even longer tilt up exactly the same  as backgrounds in 2D animation films But they were still trying to figure out how to  break the camera free to move in three dimensions This shot blew my mind - 3D  camera tracking like this should have been impossible to pull off in 1988 In reality only the two foreground cliffs are three dimensional models - the rest are flat  matte paintings with a photography shin

ing through a hole in the first one allowing for  a small camera move. It's really just an old school 2D multiplane effect as in animation  films but with a three-dimensional foreground With digital compositing it became easier to  integrate matte paintings with rotoscoping, black levels and tracking, and soon 2D matte  paintings became 3D matte paintings and eventually complete CGI backgrounds could be used But the principle hasn't changed since 1905: you built a partial set for the actors  and

fake as much as you can get away with Producers have budgets and deadlines  and have at no point in film history been aware of any rule that "if it could be  filmed for real it should be filmed for real" First I got to get one thing off my chest: I hate CGI [CELEBRATION] No, I hate the word "CGI" I've said CGI more in this video series than  in my entire career. Visual effects people do not say CGI all the time. It's mostly used by  people who have no idea what they're talking about - none of i

t's CGI - no CGI here - not CGI In the business we talk about 3D modeling, rigging, animations, sculpting, textures,  set extensions and simulations. We do say CGI but mostly when talking to non-VFX people - Hey Mr CGI guy we don't have time to move the trucks but you you can CGI them out right?" - Yes yes I can CGI them out - He says f*** it [CELEBRATION CONTINUES] This video series is a direct comment to every  time someone says no CGI and there totally is CGI No CGI on the jets So we'll be us

ing the word a lot CGI is computer generated images as opposed to  images obtained via photography. It doesn't have to be fullscreen CGI. This velociraptor is CGI  because it's a 3D computer object. Chris Pratt is photographed. This shot uses CGI These two airplanes are photographed, but they're not in the film. They're replaced  with these completely 3D computer models. They're CGI airplanes and this shot uses CGI. But CGI doesn't have to be 3D either the first CGI we saw in movies was not this

or this or this  or this or this or this or this or even this. It was the title sequence from Vertigo  where a computer program calculated these screen saver type pixel patterns. How much computer generation does it take for a group of pixels to qualify a CGI? In compositing you can put two layers on top of each other. This is not CGI because although  you're creating a new image everything you see is photographed. That's not to say there's not CGI  in Mad Max Fury Road though, there is a ton o

f it. Everyone knows the pod race in The Phantom  Menace is 100% CGI - but wait - these rocks are not completely CGI rocks like these  assets from the Quixel store that you can use in Unreal Engine. Instead they're photos  of foam props projected onto simple geometry as 2½D objects that you can place in a 3D scene Visual effect supervisor John Knoll himself describes this as a 3D matte painting So is a 3D matte painting CGI now? Defining exactly where CGI starts and stops is  quite difficult - s

o let's do something easier Susan Schwerman and Charles Finance  write in the visual effects producer: "Defining a visual effect is far from  straightforward even the visual effects society which ought to know hasn't come up  with a satisfactory definition. John Dykstra once defined a visual effects as two or more  elements of film combined into a single image" But that doesn't cut it either, because there are  also in-camera effects like foreground miniatures, forced perspective and completely

artificial shots The visual effects Oscar doesn't help us either because that also includes special effects So we can't even define visual effects? There's an Oscar for it and we don't know what it is? Let's do something easier Okay this one is on you - what  is practical film making? Like, what qualifies a shot to be a practical shot? Is it a clip with no visual effects at all? Or can some visual effects be used for  minor things like cable removal? What if an important CG element is added but

it's not  a big part of the frame? Or just a shot where some element was filmed but there could  still be an overwhelming amount of CGI? Whatever your definition is just remember  these shots from Avengers Endgame have more practical photography on screen than  these cockpit shots from Top Gun: Maverick Let me settle it for you: practical  photography means "photographing something" It doesn't say anything about what you  photograph or what is removed or added in post For instance, what exactly

do you think it means  when IGN writes that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny "prioritized practical effects"? Spoiler: if you think it says anything about the amount of CGI in the film you'd be wrong "Practical film making" is an empty buzz word that's supposed to make you think they use  very little CGI or none at all but really it's a blank check of a statement that just means that  something was filmed which has really always been true for most visual effects so it means nothing "No one

else in the world is doing this level of practical film-making -- and  it may never be done again" But hey, Beetlejuice 2 is coming out and  it will be "as practical as the first" [MAGIC] I can't wait This one needs no introduction.  Let's jump right In At Nolan's request to exclusively work  with photographed elements production VFX supervisor Andrew Jackson and special  effect supervisor Scott Fisher collected a library of practically photographed effects  of which 100 shots ended up in the mo

vie as filmed and another 100 shots went to Nolan's  longtime visual effects partner DNEG where visual effects supervisor Giacomo Mineo oversaw a  team of visual effects artist working in -- Nuke There's so only a handful of not too  specific interviews out there to go on so the following is me trying to connect the  dots and fill in the blanks with my guesses First up all these are small particles  and bubbles in turbulent water Disco field. Nolan goes to hyberspace.  I'm guessing a camera with

this macro probe lens facing down and these reflecting  particles water drops or metal flakes being dropped from above camera and then reversed Look at how the particles fly in and out of a very shallow depth of field.  Not all of the bokeh is in-camera, they did fake depth passes in Nuke to  give it the extra defocus they needed These are sparks of molten thermite  exploding when they hit the floor This star is a whole crucible of  thermite, a pot of burning metal The thermite was reused for t

his shot  with particles sinking into water used upside down as the sun's corona The birth of a star is described to Ian Failes from Befores and Afters as being  created with a fire element that is wrapped around in a circle and flipped inside  out and repeated multiple times over. The black hole is probably some fine  particulate in black liquid and they pulled the plug from the tank like a bathtub At first I thought this was in-camera but there would need to be a lot of water  on that table an

d why doesn't it run off? I say they shot the reflection  separately and tracked it onto the table This is some kind of abstract firewall  that doesn't really look like fire. My guess is various cloud tank passes added and  multiplied on top of each other. It could have been distorted with turbulent noise and nuke also These lovely plasma balls are a direct homage to the archive footage. The core itself is probably  a balloon filmed like a miniature element. The dust in the foreground is most li

kely exactly  this pass here. This flag is to shield off the light source from flaring into the camera because  it's only there to give backlight to the dust. This fire tendril wouldn't have been  part of the balloon element so they snipped it off the main explosion and pasted it on The Trinity explosion itself was a large gasoline explosion placed closer to the camera as a forced  perspective solution that made it appear bigger The bright light from the nuke  is an offscreen light source Made c

arefully to mimic the real  footage I'm guessing the fire is real the dust is a cloud tank and the dirt  in the foreground is also this dirt pass These are various explosion elements  comped onto each other for scale This is weird - first we have a reversed  explosion and then a forwards explosion. A Tenet easter egg perhaps? I'm guessing Miniatures The shaking background during Oppenheimer's  nervous breakdowns is done in camera with a shaking photo of the background being projected  directly b

ack onto the background itself. It's very unusual for a studio to allow a director  to be this experimental with an in-camera effect. They'd usually prefer it to be done without so  they could develop it in post - just like these spinning particles. You can see from the shutter  speed here versus the shutter speed here that it's a really long exposure in the film, the opposite  of slow motion, to allow for very long trails, which is only possible because all Cillian has to  do is lie really real

ly still. If there was any walking or talking it wouldn't have worked Oppenheimer's vision of a nuclear shock wave - this looks like a simple wipe between  water that reflects the sky and water that doesn't. It's either two different drone passes  over water or it's all the same pass but with the reflection added in Nuke and little ripples  tracked on it in 3D and used for distortion This looks like a fairly simple case of  fire elements tracked into an aerial plate Now it gets interesting - the

se are also  fire elements wrapped around in circles and added on top of the earth, which is  probably a physical matte painting filmed with an IMAX camera because Nolan would have  insisted. The Earth could also be a miniature, some form of ball, but it would still  be painted like a matte painting This one has to be CGI right? Not really, you  can film rockets going up in the air for real, cut them out and add them to cards in  Nuke's 3D workspace and 3D track the shot Jackson also says they u

sed set extensions  for the film but this is too invisible for me to even guess on but they would have  used either footage from the film or a second unit photography led by Andrew Jackson There are 30 people in the visual effects credits on Oppenheimer of which only 12 are artists.  With 100 shots this gives roughly an 8:1 shot to artist ratio which is higher than usual but  on a compositing-only show this checks out. Oppenheimer drew some unfortunate attention for  allegedly omitting 80% of th

e visual effects people from the credits, sparking concerns that  a lot of CGI was being hidden from the public I don't know for sure what  happened but here's a theory: Knowing the film had too much skin for  the Indian market the studio added a CG dress to several scenes for this release only  and it wouldn't be only the shots with nudity it would also be other shots for continuity  so it could be a very large number of shots And if they want full CG they would need  artists for camera trackin

g, 3D animation, dress modeling, dress texture, cloth simulation,  lighting, rendering, rotoscoping and compositing That could account for all the missing names  and if this is true the reason they're not in the credits on the film is because  the dress is not officially in the film and for that reason we will not be talking  about the dress in this no CGI discussion So let's get to it: the $1 million question. Did Oppenheimer use CGI, yes or no. And the answer to that is a clear, unambiguous: Y

ES/NO Look, I'm damned if I do, damned if I  don't. Oppenheimer is right in the gray area between definitely CGI and definitely  not CGI and even in the visual effects business people disagree about this. My honest professional answer is "I don't care" The artists at DNEG used digital visual effects tools to craft shots that sometimes came  out looking so vastly different from anything that was filmed it is hard to describe it as anything  but computer graphics artistry so to proudly go out ther

e and claim "no CGI" is very misleading  because nobody really knows what that means But what I will say is every single  example we've had in this series until now all used completely 3D rendered  objects that were absolutely definitely CGI And that is not the case with Oppenheimer. Nolan  requested that all the material the visual effects team had to work with should originate from  photography, and the team collaborated to be creative under those unusual restrictions. And in the spirit of tha

t collaboration my answer is: NO. Oppenheimer did not use CGI But I will add that when your story is about  the scientific unlocking of a release of energy unlike anything mankind had ever  seen before and you film it like this [FIREWORKS] If that worked for you, good for you. Me, personally, I needed a little bit [NUCLEAR SOUND EFFECTS] Ladies and gentlemen that concludes part  three, thank you for sticking with me so far. I have saved the most embarrassing and toe  cringing "no CGI lie" for th

e finale of the next episode so if you've had it up to here don't go  near the like and subscribe because you are going to want to miss the next episode. Thank you for watching