I've been thinking about this a lot lately. CGI is only becoming more and more realistic, but may be serving more to the detriment of the medium than anything. Films like I Am Legend replace actors with CGI, something I think is an extreme negative. Directors are also using CGI to cover up for lackluster scripts and characters. On the other hand, it's been used to great effect by some people. Children of Men, for example, used CGI very sparingly to make the seven-minute long refugee camp scene look continuous. David Fincher used it in Fight Club to make a few really great sequences that were very realistic and dynamic.

My question is: do you think CGI is inherently neutral, beneficial, or damaging? Could it be the next step towards making even more breathtaking events on camera? Or is it only a replacement for ingenuity and genuine craft? If I ever get to make films I know I'll use it, but definitely in the same way as Fincher or Cuaron. What do you think?

When used right it can work wonders in setting a scene or making it more realistic. When used wrong, which unfortunately is the majority of the time, it takes away from the story and becomes a joke.

i'm a big fan of it in the Cuaron and Fincher type uses. Subtlety is the key to good CGI... it's lame now because studios are making it to save cash so they don't have for real realism, only the semblance of such.

i had no clue there was cgi used in children of men or fight club. i guess that's common sense ... i never think about it unless it's obvious.

The intro to Fight Club, the "corporate art" rolling into the coffee shop, and the shot of the explosives rig in the van is all CGI. Fincher used it so effectively.

One of my movie ideas is kind of sci-fi, and one of the things I want to do is "dress" the actors in really minimally used CGI elements.

the problem is CGI artists often come from animation backgrounds so they break rules of reality which gives a lot of CGI a terrible look. I still think jurassic park CGI beats a lot of the stuff out today. the combination of practical effects and computer one is a good move. The raptor in the kitchen scene is one of the best CGI scenes ever. i believe in my head they had real dinosaurs.

i should mention look to lord of the rings for bad CGI. it was good skillwise, but aesthetically a lot of it looked horrible.

War of the worlds had some great CGI effects too.

Good topic.
I think it should only ever be complimentary- Lord of the Rings benefitted & was only possible really because of CGI, whereas the new Star wars movies looked awful because of the CGI that was employed. I also was unaware that CGI was used in Fight Club and Children of Men, so for my tatse, that's great CGI in that it's subtle and blends perfectly, whereas I am Legend? the CGI was all over the place bad...really noticeably bad.
George Lucas was saying somewhere that he thinks thats where movies are gonna go. I think Actors could eventually be replaced by studios who have already realised paying a few graphic artists a few hundred grand is way more viable than tens of millions of dollars for a name, that might not even deliver at the box office.

Films are going down the tubes in terms of quality anyways, it should get back to storytelling and away from trying to dazzle you. Dazzle is good but seemingly only in the right hands.

Now..bring on Bilbo...

That's one of my problems with it: actors can never be replaced. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of the "Uncanny Valley" theory, but it basically says that there's a point where artificial life (and hence, artificial life made with CGI) look close enough to humanity to achieve a resemblance, but aren't close enough to look like a real, living thing. The result is that human beings are repulsed by them. I think some people felt this way about Beowulf, even though the animation was based on actors.

I agree completely with the story point. CGI must serve the story, never the other way around.

I agree completely..
and it seems to have gone down that road doesn't it? the story has always fallen in priority to the effects in the last..oh...10? 15 years?

I watched beowulf and i kinda thought, this is like a wank..nice, but pointless ultimately.
Ok, thats whats her name Jolie and thats watsisname..but why not just make the movie in real time? there wasnt even anything too un-do-able in real terms apart from the monster...why climb the mountain? 'cos it's there?
why make the CGI movie? 'cos we can! (it was kind rubbish)

Know why lotsa people loved the original Star Waars? 'cos of the 'used future' aspect..the ships? everything actually..all dirty and crummy..and they were built!! you could see the lighting change on them as they moved in their shot, the Gammorrean Guards actually had slobber dripping from their mouths...and Yoda??? WAAAY more engaging as a puppet than as an evil looking cgi pixelated mistake.

I hope beautiful stories will always be told and as a fantasist, who lives a humdrum life & depends in a weird way on escape, in various formats, I hope it happens for cinema in such a way that the effects compliment the story, but the story presides over all other concerns, budgetary and otherwise.

Bilbo?? you're up...

You actually hit on something I've been wondering about with the "dirty" comment. Nobody probably has the knowledge that I need here, but I'm wondering if there is a way to create CGI and then "film" it to remove the way-too-clean lines and make it look more real. That way when you put it in the film, it looks as though it's part of the natural environment and not something that was made and inserted. Does that make any sense?

it does and i have only one response-if Lucasfilm couldn't manage it? who can?

that's not fair either though 'cos everything in LOTR, CGI and otherwise, looked amazing..the Massive program they developed for the big battle scenes was inspired as well as groundbreaking.

I don't truly believe you can make it looked 'lived in' unless it has been.

Well, it's only going to get more realistic, the trick is using it correctly.

they do that... they simulate camera lenses digitally and match the film stock grain

How long have they been doing that? And is that every movie with CGI or just some?

I forgot how good War of the Worlds was in the cgi department.

I'm generally against CGI but I recognize it for what it is, a tool, that can be used in a variety of useful ways by talented filmmakers. Unfortunately more often than not it's used as an easy way out when it comes to effects. Nothing takes me out of a movie more than really bad, obvious CGI. The effective examples, as others have mentioned, would be when it's used and you don't even realize it or when it's used to create something that could not have otherwise existed in a film, like some of the huge creatures in LOTR.

The worst is stuff like I Am Legend where they used CGI when there was no reason to. Tell me what it was about those creatures that compelled them to use CGI. They could have easily hired KNB effects to do some makeup and prosthetics for them, they probably would have saved money (it's a Will Smith movie so budget shouldn't have been a concern) and the creatures would have been more realistic and better. And a CGI deer? Seriously? Guys, there's a ton of deer right where I live, I'll get one for you, couldn't be all that hard.

Beyond all of this, I think CGI has taken some of the fun out of watching films. I grew up watching stuff like Day of the Dead, the Thing, all the stuff Tom Savini and Rick Baker were doing back in the day and wondering how they did all those awesome effects. You'd watch it over and over again to see if you could catch the conceit in the magician's trick, now you don't need to think about it, you immediately know it's CGI. But again, like synthesizers or sampling, I don't think it's inherently bad, it's just that the majority are using it out of laziness.

Robert Rodrigues has used CGI pretty effectively as well, he seems to be a guy who understands the possibilities of digital filmmaking in general.

if you get a real deer then you need to hire deer wranglers

some of the worst cgi that I have seen came from the biggest budgets.. I am legend, The day after tomorrow, etc... I agree that Fight Club is good use, but one you guy haven't mentioned is T2. I thought that was some of the best ever. You know it's fake, but the t1000 is believable. The jurassic parks, and twister has some good cgi also

The bottom line is that if you have talented, quality people behind the camera, you can usually trust them to use CGI in the right way. CGI is just one aspect/tool of the filmmaking process. If you have shitbirds making films, it doesn't matter if CGI is used or not; the film's still gonna suck.