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The One Ring Forums: Tolkien Topics: Movie Discussion: The Lord of the Rings:
"I always wanted the Black Riders CGI..." PJ 2013
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Lissuin
Valinor


Jan 14 2017, 3:48am

Post #26 of 36 (2827 views)
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I......love.......this, Ms. Mouse! [In reply to] Can't Post


Quote
Reminds me of the Prologue to Shakespeare's Henry V, which apologises to the audience for trying to represent world-changing events in a tiny theatre - 'Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts...' Things have changed a lot, but in essence the contract between players and audience is the same. What happens on page, stage and screen isn't real and as the audience we'll always know this. It's just a question of letting go and entering the story.


'Nuf said. Cheers! Smile


glor
Rohan

Jan 15 2017, 12:47am

Post #27 of 36 (2792 views)
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It is I think, the lighting [In reply to] Can't Post

Almost any CGI or scene shot on set, seems to me to suffer from the unnatural lighting issue. It doesn't just apply to the Hobbit films.

CGI is a replacement for sets, for painted and artificially constructed backgrounds, all these things suffer from the same issue in films. Very few directors, and I mean a tiny few, are have the eye for light and shadow that gives them the ability take a set or CGI and make it feel real or alive with light. In fact only one comes to mind, Ridley Scott.

As for the colour gradient in the Hobbit films, as an AV enthusiast of sorts, I would suggest that is more about badly calibrated cinema screens and, home viewers watching their dvds/blu-rays with their TV sets to vivid or dynamic, the bete noir of the AV world. I saw a screening of DOS in one cinema that was supposed to be HFR, and the colours and focus was all over the place. Yet when I watched the same film in HFR at my local Odeon it was glorious, the same goes for the rest of the trilogy I saw at my local Odeon in HFR and normal formats because, Odeons in the UK take a bit of time in making sure their screens are set up properly. At home, LCD TV sets even ones not set on the dreaded dynamic/vivid setting aren't very good at blacks and contrast, they overcompensate by saturating the RBG colour palette which can make some films, not just the Hobbit look overly garish or take on a strange hue.

Although when one considers the actual story there is a difference between the Hobbit and LOTR. The former has a great deal of indoor scenes, the Lonely Mountain/Erebor, Goblin Caves, Inside Bag End, the cells inside Thranduil halls, than LOTR, which has very few narrative requirements to be shot indoors. In fact even when it comes to the more outdoorsy scenes, like Laketown, there is the need to build and film within a full studio set, rather than find a location due to how it should look and the scale. When one thinks about LOTR, and the narrative and description of places in the novel and transferring them to screen, they are largely outdoors or relatively easy to use a location and build a set in situ e.g Rohan.

No mascara can survive BOTFA


imin
Valinor


Jan 15 2017, 9:57am

Post #28 of 36 (2776 views)
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hmm i dont agree [In reply to] Can't Post

I viewed AUJ in both 2D and IMAX 3D HFR and although the imax was better the colour was still terrible. I have also watched the film in sections on a laptop and home TV which is OLED 4K (these currently give the best contact with light and darks) and it still looked worse than nearly all other movies. There are others that come to mind as looking just as bad, one of the transformer movies i feel suffers with the same colour grading issues. The lighting or colour grading effect they were going for with the battle of azanulbizar for example, some probably love it, for me i think it looks terribly fake and off putting. If i compare that to some scenes from the LOTR trilogy which had almost all CGI settings, the colour grading is different, thinking of Moria in LOTR. I think ultimately it just comes down to personal preference for saturation and contrast of the picture but to me its way off in the hobbit films.

Sets such as Laketown just in general looked small and fake but that was more down to set design, then filed with over the top caricatures and bad dialogue but that is another issue for another thread, lol.

All posts are to be taken as my opinion.


LittleHobbit
Lorien

Jan 15 2017, 10:27am

Post #29 of 36 (2775 views)
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Just an observation. [In reply to] Can't Post


In Reply To
Sets such as Laketown just in general looked small and fake but that was more down to set design, then filed with over the top caricatures and bad dialogue but that is another issue for another thread, lol.


Funny, back in the day of LotR purist/revisionist debates, some people on the purist side thought that Minas Tirith looked too small and bare little resemblance to its book description, being not majestic at all. Guess those kinds of nit-picks come and go. Wink


(This post was edited by LittleHobbit on Jan 15 2017, 10:33am)


Otaku-sempai
Immortal


Jan 15 2017, 2:55pm

Post #30 of 36 (2762 views)
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Raised Expectations? [In reply to] Can't Post


In Reply To
Funny, back in the day of LotR purist/revisionist debates, some people on the purist side thought that Minas Tirith looked too small and bare little resemblance to its book description, being not majestic at all. Guess those kinds of nit-picks come and go. Wink


I think perhaps that some folks build up expectations in their minds that real life just can't compete with. The Minas Tirith set seemed to match very well with Tolkien's description, in my own humble opinion. It was a large, multi-level walled city of white stone. We are observing it from the perspective of people used to seeing elaborate vistas of skyscrapers and intricate structures such as the Sydney Opera House. Tolkien's stone wedding cake just can't compete on the same level.

"He who lies artistically, treads closer to the truth than ever he knows." -- Favorite proverb of the wizard Ningauble of the Seven Eyes

(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Jan 15 2017, 2:56pm)


imin
Valinor


Jan 15 2017, 8:15pm

Post #31 of 36 (2746 views)
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i would agree [In reply to] Can't Post

I would agree with those people that minas tirith also in parts looked fake. When it showed you the city from afar i thought it looked very good. When in the city, it all felt too small - for the same reasons as Laketown. Obviously they can't go and build a full size city just for a film, but one can wish, lol. I think i would have not minded so much if the scenes in lake town were any good.

All posts are to be taken as my opinion.


imin
Valinor


Jan 15 2017, 8:19pm

Post #32 of 36 (2745 views)
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For me [In reply to] Can't Post

I don't live anywhere which has sky scrapers or really anything over 3 stories high. For me it was more the scale of things to the people, if it were the exact same design but full size it would have been much better. I guess it works on a subconscious level as i don't watch it thinking 'does this set look small?' it just appears small, like Glor said about the stone work, it just looks fake as they see it daily. I would agree it matched the description very well, overall i liked it a lot just if it could be full size it would have been perfect (to me).

All posts are to be taken as my opinion.


glor
Rohan

Jan 17 2017, 2:38am

Post #33 of 36 (2693 views)
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I salute your choice of TV [In reply to] Can't Post

I have an newly acquired OLED myself, only the 1080p version, not much point in 4k/HDR if your viewing leans more towards BBC drama, than latest films. We haven't got much UHD content here in the UK, yet and, the tiny amount of content we have is on very expensive, top package, subscription services and doesn't really interest me. That and, the whole viewing distance issue. Anyway I digress, this isn't Av ForumsWink

That gets me thinking. I have yet to watch my hobbit Blu-rays on my new TV. I watched them on my old, slightly ailing plasma, so perhaps the more muted colour saturation of an old plasma may have made the Hobbit's colour grading seem less obvious, being generally duller in comparison than an OLED. Although I was happy in the cinema with the exception of the awful, non calibrated DOS one I witnessed.

I always thought the colour grading in LOTR was to give it an old fashioned classic epic look, echoes of Ben Hur and Lawrence of Arabia.

No mascara can survive BOTFA


imin
Valinor


Jan 17 2017, 10:07am

Post #34 of 36 (2677 views)
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viewing distance [In reply to] Can't Post

i now have a special chair that is closer to the tv to make use of the 4k, lol, i have the paid services and the amount of 4k is admittedly small but growing, and films are now being released in 4k as well. By the time it gets to BBC in full, 8k will be all the rage, lol.

just realised this is a complete tangent to the main discussion in the thread, sorry!

All posts are to be taken as my opinion.


Noria
Gondor

Jan 21 2017, 1:58pm

Post #35 of 36 (2594 views)
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Late to this party but wanted to say that Glor and dormouse make excellent points. [In reply to] Can't Post

I didn’t realize that CGI was now cheaper than practical effects, and given that PJ feels these technologies give him more artistic freedom, of course he would use them.

IIRC, in one of the videologs that PJ said that was still the same guy that made LotR and another time he said that with The Hobbit movies, he didn’t want to repeat himself. The Hobbit is a very different book to LotR so he deliberately chose a different look and feel for his film version. He shot LotR as a legend with a historical feel and TH as a fairy tale.

In LotR. I found the scale doubles, some of the forced perspective shots, some orcs and occasionally the bigatures looked obviously fake. I just didn’t care. Same applies to TH movies, for different nits, and I don’t care.

I thought that Minas Tirith looked great. It was a medieval type city, not modern New York. The thing that slightly bothered me about PS’s Minas Tirith, Helm’s Deep and Edoras too is that they were stuck out in the middle of nowhere all by themselves. Real towns would have farmsteads, orchards, hamlets and what have you close by. Tolkien knew that; he describes the homesteads of the Pelennor Fields and the orcs firing them is one of the chilling preludes to the Battle.

I have always felt that there is a kind of chicken and egg thing going on with both the LotR and Hobbit movies: if you like them, then you are inclined to like almost everything about them. If you don’t like them, everything sucks.


glor
Rohan

Jan 21 2017, 8:30pm

Post #36 of 36 (2576 views)
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CGI also speeds up the process [In reply to] Can't Post

Watching the Hobbit extras especially, those on the AUJ extended edition, PJ and the crew had a problem.

Warners wanted an immediate start to their latest money spinner. The delays including Del Toro's departure left the Hobbit crew with scrabbling around for extras. The extras had been hired but the delays meant, elves had put on weight, people were no longer available for filming, compromises had to be made because, PJ was offered little prep time. WB's insistence that filming start ASAP, wasn't just about a lack of time for design, story boarding, scripting, props etc, but finding the right people to play elves, dwarves, orcs. If one is hurried by the keepers of the purse strings, then CGI can circumvent the need for perfect proportioned extras, or correcting hurried designs that don't in the directors view, work e.g. CGI Orcs.

No mascara can survive BOTFA

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