Bear!Beorn and other CGI animals

Faenoriel

Faenoriel

Tol Eressea
This one troubles me a lot. CGI animals. Not dinosaurs or other scaled or smooth-skinned creatures, but mammals with fur. I'm yet to see one believable CGI mammal which I couldn't tell to be fake in a heart beat. (Meaning: if you have a video clip of such wonder, a link would be very appreciated.) And it's not just the fur, but the general animal way of moving, sniffing, listening and reacting. I know, I know, it's WETA, but they're just humans too.

A part of me wishes they'd use as many real animals as possible, but the other part says that would only make the CGI animals look even more unreal. *imagines a trained bear mauling the poor Goblin stuntmen*

However, I really wish they maintain the animalistic abundance: the bees, the deer, the bears, the birds... there's something very organic about all that untamed wildlife wandering around Middle-Earth.
 
"The Rise of the Apes" with our Andy Serkis as Ceasar...easy to see the Development there. Movie Development is moving at the 48 frames asecond all the time now.
 
Personally i found the highly animated style they used for Aslan to destroy any of the natural awe and wonderment you have seeing a real animal. In attempting to have him emote (not to mention lip-sync) to human standards kind of butchered the integrity, dignity and innocence animals possess simply by being what they are. When Aslan was killed, all the emotion they were trying to create just fell flat because he was so anthropomorphic- human and so kind of guilty of the nastiness humans have in their character. If they had animated him as a wholly unmagical lion i would have had to leave the room in tears- it's one of those strange things, but i think most people have an easier time watching humans suffer than they do 'dumb animals'. A human's death scene in a movie has to be really well done for us not to consider it just 'what happens' whereas you show an animal dying, let alone suffering, most audiences will find it intolerable. So yeah, if you want people to feel something for animal characters in your film, make sure they as animalistic as you can make them and don't make the same mistake Narnia did.

Dr Death
 
Weta only made props and designs for the Narnia films (Kong meant that even the special effects were done by Howard Berger instead). But I believe the Narnia effects are fine: Lewis's Talking beasts are inherently anthromorphic and they're larger than normal animals in the illustrations.

Anyway, we're talking Weta here. This company made Kong and have worked on Rise of POTA. I'm sure they can make a bear if they can make gorillas and chimpanzees.
 
I remember seeing a lot of the LotR alumni on the dvd features. Also i wasn't really commenting on C.S. Lewis' style, i just think it would have been more powerful and emotive if they weren't so anthropomorphic in depiction and i think it's something that should be considered when it comes to the animals in The Hobbit.

Dr Death
 
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Eh, Beorn's a tough one. He's essentially a black bear, but I don't want him to look like a plain old black bear. I want him to look unique and stand out a bit (assuming we see other bears). Then there is the fact that Beorn grows in size the angrier he gets. So I don't think having a trained black bear is going to cut it here.

Considering the work Weta did on King Kong, Avatar, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I'm not concerned with their ability to render mammals - especially when given a budget like this.
 
I'm still in awe of the way CGI recreates the look and movement of animal hair. I thought Aslan was amazing (they didn't have much choice about making him talk, given the story) also Reepicheep and - though this is really going beyond the question since it's part human, the Narnian centaurs - to my mind they're several thousand times more impressive than the Harry Potter centaurs.

I don't have any worries about Beorn - they've had so much practice now in creating that kind of creature.
 
The animals still looked like CGI animals. At least every time I looked at them I thought "that's not real", which isn't very good for the viewing experience.

I guess it's not really about how correct the anatomy is or how realistic the fur looks like. It's the movement. When you look at animals, they move non-stop in a very fluid energetic way, and they're always alert and sensing and noticing things we humans aren't even aware of. They're not thinking or aiming at anything, they're just being and sensing everything around them and in their own body in such a naturalistic way. CGI animals act more human-like, because they're moved by a human mind.
 
The real deal is always the best alternative. Just like the real locations of the Trilogy. The actors said it the best when the noted that no computer tricks could have made Edoras look as stunning as it did when they built it IRL. The same goes for animals: whenever possible, use real animals. I realize Beorn is going to have to be CGI, but there are a great deal of other critters around, like the birds and the deer, not to mention Beorn's friends. And then there's Bilbo's dream of the dancing bears, which I really hope gets included somehow. It's so surreal and magical.
 
Considering the trilogy used enough physical miniatures composited into shots, why not do the same with the bear? There have been enough older films (and some fairly modern) that have used real and sometimes very dangerous animals in them. A couple of live action takes on the Jungle Book i know have used real panthers for Baghera and managed to persuade them to perform most of the basic shots, so shooting a suitably guided bear against bluescreen to be scaled up, down or whatever should not be beyond the realms of possibility and would certainly look more convincing (and possibly be quite a bit cheaper) than the man hours needed to create one digitally. If they were really cheap they could stuff some goblin dummies full of food and let the bear lose but they probably want some more choreographed 'moves' for when Beorn starts fighting.

Dr Death
 
The Edge with Anthony Hopkins is a good example of a movie where they used a real life Kodiak bear on set to interact with the actors. It was particularly effective I thought.
 
I thought they did a great job making them believable (considering the situation, that they needed to talk, etc...) ... and some animals on set actually were real - like the wolves chasing the Pevensies and Beavers in LWW ...(They actually had to CGI their tails, though, because they were wagging and happy during the chase instead of angry) ... when I watch animals talk or do human things in movies, I think I kind of have to "turn off" or suppress that part of me that wants 100% "real" - and just let go a bit...
 
I've yet to see a believable CGI deer/bear/lion/horse/zebra/etc on screen. Computer generated deers in particular are so common in Hollywood films these days that you'd think we'd be talking about an extinct animal. They invariably move and breathe like drunken robots.

King Kong was fine because he is a mythological creature lost in the modern world, so if he seems wonderfully unreal (which he does) that's perfectly alright - plus the detail of the fur is great to look at. And Gollum's technical wizardry is more than acceptable because we have nothing to compare him to in the "real" world. But I'm dreading seeing computer generated bears, wolves, or orcs (the best orcs were the ravaged Moria demons of the first movie, and that was all make-up, lighting and acting doing the trick), not to mention there's nothing that ages worse than "state of the art" computer effects. By all means use them but as based on real things as possible.
 
CGI animals usually don't work. Even the apes in Rise of the Planet of the Apes don't look 100% real. It's too hard for me accept them when I have a real world reference to look at.

I love Beorn. I'm glad he's featured in the films. He's awesome! I just hope the bear cgi is effective.

Also... I'm worried about talking animals. I hate talking animals.
 
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