After a decade, Gore Verbinski returns to filmmaking with the upcoming Sam Rockwell-led dark comedy sci-fi thriller “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”.
It’s a welcome return to the screen for the helmer best known for his visually lush films such as the acclaimed “The Ring” remake and the original “Pirates of the Caribbean” trilogy.
He’s also accustomed to using CGI in movies, sometimes to great impact, such as that of the Davy Jones character in the “Pirates” sequels – 20+ year old digital creature VFX that are still held up as a gold standard.
These days, complaints about poor digital visual effects are rampant, with plenty of arguments that it looks more fake and unconvincing than it ever did before. There’s a multitude of reasons for this, including cost-cutting, outsourcing and more.
Verbinski, in a new interview with But Why Tho? (via PC Gamer), was asked why visual effects in movies just don’t look so good these days. His answer was unexpected – the switch from the old school 3D modelling and animation software Maya to the more user-friendly Unreal Engine:
“I think the simplest answer is you’ve seen the Unreal gaming engine enter the visual effects landscape. So it used to be a divide, with Unreal Engine being very good at video games, but then people started thinking maybe movies can also use Unreal for finished visual effects. So you have this sort of gaming aesthetic entering the world of cinema.
I think that Unreal Engine coming in and replacing Maya as a sort of fundamental is the greatest slip backwards. It works with Marvel movies where you kind of know you’re in a heightened, unrealistic reality. I think it doesn’t work from a strictly photo-real standpoint.
I just don’t think it takes light the same way; I don’t think it fundamentally reacts to subsurface, scattering, and how light hits skin and reflects in the same way. So that’s how you get this uncanny valley when you come to creature animation, a lot of in-betweening is done for speed instead of being done by hand.
And then just what’s become acceptable from an executive standpoint, where they think no one will care that the ships in the ocean look like they’re not on the water. In the first Pirates movie, we were actually going out to sea and getting on a boat.”
His comments have already drawn a response from the VFX community, including Epic Games VFX supervisor Pat Tubach. Tubach is a four-time VFX Oscar nominee who started at ILM in 1999 and has spent more than 20 years creating visual effects for film and television – including working on the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films.
Speaking with VGC, Tubach says in a statement that it’s not the tools that are to blame, but those who wield them:
“It’s inaccurate for anyone in the industry to claim that one tool is to blame for some erroneously perceived issues with the state of VFX and CGI. It’s true that there are a lot more people making computer graphics than ever before, and with that scale comes a range of successes and failures – but aesthetic and craft comes from artists, not software.
Unreal Engine is primarily used for pre-visualization, virtual production, and in some cases final pixels. I can guarantee that the artists working on big blockbuster VFX films like Pirates of the Caribbean 10-15 years ago could only dream about having a tool as powerful as Unreal Engine on their desks to help them get the job done. And I should know – I was one of them.”
Verbinski says his film, which opens next month, does use CG but they “try to be really strict with making at least 50% of the frame photographic. I think that keeps you honest”.
