Ray Harryhausen and Dr Who
Film and TV special effects used to be terrible. They were great at the time, because nobody had seen, or could do, any better, but looking back now they were rubbish.

Now they are mostly pretty good, and any that do use old-style effects these days have upped their game to compete with CGI so much that they aren't shit any more either.

As evidence, compare any Harryhausen-esque stop-motion with, let's say, Wallace & Gromit (which uses the same techniques*). Not nearly as jerky and amatuerish watching Gromit clean windows and watching Jason pretend to fight skeletons, is it?

*Ok, Harryhausen invented most of the techniques, but Logie Baird invented telly and I don't plan on swapping my 46" plasma beastie for one of his nine pixel monochrome efforts.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 14:52, 21 replies)

big tvs are for plebs

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 15:02, closed)

I am a pleb
So what of it?
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 15:15, closed)

Please don't speak to your betters unless directly spoken to

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 15:51, closed)

Yeah some plebs who lived in our house before stuck a bloody 70 inch tv on the wall but I haven't got round to ripping it down and putting a nice picture of some geese up instead yet

(AWESOMEB0T meddling prick, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 16:15, closed)

I have a sneaky fondness for that "early 80s not-so-special-effects" look
Excellently designed spaceships, but built from easily recognisable bits of Airfix kits, wobbling across the screen on visible wires or with a badly-matched travelling matte... marvellous!

Blake's 7 is a great example; the Liberator model and its main bridge set are both pretty good, and that's clearly where most of the money went; all other effects are extremely ropey!

The worst is probably The Tomorrow People... I have fond memories of the show, but the effects had a budget of about £4.20.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 15:03, closed)

True, up to a point
But I also have a fondness for Texan bars, though I wouldn't want to eat one now as I have to pay for my own dentistry.

The good thing about shit special effects was that they realised they had to use it sparingly and pad out the running time with, you know, ideas, and snappy dialogue and acting and stuff. Rather than just do endless CGI action sequences.

It doesn't have to be that way, though; the recent trend to 'reimagine' superheroes generally comes with a requirement to write better scripts and use better actors, and get them to behave realistically (as realistically as an invincible alien or billionaire costumed vigilante can). Compare the first Christopher Revve Superman film to Man of Steel, for instance. The effects in MoS are miles better (so 'realistic' that much of the second half of the film is lost from view behind the CGI smoke and dust which, let's face it, would be billowing around if two invincible aliens were throwing one another into buildings, etc.) But the new boy is just a better actor that Christopher Reeve ever was called on to be, bless his rusty iron lung.

I'm all for these reimaginings for those very reasons. What I really wanted the remake of Total Recall to be was a shot-for shot remake using CGI instead of stop-motion for close-up FX and models for long shots. Ideally using the same actors, even the original footage as much as they could. But no, they had to go and 're-imagine' it in a bollocks way instead. Wankers.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 15:15, closed)

You make some good points
...but your argument was let down by how relentlessly shit Man Of Steel was. Seriously, one of the worst films I've ever seen, and one that would have benefited from having its effects "used sparingly".

Actually, that would have left very little of the film... So, a plan with no drawbacks!
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 15:58, closed)

I ate a Texan bar, once.
I think it was Hooters.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 17:54, closed)

I'm still stunned by The Nightmare Before Christmas.

( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 15:22, closed)

Me too!

Well, stunned at how popular it is with knobheads down Camden Market with 'cyber goth' trousers on and terrible facial piercings.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 15:29, closed)

Jurassic park looks dreadful now...

(magictorch, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 15:29, closed)

Your mum looks dreadful

( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 15:53, closed)

I don't think I've ever seen anyone over the age of 14 wearing any Nightmare Before Christmas stuff.
It smacks of "Baby's First Goth-out."
( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 18:28, closed)

Very well animated, though.
You don't see bright green used much for tattoos, I wonder why that is?
( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 19:47, closed)

clash of the titans FTMFW

( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 15:39, closed)

Everything else aside*.
I contend that the pre-CGI Red Dwarf effects look more real that the CGI.
Oh, and the CGI in Gladiator ought to have resulted in a sacking of the Director and/or Producer.


*Discussions of being better or worse that current.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 18:33, closed)

Give me CSO
over CGI any day.

As for CSI, I CGAF.
(Dr Skagra glorious glargzhem, Fri 30 Aug 2013, 19:15, closed)

Stop motion characters inserted into a live action film still look good, although I concede that some of the appeal is nostalgic,
but no one was ever under the impression that the effects in Doctor Who were anything other than what they were.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Sat 31 Aug 2013, 9:56, closed)

NEVER MIND EH THE ROBOCOP REMAKE WILL SORT ALL THAT OUT

( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Sat 31 Aug 2013, 12:44, closed)

OH DEAR GOD, NO!
What's with all the CAPSLOCK, this week?
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Sat 31 Aug 2013, 17:26, closed)

To a point i agree
But when you look at some of the Pertwee and early Tom Baker Doctor Whos the storylines were well written and well acted. Blake 7's effects mostly consisted of whatever they could scrounge from Doctor whos cast offs or steal from Blue Peter. That said the stories were well considered and well written.
(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Tue 3 Sep 2013, 15:51, closed)