Not just practical effects just like. Basic set design lol

How… How do they think sci-fi was done before CGI?

Really badly? Do you remember sci-fi before CGI? It was shit. And don’t say Star Wars because they went back and fixed that with CGI later.

*big sigh* *puts head in hands* heathens who’ve never watched pre-MCU sci-fi movies OR the unedited Star Wars movies, my beloathed

So first of all, most people agree that the majority of the “CGI fixes” in the Star Wars original trilogy (excluding minor visual/sound effects like lightsaber colors and blaster sounds) are unececssary, extremely conspicuous, and/or bad. This is not news to literally anyone older than about 20 who has consumed Star Wars content on any level. There are quite literally two very famous ‘despecialized’ fan projects explicitly dedicated to un-doing all of the shitty “fixed” CGI effects while simultaneously restoring the OT in HD.

And yes, I do, in fact, remember sci-fi special effects before CGI was the foundational cornerstone of moviemaking. It was not, in fact, shit:

Also, ironically I can show you by….*gasp* using fucking Star Wars, of all things. Welcome to the Tatooine pod race set of The Phantom Menace, which was not, as popularly believed, CGI’d but was instead a fully-built miniature set:

Yes, they built the entire set as a minature, built life-sized pod racers for the actors, then spliced the two together using digital effects. Yes, they did such a fantastic job that people think the entire set and scene sequence was basically completely CGI’d to this day. You’re fucking welcome for undervaluing the time, effort, and talents of set designers by implying that set design and practical effects inherently mean things will look like shit.

CGI also ages really poorly. What you think looks incredibly realistic now is going to look terrible in a few years. Just look at the original vs remastered Star Trek. They “restored” Star Trek around 2006 and replaced a lot of the practical effects with CGI, and maybe it looked ok in 2006, but it looks so bad and fake now.

You can see a video comparison for one episode here: https://youtu.be/ruPVTPCavdM

In the 60s they built a whole model of the Enterprise, complete with blinking lights and beautifully sculpted/painted details. It looks stunning! Then they replaced it with that horribly smooth and fake looking cgi ship.

Just look at this beauty

You can see the model at the Air and Space Museum in DC

Unfortunately the remastered version is the only version available to stream, but you can still find DVDs with the original effect.

made in 1968 and still stunning 2001 A Space Odyssey

Originally posted by maekar76

Originally posted by bongjoonsho

Originally posted by scoop16

the designers worked with engineers at NASA to make realistic futuristic special effects using models and matte paintings no computer effects at all! - and incidentally inspired David Bowie to write Space Oddity, later performed in space by astronaut Chris Hadfield

Originally posted by laughing-on-the-internet

Originally posted by samuelljackson

Originally posted by vahkarianmoved

Originally posted by junkfoodcinemas

The CGI of the original Jurassic Park may not be aging well (though arguably still better than some), but the practical effects will always look stunning. 

I want to talk fantasy.

Originally posted by cinema-phantom

This shot was achieved with splicing and green screen.

Originally posted by time-means-nothing-for-me

This wild-looking shot (and similar manipulations) was famously achieved by having a professional juggler in a duplicate of Bowie’s jacket and gloves sitting behind him, basically with Bowie in his lap, doing the handwork while Bowie kept his arms behind the juggler. You may have seen a game based on this on Whose Line Is It Anyway.

Originally posted by inafarawaykingdomrol

This? Wires! Splicing! THE CGI TO DO THIS DIDN’T EXIST YET! (The juggler is hidden under the cape. If there’s a scene where he’s wearing a cape, that’s actually probably why.)

Originally posted by thebowieologist

And this? This heartstopping shot?

This does appear to be from the version with CGI—

—CGI THAT WAS USED TO ERASE THE SHADOW FROM THE PRACTICAL EFFECT.

The shot itself hasn’t changed. The lift itself was done with wires and Bowie was given some propulsion with an air cannon so he could make that turn at speed. A minor amount of CGI was used in the 30th anniversary to “touch up” the work done in 1986, and one of the things they did was to remove a shadow on the wall from one of the wires.

How about this?

Originally posted by 60s-heartshaped-chevrolet

You don’t know it, but you’re looking at a practical effect. In real life, the Ruby Slippers are almost orange. That luxe, rich ruby color showed up on the film as black when the shoes were the correct color, so the costumers adjusted the actual costume to give the color they wanted.

Originally posted by witchinghour

A MODEL OF A HOUSE SHOT INSIDE A NYLON STOCKING ATTACHED TO A FAN.

Originally posted by ernestsewell

MAN IN A COSTUME.

HORSES DUSTED WITH COLORED GELATIN.

Originally posted by dailyflicks

And this? This is where it would’ve been useful to have CGI. Margaret Hamilton got really badly burned on the steam doing one of her entrance/exits, and ended up in the hospital. THIS is what you use CGI for.

You come into my house and insult practical effects?

I’ll just finish off by reminding you THIS IS ONE, TOO.

Originally posted by cinemotionpicture

That last one, iirc, was there was a double in a sepia-toned costume, and the interior door and wall there was painted brown, so when it was lit and shot it all appeared to still be in the sepia tone of the Kansas scenes, and part of why Dorothy stepped back out of the frame was so the double and Judy Garland (in the proper blue-and-white costume) could swap.

You are correct. The double’s name, by the way, was Bobbi Koshay.

#this is also a purely personal opinion but aged practical effects are charming #in a way that aged cgi is not (via @glorious-spoon)

Practical effects has a union. CGI firms arent organized yet and therefore are cheaper.

Ray Harryhausen and Ishiro Honda and John Carpenter didn’t learn and teach practical filmmaking for practical effects to be disrespected.

If the amount of happiness, immediate or ultimate, is increased by any costume, it is right to wear it.

THIS

damn just pay them a living wage

Degenerative Cubism afflicts 12% of Spanish cattle. If the disease were ever to become airborne, it’s estimated that all beef cattle in the country would be little more than a few lines leaving the impression of cattle within one month.

A realism vaccine was developed in 1994 but has occasional surrealist side effects, turning 2% of cattle injected into two arguing mimes and a waffle.

jesus christ this is spy kids I thought this was some shakespearian story

Shakespeare wishes he had what spy kids has

That’s not fair. Shakespeare and Spy Kids are kindred spirits, don’t pit them against eachother.

MARVEL wishes it had what Spy Kids has.

I come from a small Moravian village that has been founded over 600 hundred years ago on this hill not that far away from a moderately big road, but practically Nowhere Important, eastern Czech republic. It's never had more than a couple hundred people, because the soil is not that great, and the hills are high enough that the weather is too chilly to have tomatoes out of greenhouse (if you actually wish to have more than four of them) and it snows frequently enough on Easter that it's not considered uncommon.

On my grandmother's side, I come from a long line of small farmers that lived in this one village, going back at least to the 17th century. Everyone in this village was either working in the forest, as small farmers (we're talking about locally rich families having four (4!) cows), small craftsmen or, later on, in one of the factories in the towns down the hill.

And then the commies came to power. And with them came the directive to everyone to give their fields and forests to the state-owned coop.

Their fields and forests, as in their partial, main, or only way of making a living in this village on this hill nowhere important.

So of course people either refused, or were extremely vary of the idea. So then came the bosses of the factories down the hill, which had been already nationalised) to the (young adult) children working there and said to them something like my grandad heard from his boss: "You're a good worker, but we have orders from the party up above, and if your parents don't give their fields and forest to the coop, I will not be able to employ you anymore." In my village, that was enough. In other villages, they ended up resorting to violence.

So the all small village farmers sooner or later gave all their fields and forests to the coop and started working there instead, and the village got electricity and the children got high schools so that they can work at more specialised positions in the coop.

Until one day the boss came to them and said: "Oh, you go to church? You'll have to stop doing that, or I can't employ you on this Specialised Position anymore, the comrades at the top said so."

That's how the communists built their soviet-style centralised farms. By taking them from the people that were using them to make a living. By threatening the livelihood of their whole families. And god forbid your farm or business was large enough to have literally any employees, that made you an evil bourgeois capitalist already.

And yes, that means mom-and-pop shops too. Every single way of making a living was nationalised, either via a state company or as a coop. Like, even my grandma's tiny village convenience store was a part of the Self-service Stores Coop chain, even though she was the only employee in that village and the shop was so small that was located in what is now the living room (until she went to the county communist party headquarters to beg the comrades to build a shop building in the village because it took up a room in a house with four children, because guess what, the Building and Planning was also nationalised and under the supervision of the party).

This is how complete the Everything Was Nationalised was.

That's how every family has a story of someone losing their business, their shop, their farm, their forest to the Party.

Because everyone had to either work in the nationalised, centrally planned organisations, or to be declared (and often institutionalized) as Too Sick To Work, or they faced time in jail for the crime of Social Parasitism.

So yeah, the communists did in fact steal about 90% of what my grandad's family had. He actively chose Czech nationality when the Nazis came asking, because his mum's family had German roots, and he got to choose. My grandma was apparently smart enough pupil that during the war that the local Gestapo unit wanted her picture (from the side, with left ear visible), and invited her in for and interview, to see if she might be a good enough candidate for reeducation, when they get to eradicating the Slavs as they eventually intended. She, by her uncle's advice, spent the whole time the frontline was moving through the village hiding in the cellar with her mum, so that they don't get raped by the Red Army soldiers (or shot dead while trying to escape the soldiers trying to rape her like grandad's cousin).

They were small village farmers, in a village with a soil too poor to sustain anything more than that.

And yet, the comrades from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia still took almost all they had.

also wanna note, before anyone says "but co-ops are good, they can still work the land and have electricity and stuff!", by collectivizing pretty much all of arable land in the country, all of it ended up managed by the state aka ministers, offices and statisticians who knew jack shit about land stewardship and only cared about fitting into the 5-year economic plan. the results? mistreated livestock, absolutely tanked biodiversity that never fully recovered after that, smaller fields combined into massive stretches of land soon exhausted by artificial fertilization and mass-farming of goods regardless of customer demand, most of it was exported to more populated areas of the Eastern Bloc anyway. no capitalism anymore! everything is pre-planned and the same for everyone now! doesn't matter that people in this area need more grain or potatoes, the plan clearly says otherwise. this is what directly led to the ukrainian holodomor for example

on a smaller scale this happened with everything. if you had your field, workshop, business or store confiscated by the state, you could still work there but you barely had any say in what gets produced, when and how much of it. if you were a shoemaker, you couldn't take commissions from neighbors on carefully-made work shoes. your task was now to make as many low-quality shoes as you can to fit the quota. and all you can do is watch how your lifelong work turns into a badly paid, mismanaged mass production where you knew that whatever you create will just rot in a warehouse because there is no demand for it, all the big shots care about is producing 120% of what was planned so they can pat themselves on the back and brag about how strong the economy is.

and if you protested? you are clearly a disruptive political element and an enemy of the people, and you get sent to work in a uranium mine to supply the USSR with material to make nuclear weapons

As a Southern Ukrainian, whose great-grandmother's sister starved to death as a child during Holodomor, fuck this Westerner.

fellow Czech here, 100 % this. everyone has a story like this. and if you don't, it means your family did the nationalizing.

and this whole nationalization didn't mean just huge losses and the fall of pretty much every industry we had. as much as everyone tends to think about the society as a whole and big historic happenings, when it comes to communism, individuals just were suffering. my whole family from mom's side was in deep shit because they refused to give in to the party. the shop my great-grandparents built with their own hands and that was supplying the whole town was not only nationalized, but the family was kicked out of it, even though it was situated in their own house. they weren't allowed to work there anymore. well, what now? you HAD TO work under the cokmunjst party. it's either work or prison (or death if you're too loud). so suddenly, my 60yo great-grandpa who wasn't physically able to do anything but run his own tiny shop, was supposed to go do heavy labour in a mine odr an equally shitty factory. h o w. how was he supposed to be able to do that? well, he wasn't supposed to do that. he was supposed to go to the kine and ideally die in the first week and stop.being a problem. that's how it worked. that's what we remember that's why you as a westerner shut the fuck up and listen.