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Crafting an illusion

A headline in Saturday’s Guardian newspaper, “Hi-tech Hollywood Scares off its Top Monster-maker”, set me wondering.  The story concerned the withdrawal from film-making by a hero of mine, Rick Baker, one of Hollywood’s most successful and gifted make-up and special effects artists. It is a sad day for film-making generally when someone as gifted as Baker feels that his craft is being undermined by the relentless downward pressure on costs of production that means CGI is replacing animatronics and even make-up, as the default creative process.  And I use the word creative with care, because film-making is above all other things a craft.  Baker may have gone by the title of make-up artist, but he was and still is above all other things a craftsman.  There is irony in the timing of his ‘retirement,’ because, as the saying goes, ‘what goes around comes around’, with a more analogue approach to SFX once again gaining traction with some producers.  The much anticipated renewal of the Star Wars franchise – when the first films were made long before CGI became the default tool it is today – with the release later this year of Star Wars – the Force Awakens, promises some if not plenty of non-CGI make-up and animatronics.  This debate is continued here
However, Baker’s claim that CGI is ‘cheap and fast’ bears some scrutiny.  I don’t think there is much that is cheap and fast about most CGI-heavy Hollywood block-busters these days.  With budgets often approaching $100 million and production schedules running into years, huge amounts of time and resources are being invested into a technology that makes the fantasies of screenwriters ever easier to realise.  And this technology has spawned a vast new industry with much of the talent centred in the UK, employing hundreds of creative and ingenious individuals who spend their lives in front of video screens operating software that makes the mind boggle.  The magic of cinema is very much alive and kicking even if the producers demand ever more crazy effects to hide the paucity of new ideas within predictable and cliched story-lines and action sequences.
What is significant, hopefully, about the return to a more craft-based and traditional approach to SFX is that it will provide work for those tactile and practical individuals who prefer to use their hands to physically create something, rather than leave it to a digital processor behind a VDU.  As someone who has always wondered at the artistry and creative brilliance of great SFX I welcome the change of heart.  Yet, is this driven by audience fatigue of ever more unbelieveable CGI effects which undermine the suspension of disbelief or the yearnings of creative minds to rediscover the joys of the analogue world?
The likes of Baker I firmly believe will be with us for ever.  He will be followed by another generation of young film-makers who will not compromise their craft to create works of art that are very much about getting their hands dirty.  Because our culture is so centred on software and the ability to make films is literally in the palm of our hands, thanks to the latest generation of Apps, the analogue world which painters and sculptors understand so well needs to be re-captured by film-makers too.


Posted by author: Adam

One thought on “Crafting an illusion

  • Very interesting…but…there seems to be an implication here that analogue, hand crafted technology is preferable simply because it is analogue and hand made rather than digital. Surely, the important thing is the final result not how it was arrived at? Fisherman no longer fashion their hooks from the discarded bones of their lunch, we do not ‘message’ one another utilising the services of the man with a forked stick nor, for that matter, has the standard of critique been improved by the appearance of the Like button so all is not necessarily better or worse from the move from analogue to digital. As Tennyson’s Arthur had it:
    “The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
    And God fulfils himself in many ways,
    Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”

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