Processing… Processing… System Error
I was watching “Tremors” the other day starring Kevin Bacon circa 1989 because it was one of my favorite movies growing up. A few days later, due to the special place it holds in my heart, I put on the special features to take a deeper look. Then something kind of made me sad. There was a section titled, “creature feature,” in which grown men and woman in 1980’s attire are seen working in a warehouse, creating the “creatures,” out of various materials. You see them painting the scaly skin, hand crafting the large plastic mouths (that devours the residents in the film), creating electric coils for the snake-like-tongues that attack the prey, and trying on the finished creature for size (because back in the day, someone had to control it from the inside, right?). This made me sad. Now-a-days, the majority of special effects are done by computer, you don’t see too many warehouses that build full sized monsters anymore.
Of course computer special effects are no small task and have allowed a much larger spectrum of interesting creatures and concepts but … I grew up on the Labyrinth (staring David Bowie…Bowie) and Dark Crystal and beyond the sentimental value of these films, there is something special about knowing it’s all down by hand and sometimes it even looks better than computer affects. I’m sure there are still people creating their creatures, probably small scale models to scan and enter into a computer, but you’re not going to see a whole movie without computer effects anymore. And any special feature disk you pop in, I doubt you’ll see 8 men spend 2 months creating a 20 foot rock monster.
After Jurassic Park came blazing in the 90’s it was over. This was the first movie to show viewers (perhaps minus Tron) that computers were the new way. Jurassic Park was the first movie that caused me to think ‘how the hell did they do that?!!’ because it was so amazing. Given though, I was only about 10. But now it seems everyone uses computer effects in excess. I am kind of tired of over-the-top outrageous scenes that already look fake because they are all computer and even little things that are created by computer. That one little thing you did, did you really need to use a computer?? If a leaf falls off a tree, does it have to be that fake shiny perfect computer leaf? Can’t you drop a real leaf?? And I know it probably cost more to do it for real… but come on.
Anyway, just a thought. It’s like a lost art or something and I kind of miss it… I wouldn’t mind seeing a movie made with Muppets and/or hand crafted creatures. Might be fun. Or even just anything not made by computer… she said as she updated her internet journal.