Options
Worst special effects (models and minatures, not CGI) in movies
A few days ago I was watching Meteor on blu ray...I know it's not a great movie but I had not seen it for years, and hoped with a decent transfer it might at least look a little better.
Nope.
What struck me, as it did on previous viewings, was how bad the modelwork (specifically the scenes of the rockets, or indeed any scenes in space) in the movie was.
The main problem is that the rockets themselves looked just like toys, were pure, shiny white with hardly any detail, and worst of all were filmed in such harsh, bright lighting they looked exactly like...well, toys.
Filming miniatures is an art and a skill, and a good crew would know how to film models in such a way to give them a sense of scale, which is crucial for such movies otherwise they just look like...toys. You also NEVER film such models with bright studio lights, even big, massively detailed and more convincing models such as the ones in movies like Alien/Aliens, Star Wars, Star Trek etc.
I actually cannot believe the footage even got past the director and the people at the studios...it looks more like test footage, or something you would see on a children's tv show.
Definitely the worst I have seen. Anyone got any other similar examples?
Nope.
What struck me, as it did on previous viewings, was how bad the modelwork (specifically the scenes of the rockets, or indeed any scenes in space) in the movie was.
The main problem is that the rockets themselves looked just like toys, were pure, shiny white with hardly any detail, and worst of all were filmed in such harsh, bright lighting they looked exactly like...well, toys.
Filming miniatures is an art and a skill, and a good crew would know how to film models in such a way to give them a sense of scale, which is crucial for such movies otherwise they just look like...toys. You also NEVER film such models with bright studio lights, even big, massively detailed and more convincing models such as the ones in movies like Alien/Aliens, Star Wars, Star Trek etc.
I actually cannot believe the footage even got past the director and the people at the studios...it looks more like test footage, or something you would see on a children's tv show.
Definitely the worst I have seen. Anyone got any other similar examples?
0
Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywaR-Lq_ayk
Despite his reputation as a genius of cinema, Hitchcock had some pretty ropey effects in his movies - Marnie in particular with poor back projection and dummy horses.
Have to agree, that particular sequence has always looked ropey, which is a shame because apart from that dreadful bit of 'enhancement' when the dam blows up, the rest of the modelwork is actually pretty good.
That said it is still a great movie.
Good examples, and particularly of studios trying to save money and do it on the cheap...Superman 4 filmed in Milton Keynes...and on the London Underground unconvincingly trying to stand in for a NY subway.
ST5 similarly with some dreadful process shots, and just general all round cheapness. Kind of an insult to fans of the franchise.
Does not apply...talking about older movies. non-cgi, mainly old style modelwork.
Bad CGI I more modern movies is perhaps a thread you should start yourself.
Mmmm...I dunno...when you start going back to the 30's to the 60's I don't think it's the same...simple truth is in those decades unless you went down the Harryhausen route, which was time consuming and expensive, you had to make rubber monsters and they usually looked rubbish.
Plus if you were young at the time you saw them, you never minded anyway
I'm talking more about movies made during the decades when convincing special effects were available, but that for whatever reason certain people had decided they would save money and do it on the cheap, and also with high-profile, larger budget movies, rather than the lower budget ones that simply never had the resources/money, so you can kind of forgive or at least understand them.
It's the movies that were major, high-profile, apparently respectable, with major stars and directors etc that promised us so much, but ultimately did it on the cheap and shafted us. Sorry if that wasn't clear in my initial post...trying to avoid CGI related stuff is possible.
As for Hitchcock, I think his movies varied between innovative techniques such as dolly shots in Vertigo, cameras strapped to actors as in the scene in Psycho where Martin Balsam falls down the stairs, to some dodgy process/matte shots in some of his other movies.
The Birds is a good example, but yet I don't get distracted by that because we are talking 50's, and such techniques were typical of what was available and in use during that era.
I think it must have been the very last scene to shoot and they only had $25 left in the budget
What was worse that at the same time, Star Trek: TNG was doing effects work that was several times better on a fraction of the budget. Hell, I'd swear the majority of the effects work in The Final Frontier was literally worse than the stuff in Star Trek: TOS.
While we're on the subject of Trek, The Motion Picture had quite a few shots that they obviously didn't have the time to finish. As a result, you had moments like the cool, trippy wormhole effect, which was immediately followed by an asteroid filmed in the wrong aspect ratio and then turning into a crudely overlaid explosion.
OH bought me a DVD of 'The Longest Day' yesterday and, despite my recollections of it as very 'serious' (it's been years since I saw it), some of the model work is rather lame (as well as some no-chance back projection).
In terms of effective miniatures, I would contend that Earthquake takes the crown. The 'collapsing freeway' shot in particular is still quite breathtakingly convincing.
They had to cover up the bouncing bomb in some of the footage as its design was still classified when the film came out.
The explosions at the dams looked like very poorly done mattes of explosions superimposed over the model breaking up.
I thought I was watching some bad old computer game for a sec there
Manborg trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mISUM0qvFTQ
I was thinking about Meteor and I'm sure that's the film where you could see a light bulb in the exhaust of one of the missiles!
Hitchcock reportedly was inspired by the 1920's German expressionist films such as Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari which had surreal painted backgrounds and it is claimed, certainly with Marnie, some of the scenes were intended as homage to those previous films and had backgrounds that were never intended to look realistic.
That's the excuse anyway. ;-)