Today my lecture watched Pixar's Wall-e with a view to looking at how CGI is beening made more realistic by the use of cameras that impersonate the cinematography of real physical cameras used to shoot live action. The theory behind this is that we are so used to accepting what we see in live action films, that what we see being shot or filmed through what appears to be the same medium has the same effect and tricks the mind when it comes to realism. Pixar have clearly done a lot of research when it comes to this. By creating visuals we normally associate with live action filming, such as lens flare, and changing focus due to different aperatures the film gives the appearance that it was made using a film crew rather than a hoard of animators. Pixar are also clearly skilled at using the language of cinematography to tell the story much in the same way a live action director does, this method of working in similar ways to any other director really helps in convincing you that what your eyes see is more real than you would think.
But one of the key points I felt was important in highlighting how clever Pixar we being when using cameras, was how they portrayed a sense of scale, considering that there are no human beings in the first half of the film, and this is the distant future so buildings and landscapes we see are not neccessarily as good indicators of scale as we might think, we still know exactly how big Wall-e is. And when the first humans are introduced Wall-e turns out to be exactly the size we thought. This almost confounding ability to make us natural assume the exact scale of characters and landscapes that are completely fictionalized demonstrates how aspects of the film trick the audience into believing it could be real.
Obviously Pixar have a style that is styalized and isnt firmly based on ultra-realism but rather greating lovable characters and good stories, I still find it interesting that we can be tricked into believing that parts of the film could have been filmed from live action. Also interestingly I did some further research into Alex Roman's the third and the seventh posted on this blog last week, and it turns out that the cameraman ( a figure many said shows what see still cannot reproduce accurately in CGI, is actually a real person green screened into the animation) I found it ironic that the image that jarred with viewers in that piece was actually the only thing in it that was real.
But one of the key points I felt was important in highlighting how clever Pixar we being when using cameras, was how they portrayed a sense of scale, considering that there are no human beings in the first half of the film, and this is the distant future so buildings and landscapes we see are not neccessarily as good indicators of scale as we might think, we still know exactly how big Wall-e is. And when the first humans are introduced Wall-e turns out to be exactly the size we thought. This almost confounding ability to make us natural assume the exact scale of characters and landscapes that are completely fictionalized demonstrates how aspects of the film trick the audience into believing it could be real.
Obviously Pixar have a style that is styalized and isnt firmly based on ultra-realism but rather greating lovable characters and good stories, I still find it interesting that we can be tricked into believing that parts of the film could have been filmed from live action. Also interestingly I did some further research into Alex Roman's the third and the seventh posted on this blog last week, and it turns out that the cameraman ( a figure many said shows what see still cannot reproduce accurately in CGI, is actually a real person green screened into the animation) I found it ironic that the image that jarred with viewers in that piece was actually the only thing in it that was real.
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