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The hit Disney movie "Moana" features stunning visual effects, including the animation of water to such a degree that it becomes a distinct character in the film.
UCLA mathematics professor Joseph Teran, a Walt Disney consultant on animated movies since 2007, is under no illusion that artists want lengthy mathematics lessons, but many of them realize that the success of animated movies often depends on advanced mathematics.
"In general, the animators and artists at the studios want as little to do with mathematics and physics as possible, but the demands for realism in animated movies are so high," Teran said. "Things are going to look fake if you don't at least start with the correct physics and mathematics for many materials, such as water and snow. If the physics and mathematics are not simulated accurately, it will be very glaring that something is wrong with the animation of the material."
Teran and his research team have helped infuse realism into several Disney movies, including "Frozen," where they used science to animate snow scenes. Most recently, they applied their knowledge of math, physics and computer science to enliven the new 3-D computer-animated hit, "Moana," a tale about an adventurous teenage girl who is drawn to the ocean and is inspired to leave the safety of her island on a daring journey to save her people.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 04 2017, @05:22PM
Which is my point about comparing Star Wars to the new Star Wars Bigger Splosions:
when Luke finds his Aunt and Uncle dead and his farm a smoking ruin, there is a build up of music, a close up of Luke, the emotions building within him: all leading up to his decision to wreak havoc against the Empire.
The new Star Wars Bigger Splosions: you get a conversation, some crying and Han dies (Han dies and I DON'T CARE! because they give me no reason to care. It's just 'meh, crying, Han is dead now, meh'.
BUT THE FREAKING DEATH STAR IS A FREAKING P L A N E T ! ! !
Today its about splosions and dancing/flying sword fights. It used to be about story and characters.
I showed my daughter and wife an old movie called "How to get ahead in business without really trying" (it was originally a book).
They HATE those old movies (or so they say), but couldn't stop watching it and it is one of my daughters favourite movies now (the music and songs are quite catchy).
Today, that movie would have big stars, splosions and car wrecks and would suck completely with no story.
Sad.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday January 04 2017, @08:30PM
While I agree with you that Hollywood "blockbusters" today are more frequently built on special effects than ever (often to the detriment of other elements of film), I also find your post with its nostalgia for the old Star Wars trilogy to be just a little ironic. For it was films like that original trilogy that actually begat the modern trend.
I know others will disagree with me (and this might even be seen as heresy), and I fully admit this is just my personal opinion, but I really never found the original trilogy to be so "great." Frankly, I somehow managed to live about three decades after it came out without ever watching it (not quite true -- I had seen some segments here and there, because you couldn't completely avoid it). And when a friend finally sat me down and said "watch it," my reaction was a solid "Meh." Not terrible movies by any means, but they'd never make it close to my personal top 100 films. To me, they seemed mediocre for most of the reasons you call out the new franchise -- excess dependence on special effects, things like chase scenes and fight scenes instead of character development, mediocre acting, and some whopping bad dialogue at times. To be sure, there are some AMAZING moments among those three films, but overall not that impressive.
I want to be clear that I love a lot of sci-fi and fantasy movies. And it's not because the films had "aged" that I say this -- probably the majority of films I'd put in my "Top 100" would be older than the original trilogy; I'm a fan of a number of movies from that era (70s, early 80s).
Before I started writing this post, I did a quick search to see if anyone else feels this way too, because I feel like I'm outing myself as having some bizarre taste because I found the original films unimpressive.
So I found stuff like this [macleans.ca]. While I don't agree with everything said in that piece, it mostly is a good summary of my criticisms, so I won't repeat them here. Interestingly, it also notes that while it was fairly common to bash the original trilogy in mainstream culture in the 1980s and even throughout the 1990s, it has now become nearly impossible to criticize it -- even if you're people like Simon Pegg or Joss Whedon (see the link for details).
But to respond more directly to the parent's post, two quotes from this link stand out. First was Alec Guiness's reaction from the set of the first film: "New rubbish dialogue reaches me every day, and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable." And a later statement from that article kind of summarizes my thoughts here: "Star Wars films were once criticized for their overreliance on special effects; now, they’re from a more artistic and craftsmanlike time."
Again, this is all my personal view (well, also apparently similar to the viewpoints of other people cited in that link), and I know there are a lot of films I like that are unbearable or uninteresting to others. But I do find it fascinating that films like the original Star Wars are now held up as a standard for writing, direction, character development, etc., when back in the day they were seen as vapid for lacking such things. Shows how far the "blockbuster" standard has shaped our perception. (And I'm not complaining by the way -- some of the greatest "arthouse" films or whatever you want to call the opposite of "blockbuster" are being made today, too. I'm a major proponent of offering different choices for different people.)
P.S. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a fun movie musical, though I find the pacing slows a bit in the middle (it's been a while since I watched it). BTW - have you seen the NBC parody [youtube.com] of "Brotherhood of Man" that aired during the Superbowl a few years back? Anyhow, there are lots of great musicals from that era. If your daughter loved it, I'd strongly encourage looking at others too [wikipedia.org]. (You'll notice the majority of films in that list are from the 40s through the 60s.)
(Score: 2) by AudioGuy on Thursday January 05 2017, @01:28AM
I don't think it is possible for people born past a certain point to really understand Star Wars.
To fully understand Star Wars, you needed to grow up in a certain kind of world:
Your first experience of science fiction should have been 20+ year old Buck Rogers serials viewed in black and white on a small TV screen. Pure juvenile, escapist stuff with horrible acting, ridiculous plots, and special effects so bad they were funny, like sparklers inside paper rocket ship models a few inches long.
The world of science fiction was more in print, which was a combination of similar 'space opera' plus some newer hard science fiction that was very good at extrapolating technical trends and exploring the possible results, plus some that also had some good social commentary.
Movies you had seen were one pretty good one, 2001, with great effects but a plot practically no one understood, B movies with people in ape makeup, a distopian future run by a bunch of hippies controlled by a crystal (Zardoz), a bunch of earlier completely absurd B/W stuff involving shrinking men or flying saucers, and so forth, all with pretty lame bleeps and bloops, Theremins, or 'modern' music. All this followed by practically NO SF in movies for years, except some lame disaster movies.
So when that first crawl came up, you knew exactly what you were in for, which was this: Someone was doing an old 1930s serial but AS IF it were an 'A' movie. So essentially an amazing piece of 'fan fiction', a sort of send up. (And you wondered later how in the heck someone managed to talk a major studio into funding this. The guy had to be a genius of persusasion, if nothng else). But that was what it was.
So lame acting? Of course, it would not have been in the genre without this.
Ridiculous plot? Same.
But:
The music - awesome, and completely breaking the current trend.
The special effects. No one had every seen anything like this anywhere. I remember involuntarily scrunching down in my seat when that huge spaceship flew over me at the beginning (a balcony seat, and remember this was made for THAT experience, not beeng seen on a small compiuter screen)
I don't think you can get to that same experience today, without that background. You need the old 1930s serials in your memory. And not to have seen the later, better films.
And it probably would not hurt to have, at one point in your life, believed you would be driving an atomic car as soon as some small technical details were worked out, and that you would likely be retiring on Mars in your old age, because of the lower gravity.