Animation Nation

         The movies of today have been defined by an era of animation and special effects, the time for on site filming has been usurped by this great cinematic innovation.

         From Avatar, Hunger games, Avengers, Godzilla, to the Hobbit, Star wars, and even the Wolf of Wall Street, films in the 21st century are using CGI (Computer Generated Imagery)  and special effects incessantly instead of the classic stunt man and on site shooting tactics. Nearly every movie you watch today uses some form of digital effects. Especially with todays craze of science fiction and post apocalyptic films, special effects such as CGI green and blue screen are used more and more and are becoming more prevalent in big budget block buster films.

         To put it into perspective, in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, over 75 percent of the scenes are shot using CGI and Green Screen, and that number only gets higher in the prequel trilogy, The Hobbit. Out of the entire LOTR trilogy, there are 3240 digital visual effects shots used. (Weta Digital (DVD). New Line Cinema. 2004.) The Lord of The Rings series (including the Hobbit) is comparable to the timeless series classic Star Wars. 

        Director George Lucas was the father of special effects because of his renowned series. When the first movie came out, A New Hope, "Movie goers were awed by Star Wars's opening sequence, as the large space ship appeared to hover over the head of the audience and converge into the middle distance." CGI was a brand new system in the 70's and it was expensive. Lucas actually only used 90 seconds of CGI footage in his first film, his prominence as a special effects master came from the animatronics, puppetry, "matte paintings," mass amounts of miniatures, and other effects techniques. It is important to know this because when hearing the word special effects, most people thing CGI and green screen, but many times it means hours and hours of creative analog genius. Referring back to LOTR, the miniatures team in the Two Towers film, worked the most out of any special effects crew logging a grand total of one thousand days. Yet Star wars was still one of the first to use such a technology as CGI and it would make way for major films such as Jurassic Park, Men in Black, and so on. 

       As we venture deeper into this cinematic wonderland, some people fear that we are loosing the classical art of aesthetic film to digital blockbusters. Yes the Return of the King, a digital masterpiece, won 11 Academy awards (IMDB), but the prevalence of poorly shot digital films is very real. The great movies that win awards such as Avatar, LOTR, or Titanic are high budget and use the best special effects companies. It is the films on the sci-fi channel that give special effects and CGI a bad name. Even some of the major movie theater quality films have been criticized for their special effects; Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, The Mummy Returns, the Green Lantern, and R.I.P.D to name a few. 

       The use of animation and special effects in todays world of cinematography is very prevalent and will only increase with time. Will we forget about how to make great movies such as The Notebook or Casablanca without the use of special effects, or will we hold sacred the values of analog film and film making. Personally i enjoy animation when done right and i think that it can add a whole new realm to film. But the reality that special effects have the power to ruin film is much to great.