The Reality of Real

The other day my wife and I were coming into the house where we passed some of my mom’s planters on the porch. Being the holiday season, they were filled with two beautiful poinsettias. Bich (my wife) remarked, “How does mom keep real flowers looking so good out here?” Knowing that couldn’t be possible, I examined them closer and saw that they were indeed fake.

But they were fake in the most clever way. The tips of many flowers were slightly discolored. A couple other flowers looked dead, their petals faded to a deep purple. Other petals had the bright green color of new buds. By liberally adding imperfections, whichever company made those fake poinsettias knew how to make fake flowers look real.

It reminded me of some movies I’ve seen, where things look maddeningly too perfect to be real. You know what I mean. Watch an old movie musical like “Oklahoma”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048445/ or “South Pacific”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052225/ and you know those “outdoor” scenes are really shot indoors, on perfectly crafted sets with perfect lighting and a bright blue scrim for a sky. There are some clever linking scenes of expansive *real* outdoor scenes, but you can instantly tell when they cut to the set.

For these old movies, this is forgivable. The early color film specifications required special mixes of very bright light that you just can’t reliably get outdoors. Plus, when you’re shooting something as complicated and fantastical as “The Wizard of Oz”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/ it’s not practical to shoot only when the weather is right and the sun is up. Yet I still cringe at those stupid shots in the woods surrounding the witch’s castle of that owl and those crows with the glowing red eyes. They are such obviously cheap halloween props from Spencer Gifts that it begs the question: Why didn’t they just shoot some real crows?

The human mind is extremely sophisticated at recognizing reality because we do it every second of every day. Rarely are we fooled, because we’re trained from birth to recognize extremely minute differences that shout out *real* or *fake*. CGI is getting extremely good, but even I could instantly tell that was not the _real_ Tobey Maguire climbing up the side of the building in “Spiderman”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145487/ . There was just something about the way he moved that didn’t look quite…right.

Does anybody else think the old puppet Yoda was more charming than the new CGI Yoda?

!/images/19.jpg (Old Yoda)! !/images/18.jpg (New Yoda)!

3 Comments

  1. Ed abobo says:

    Yes! You’re right!

  2. Grace says:

    Hey Todd, nice site. So there’s my compliment, here’s my gripe. Come on, you knew it was coming. I’ve read your other blog entries and I’m not sure if this comment goes here specifically or is just more general. I understand where you’re coming from your a filmmaker with no budget so you’re making movies on the fly and all that, which is cool. Movies aren’t about being real. They are fake just like your mom’s flowers. I understand that what your saying is reality is flawed, but sometimes that’s not the point. I think it’s less about which Yoda you think is more charming and which story is better. Film is all about the suspension of disbelief. For most people like me, who aren’t filmmakers it’s an escape, so if we are into it we don’t even think about Tobey Maguire, we are watching Spiderman. No, CGI isn’t perfect, it’s not human, but if the plot is interesting, the writing is good and the acting isn’t distracting who cares… Movies aren’t about showing reality the way it is. Its about creating your own, or at least thats why I watch them.

  3. Todd says:

    Hi Grace! Yes, I agree completely with what you’re saying, and that’s really my point. Lots of wanna-be filmmakers (like me) get so caught up in what “looks better” that they lose sight of the important stuff—the story, the characters. They raise money to build a set instead of just finding a suitable location. Or spend cash for expensive editing and effects software and spend so much time tinkering the picture—when they should REALLY be tinkering their scripts and making their CHARACTERS more real.

    Movies are “real” if we can identify with their characters and see that they react in believable ways. I’m not complaining about CGI—I’m just trying to point out that, for all its brilliance, you can still make a terrific film without the razzle-dazzle.

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