“In Fury Road, in [Furiosa], there are hardly any shots that haven’t been manipulated digitally,” Miller told io9. “For instance, changing the sky. When Steven Spielberg shot Jaws, the sea was changing all the time. If you look at that film one moment it’s choppy, one moment it’s flat. You don’t need to do that anymore.”
So basically every shot in both Fury Road and Furiosa has some kind of digital changes to it. But, for the most part, it’s subtle stuff. The Furiosa scene Miller pointed to was “The Stowaway,” one of the film’s middle chapters and also its longest, most sprawling action sequence. In it, Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) tries to escape the Citadel but instead finds herself in an epic battle versus a group of Wasteland pirates.
“When you’re doing extended sequences like ‘The Stowaway’ sequence, that was shot over 78 days. It’s a 15-minute sequence but the skies are consistent,” Miller said. “So we took what we thought was a good sky and we can reproduce that sky right through the story. So some shots have the real sky because the real sky looked really good. But in the next shot, it might have been where it was a completely different sky so we were able to match that. You can do that.”
The film clearly has other digital effects too but Miller is mostly a fan of the ones that are invisible and keep everything smooth and cohesive. It’s a huge game-changer. “If you were shooting Jaws again today, the sea would be consistent,” He said. “Even meticulous filmmakers, guys like David Lean when they shot Lawrence of Arabia—obsessively, meticulous with their camera and lighting and so on—you can see where they shot different times of day and so on. You can avoid it now to some degree. It’s a much smoother experience.”
It’s a refreshing change to hear this. Ever since that one video essay I just can’t take directors and actors seriously when they espouse that their film has (almost) no CGI or VFX in it.
Background CGI for ensuring consistency and immersion is what CGI excels at. Human-based CGI still has the uncanny valley. I loved Furiosa, but you can easily tell when they had CGI humans for stunts.
It’s just another tool and directors need to choose the appropriate time to use it and when not to.
It’s like the time Tom Hardy pretty much admitted to take Performance Enhancing Drugs, because of course the actors getting superhero bodies in months do.
VFX are used extensively but usually not in thr noticeable ways people think of from sci-fi or fantasy films. I went with a friend in the VFX trade and he has a friend credited for environmental effects on Furiosa. I asked if it was modelling some of the striking landscapes and he said it was usually more subtle than that - this article puts the emphasis on that more subtle work. And it makes a lot of sense - filming takes a long time and it was previously a nightmare maintaining continuity for factors out of your control, like the weather.
It’s like the time Tom Hardy pretty much admitted to take Performance Enhancing Drugs, because of course the actors getting superhero bodies in months do.
Schwarzenegger once spoke about how when he went mainstream actors would privately come to him asking for weight lifting advice because it turned out that many of them were doing it secretly to create the illusion that they were all “naturally masculine”. Basically the same dynamic.
When Steven Spielberg shot Jaws, the sea was changing all the time. If you look at that film one moment it’s choppy, one moment it’s flat. You don’t need to do that anymore.
See I take the opposite message away from this. The point is, it doesn’t have to be perfect in order to be masterpiece cinema or accomplish the goal.
Great paintings can have brushstrokes. It doesn’t need to look photorealistic to what the thing looks like; in fact you could make the argument that’s counterproductive. Great video games have constrained mechanics; you can’t do everything “realistic,” and in fact the pursuit of hyper realism seems etc etc you get the point.
Maybe I’m oversimplifying what he’s saying, and he just means that the craft of movie making is now easier and we can eliminate some detail-focused bullshit that used to create logistical problems with shooting… but it sounds more to me like “and NOW we can sink millions of dollars into fuckin around with the background of the shots and that’ll finally fix what was wrong with Jaws and all the movies now will be better than Jaws as a result” which sounds like totally missing the point if that’s what he’s saying.
He is saying that through vfx the whole experience can be more consistent.
You can eliminate stuff that takes you out of the movie like the sky or water changing from shot to shot. It is more immersive that way.
And I’m saying consistency is not the goal. Was Jaws not immersive?
Consistency is one of the goals. That is why there is a person on set whose whole job it is to keep stuff consistent between takes.
Every time I see clothing/stance/water/sky change between shots it reminds me that I am watching a movie which in turn kills my immersion.
If you would take jaws the way it is and just change the inconsistencies it would be a better movie. Doesn’t mean it isn’t a good movie now.
Was Jaws not immersive?
Well in did get my leg bit off in the cinema.
“… I got better.”
