Animatronics= dead?

I've just realised that many big-budget CG movies these days don't even use animatronics anymore in the same way Jurassic Park is famous for using. The JP films, as we all know, use a combination of Stan Winston Studio's (in some cases) life size animatronics for close up/midriff shots of the dinosaurs reacting to sets, props and people etc and ILM's CGI for long full body shots of the dinosaurs doing things otherwise impossible to do via practical animatronics. But i've seen recently that many big CGI movies these days don't use animatronics anymore, instead rather going full CG for the whole show, especially if they are huge dinosaur-sized sentients. Recent examples of this are:

Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005): The prime example. I would have expected this movie to be made similar to the JP movies in terms of using practical and CGI effects but no, this movie's creatures are all full CGI, even down to intricatly detailed close-up shots. Usually they have animatronic heads for when creatures interact with actor in close shots, but that's not the case here. Everything is high detailed CG, close up and long shots. The only "animatronics" were props and machines simulating logs or Kong's hands/arms for the actors to work with, all covered in greenscreen ready to be made into real characters on the computer.

Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy (2003-2006): The undead skeleton pirates are all CG, no animatromics, but most importantly Davy Jones and the Kraken are all fully CG- a very big surprise considering I thought they at least used a fusion of make-up, prosthetics and CGI for Davy's face but apparantly not, Davy is full CG, including his clothes and hat. It's all shot close up too, and amazingly still retains incredible texture, movement and density which before wouldn't have been able to be achieved without practical make-up/prosthetics.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003) Whilst the goblins and other smaller human-sized nasties are actors in prosthetic make-up (except Gollum), the bigger creatures are all full CG. With the exception of Treebeard (who is basically just a massive prop), all the huge monsters here do not have animatronic counterparts. For example, midriff/head shots would be animatronic if it were JP, but here everything is done on the computer, from extreme close ups to long shots (Ballrog, cave-troll, Shelob, Wargs, flying fellbeasts etc, all CG, no animatronics).

Transformers (2007): All the robots are fully CG, close-ups and long shots. The movie does use props and some extentions of the characters are animatronic (eg Scorponok's tail when it attacks people) but otherwise the main robots themselves are all CG.



Star Wars: Attack of the Clones/Revenge of the Sith(2002,2005): All the massive creatures here are all full CG, no animatronic counterparts (case in point the monsters in the Geonosis gladitorial arena such as the Reek, Nexu and Acklay and the Varactyl Boga- that iguana thing which Obi-Wan rides in ROTS) all fully CG, even when reacting with actors.

These are just some of the movies of recent years that I can think of which don't use animatronics, i'm sure there are more i've missed.

So cinema and technology have come to a point where there's no need to have huge practical effects anymore- everything from close-up to long shot can now be done on high quality CG and look just as good, where before having CG for everything was costly so they used to split it up between two mediums. Certainly there was never any problem using full CG for everything, even upclose shots (JP has the Rex and raptors merely a few meteres away from the camera and it still looks amazingly detailed) but there were issues of having CG objects interacting with actors and props. Now however it's not a big problem anymore, current technology can deal with everything. It's not expensive anymore either- certianly now it would probably cost more to make animatronics as well as CGI- two different types of things which then involves blending them both together, which is yet more work. Not to mention the hours of difficult labour having massive animatronics on set. It's a lot of work when one can now sort it out with CG which now, in some cases, looks even better than animatronics (when time and effort of course are put into it). Why have an animatronic with limited movement as a close up when you can have a full CG object close up which can do anything and everything? (Imagine having Kong's close ups with a large animatronic head...really wouldn't look as good at all, especially in conveying emotions and expression. This is where CGI for everything works so well as one seamless creature).

All these current movies have no animatronics in there becuause it's now easier and cost effective to do everything with CG and have it looking just as good (King Kong the very best example of this). JP3 was all the way back in 2001 where it made sense by using the traditional ILM/Stan Winston method, but massive leaps in CG technology has been made since then. So, do you think the next JP movie will still use animatronics when films can now be made easily without it? Looking at it now, I really can't think why they should...

I'd like it to keep tradition but the fact is that buisness-wise it would be expensive to do both- they would probably relegate it to one medium to keep it cost effective. Stan Winston Studios would of course still be used in the design process (every dinosaur in the JP films has been designed by them of course) but i'm not sure if they would still make huge animatronic dinosaurs anymore. Maybe smaller ones like raptors and such but still, movies nowaydays use CGI for everything.

The only recent movie I can think of where they had huge animatronics as well as CGI was the Queen in AVP:Alien vs Predator in 2004, but this was mainly becuase their budget didn't allow it to go full CG. The Alien Queen was both animatronic and CG, though I think this was becuase the Queen is a creature which just looks and moves better as an animatronic rather than a CG one (the skin and sheen for example all look more realistic when made out of real material).



Dinosaurs on the other hand are living, breathing animals much closer to today's animals than the Alien Queen..they sweat, they tear, they have much more complicated skin and skin mechanics including muscle, bone and tissue which move and react...all of which can easily be done on a computer these days and, with the right SFX house behind it, can look much much better than a model.



I believe Spielberg is quoted to have said that animatronics solicits better performances from the human actors, as the actors have something to play to. Getting eyeline/eyefocus right when you want a face-to-face shot, that sort of thing. Shooting around that (ie: no face shots of actors looking at CGI on the same frame) limits the director's vision. Perhaps the future is crude models for the director and actor's benefit, and CGI all the way...

But guess what- even Spielberg has moved on since then! His War of the Worlds adaptation in 2005 had no animatronics, not even for the small aliens (especially in the sequence where he replicates his JP "raptors in the kitchen" sequence with the two children in the basement). Whereas in JP he used animatronics and CGI for the raptors, in WOTW it's all CGI aliens, even for the close-ups. The tripods were of course just too big to be made with animatronics, so that's understandable. The only practical effects in this movie were the fallen tripods and weeds. So it looks like Spielberg has embraced the wonders of full CGI now too.

He also produced Transformers, which as I already mentioned had no major animatronics. He will most likely produce Jurassic Park 4 as well, and I think he'll probably give a thumbs up to full CGI there too.

I think it has become easier for actors to work agianst nothing as they are now well versed and experienced in it as opposed to before when it was a new thing and therfore harder, though most of the time it's not really against thin air. SFX guys usually have stand-ins for the actors to work agianst, and though it may not be much it's at least an eyeline. Nowadays of course they have actors who mo-cap the performance of their character; Andy Serkis as Gollum or Bill Nighy as Davy Jones for example, who act as their respective character which will later be replaced with a CG version- this eradicates the problem of other actors with nothing to work with, especially when conveying emotion and drama from their performance as it is all now done in-camera.

I just think that technology has moved on so much that everything can be done with full CGI in a live action movie now- and, as movies like King Kong have shown us, all look good as one seamless art rather than breaking it up between different mediums. Though new technolgy is being created everyday, James Cameron's new film Avatar will have such technology never seen before as it has been invented just for it, and all of that is done on the computer with no practical work whatsoever, not even for the alien characters. A recent magazine writer who some some test footage was reportadly so amazed he said "I couldn't tell what was real or not". So maybe the time of animatronics is coming to an end, who knows. Movies have to keep ahead of the game to impress audiences who know all to well what's CGI and what's not, I don't think a new JP movie could work with traditional animatronics anymore when people demand so much more from their special effects now. People just get turned off when they can see what's "fake".

I think, personally, that this is just down to Weta's lesser results of CGI amongst blue/green screen work. This is of course their biggest problem, and it's been complained about many times; their greenscreen compositing work is just very poor compared to ILM's- take for instance the infamous Brontosaur stampede in Kong which is the best example of their worst work, just really bad greenscreening, especially on the actors in that scene who are so poorly composited it's pretty much embarassing they even left it in. Even The Lord of the Rings films have the same issue.

ILM however don't have this problem- as seen in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (which I see as some of their best work to date), Davy Jones and his crew are all filmed on greenscreen and superimposed onto real locations and sets- and the result is seamless, much better than what Weta has done. Though one can argue that even ILM have their bad days, as seen in the Star Wars prequels (absoloutly atrocious greenscreen compositing work, especially in Attack of the Clones, but this agian is most likely down to excessive workload which I guess was the case with King Kong, which is why some things look amazing and some things look like crap). However I don't expect a JP movie to have CG output on that huge scale considering the films are usually split greater on the human side than dinosaur action, so the CG work would probably be on a good scale.

Either way Kong is a great example of CG work but a bad example of greenscreening. But other movies (Pirates) have shown that this isn't a problem in the right hands. And considering ILM will be doing the CG work in the next JP film, I don't think it's ever going to be a problem for them. JP3 and even The Lost World: Jurassic Park had a lot of close-up composting done, and it all looked great.