Many believe that visual effects are to blame for bad films (McClean, 2007a). That may be true or false, depending on the quality of work and what the consumers feel or need.  VFX has gradually contributed to film industries by creating environments and characters that do not exist, making scenes that would be impossible or costly to make and adding effects to films that consumers would never know they were there. Without looking further, critics blame everything on VFX. The author of the book (McClean, 2007) suggests that the poor planning quality of every aspect included in the film affects the outcome. Some film makers get an idea and instead of developing it properly they surround everything around the effects (McClean, 2007c).   

This assignment is about how has Visual Effects impacted film Narrative. The assignment identifies the contributions that VFX made, why they changed the ways stories are told and how that was achieved. Avatar and Ready player one, are some of the films that made use of the VFX technology to create unbelievable characters, environment and bringing reality and fantasy together. These films are going to be used as examples of what can be achieve by planning every detail.  

  

In many situations' directors turn to VFX because sometimes they find the right actor for the part, but they don’t have the body face or age to represent the idea for the film or actors get sick, injured, not physically capable of completing a scene or they are not in this world anymore.  Films such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fast and Furious 7 and Rogue one used VFX to change characteristic of a character and bring others to life. For example, in the film the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a movie about a baby that was born old and started growing younger as the years gone by. The creators developed a CG head of Brad Pitt and integrated into different actors' body, after that was done, they composite, tracked, and matte painted it throughout the film (Domain, 2018). After Paul Walker was tragically killed on a traffic collision in middle of filming Fast and Furious 7, the VFX team made use of CG to build the characters face and integrated it into his brothers and match their movements.   

  

In Rogue one the creative team brought Peter Cushing Back to life by finding someone with similar fixtures, putting them through makeup to create a similar hairstyle and other fixtures, after that the character had to wear a transparent mask where the dots used for motion capture would be added to captures the actors facial movements (Guerrasio, 2017).   

  

VFX technologies such as Motion Capture and CGI Green stockings are very useful especially when you want to add or remove something from an actor. The Film Stronger is about a man that lost his legs during Boston Marathon Bombing attack. To make the Film more real and emotional the VFX, Makeup and Art department team worked together to give the illusion that the actor Jake Gyllenhaal (who played the bomb victim) legs were really gone (Simpson, 2017). The scene of the bombing showed that with no effects at all it would have been very challenging for the creators to find a great actor that would fit the part perfectly and had lost his or to find a way of hidden his legs and making it look like they were really blasted by the bomb.              

With VFX directors with unimaginable ideas for environments, characters and objects that do not exist, or bringing both the real and fantasy together were able to bring that idea to life. Films such as Jurassic Park, Casablanca, Avatar and Ready Player One are good examples of what can be achieved. In 1993 Computer generated imagery (CGI) was used in Jurassic Park, where digital dinosaurs were integrated into scenes with life actors (Byrne, p. 2).  

  

  

In the early 1940 the budget for the film Casablanca was not enough to fly the crew to North Africa. For that same reason, they turned to VFX to create most of the scenes they intended to do digitally and shot everything in a studio (Byrne, p. 84a). The author of the book bill Byrne suggests that "the real issue is the need for locations that do not exist”, (Byrne, p. 84b). That means that finding a real location is not the problem, but the real issue is finding one that only exists in ones imagination. Image what directors would have to go through if a building that represented something very important in the film could not be built because of the builders had no means to create something of that magnitude or if they had to blow it up and the take does not look like it should, imagine building everything from the beginning. VFX gives the directors control of every procedures that he takes for the film.  

For a film to work, there should be a plan for everything that is going to take place. Because of how many times consumers go to see films their “ability to understand cinema language construction” improved because they learned how to listen and read film language. That is why consumers ask questions “internally or verbally” if they find themselves lost during a film. It is important that the language is translated thought a film (De Valk and Arnold, p. 8a). A Filmmaker that knows how to speak and write in film language will not be misunderstood by the audience (De Valk and Arnold, p. 8b).  To tell a good story everything from composition, placing actors, the relationship of objects in the frame, play a role on how the consumers feel about the film (De Valk and Arnold, p. 10a). Elements such as structure of spaces, objects and characters within the frame are not only there to push the story forward but to be used as a metaphor to indicate or carry a deeper narrative meaning that goes beyond what any dialogue would be able to express (De Valk and Arnold, p. 10b). Many times, people will watch films and look in the background for objects or sign that will give them an idea about what is about to happen next. Narrative is part of cinema language. It can be written, visual and verbal. No matter how good a story is, a structure needs to be set and develop by everyone involved for it to work.  

  

VFX brings visions or imaginations to life and combine it with things of our world. Avatar is a good example of a film that’s contains both the real and digitally created. The director of Avatar, James Cameron, made use of CGI am three-dimensional film effects to make the viewers see reality through Illusion. Cameron used technologies such as, motion capture and specially modified cameras to capture every detail of the actors movements and green screen to add to locations. Seventy percent of the Images in the film was created by CGI (Johnson, 2009). Cameron raised the bar for 3D Cinema "by blending seamlessly live action footage with computer generated images” (Nelmes, p. 22). Because the film was structed properly the VFX and narration complimented each other, and that resulted on Avatar winning awards for best cinematography, best VFX, achievement in directing, best motion picture of that year and according to (Complex, 2018) until today they are the heights grossing film of all time. Ready Player one is another great film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film as a mixture of characters and environments that were digitally created and the real world. VFX allowed the director to have freedom to explore every technic possible to make the film as accurate to book as possible.          

  

  

 When a film is well developed the effects serves the story and the characters. Nowadays with directors having more ideas that includes objects, buildings and characters that do not exist and because some of the action are too dangerous or costly to make, they use VFX to create the illusion of things that critics who normally spot the effects straight away will not know that what they are watching was created by digital compositing.  Time and time again a person may watch a film or advert without realizing that the cars they see was digitally created, buildings may exist or not in real life, the viewers can really tell if they are there or not, some of the extras that was digitally created would go unnoticed throughout the films. That may be because most of the attention goes to what the main characters are doing that the surrounding goes unnoticed. Examples can be found in World War Z, where digitally created extras were used for different scenes. Most of them had their own unique look making it hard for the viewers to spot any different (Fame, 2017). If the was no effects, they would have to spend a lot of money finding a large quantity of people and spent a good amount  

of time customizing a lot of individual characters and the was a lot of scenes were characters had to jump and climb different buildings, imagine having to find that many stunt doubles.    

In the show Games of Thrones, the VFX team used effects to do things such as duplicating the number of extras and adding locations or more to it. They used digital created characters some with different characteristics and duplicated them around where they wanted them to be. Most of CGI characters were used in scenes where the camera was not that closed, so the human eyes cannot see the difference. A big cast like that would have been hard to manage and without them the feel that the director was looking for the scene would have not been the same. For the buildings, the creators made use of buildings that was already there to add different characteristic to it, or they were just build from scratch and position it around other building or and environment they created. Without the VFX team everything that was written, and the intensions of the director would have not translated well throughout the film (rspvfx, 2016).       

Some of the adverts the viewers watch nowadays might be done by Visual Effects and they would not even know. Take for examples the advert for Galaxy, where they used the actress Audrey Hepburn fixtures (who died a long time ago) and created a CGI version of her and the environment was also created by the VFX team involved, leaving most people to debate if what they were seen was real or not (Dionicus, 2013). Also, a VFX technology called the Blackbird was developed by the company Mill to be used as a motion capture for cars. They can be used for adverts, film that can find that type of vehicle or by car developers to showcase their products. This technology can replicate anything that is programed into it (Top, 2016).     

 

As it was explained throughout this assignment, VFX gives a lot of freedom to film industries to create fantasy and add more to reality. Because they can achieve the normal and the unthinkable with their film technologies. VFX cannot be blamed for lack of narrative because for a film to be successful it needs to be well structured so that every element that has a meaning stands out. Also, language in film takes different forms such as written, visual and verbal. Elements such as structure of spaces, objects and characters within the frame are there to narrate the story visually to the people watching, in a way that goes beyond what any dialogue would be able to. Many directors do come up with ideas that could have both the effects and narrative complimenting each other but instead of looking for ways to develop and structure it, they relay only in the effects thinking that it will solve all their problems. Film language is a very important part of film making because it allows the director to make a film that will speak to the audience in a way that they understand, even if the film has VFX or not.     

 

 

 

 

 Byrne, B. (2009). The visual effects arsenal. Oxford: Focal Press.  

 Complex. (2018). The Highest Grossing Movies of All Time. Available at: https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/highest-grossing-movies-of-all-time/ (16 Nov. 2018). 

De Valk, M. and Arnold, S. (2013). The film handbook. London: Routledge.  

 

Digital Domain. (2018). The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Available at: https://www.digitaldomain.com/work/the-curious-case-of-benjamin-button/ (16 November 2018).  

Dionicus. (2013). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYWv1oD3dv8 (16 November 2018).  

Fame Focus (2017) All Hollywood VFX Removed Here's what WWZ REALLY Looks Like! Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpIpuuW4qUQ (Accessed: 16 November 2018).  

Guerrasio, J. (2017). The actor behind the CGI Tarkin in 'Rogue One' tells us how he created the character. Business  

Insider. Available at: http://uk.businessinsider.com/cgi-moff-tarkin-rogue-one-guy-henry-2017-1 (16 November 2018).  

IMDb. (2010). Avatar. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/awards (16 November 2018).  

Johnson, B. (2009). The secrets of James Cameron's new film Avatar. Available at Simpson, G. (2017). Stronger EXCLUSIVE: How Jake Gyllenhaal’s legs were hidden – makeup artist reveals all.  

Available at: https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/films/889872/Stronger-movie-Jake-Gyllenhaal-legs-Blade- 

Runner-2049-Ryan-Gosling-Donald-Mowat-makeup (Accessed 16 November 2018).  

: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/aug/20/3d-film-avatar-james-cameron-technology (16 November 2018).  

rspvfx. (2016). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fPRK92TtIY&t=56s (16 November 2018). 

Top Gear (2016) The Rig That Transforms Into ANY Car: The Mill BLACKBIRD | Top Gear Magazine 

. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJhn1OPO3Ig (Accessed: 16 November 2018).  

Marland, J., Edgar-Hunt, R. and Rawle, S. (2010). The Language of Film. Crans-pres-Celigny, CHE: AVA Publishing.  

McClean, S. (2007). Digital storytelling. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.  

Nelmes, J. and Nichols, B. (2012). Introduction to film studies. London: Routledge.  

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For my first assessment I was not able to do a good piece of work.

The assessment was not planned and that made it hard for me to write it and know what do talk about.

I wrote and researched the assessment at the same time , that made it hard for me to really understand everything.

Some of my reference and citation was well done, but I made the mistake of leaving them red and not giving enough space between them. 

There was no title on the assessment.

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After speaking to Katie I realised some of the mistake I made.

Now I know how important planning an essay really is.