Watching those 15 year old Transformers effects holding up to this day still amazes me. It’s such a shame that incredibly talented artists are considered mediocre because their work isn’t respected. Those people are magicians, they can do anything, just as long as they have proper deadlines and well planned shots. Bay, Verbinski, Jackson, Nolan, those people understand what it takes and are very careful with their scenes, and decades after their movies, nearly nothing stands out as dated. Davy Jones, Gollum, dream sequences of Inception or space scenes of Interstellar, you believe you’re watching something that was properly photographed.
Very true, I couldn't agree more! As with any technology or tool, if it's not implemented in the right way, you get poor results. Hopefully I'll be driving into some examples from some of the filmmakers you listed in the next episode to see how they use CGI in their films!
@@Songsar7Artski MCU movies are not good when it comes to story either. I am a transformers fan and recognize the weakness in the stories of the TF films, but marvel movies mostly work on the basis of hype created around them. Just look at it this way, what marvel movies have worked without hype created before them. Examples: dr. Strange2, thor LAT, even series like she hulk have had no hype around them and have turned out to be complete failures. However, I do love the avengers films when it comes to storytelling
@@johnturturo there were even better movies than avengers too in MCU like the first 3 iron man movies, cap america winter soldier, civil war, etc...They had very good standards of handling the franchises creatively. It started sucking post avengers endgame period...Precisely Captain Marvel kick-started this shitshow (rlsd just few months before endgame )
Transformers is always one the best but it's just a nightmare for cgi production, the amount of roto for bay movies is just insane. Also marvel is a horrible client known for changing stuffs over and over drastically with so little time to finish, the artists were stressed to the extreme can't complain too much on the quality.
Agreed, and that's a big part of what I want to say in these videos. Ultimately the quality of the vfx comes down to the filmmaker or the studio and what they give the vfx teams to work with. It's sad because you basically force talented artists to put out poor quality work when you place such harsh deadlines and continually change things. Thanks for your comment and thanks for watching!
The fact they want a pretty much final render on scenes they’re not sure they want or not, because the directors are inexperienced and can’t see ahead, is mind blowing to me. It’s not like they can’t afford proper filmmakers who understand these things.
The fact that the CGI in the first Transformers movie looks more like real life than the stuff we get today amazes me. Definitely goes to show how much work the VFX artists put into the movie.
1:48 another reason this looks so real is because the exploding vehicle also serves as the perfect frame of reference to render another burning vehicle; which is the transformer itself. Both are metals constructs that catch fire, same materials, same movements, same reflections and lighting.
This is the exact reason why Iron Man looked way better than any of it's successors. RDJ had a practical suit/chestplate/helmet on him. That meant VFX teams had perfect reference & didn't need to deal with the "floating head" effect as practical suit already provided occlusion/shadows on RDJ's face.
Poor planning too. Waititi was explaining once how he shot a dialogue scene for L&T, and after the scene was semi finished, he realized some stuff was either not explained properly or could’ve been said better, and went back to redo it. So instead of simply writing a second draft, he had the entire team focusing on a scene that didn’t need to be repeated, because he’s just that lazy.
Your praise of Transformers visual effects and Michael Bay's talent is like honey for my ears! I keep stubbornly arguing with people because i think that first Transformers movie is one of the all-time greatest blockbuster movies in terms of cinematography and visual effects and its still looks way better than any Marvel or DC movie. Road chase scene is insane, Bay is literally a genius when we talk about using CGI properly. I think that Bay is one of the most underrated movie directors. His use of CGI, his shots and angles are always so dynamic but grounded and lively Also i can say same words of praise about amazing Gore Verbinski and his Pirates of the Caribbean but they are not as disrespectfully underrated as Bay's Transformers.
Very much agree, the CGI is incredible in the first transformers movie! The fact that the visual effects were so heavily exposed during the whole film, front and center in broad daylight, and that they look that good is impressive. The fact that it came out in 2007 only adds to that!
I've been doing the same thing. Whenever someone says that Bay is a bad director I'm like: ? I mean, come on! Give him a well written action movie screenplay and he will make one of the greatest action movies ever made in the history of humanity, without a doubt. He has an strong vision and identity. Something that many directors and blockbusters are lacking nowadays. You can hate him... But whenever you look at one of his shots or action sequences, even if it's from a movie you haven't seen... You know it was directed by him. Which leads me to think about the MCU... I can count with the fingers of my right hand and only right hand the times a director put his/her vision in it... And never entirely. That's why I'm not paying anymore to anything made by them. I remember the name of Sam Raimi was one of the few directors whose name appeared in the trailers. But it was just a lie at the end.
@@THE.N1KO Dr strange 2 have reshoot. Some said it's 40% of the movie. That's why sometime you spot it, sometime you done, feigi only use raimi as a tool to promote Dr strange 2 after Scott derricson left because feigi refuse to let scott doing 1) rated R movie 2) Dr strange is not the main character in his own movie If I'm not wrong, Sam raimi directing this movie because feigi promise him something, some said it's spiderman 4, some said it's upcoming marvel project
@@novustalks7525 you can't really say that there isn't modifications that is made when we haven't see the final product. One thing we all know is that vfx artist working on that movie are not being pressured finishing cgi in tight schedule.
Transformers and POTC both had some of the best vfx to date in my opinion, and considering they are both over 10 years old it is really quite astonishing how bad some of today's vfx are...
Now I see why Nolan tries to avoid CGI as much as possible. I have the same feeling after watching a bunch of marvel movies. Undoubtably they are cool and fun to watch but they always lack something and those things only appear in real photography. There is an great example which is starship troopers (the first one) movie. Though some explosions are not as good as today's CGI simulation, but overall it really looks real and spectacular because they used miniature and a lot of tricks for shooting, CGI came into play when too many arachnids in the scene which is impossible to make real models. IMO that movie still holds up and it was made in 1997 if I recall correctly. That was a good time when CGI is not dominating entire screen.
Yeah I'd really love to see more directors bring back miniatures. It's amazing what filmmakers were able to achieve before CGI even existed! And if you do it right, it doesn't look nearly as dated as CGI in the future. Thanks for your comment and for watching!
As a major Transformers fan whose followed these films from the beginning, I agree wholeheartedly. Some of the best CGI in cinema. Despite all criticisms of the Bay films, I'll always adore and appreciate his masterful visuals & aesthetics in the Transformers films. Works of art.
I was thinking the same thing when comparing the Mandalorian and the Obi wan series Even though both were using the LED Unreal Volume, one had great cinematography and visuals and the other looked like a fan film on a number of shots with terrible lighting and composition
Very true! I find it astounding that projects of that budget could be so poorly realized sometimes, because there are so many amazing filmmakers out there who would do a great job given a project like that. Thanks for your comment and for watching!
Also thor love and thuder looks very fake and unpolished despite using volume but the batman and mandalorian is both shot well and interestingly both have same dp
@@kiranvnair1133 That’s what happens when the director has absolutely no knowledge of how to use these tools. The Volume is an incredible tool, but it’s just that, a tool. The result depends on how it’s used. It requires a director who either has a good understanding of VFX, or one who accepts and understands their lack of knowledge and are willing to have their VFX supervisors guide them through their scenes, with no ego. Same goes for all VFX really, it’s how the same people who did Planet of the Apes, also did the godawful Black Panther VFX.
@@alexman378 Ok, but there are other things at work like schedule, time, processes of the studio, artistic intent, etc. so many things. Thor Love and Thunder has Taika Waititi as director, and guess what? He directed a few Mandalorian episodes also. You have to know that the Marvel movies often are allowed to look way more cartoony, and that's just the 'look' they can get away with. To say that he has absolutely no knowledge of how to use these tools is ridiculous.
@@haysoos123 Directing in a show and directing in films are two very different things. He really has no idea how to use them, and it’s quite evident, because everything looks flat and worse than green screens in a $220M movie. Inexcusable, especially considering he even used it for apartment scenes. And it was all his idea, so the big bad faceless studio which gave him so much freedom isn’t the one to blame, they’re only to blame for giving someone like that any freedom at all.
For a scene that was shot 15 years ago, Arrival To Earth is easily one of the best scenes I have ever seen both in terms of visuals and soundtrack. Look at the behind the scenes of Rise Of The Beasts, it looks like they're still going with the mixture of CGI and practical effects so it can actually look real when you watch it in theaters or on television.
I love watching the scenes they’ve shot so far and picking out the bits when they’re gonna transform. There’s this one where Optimus rams Scourge through a brick wall and I can so vividly picture them transforming and fumbling over to keep fighting.
I find these topics super interesting. I’m trying barely trying at scratch the surface in learning these ideas for my own personal creative projects, so I love learning these “mistakes to avoid” pieces of advice.
Thank you for using transformers as well industrial lightning studio for an example for vfx that actually had effort. Despite how commonly bad the franchise became, the work on the transformers themselves is undefeated. I think it's just more about putting more time and commitment in a film rather than rushing it for black widows comparison
It's nice to watch videos that praise the live-action Transformers films, most videos I find attack the films and I get easily annoyed and just skip them
It’s amazing to me how the first transformers still looks good to this day. You’ve got to praise all the people that worked on that movie especially considering what they were working with in 06/07.
Honestly, I feel like the reason CGI is so bad, is because it's so good. Back in the day (a la Jurassic Park), they KNEW it wasn't good and used it very sparingly. Like what was said in one of the videos "it was in the dark and out of focus". But it being like that also helped ground it better. Now tho, it's so good (and like you said) productions use it as a crutch and mostly in the daylight, which is substantially harder to ground. That being said, if productions had more time, CGI would certainly look better.
I totally agree! It's placed front and center in so many big studio productions, often times for no reason and with impossible deadlines for artists. Hope more writers, directors and studios realize this!
For all of eternity the two trilogies I’ll reference as a perfect blend of practical effects and CGI are the first three Bay-Verse Transformers, and the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy. The behind the scenes of the train fight in Spider-Man 2 is so fucking great to watch. Practical sets and footage mushed together to create this big action scene. A specific shot that blew my mind was the reveal shot of Spidey and Ock on the side of the train. The behind the scenes shows that it was a real shot of the train zooming by, and they just plopped the two CGI models on the side of it. So many people would just assume that it was a 100% CGI shot.
A bit of good art direction can make a massive difference. Vagrant Story, a game made for the playstation 1, a seriously underpowered console, still looks amazing to this day. The art team used a bevy of fake lighting techniques: Rim lights were handled by duplicating character models, brightening them, and offsetting them slightly; Environmental lighting was handled using vertex colors blended onto the base textures. They even faked depth of field effects! Combine that with some very cinematic camera angles and movements during cutscenes, and you get one of the best visual experiences of the console's entire library.
The main reason for current day VFX being so bad is the fact that Disney owns most of the properties pointed out, and they are a strict bottom line company. So...if you have 1200 VFX shots, you are going to spend 80% of your budget on maybe 200 of those as hero shots, and those will go to ILM/WETA/FRAMESTORE etc. The rest will go to smaller studios usually in India or somewhere in Asia where the talent/resources just aren't at ILM quality. ILM is also having a issue where they have several multi-national offices, so ILM has to bid against itself. When you put tax credits into this equation, you can see the issue. VFX bids are always a race to the bottom so if ILM London has a 40% tax break, where do you think the work will go. I'm not bagging on ILM or it's people, it's just a matter of money. This is the reason why most modern Marvel movies have REALLY good vfx in one shot, then shitty in another. Back in the day, the majority of the shots were done by 3 main studios, all at the same quality level....with smaller studios picking up things like comp work or BG VFX. This is all on top of the points you mentioned in the video. Just dropping my 5 cents.
The thing I love about this analysis is that the vfx for both "The Transformers" and "The Avengers" or even the Black Window movie, were all made by ILM, so it all boils down to execution, not the vfx artists quality. So, basically the fault is on the studio producing the movie, not the vfx studio
ex VFX artist recently said MCU never give them enough time to do the visuals. Especially when mcu movies always doing reshoots and there's only few months left. Compare that to other movie where they were given enough time to do the visuals. I still remember back in 2000's, VFX team takes at least 1 year just to finished the visual but nowadays it's under 6 months, also back in the days only 1 VFX studios doing the whole CGI while today it's divided to 3 VFX studios. No wonder some scene are uncanny valley
I actually got to watch these scenes of Transformers being filmed in Downtown Chicago in 2010. A close family friend has been the location manager for all of the transformers movies and let me and my dad watch on the set while it was being filmed. So so much effort went into making a believable environment, actual cars were being flipped and blown up so the CGI could be added in over it, and it made for some astoundingly good effects.
With this example we can really see how CGI artistry was taken for granted when the first Transformers movie was released. 15 years later, not only does it hold up amazingly, but it's way better than most stuff nowadays. Critics can say whatever they want about the scripts in Bay movies, but the craftmanship in its visual and practical effects are top tier. The man knows how to orchestrate an spectacle.
The Forest Battle from Revenge of the Fallen is singlehandedly one of my favorite scenes from anything ever. It’s incredibly well choreographed, the effects still hold up astonishingly, the amount of energy and heft the bots have while beating the ever loving shit out of each other is amazing. Then you compare it to like most final fights in the MCU where there’s a million jump cuts with every hit, there’s practically no impact with every hit, most of the time it’s literally two people just standing in a green screen room as opposed to them properly filming Shia LaBeouf running through a forest getting chased by robots. These movies to my knowledge are typically made on a similar budget yet the Transformers crew actually took their time and was able to craft something really cool meanwhile the MCU crews opt to just make everything digital. I know that the MCU crews are often forced on deadlines that they struggle to beat but it doesn’t change the drastic quality difference.
Ahh yes Transformers, my childhood and make me interested in the part of making a movie (Vfx artist maybe) I wondering how they make that robot model wow, the Rig too
great work man, this video feels like classic era of youtube. no filler or bloat, just under 10 mins and very info dense. there's a fervor for that and this meets it while being informative
Damn I'm slaw then because that one scene from Black Widow, where Natasha is diving after her sister and there's debris falling everywhere, looks dope af.
I liked the CGI scenes in the first three bay films, I thought they got the job done, even though there were.. SO.. MANY. But Age of Extinction gives me a headache. The first movie though... MINDBLOWING, and still perfect.
Transformers did have some of the best, if not the best, CGI to date compared to most other franchises of today. The robots felt like they were there and so it made them more believable. For example, Thanos in the MCU is a crazy techincal feat (and yes, impressive, without a doubt) but you can still tell that he's CGI and not actually there in some shots compared to most of Michael Bay Transformers movies. Some great examples of CGI in all of cinema (I can list at the top of my head) are Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean, T-Rex from Jurassic Park (thanks to legendary Spielberg's cinematography and practical dummies on-set), Avatar as a whole, Planet of the Apes as a whole and of course the LOTR Gollum. Some examples too are Interstellar and more recent ones like Disney's The Jungle Book and Pixar's The Good Dinosaur (those environments were ridicuously incredible).
You really hit the nail on this one. I couldn't pinpoint why I didn't like the CG of the Marvel while liking the Transformer series before but now you have enlightened me.
When it comes to actors, especially for big budget movies, they require a certain amount of screen time. There is a grey line of whether it counts if there are CG versions of themselves on screen. A transformer doesn't need to worry about facial screen time as it is a complete CG character. One problem with superhero movies today is that we don't get a hero fully suited for long periods of screen time as they must show the actors face. A movie like Deadpool excels with having the hero fully suited as it was less risky film for the studio.The point of what I want to get at is CGI might be sacrificed in order to accommodate for the actors to fulfil contractual obligations.
Hey there! Thats a very informative video for ppl who are new into this field. I wanna know what you really think about monsterverse (godzilla 2014, kong skull island, godzilla kotm and the recent gvk 2021) as well my personal fav pacific rim 2013 ? Surely these fictional movies may lack proper story but considering only their vfx alone they sure did an excellent job. Characters like godzilla, kong, ghidorah, optimus prime, bumblebee, jeagers, other giant robots actually belongs to comical story and cannot exist in real life but yet the cg & fx elements makes us question whether THESE THINGS are fake or not is what makes them best. No wonder why transformers 1 (also the sequels but their plot is not that gr8) still holds a special place for so many ppl. Meanwhile marvel, DC are also comical but their deteriorating cg & fx elements looks more like uncooked tuna.... hence not that much liking.
I grew up watching the Transformers movies by Michael Bay as a 10 year old and allways since then I was in love with their look and character design, I am still searching for a film looking as amazing as them, but it is really hard. I think the Lord of the Rings also can impress you for a life time as well as the new Dune, but nontheless they are amazing in a different way. Maybe Bay is the only one who can create this immersive feeling of real on camera explosions and heavy fighting alien robots the way he does. I just allways have to think of this gigantic steel worm in TF 3 that drills through a scyscrapper and becomes killed by Optimus Prime in the visually most stunning way you can imagine. All I can say is thank you Michael Bay for stealing my breath for ever...
I agree with most of your video except for the harshness towards Black Widow. I feel like no one (especially the artists) wanted to turn that in as the final product, but the corporate need to push it out due to the COVID delays isn't a fair comparison. If anything, Transformers 2 would be a better comparison. As much as I love the first 3 films, 2 definitely suffered from compositing issues and I'm sure the writers strike of the time didn't help them out. Awesome breakdowns, can't wait to see more!
One of the most jarring things about that infamous black widow shot is that there are about 3-4 consecutive camera cuts that are ugly and only there to try to hide horrible visuals
adding my 2 cents, its not always that the vfx studio sucks or how poorly they composited the shots . most of the time the artists are bound to the higher authorities commands and have to work things out on what they have because someone didn't lit the shot correctly or the client think otherwise, sometimes clients just straight up spoils a great shot because his 5 year old didn't like the work.......industry is more political then you think.
I’m a lighting artist and I have worked in a few of the big studios (MPC, ILM, DNEG) and i was surprised when we where replacing things like vehicles and buildings actually shot in plate with CG facsimiles that took a long time to make from assets to layout and animation and in the end that didn’t look so realistic
As an Artist, I can say doing these Vfx and Cgi and the Story board is really hard to do with the amount of time and effort. But you'll be worth it to show it
That's definitely a cool detail, the background motion capture allows the vfx team to have every surface of the transformer reflect whatever part of the motion capture its looking at then it's making the shadows of not just moving objects, static objects but also the transformer overlaying parts too then ensuring the lightning is also accurate for example not too light or too dark. I'd love to do this with my edits but my main focus is cinematic set design in prisma 3d and colour grading, I definitely recommend people to use node video and prisma 3d, animating models is quite difficult even a single door but it's definitely worth it because it'll teach you that understanding each separate part is important! I really hope my first paragraph is correct because it'll confirm that I am continuing to learn more but please correct me if I'm wrong.
Thats the one thing thats been bugging me about modern VFX/CGI, is the faded, washed out, ashey and grey look to it. Its crazy how good the Transformers films look, compared today standards. I will always love the Transformers films, and that the VFX/CGI and Practical was pushed to the best they could achieve! 😃 I love Marvel, but my god the CGI and Practical work has gone down hill in quality! That Bruce Banner shot in the Hulkbuster goes through me it is sooo bad 😬
Never thought i'd see the day where someone makes a video specifically talking about how much greater the Transformer's movies CGI and cinematography is when compared to Marvel. I thought I was one of the only people who thought that, Bravo, sir!
I was 13 when I saw the first transformers in theater and my 13 year old brain was blown away when those cars started morphing with those intricate animation. In today's post-Iron Man suit era, we've grown accustomed to these details but in 2007, this was groundbreaking. ILM once told in an interview that Transformers made them and Marvel believe a cool-looking CGI Iron Man was possible in the first place. My jaw dropped the first time seeing it and Michael Bay deserves some recognition for his ambition back then. Also, it came out right after 300 and right before Pirates of the Caribbean : At World's End, two blockbusters that also showed the 2000's-era viewer what crazy shit could be done with CGI. Man what a time.
It's weird but interesting to see internet homies go from trashing Bayformers to saying nice stuff about those movies now. I won't complain, the first one's a classic & Dark of the Moon is fun too.
I could imagine it's really hard to art direct such as composition and lighting in front of the massive green screen when it doesn't give you any context of the shot.
Great insight. Really like the comparison shot between non and cinematic. Make more videos like this please, comparing good and bad cinematography is interesting not necessarily vfx.
The first transformers is crazy, with bay as director there's no dull moment everything is chaos (in good way) my favorite part is that battle in highway when the kid in car watch the fight, even today i still question how bay shot all that scene
Amazing video, thanks for highlighting the Transformers CGI. I was obsessed with the vfx and all the behind the scenes etc for many years... That was a great production and loved the original movie.
This felt less about "why modern VFX sucks" and more about a personal opinion on why Marvel VFX sucks. There was some valid critique on why the CGI still holds up well in the Transformers movies (original one at least) but the scene from The Avengers wasn't comparable. You stated the use of wide-angle shots (artistic choices not a rule that was broken) and the use of full CGI but left out the fact that a shot like that would not be as achievable practically. Everyone seems to pick apart that one scene from Black Widow as an example of bad CGI when none of the CGI was bad, the real elements in it were comped poorly all of which could've been fixed by simply matching the lighting of the real elements better. The imperfections were in the blue screen shots and not the VFX. Not to mention your suggestion of shooting on a "real" location doesn't make much sense when the scene takes place on a hanger that's miles up in the sky. Unless you meant adding real elements in the studio to make the human element more grounded. Marvel's major problem is cranking out VFX shots without giving artists enough time. With every example of bad CGI there's plenty examples of modern VFX gone extremely well.
Yeah the whole thing feels cherry-picked and also smells of Dunning-Kruger a bit, like it's coming from someone who thinks they know a lot more about something than they actually do. The author's iMDB only has three credits, all of which are small indie productions, so I'm honestly kinda baffled that they're putting out a whole course about how to composite better than Marvel. There's a reason why we rarely see experienced VFX folks nitpicking single sequences in movies (except in cases like Corridor Crew where it's done for entertainment). Black Widow has 1000+ VFX shots, most of which completely seamless (and of which ~800 were done by ILM, as a matter of fact), and artists who have worked in big budget productions are wise to the compromises that always end up being made due to deadlines or budgetary constraints as the final cut comes together. Marvel's current trend of not committing to creative decisions until the last second is far more likely to have caused these recent blunders than the entire VFX pipeline who worked on the movies suddenly forgetting how to do their jobs. And I honestly don't know what they expected from the Avengers sequence? That film's CG recreation of an entire section of Manhattan was a massive achievement, especially for ten years ago, and the scene fits the style of the rest of the film just fine. If the diretor or DP wanted a shakier/more grounded camera they could have very easily animated it as such, the author seems to be mistaking their preference for a particular style with an objective standard for how visual effects should be presented.
@@DodaGarcia I totally agree. The Avengers was one of the first movies I had ever seen on an IMAX screen and the experience of seeing the New York battle for the first time was amazing. He's showing a low resolution screen recording of the scene which of course backs up his notion of calling it "garbage". Marvel isn't the pinnacle of filmmaking but it seems like the current bandwagon right now is to shit on everything they make. I find it interesting that he didn't choose any scenes from Infinity War, most likely because that movie uses a lot of the techniques he's speaking of and it's just easier to cherry-pick a couple of shots that don't fit his particular taste or his personal definition of "Cinematic". I had a feeling the title was clickbait. We all know Modern VFX doesn't suck and that it's definitely not regressing. It's a pretty crazy notion to assert that and imply he has more mastery over the medium than major studios by plugging his course. The ultimate down fall of bad VFX in modern movies is just budget and time constraints. He makes some very valid points and offers some solid advice but overall places a bit of bias and makes cinematography and VFX seem a lot less nuanced.
Thanks for this! It's something I've been saying for literal decades - since the Star Wars prequels. I was telling people that to make them look more realistic and less cartoon video gameish as they did, George should've built as much of the sets as possible. Then just used green/blue screen to extend the settings in the distant background. Instead of doing ENTIRE sets digitally as he did. Shots on the Wookie planet and during the clone war battle being just two examples. But I would get a lot of backlash from kids and adults that didn't know any better. So it's nice to have more validation. I called it "digital minimalism" where you do as much practically as possible and only use digital where it's absolutely necessary. Relatively more recently, I used Chris Nolan and Denis Villeneuve as perfect examples of DM. One thing that bugs me to no end that I see repeatedly today, is the continued use of bad greenscreen that I mostly see in the DCFU for some reason, where every scene that takes place outdoors was obviously shot indoors and against a green screen. This is so easily fixed by shooting scenes outdoors that are supposed to take place outdoors in the film. This is because it's very difficult to replicate natural outdoor lighting with artificial lights. So just let nature and the real world do it instead.
Spot on, also beside that, the lack of character of the location itself bring sense of realism seems very lack. Recent original trilogy if spiderman analysis by Patrick H Willems clearly stated the main problem of modern movies, which is the place and the people or the lack senses of it.
I'm so glad Transfomers was made in 2007 before the MCU crap....Other the the few exceptions and even then even some of the best look cheap unless you count the stuff in phase 1
Unrelated but I just realized that Black Widow & Yelena should've been wearing oxygen masks connected to oxygen tanks when they were outside the Red Room. They are high above the clouds where there is very little oxygen to breathe. You could excuse it to them being a little superhuman (Black Widow was injected with the same super soldier serum Capt. had, according to what I heard from the comics) but I think even superhumans still need air.
The only thing that dates the Transformers movies for me is the amount of motion blur many of the shots use. Other than that, it still looks absolutely incredible.
This is something I've been saying for years, the transformers movies definitely don't have the best writing even when compared against other transformers media, but they look really fucking good.
Just look at the movies directed by directors who started off in visual effects. The original Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, James Cameron’s movies before Avatar. These were directed by people who understood VFX. Who understood that ultimately the goal is to trick the human brain if you want to make the audience to forget that they are watching something that’s not real. I guess the main problem is that filmmakers today don’t really understand how the audience work. So they also don’t understand how to tell stories anymore.
What Michael Bay's team accomplished visually is still remarkable to this day. Those movies need to be studied and appreciated for their visual effects. I've been saying this for years. Makes Marvel movies look like crap.
Someone should please explain the problem with that black widow scene, like is it that they didn't do enough or they did below professional work, like beginner level shi
Devil’s advocate for that Black Widow shot, it was a reshoot during covid. They had (comparatively) little resources, but even with zero resources you could make better.
Using CGI only when absolutely necessary also helps because it allows the animators to be able to perfect the CGI by giving them times to make their animation look less rubbery and more detailed
Its truly sad how few films ever get the green light to use "Real" locations anymore. Indian Jones 4 was one of the greatest train wreaks where pure CGI dose not work with a film that is imbedded in our minds as "real" like the first 3. Gorge Lucas was able to pull it off with Star Wars I-II-III with Mandalorian enhancing how backdrops are filmed.
The Transformer scene where the one transformer is chasing Optimus Prime on the highway is the most realistic CGI I've ever seen then and since, and it was from 2007. It really looks like the transformers are real.
Watching those 15 year old Transformers effects holding up to this day still amazes me. It’s such a shame that incredibly talented artists are considered mediocre because their work isn’t respected. Those people are magicians, they can do anything, just as long as they have proper deadlines and well planned shots.
Bay, Verbinski, Jackson, Nolan, those people understand what it takes and are very careful with their scenes, and decades after their movies, nearly nothing stands out as dated. Davy Jones, Gollum, dream sequences of Inception or space scenes of Interstellar, you believe you’re watching something that was properly photographed.
Very true, I couldn't agree more! As with any technology or tool, if it's not implemented in the right way, you get poor results. Hopefully I'll be driving into some examples from some of the filmmakers you listed in the next episode to see how they use CGI in their films!
Very well said.
dont forget guillermo del toro
@@BoundlessEntertainmentFilms District 9 is another such film !
This 👆
Transformers franchise may not be studied as a film, but when it comes to CGI it's where directors should take notes when making a blockbuster.
Agreed! Thanks for watching and for your comment!
About the ‘film’ part, the same can be said for MCU movies
@@Songsar7Artski MCU movies are not good when it comes to story either. I am a transformers fan and recognize the weakness in the stories of the TF films, but marvel movies mostly work on the basis of hype created around them. Just look at it this way, what marvel movies have worked without hype created before them. Examples: dr. Strange2, thor LAT, even series like she hulk have had no hype around them and have turned out to be complete failures. However, I do love the avengers films when it comes to storytelling
@@johnturturo there were even better movies than avengers too in MCU like the first 3 iron man movies, cap america winter soldier, civil war, etc...They had very good standards of handling the franchises creatively. It started sucking post avengers endgame period...Precisely Captain Marvel kick-started this shitshow (rlsd just few months before endgame )
the jurassic world and marvel movies are the worst movies of all time
Transformers is always one the best but it's just a nightmare for cgi production, the amount of roto for bay movies is just insane. Also marvel is a horrible client known for changing stuffs over and over drastically with so little time to finish, the artists were stressed to the extreme can't complain too much on the quality.
Agreed, and that's a big part of what I want to say in these videos. Ultimately the quality of the vfx comes down to the filmmaker or the studio and what they give the vfx teams to work with. It's sad because you basically force talented artists to put out poor quality work when you place such harsh deadlines and continually change things. Thanks for your comment and thanks for watching!
The fact they want a pretty much final render on scenes they’re not sure they want or not, because the directors are inexperienced and can’t see ahead, is mind blowing to me. It’s not like they can’t afford proper filmmakers who understand these things.
@@alexman378 Sam raimi did Dr strange 2 and looks how feigi reshoots that movie without Sam raimi. Some said they reshoot up to 40% of that movie.
@@alexman378 I mean, thats not a problem per say. Its more about the deadlines you put around that framework, which I would guess is the problem here
@@boboboy8189 wait, feigi did reshoot? So... "technically" DS MoM has two directors, eh?
The fact that the CGI in the first Transformers movie looks more like real life than the stuff we get today amazes me. Definitely goes to show how much work the VFX artists put into the movie.
And how much time they were given to polish
@@wifine1951 very true
And that CGI was bad too. Standards have just gone from low to terrible.
@@doltBmB what are you talking about? The CGI in the first Transformers movie is phenomenal
@@LowTierMarston he’s lying to himself
The reflection on the bus of the Decepticon is so well done. Really sells the shot.
There's another scene where you can see optimus"s face reflecting off his chest and his mouth moving exactly to his words in the reflection
When the helicopter transformed at the beginning of the first transformers, I was legitimately gobsmacked. I’d never seen anything like that.
The helicopters name is blackout
Yeah, the opening to the movie is awesome.
Yup, no surprise 9 year old me became obsessed for a while at that moment.
To this day the best scene in transformers franchise.
1:48 another reason this looks so real is because the exploding vehicle also serves as the perfect frame of reference to render another burning vehicle; which is the transformer itself. Both are metals constructs that catch fire, same materials, same movements, same reflections and lighting.
This is the exact reason why Iron Man looked way better than any of it's successors. RDJ had a practical suit/chestplate/helmet on him. That meant VFX teams had perfect reference & didn't need to deal with the "floating head" effect as practical suit already provided occlusion/shadows on RDJ's face.
Hasil Pantulan ca ha ya cermin mimpi
th-cam.com/video/_iMKwSikRN4/w-d-xo.html
Why modern VFX sucks is almost always because of unreasonable deadlines and top executives 😅
Poor planning too. Waititi was explaining once how he shot a dialogue scene for L&T, and after the scene was semi finished, he realized some stuff was either not explained properly or could’ve been said better, and went back to redo it. So instead of simply writing a second draft, he had the entire team focusing on a scene that didn’t need to be repeated, because he’s just that lazy.
Lack of creativity, laziness and the utter tendency to cut corners whenever they can
Your praise of Transformers visual effects and Michael Bay's talent is like honey for my ears!
I keep stubbornly arguing with people because i think that first Transformers movie is one of the all-time greatest blockbuster movies in terms of cinematography and visual effects and its still looks way better than any Marvel or DC movie. Road chase scene is insane, Bay is literally a genius when we talk about using CGI properly.
I think that Bay is one of the most underrated movie directors. His use of CGI, his shots and angles are always so dynamic but grounded and lively
Also i can say same words of praise about amazing Gore Verbinski and his Pirates of the Caribbean but they are not as disrespectfully underrated as Bay's Transformers.
Very much agree, the CGI is incredible in the first transformers movie! The fact that the visual effects were so heavily exposed during the whole film, front and center in broad daylight, and that they look that good is impressive. The fact that it came out in 2007 only adds to that!
Joker CGI actually better than all MCU movies.
I've been doing the same thing. Whenever someone says that Bay is a bad director I'm like: ?
I mean, come on! Give him a well written action movie screenplay and he will make one of the greatest action movies ever made in the history of humanity, without a doubt.
He has an strong vision and identity. Something that many directors and blockbusters are lacking nowadays.
You can hate him... But whenever you look at one of his shots or action sequences, even if it's from a movie you haven't seen... You know it was directed by him.
Which leads me to think about the MCU... I can count with the fingers of my right hand and only right hand the times a director put his/her vision in it... And never entirely.
That's why I'm not paying anymore to anything made by them. I remember the name of Sam Raimi was one of the few directors whose name appeared in the trailers. But it was just a lie at the end.
@@THE.N1KO Dr strange 2 have reshoot. Some said it's 40% of the movie. That's why sometime you spot it, sometime you done, feigi only use raimi as a tool to promote Dr strange 2 after Scott derricson left because feigi refuse to let scott doing
1) rated R movie
2) Dr strange is not the main character in his own movie
If I'm not wrong, Sam raimi directing this movie because feigi promise him something, some said it's spiderman 4, some said it's upcoming marvel project
@@THE.N1KO absolutely agree with every word
This makes me happy that the new Transformers Rise of the Beasts was delayed a year, more time to sharpen the cgi and visuals
I'm really hoping it's good.
The movie was finished last year they haven't touched it since
@@novustalks7525 that wouldn’t make sense because they probably can make some modifications to the cgi.but maybe they are finished though
@@princethegod0346 there isn't any modifications to be made. The movie would have been completed for its initial deadline until the delay
@@novustalks7525 you can't really say that there isn't modifications that is made when we haven't see the final product. One thing we all know is that vfx artist working on that movie are not being pressured finishing cgi in tight schedule.
Ngl. I love the bayformers films. The amount of time they put into the rigs and stunts and real looking cgi always amazes me. 2007 looks perfect.
Transformers and POTC both had some of the best vfx to date in my opinion, and considering they are both over 10 years old it is really quite astonishing how bad some of today's vfx are...
That’s pretty Interesting.
It shows how studios aren’t trying anymore
Now I see why Nolan tries to avoid CGI as much as possible. I have the same feeling after watching a bunch of marvel movies. Undoubtably they are cool and fun to watch but they always lack something and those things only appear in real photography. There is an great example which is starship troopers (the first one) movie. Though some explosions are not as good as today's CGI simulation, but overall it really looks real and spectacular because they used miniature and a lot of tricks for shooting, CGI came into play when too many arachnids in the scene which is impossible to make real models. IMO that movie still holds up and it was made in 1997 if I recall correctly. That was a good time when CGI is not dominating entire screen.
Yeah I'd really love to see more directors bring back miniatures. It's amazing what filmmakers were able to achieve before CGI even existed! And if you do it right, it doesn't look nearly as dated as CGI in the future. Thanks for your comment and for watching!
As a major Transformers fan whose followed these films from the beginning, I agree wholeheartedly. Some of the best CGI in cinema. Despite all criticisms of the Bay films, I'll always adore and appreciate his masterful visuals & aesthetics in the Transformers films. Works of art.
I was thinking the same thing when comparing the Mandalorian and the Obi wan series
Even though both were using the LED Unreal Volume, one had great cinematography and visuals and the other looked like a fan film on a number of shots with terrible lighting and composition
Very true! I find it astounding that projects of that budget could be so poorly realized sometimes, because there are so many amazing filmmakers out there who would do a great job given a project like that. Thanks for your comment and for watching!
Also thor love and thuder looks very fake and unpolished despite using volume but the batman and mandalorian is both shot well and interestingly both have same dp
@@kiranvnair1133 That’s what happens when the director has absolutely no knowledge of how to use these tools. The Volume is an incredible tool, but it’s just that, a tool. The result depends on how it’s used. It requires a director who either has a good understanding of VFX, or one who accepts and understands their lack of knowledge and are willing to have their VFX supervisors guide them through their scenes, with no ego.
Same goes for all VFX really, it’s how the same people who did Planet of the Apes, also did the godawful Black Panther VFX.
@@alexman378 Ok, but there are other things at work like schedule, time, processes of the studio, artistic intent, etc. so many things. Thor Love and Thunder has Taika Waititi as director, and guess what? He directed a few Mandalorian episodes also. You have to know that the Marvel movies often are allowed to look way more cartoony, and that's just the 'look' they can get away with. To say that he has absolutely no knowledge of how to use these tools is ridiculous.
@@haysoos123 Directing in a show and directing in films are two very different things.
He really has no idea how to use them, and it’s quite evident, because everything looks flat and worse than green screens in a $220M movie. Inexcusable, especially considering he even used it for apartment scenes. And it was all his idea, so the big bad faceless studio which gave him so much freedom isn’t the one to blame, they’re only to blame for giving someone like that any freedom at all.
For a scene that was shot 15 years ago, Arrival To Earth is easily one of the best scenes I have ever seen both in terms of visuals and soundtrack. Look at the behind the scenes of Rise Of The Beasts, it looks like they're still going with the mixture of CGI and practical effects so it can actually look real when you watch it in theaters or on television.
Yeah. I’m really excited for ROTB. Can’t wait for it to come. I really hope the trailer drops soon
I love watching the scenes they’ve shot so far and picking out the bits when they’re gonna transform. There’s this one where Optimus rams Scourge through a brick wall and I can so vividly picture them transforming and fumbling over to keep fighting.
@@Noaher256 yeah, those scenes in the alleys are quits interesting. I’m excited
I find these topics super interesting. I’m trying barely trying at scratch the surface in learning these ideas for my own personal creative projects, so I love learning these “mistakes to avoid” pieces of advice.
Thanks for watching! Very glad to hear you find these videos helpful!
Thank you for using transformers as well industrial lightning studio for an example for vfx that actually had effort. Despite how commonly bad the franchise became, the work on the transformers themselves is undefeated. I think it's just more about putting more time and commitment in a film rather than rushing it for black widows comparison
The franchise only got bad with 5 and bumblebee
@@novustalks7525 what are you smoking? Bumblebee was miles ahead of age of extinction and the last knight.
@@kelvinzaragoza6349 no it wasn't. Age of extinction was good the other two were rubbish
I'll never understand why Transformers never got the praise it should've for its CGI
It's nice to watch videos that praise the live-action Transformers films, most videos I find attack the films and I get easily annoyed and just skip them
Agreed
It’s amazing to me how the first transformers still looks good to this day. You’ve got to praise all the people that worked on that movie especially considering what they were working with in 06/07.
Honestly, I feel like the reason CGI is so bad, is because it's so good. Back in the day (a la Jurassic Park), they KNEW it wasn't good and used it very sparingly. Like what was said in one of the videos "it was in the dark and out of focus". But it being like that also helped ground it better. Now tho, it's so good (and like you said) productions use it as a crutch and mostly in the daylight, which is substantially harder to ground. That being said, if productions had more time, CGI would certainly look better.
I totally agree! It's placed front and center in so many big studio productions, often times for no reason and with impossible deadlines for artists. Hope more writers, directors and studios realize this!
Studios doing reshoots is one of the a problem with today CGI
For all of eternity the two trilogies I’ll reference as a perfect blend of practical effects and CGI are the first three Bay-Verse Transformers, and the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy.
The behind the scenes of the train fight in Spider-Man 2 is so fucking great to watch. Practical sets and footage mushed together to create this big action scene. A specific shot that blew my mind was the reveal shot of Spidey and Ock on the side of the train. The behind the scenes shows that it was a real shot of the train zooming by, and they just plopped the two CGI models on the side of it. So many people would just assume that it was a 100% CGI shot.
All 5 bay films look jaw droppingly real
A bit of good art direction can make a massive difference. Vagrant Story, a game made for the playstation 1, a seriously underpowered console, still looks amazing to this day. The art team used a bevy of fake lighting techniques: Rim lights were handled by duplicating character models, brightening them, and offsetting them slightly; Environmental lighting was handled using vertex colors blended onto the base textures. They even faked depth of field effects! Combine that with some very cinematic camera angles and movements during cutscenes, and you get one of the best visual experiences of the console's entire library.
How do you know this?
The main reason for current day VFX being so bad is the fact that Disney owns most of the properties pointed out, and they are a strict bottom line company. So...if you have 1200 VFX shots, you are going to spend 80% of your budget on maybe 200 of those as hero shots, and those will go to ILM/WETA/FRAMESTORE etc. The rest will go to smaller studios usually in India or somewhere in Asia where the talent/resources just aren't at ILM quality. ILM is also having a issue where they have several multi-national offices, so ILM has to bid against itself. When you put tax credits into this equation, you can see the issue. VFX bids are always a race to the bottom so if ILM London has a 40% tax break, where do you think the work will go. I'm not bagging on ILM or it's people, it's just a matter of money. This is the reason why most modern Marvel movies have REALLY good vfx in one shot, then shitty in another. Back in the day, the majority of the shots were done by 3 main studios, all at the same quality level....with smaller studios picking up things like comp work or BG VFX. This is all on top of the points you mentioned in the video. Just dropping my 5 cents.
True, sometimes I HATE that simple scene in movies is completely SGI and im not talking about sci-fi fight scenes etc.
The thing I love about this analysis is that the vfx for both "The Transformers" and "The Avengers" or even the Black Window movie, were all made by ILM, so it all boils down to execution, not the vfx artists quality. So, basically the fault is on the studio producing the movie, not the vfx studio
ex VFX artist recently said MCU never give them enough time to do the visuals. Especially when mcu movies always doing reshoots and there's only few months left. Compare that to other movie where they were given enough time to do the visuals.
I still remember back in 2000's, VFX team takes at least 1 year just to finished the visual but nowadays it's under 6 months, also back in the days only 1 VFX studios doing the whole CGI while today it's divided to 3 VFX studios.
No wonder some scene are uncanny valley
@@boboboy8189 you're absolutely right!
1:46 The silhouette of the robot is insane, it makes the scene so real
I actually got to watch these scenes of Transformers being filmed in Downtown Chicago in 2010. A close family friend has been the location manager for all of the transformers movies and let me and my dad watch on the set while it was being filmed. So so much effort went into making a believable environment, actual cars were being flipped and blown up so the CGI could be added in over it, and it made for some astoundingly good effects.
With this example we can really see how CGI artistry was taken for granted when the first Transformers movie was released. 15 years later, not only does it hold up amazingly, but it's way better than most stuff nowadays. Critics can say whatever they want about the scripts in Bay movies, but the craftmanship in its visual and practical effects are top tier. The man knows how to orchestrate an spectacle.
The Forest Battle from Revenge of the Fallen is singlehandedly one of my favorite scenes from anything ever. It’s incredibly well choreographed, the effects still hold up astonishingly, the amount of energy and heft the bots have while beating the ever loving shit out of each other is amazing.
Then you compare it to like most final fights in the MCU where there’s a million jump cuts with every hit, there’s practically no impact with every hit, most of the time it’s literally two people just standing in a green screen room as opposed to them properly filming Shia LaBeouf running through a forest getting chased by robots.
These movies to my knowledge are typically made on a similar budget yet the Transformers crew actually took their time and was able to craft something really cool meanwhile the MCU crews opt to just make everything digital. I know that the MCU crews are often forced on deadlines that they struggle to beat but it doesn’t change the drastic quality difference.
Ahh yes Transformers, my childhood and make me interested in the part of making a movie (Vfx artist maybe)
I wondering how they make that robot model wow, the Rig too
Me too!!
great work man, this video feels like classic era of youtube. no filler or bloat, just under 10 mins and very info dense. there's a fervor for that and this meets it while being informative
Damn I'm slaw then because that one scene from Black Widow, where Natasha is diving after her sister and there's debris falling everywhere, looks dope af.
I liked the CGI scenes in the first three bay films, I thought they got the job done, even though there were.. SO.. MANY.
But Age of Extinction gives me a headache.
The first movie though... MINDBLOWING, and still perfect.
age of extinction was just as good. the movie itself was the best of the bunch by far
Transformers did have some of the best, if not the best, CGI to date compared to most other franchises of today. The robots felt like they were there and so it made them more believable. For example, Thanos in the MCU is a crazy techincal feat (and yes, impressive, without a doubt) but you can still tell that he's CGI and not actually there in some shots compared to most of Michael Bay Transformers movies. Some great examples of CGI in all of cinema (I can list at the top of my head) are Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean, T-Rex from Jurassic Park (thanks to legendary Spielberg's cinematography and practical dummies on-set), Avatar as a whole, Planet of the Apes as a whole and of course the LOTR Gollum. Some examples too are Interstellar and more recent ones like Disney's The Jungle Book and Pixar's The Good Dinosaur (those environments were ridicuously incredible).
You really hit the nail on this one. I couldn't pinpoint why I didn't like the CG of the Marvel while liking the Transformer series before but now you have enlightened me.
Environment matters & that's the point where Bay's Transformers beats Marvel .
The Bayformers trilogy is a perfect study for CGI. That stuff still holds up damn well today.
*0:55** IT ONLY SAVES TIME, CGI(EVEN THE CRAPPY ONE) ARE ALWAYS EASIER BUT MORE EXPENSIVE THAN PRACTICAL EFFECTS*
When it comes to actors, especially for big budget movies, they require a certain amount of screen time. There is a grey line of whether it counts if there are CG versions of themselves on screen. A transformer doesn't need to worry about facial screen time as it is a complete CG character. One problem with superhero movies today is that we don't get a hero fully suited for long periods of screen time as they must show the actors face. A movie like Deadpool excels with having the hero fully suited as it was less risky film for the studio.The point of what I want to get at is CGI might be sacrificed in order to accommodate for the actors to fulfil contractual obligations.
Hey there! Thats a very informative video for ppl who are new into this field. I wanna know what you really think about monsterverse (godzilla 2014, kong skull island, godzilla kotm and the recent gvk 2021) as well my personal fav pacific rim 2013 ? Surely these fictional movies may lack proper story but considering only their vfx alone they sure did an excellent job. Characters like godzilla, kong, ghidorah, optimus prime, bumblebee, jeagers, other giant robots actually belongs to comical story and cannot exist in real life but yet the cg & fx elements makes us question whether THESE THINGS are fake or not is what makes them best. No wonder why transformers 1 (also the sequels but their plot is not that gr8) still holds a special place for so many ppl. Meanwhile marvel, DC are also comical but their deteriorating cg & fx elements looks more like uncooked tuna.... hence not that much liking.
Love you're vids dude it really inspired me to do vfx and cgi
Very glad to hear that!! Thanks for watching and for your comment!
Sad to not see Pirates of the Caribbean mentioned here, those effects still hold up SO WELL, specially Davey Jones
My favorite one from Transformers of Bay is Devastator.
Holy hell. VFX used for that behemoth is sick.
I grew up watching the Transformers movies by Michael Bay as a 10 year old and allways since then I was in love with their look and character design, I am still searching for a film looking as amazing as them, but it is really hard. I think the Lord of the Rings also can impress you for a life time as well as the new Dune, but nontheless they are amazing in a different way. Maybe Bay is the only one who can create this immersive feeling of real on camera explosions and heavy fighting alien robots the way he does. I just allways have to think of this gigantic steel worm in TF 3 that drills through a scyscrapper and becomes killed by Optimus Prime in the visually most stunning way you can imagine.
All I can say is thank you Michael Bay for stealing my breath for ever...
I agree with most of your video except for the harshness towards Black Widow. I feel like no one (especially the artists) wanted to turn that in as the final product, but the corporate need to push it out due to the COVID delays isn't a fair comparison. If anything, Transformers 2 would be a better comparison. As much as I love the first 3 films, 2 definitely suffered from compositing issues and I'm sure the writers strike of the time didn't help them out. Awesome breakdowns, can't wait to see more!
One of the most jarring things about that infamous black widow shot is that there are about 3-4 consecutive camera cuts that are ugly and only there to try to hide horrible visuals
The bumblebee movie used even more practical effects than the Michael bay movies. And it looked phenomenal
Uh it was OK. But the CGI isn't as good as the Bayfilms.
no it didn't. bumblebee was noticeably worse. the cgi was very bad compared to the bay films
@@novustalks7525 The cgi was good it just wasn't as good. It was in no way bad though.
Nah the cgi was worse
Great series, man. Subbed and looking forward to the next ones!
Thank you and thanks for watching!!
adding my 2 cents, its not always that the vfx studio sucks or how poorly they composited the shots . most of the time the artists are bound to the higher authorities commands and have to work things out on what they have because someone didn't lit the shot correctly or the client think otherwise, sometimes clients just straight up spoils a great shot because his 5 year old didn't like the work.......industry is more political then you think.
You should talk about the VFX from Godzilla (2014) very good monsters and sounds, and IMO the Best cgi of the last decade
Transformers need more praise for its visual effects and cinematography
I’m a lighting artist and I have worked in a few of the big studios (MPC, ILM, DNEG) and i was surprised when we where replacing things like vehicles and buildings actually shot in plate with CG facsimiles that took a long time to make from assets to layout and animation and in the end that didn’t look so realistic
Just bought the course bundle. Looking forward to learning!
Awesome, thank you for your purchase! Glad to have you in the community and feel free to reach out if you have any questions!
As an Artist, I can say doing these Vfx and Cgi and the Story board is really hard to do with the amount of time and effort.
But you'll be worth it to show it
That's definitely a cool detail, the background motion capture allows the vfx team to have every surface of the transformer reflect whatever part of the motion capture its looking at then it's making the shadows of not just moving objects, static objects but also the transformer overlaying parts too then ensuring the lightning is also accurate for example not too light or too dark.
I'd love to do this with my edits but my main focus is cinematic set design in prisma 3d and colour grading, I definitely recommend people to use node video and prisma 3d, animating models is quite difficult even a single door but it's definitely worth it because it'll teach you that understanding each separate part is important!
I really hope my first paragraph is correct because it'll confirm that I am continuing to learn more but please correct me if I'm wrong.
Thats the one thing thats been bugging me about modern VFX/CGI, is the faded, washed out, ashey and grey look to it. Its crazy how good the Transformers films look, compared today standards. I will always love the Transformers films, and that the VFX/CGI and Practical was pushed to the best they could achieve! 😃 I love Marvel, but my god the CGI and Practical work has gone down hill in quality! That Bruce Banner shot in the Hulkbuster goes through me it is sooo bad 😬
me too. the transformers films were something special
1:50 I love that the bus is completely empty and just filled with reinforcing bars instead of seats and people 🤣
Never thought i'd see the day where someone makes a video specifically talking about how much greater the Transformer's movies CGI and cinematography is when compared to Marvel. I thought I was one of the only people who thought that, Bravo, sir!
I was 13 when I saw the first transformers in theater and my 13 year old brain was blown away when those cars started morphing with those intricate animation. In today's post-Iron Man suit era, we've grown accustomed to these details but in 2007, this was groundbreaking. ILM once told in an interview that Transformers made them and Marvel believe a cool-looking CGI Iron Man was possible in the first place. My jaw dropped the first time seeing it and Michael Bay deserves some recognition for his ambition back then. Also, it came out right after 300 and right before Pirates of the Caribbean : At World's End, two blockbusters that also showed the 2000's-era viewer what crazy shit could be done with CGI. Man what a time.
It's weird but interesting to see internet homies go from trashing Bayformers to saying nice stuff about those movies now. I won't complain, the first one's a classic & Dark of the Moon is fun too.
Bumblebee is good CGI think also
I could imagine it's really hard to art direct such as composition and lighting in front of the massive green screen when it doesn't give you any context of the shot.
the idea that marvel VFX suck - not just could be better, or improved, but actually *suck* - is complete nonsense
It actually does suck though
Great insight. Really like the comparison shot between non and cinematic. Make more videos like this please, comparing good and bad cinematography is interesting not necessarily vfx.
The first transformers is crazy, with bay as director there's no dull moment everything is chaos (in good way) my favorite part is that battle in highway when the kid in car watch the fight, even today i still question how bay shot all that scene
2:53 So they basically used lightprobbed/cubemapped reflections, that's really cool.
Amazing video, thanks for highlighting the Transformers CGI. I was obsessed with the vfx and all the behind the scenes etc for many years... That was a great production and loved the original movie.
The cgi in the first five transformers films is incredible. The bots reflect off their own bodies
Please make more videos like these. It’s very interesting and more people will appreciate cgi. it’s never easy to do and takes takes time.
This felt less about "why modern VFX sucks" and more about a personal opinion on why Marvel VFX sucks. There was some valid critique on why the CGI still holds up well in the Transformers movies (original one at least) but the scene from The Avengers wasn't comparable. You stated the use of wide-angle shots (artistic choices not a rule that was broken) and the use of full CGI but left out the fact that a shot like that would not be as achievable practically.
Everyone seems to pick apart that one scene from Black Widow as an example of bad CGI when none of the CGI was bad, the real elements in it were comped poorly all of which could've been fixed by simply matching the lighting of the real elements better. The imperfections were in the blue screen shots and not the VFX. Not to mention your suggestion of shooting on a "real" location doesn't make much sense when the scene takes place on a hanger that's miles up in the sky. Unless you meant adding real elements in the studio to make the human element more grounded. Marvel's major problem is cranking out VFX shots without giving artists enough time. With every example of bad CGI there's plenty examples of modern VFX gone extremely well.
Yeah the whole thing feels cherry-picked and also smells of Dunning-Kruger a bit, like it's coming from someone who thinks they know a lot more about something than they actually do. The author's iMDB only has three credits, all of which are small indie productions, so I'm honestly kinda baffled that they're putting out a whole course about how to composite better than Marvel.
There's a reason why we rarely see experienced VFX folks nitpicking single sequences in movies (except in cases like Corridor Crew where it's done for entertainment). Black Widow has 1000+ VFX shots, most of which completely seamless (and of which ~800 were done by ILM, as a matter of fact), and artists who have worked in big budget productions are wise to the compromises that always end up being made due to deadlines or budgetary constraints as the final cut comes together. Marvel's current trend of not committing to creative decisions until the last second is far more likely to have caused these recent blunders than the entire VFX pipeline who worked on the movies suddenly forgetting how to do their jobs.
And I honestly don't know what they expected from the Avengers sequence? That film's CG recreation of an entire section of Manhattan was a massive achievement, especially for ten years ago, and the scene fits the style of the rest of the film just fine. If the diretor or DP wanted a shakier/more grounded camera they could have very easily animated it as such, the author seems to be mistaking their preference for a particular style with an objective standard for how visual effects should be presented.
@@DodaGarcia I totally agree. The Avengers was one of the first movies I had ever seen on an IMAX screen and the experience of seeing the New York battle for the first time was amazing. He's showing a low resolution screen recording of the scene which of course backs up his notion of calling it "garbage". Marvel isn't the pinnacle of filmmaking but it seems like the current bandwagon right now is to shit on everything they make. I find it interesting that he didn't choose any scenes from Infinity War, most likely because that movie uses a lot of the techniques he's speaking of and it's just easier to cherry-pick a couple of shots that don't fit his particular taste or his personal definition of "Cinematic".
I had a feeling the title was clickbait. We all know Modern VFX doesn't suck and that it's definitely not regressing. It's a pretty crazy notion to assert that and imply he has more mastery over the medium than major studios by plugging his course. The ultimate down fall of bad VFX in modern movies is just budget and time constraints. He makes some very valid points and offers some solid advice but overall places a bit of bias and makes cinematography and VFX seem a lot less nuanced.
it's so nice to discover a new channel with this quality, keep this project alive pliss!!
(call me if you need some Portuguese (BR) subtitles 😳)
Thanks for this! It's something I've been saying for literal decades - since the Star Wars prequels. I was telling people that to make them look more realistic and less cartoon video gameish as they did, George should've built as much of the sets as possible. Then just used green/blue screen to extend the settings in the distant background. Instead of doing ENTIRE sets digitally as he did.
Shots on the Wookie planet and during the clone war battle being just two examples.
But I would get a lot of backlash from kids and adults that didn't know any better. So it's nice to have more validation.
I called it "digital minimalism" where you do as much practically as possible and only use digital where it's absolutely necessary. Relatively more recently, I used Chris Nolan and Denis Villeneuve as perfect examples of DM.
One thing that bugs me to no end that I see repeatedly today, is the continued use of bad greenscreen that I mostly see in the DCFU for some reason, where every scene that takes place outdoors was obviously shot indoors and against a green screen.
This is so easily fixed by shooting scenes outdoors that are supposed to take place outdoors in the film. This is because it's very difficult to replicate natural outdoor lighting with artificial lights. So just let nature and the real world do it instead.
Spot on, also beside that, the lack of character of the location itself bring sense of realism seems very lack. Recent original trilogy if spiderman analysis by Patrick H Willems clearly stated the main problem of modern movies, which is the place and the people or the lack senses of it.
I'm so glad Transfomers was made in 2007 before the MCU crap....Other the the few exceptions and even then even some of the best look cheap unless you count the stuff in phase 1
This is a great series! Love this kind of analysis! Thank you!!! 👍 👍 👍
Awesome, thank you for watching and for your comment!!
Unrelated but I just realized that Black Widow & Yelena should've been wearing oxygen masks connected to oxygen tanks when they were outside the Red Room. They are high above the clouds where there is very little oxygen to breathe. You could excuse it to them being a little superhuman (Black Widow was injected with the same super soldier serum Capt. had, according to what I heard from the comics) but I think even superhumans still need air.
The only thing that dates the Transformers movies for me is the amount of motion blur many of the shots use. Other than that, it still looks absolutely incredible.
This is something I've been saying for years, the transformers movies definitely don't have the best writing even when compared against other transformers media, but they look really fucking good.
Planet of the apes, avatar and dune are the few stunninf vfx movies still made today
3:48 looked like some old movie CGI 😅 scorpion king and Co.
Just look at the movies directed by directors who started off in visual effects.
The original Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, James Cameron’s movies before Avatar.
These were directed by people who understood VFX. Who understood that ultimately the goal is to trick the human brain if you want to make the audience to forget that they are watching something that’s not real.
I guess the main problem is that filmmakers today don’t really understand how the audience work. So they also don’t understand how to tell stories anymore.
I love your videos and your explanation!
Can you please increase the lights in your room, it's too dark
I like this topic. Thank you. Can you please make an extended video with some vfx artists discussing this. It will be totally appreciated. Cheers.
5:00 'time' was the reason in this case.
What Michael Bay's team accomplished visually is still remarkable to this day. Those movies need to be studied and appreciated for their visual effects. I've been saying this for years. Makes Marvel movies look like crap.
How to make your vfx great:-
Do a mix of cgi and practical effec
Someone should please explain the problem with that black widow scene, like is it that they didn't do enough or they did below professional work, like beginner level shi
Well said and Good tips. Thank you. 👍
I really recommend checking out The Batman 2022 and it's use of Practical Effects and blending it with CGI
Devil’s advocate for that Black Widow shot, it was a reshoot during covid. They had (comparatively) little resources, but even with zero resources you could make better.
The one thing that always breaks my immertion in those Bay's films are the 'ground exploding'
Using CGI only when absolutely necessary also helps because it allows the animators to be able to perfect the CGI by giving them times to make their animation look less rubbery and more detailed
Gotta rewatch the transformers for some Nostalgia when life was easy
Its truly sad how few films ever get the green light to use "Real" locations anymore. Indian Jones 4 was one of the greatest train wreaks where pure CGI dose not work with a film that is imbedded in our minds as "real" like the first 3.
Gorge Lucas was able to pull it off with Star Wars I-II-III with Mandalorian enhancing how backdrops are filmed.
Sadly people nowadays aren’t aware or just don’t care, just mindlessly gobbling up the garbage that are movies like Marvel.
So what I’m hearing is the key to good cgi is a talented director, cinematographer, and producers. Well, guess it’s hopeless for modern blockbusters
The Transformer scene where the one transformer is chasing Optimus Prime on the highway is the most realistic CGI I've ever seen then and since, and it was from 2007. It really looks like the transformers are real.
I'm pretty sure Michael bay wanted to make us feel small compared to the transformers witch is why the shots are so close to the ground