Are Some Special Effects Too Hard To Replicate For Real?
Special effects are not just about fantastical and fictional entities like alien spaceships and fantastical monsters. Sometimes the biggest challenge is using special effects to authentically recreate phenomena that exist in real life and are seen by many.
This month is providing some spectacular examples of real natural occurrences that can take the breath away.
Most notably, anyone with even the slightest interest in stargazing will have had the chance to view a solar eclipse, then a lunar eclipse, plus the annual Perseids meteor shower.
Both the solar and lunar eclipses are not quite total eclipses from our perspective in the UK, although in the former case people in Greenland, Spain and Iceland will have got lucky.
Can Eclipses Be Accurately Recreated By Special Effects?
Eclipses are not just fascinating sights that will amaze people in real life, but often a feature of TV shows and films. Indeed, many a film has had an eclipse as a key part of the story. This, however, raises an interesting question, which is how the effect can be recreated.
Since a total eclipse relies on the perfect alignment of the sun and moon, the former being about 400 times as large but also 400 times further away, scale models are pretty much out of the question. But can the effect be created authentically in other ways?
As Cinenoir noted, various films have tried to create either realistic or artistic impressions of eclipses in various ways:
The 2006 film Apocalypto used a ‘black sun’ effect by using a custom-designed aperture designed to recreate the spike effects seen in early eclipse images.
Dolores Clairborne (1995) used a brief exposure of the film to light to create a unique and surreal eclipse, designed to highlight the mental state of one of the characters.
The 1985 film Ladyhawke used a double exposure technique.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, filmed in 1949, used a slow-moving mechanical shutter to mimic the gradual dimming of the sun as the eclipse progressed.
The 1961 film Barabbas took the most straightforward approach when it was shot by filming an actual total eclipse in Italy, ensuring the image could not be more realistic.
Why Did The Tomb Raider Film Use An Unrealistic Portrayal Of An Eclipse?
Other attempts at depicting a total eclipse, however, might be seen as leaving much to be desired, even with 21st-century CGI technology.
A case in point might be the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider film of 2001, in which the animation of a total eclipse featured jerky motions that bore no resemblance to what anyone who has seen the real thing would recognise.
This was despite the extensive use of advanced CGI in the film for a variety of special effects, many of which were of paranormal happenings rather than natural events.
The key question at this point, as with so many special effects, is whether this matters very much. Clearly, the question was emphatically answered in Barabbas. In Dolores Clairborne, an artistic impression was the priority.
It may be that in the case of the Lara Croft film, the artistic impression created by the slightly surreal monsters and supernatural incidents lent itself to a less-than-accurate impression of what a total eclipse really looks like.
Where this might differ with something like the representation of an alien planet is that in those cases, a planet scene is either made to look exactly as we know it looks (Mars) or some artistic licence is used (just about everywhere else).
In this case, there may be scope to fit somewhere in between, with something very recognisable but a little different.
Are Realistic Effects A Matter Of Budget Or Artistic Licence?
However, when we know what a natural phenomenon looks like, any decision to produce something that does not look realistic may be a matter of presentation or budget. And if the budget is low, then costly CGI effects will have to be sacrificed.
The same consideration may apply with effects like a volcano, a tsunami, or a huge whirlwind. Like an eclipse, these are all startling but recurrent natural phenomena. In all cases, there is plenty of real footage of such events, but also many film depictions.
As with eclipses, there is an opportunity to make these as realistic as possible, either by using footage of a real event or at least ensuring the special effects used are designed to create as realistic an image as possible.
If one considers volcanoes, it is not hard to recall instances of spectacular real-life footage, such as the Mount St Helens eruption of 1980.
It is debatable whether CGI images of an eruption look so authentic, although in cases like Krakatoa, it perhaps matters less because it happened in 1883 when photographic technology was limited and anyone close enough to see wouldn’t have survived anyway.
How Can You Decide On Special Effect Priorities?
A key question when using computer-generated images of anything is how far they can safely diverge from the absolutely authentic. Some of those who may view the footage may be more cynical in an age of unrealistic ‘AI slop’ pictures.
This leaves some major choices to be made:
Use CGI as well as possible to create as accurate an effect as you can
Stop short of this with CGI or other effects and seek to ensure that the effects do less of the heavy lifting in terms of creating a powerful experience for the viewer than other aspects, like the plot or the acting.
Go with a lower-budget approach with limited special effects, which manages the expectations of viewers.
Much will also depend on the nature of your production. A film or TV series might regard high-quality special effects as being a priority. An advert may not. A documentary may mix it up, by using some real footage, some CGI and some animation.
As millions across Europe watched the solar eclipse, the sense of awe and wonder was palpable. In some senses, it should be regarded as an ‘I was there’ moment that nothing on screen could match up to.
However, it is an important decision as to how much you need your post-production work to stretch to recreate natural wonders that are difficult to recreate convincingly.
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