Over the years CGI (computer graphics imagery) has been used regularly in movies. Films known for practical effects have slowly been forced to shift to this new method, including James Bond and Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull even marketed itself as “Old fashioned” because they used practical stunts. Stuntmen are finding work harder to do as there's less work for them, although they will always be around. An issue with CGI is that it will look good now, but in ten years time, people will see that work as bad because CGI is constantly evolving. CGI has let movie making do many great things, and helped many franchises evolve, but soon enough the shows won’t be any fun unless you know someone is getting hurt filming it (Weinman).
Alien suits hanging on a rack from Alien Resurrection (1997), and a Jurassic Park (1993) collage.
With the world of CGI constantly evolving, so has the world of practical effects. Many directors think CGI is the way to go, but people don’t know that both must work together as both have certain advantages and disadvantages. For example, Jurassic Park has 15 minutes of dinosaur footage, but only 4 minutes of CG, and the other 11 minutes being done using an animatronic dinosaur created by Stan Winston. A method used is using rigs and animatronics for up close shots as they could be made more realistic, and then use CGI for flying, running, and more movement oriented scenes. However, some films still need the use for more practical effects, such as Alien Resurrection. With the amount of actor-creature interaction in the film, they needed a person in a suit to be there, otherwise, the budget would be extremely high, and the actors would have trouble acting without anything else there. Overall, CGI has become a massively effective tool in moving making, but sometimes it’s just better to use the practical effects to receive better quality scenes (Greer).
A collage of the T.rex model and a scene from Jurassic Park (1993), created by me.
Stan Winston and the animatronic T. rex from Jurassic Park (1993).