French supermarket's Christmas advert is worldwide hit (without AI) [video]

I remember a time when using computer was not well seen when creating art.

Wasn't it even Tron who didn't qualify for the special effects oscar because they "used computers"?

It's interesting that it's no longer "computer bad", now it's "AI bad".

I think people are setting themselves up for failure if they index their happiness or sense of self satisfaction to their ability to discern what AI-generated content is or not.

Soon, we’ll have no idea what’s AI-generated or not. I care about good, tight story telling.

In the case of this ad.. it’s okay?

Part of watching films and animations was that seeing that a human created this inspired the wish to create in yourself. When all they did was enter a prompt that takes some of the magic away.

If all you care about is just the story then maybe you personally will be satisfied but a lot of people cared about the animations, cinematography, etc, and all of the work that went into that.

I think digital effects still rarely look as good as the peak of Hollywood practical effects (call it… idk, Alien in 1979 through Independence Day in ‘96 or so, roughly, and yes I know ID4 also had computer fx in addition to lots of miniatures and models)

Having to do things for-real also kept things grounded. Modern action movies are often cartoon-like with supposedly human characters stringing together super-human moves that’d leave a real person with dislocated shoulders, broken bones, and brain damage, because they’re actually just CG, no human involved.

[EDIT] OMG, or take Bullitt (1968) versus, say, the later Fast and the Furious sequels (everything past Tokyo Drift). The latter are basically Pixar's Cars with more-realistic textures. They're cartoons with live-action talking segments. Very little actual driving is depicted. Bullitt may have used the movie-magic of editing, but someone did have to actually drive a car, for every shot of a car driving. Or at least they had to set up a car with a dummy to convincingly crash. What you're seeing is heightened, but basically within the realm of reality.

Or take A Bridge Too Far. It's a bit of a mess! Make it CG and it'd be outright bad. But ho-lee-shit do they blow up a lot of stuff, like, you cannot even believe how much. And look at all those tanks and armored vehicles they got! And planes! And extras! Those are all 100% real! AND ALL THE KABOOMS! And it all looks better than CG, to boot. The spectacle of it (plus some solid performances) saves the movie. Make all the FX CG and it'd be crap.

Imagine a Jackie Chan movie with CG stunts. What is even the point. It'd be trash.

I highly recommend this 5-part essay series "NO CGI" is really just INVISIBLE CGI" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo (it starts with "Top Gun: Maverick").

Current-era CGI is insanely good. The problem is that it's used and abused everywhere, often with very little consideration for whether it's needed, or if there's time to do all the VFX shots etc.

I think eliminating the need to think and work around reality is part of the trouble. Not that it ruins everything (people take HN posts as so maximalist even when they factually are not; see: the rest of this comment tree) but I think the lack of the odd limitation or need to think about how to solve a problem without resorting to “render it in a computer” causes significant harm to cinema overall. I’m not (see above parenthetical) claiming it’s net-negative, but there’s a kind of film-making skill and genius that was once on display pretty widely, and now is not.

I mean for fuck’s sake, they’d probably CG the paint buckets in Home Alone if they made it today. And we’d get some tasteless can-cam shot, because you don’t have to figure it out, you can just do it. And they’d look fake because they’d move too perfectly, lacking the kinds of little off-seeming movements that a real paint can in a real take might do. Never might the can obscure a few frames of face when the directors might choose otherwise, and the result will be obviously CG through its convenience if not due to outright flaws.

Excessive perfection and too many things moving the optimal way for the shot or exactly the way the viewer expects are under-appreciated tells of CG, and they’re deadly ones, present even in a lot of “perfect” CG (give it a few years, we thought the CG in Lord of the Rings was convincing and now it looks like trash). They need to start CGing their fake environments sometimes doing something slightly less than ideal to an actor’s jacket, or something, and not to call attention to it as a comedy relief moment, but because “that’s just what happened” (not really, but it’d make the effects more convincing)