I went into this thinking I was going to write about
anthology movies and where they can go wrong.
The problem with that train of thought is that I haven’t actually seen
all that many anthology movies and most of the ones I have seen have actually
been decent. I don’t have the knowledge
yet to accurately describe what is good or bad about anthologies and what makes
some better than others. Thus, I
couldn’t do any writing about that. I
had to find another topic to write about in relation to the movie and it came
to me fairly easily. The effects work is
something worth noting in the movie. So,
voila! I now have a new topic to write
about.
There are two main types of effects, practical and computer
generated. Both of these methods of
creating imagery have their good and bad moment. There’s a certain suspension of disbelief
that must be allowed in many cases when watching something that is heavily
effects based. This is less of an issue
in mainstream films as the technology has advanced throughout the years. However, with lower budget movies, such as
this week’s The Summer of Massacre, the effects can still be unimpressive.
Practical effects and action sequences in movies are
something that I appreciate more than computer graphics. Not only do practical effects look better
within their surrounding world, but there is also an amount of work that you
know was put into them. I appreciate the
effort made with practical effects. But
I’d like to focus on the first thing that practical effects are good for. They look better within their surrounding
world. Since the practical effects are
in the scene at the point in which it is being filmed, they exist alongside the
people and the environment. The people
can properly interact with the practical effects, and the practical effects can
properly respond to the interactions.
Watching practical effects feels much more real than watching computer
graphics.
The practical effects in The Summer of Massacre were pretty
good. There weren’t too many instances
in which practical effects were used, however.
But what was there was good. I
would have been happy if the entire movie was done with effects of that
quality. Joe Castro knows how to do
practical effects. This is what leads to
the disappointment that I have with the rest of the movie’s effects. The Summer of Massacre relies heavily on
computer generated effects.
Computer generated effects can sometimes be used to great
effect. Don’t get me wrong. They can be great when used to enhance practical
effects. There are some instances where
they are great without the practical blueprint.
And the technology is only getting better. In a few years, I’ll probably be eating my
current snobbery. This is how I feel
right now. In a lot of cases, the effects
can look quite exceptional, on their own.
When brought into a live-action environment, however, they feel like
they are on a different plane and can’t properly interact with the
surroundings. This isn’t even bringing
into account the lower quality of CGI in most lower-budget movies. The lower the budget of a movie, the lower
the quality of the computer effects seems to be. There isn’t much more to that side of it than
that. If the movie doesn’t have the funding
for better computer effects, the computer effects will be worse. That’s just how it goes.
In The Summer of Massacre, there are some horrendous
computer effects. There was a game I
recently played on the AMC website (the television channel, not the theater
chain). It was a “Which character are
you?” game for The Walking Dead. This is
a quiz, really. So the images are just
images. There is nothing special to
them. The effects in The Summer of
Massacre were the same quality as these pictures. A film has computer effects of the same quality
as a quiz game. This is something that I
never expected to be thinking, let alone writing, but here we are. These effects ruined any of the impact that
was supposed to exist from watching the murder on screen. The shock was lessened by the low quality of
the effects work.
The movie was not good.
That’s not to say that it would be impossible to be good. It actually kind of got better as it went
on. What hurt it, though, was the low
quality of the computer effects. The
later portions of The Summer of Massacre didn’t rely so heavily on them. This made the movie slightly more
enjoyable. I can see the potential in
what was happening, but it didn’t reach the potential. That makes me sad. I hope to check out some other Joe Castro
work in the future and see what his movies are like without the overly heavy
use of computer effects.
There are some notes before this is over:
- I briefly discussed practical effects in the post for The Deadly Spawn.
- If you would like to suggest a movie, tell me on Twitter, or you could leave a comment. I like comments.
- The Summer of Massacre was suggested by @deggsy
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