best vfx film 2015

pem

Hi

My lovely brother is a film critics and journalist he will write an article about the 10 best VFX movie of 2015.

What is your take on that?

I like to help him out and for once get a journalist to write something objective about VFX !

thomasp

agreed. rare to see a VFX heavy film with in-your-face CG work like virtual characters hold up a high standard throughout.

Quotidian

mad max

Fuiosg

mad max... Haven't seen the new star wars yet, but even that feels a tad too CG-laden for my tastes.

cptSwing

Bots have opinions nowadays..!

blankslatejoe

I don't know if I have a best VFX vote for the year yet. Mad Max showed great CGI restraint, tastefully using it to bolster incredible practical VFX..so maybe that would make it my pick. Star wars had amazing art direction, with awesome environment CGI and great puppetry work, which might make it my pick too...if not for the pure character CGI feeling a bit weak and mismatched with the scene. Age of Ultron was this year too, and that had some pretty excellent work in it all around, especially considering how much was going on on-screen (robot armies, hulk everywhere, giant floating cities, rubble ahoy, etc). Jurassic World wouldn't be in the runnings for me at all though...I thought it did not look like cutting edge work...although, my dislike for the film and the films art direction might be influencing my opinion on that.

tadpole3159

Fuiosg said:

mad max... Haven't seen the new star wars yet, but even that feels a tad too CG-laden for my tastes.

CG-laden? Whats all this about, aren't we all digital artists here? Shouldn't we be celebrating digital artistry not hating on it? Especially considering this is a thread that talks about giving digital artists awards for their hard work in the field of VFX.
Also are you saying star wars shouldn't win a VFX award because they used to much VFX?

I love to see well made visual effects as much as I love seeing well made video games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgbhfgoAIiA

Fuiosg

tadpole3159 said:

Fuiosg said:

mad max... Haven't seen the new star wars yet, but even that feels a tad too CG-laden for my tastes.

CG-laden? Whats all this about, aren't we all digital artists here? Shouldn't we be celebrating digital artistry not hating on it? Especially considering this is a thread that talks about giving digital artists awards for their hard work in the field of VFX.
Also are you saying star wars shouldn't win a VFX award because they used to much VFX?

The art of film is more important than the art of VFX, the latter's only purpose is to serve the film. A lot of CG ultimately takes you out of the experience, which only happened to me a few times with Star Wars, but overall I thought they handled it pretty well. In fact, the aesthetics of that movie were what I liked most and why I would see it again, still it was no Mad Max. Also I think there's a case for discipline, sometimes what you don't see is more important than what you do.

blankslatejoe

also, VFX includes more than just digital/CGI work, which is why Mad Max's practical effects and SWs puppetry are worth bringing up.

tadpole3159

blankslatejoe said:

also, VFX includes more than just digital/CGI work, which is why Mad Max's practical effects and SWs puppetry are worth bringing up.

Actually it doesn't, visual effects is only digital work. Your practical effects and puppetry are called special effects and aren't part of the nominations of this award.

It's also worth noting that this award is about celebrating the quality of the vfx and not the quality of the films they feature in.

I think weta digital were nominated last year for its fantastic crowd work in the last hobbit film. the hobbit films aren't that great in my opinion the the visual effect were out standing and well worth an oscar.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_effects

thomasp

hm, i think the hobbit qualifies as exactly the type of vfx laden movie where it takes you out of the experience plenty of times. great looking effects mix with very obvious green screen work, fake physics, over the top character animation (that goblin king comes to mind) and the occasional very videogamey-looking crowd or camera-sequence. a bumpy ride all in all.

perhaps if you could give the award to individual sequences, not entire movies...

blankslatejoe

hmmmm...Well, that definition doesn't coincide with the Oscar's definition then Tadpole. I don't think they've ever made the distinction between CGI and traditional special effects--it's just one category.

I guess it'd be up to the OP/his brother/their publication to decide whether non-CGI special effects are considered for this specific thing...and sure, most of the traditional effects (splicing, compositing, mattes, etc) have far better digital counterparts nowadays, but you still see non-CGI stuff pop up sometimes; stuff that I think would merit consideration for top ten lists like the OP seems to be talking about.

blankslatejoe

thomasp said:

hm, i think the hobbit qualifies as exactly the type of vfx laden movie where it takes you out of the experience plenty of times. great looking effects mix with very obvious green screen work, fake physics, over the top character animation (that goblin king comes to mind) and the occasional very videogamey-looking crowd or camera-sequence. a bumpy ride all in all.

perhaps if you could give the award to individual sequences, not entire movies...

Yeah, I'm with you on the hobbit--I didn't find the effects to be "convincing"..except for the great set/environment stuff..although that was 2014 and so it's not really part of the runnings anyway. You basically have this list:

Avengers:Ultron
New Mad Max
New Star Wars
Chappie
Ex Machina
Martian
Terminator Genesysysysuss
Jurassic World
Ant Man
Insurgent
Jupiter Ascending
Tomorrowland
Another Hunger Games
That Maze Runner Sequel
New Fantastic 4

Am I missing anything big?
But, now that I think about it, I think we can all agree that the clear winner should be Kung Fury.

Shyralon

Personally I have seen four movies this year which impressed me through their vfx (not counting mad max, which was absolutely great and had awesome effects, but those were mostly sfx, I'm only focussing on vfx right now). Also only counting the vfx, not of the movie itself was good or bad.
Place one would probably be Ex Machina, even though it was not too vfx heavy, the way they did the android girl was really impressive to me. Also good movie.
Second place for me is Star Wars, which had some of the best looking environments I have seen this year (that desert planet with the crashed ships was just amazing).
Place 3/4 would be Avengers 2 and Chappie. Avengers 2 was just so much high quality vfx going on and really fits the comic style in my opinion. Chappie impressed me by the way they managed to display chappies emotions and I also liked the look of it.
Again, just my personal opinion, there are quite a few movies I haven't seen.

escudero

Madmax, Ex Machina and Avengers 2 !