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Writers Strike? Like I'd notice.

250px-Time_Enough_at_Last.jpg
Burgess Meredith - "Time Enough to Last"

In 1966, on any given weeknight you would have found me sitting in my room making a model airplane, watching "Twilight Zone" or "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" or "12 O'clock High".

Its now 2008, and I find myself pretty much doing the same thing, then on a little rabbit eared metallic black and white TV in the back of a small house on Manhattan street in Sparks Nevada, now I watch TV on a Slingbox and I live just across from Sparks the other side of the Sierra Nevadas in California.

The Sci-Fi Channel marathon of Twilight Zone has made me witness again the greatness of Burgess Meredith as an actor and Rod Serling as a writer. Notice I didnt say anything about special effects? Thats because there werent any. Did it distract from the show? In my opinion, not a bit, in fact I think it actually helped!

I had a discussion this weekend where I argued that the easy availability of special effects via CGI has temporarily clouded the artistic vision of directors and producers of film and television, they have succummed to the quiet narcotic of computers and software. In 1977, Jaws showed us that not seeing the shark was actually better than seeing it. The Shark, once fully seen ends the movie. By drawing the focus of the tension around the largely unseen shark our imaginations filled in the blanks, and our imaginations of what the shark might be were far worse than what the shark actually ended up being ( which was if I remember correctly was a big pile of "Roy Schieder Fishing Chum" through which Richard Dreyfuss was forced to swim for the happy ending to be complete )

That director at that time didn't have a choice in how to present to movie, he had to take the risky art route of trying to get the audience to be frightened at the right time and laugh at the right time and not confuse the two. There simply wasnt the CGI that there is today. That director was forced to use the creative art of film making to provide the image of the shark in the shape of your own shadow of fear, there just below the water slightly out of reach, just waiting to eat your girlfriend (at just the right moment in the date, so you wouldnt have to call the next day).

Today the same director would have the shark doing a tap dance on center stage with a straw hat and cane just because he could. Its CGI, its practically free so why not make the shark into a three headed "dog shark" with "frickin lazer beams" and make it three, no four times bigger than the boat! Yeah, sure thats the ticket.

In 1977, it was the art department and the bank that determined your level of special effects, you as a director and an actor had to paper around the lack of special effects with words, with acting, with a bit of creative lighting and the occasional big rubber shark shaped thing that would end up an ornament outside a crab shack in Pensacola. In 2008, its the mopey, hoodie wearing kid with the Ipod stuck in his ears who thinks that "The Matrix is the greatest movie of all time" that determines how many dog-heads to put on your shark. And its meaninginless to have one or two or three dog-heads because everyone knows that with a few choices on the digitalization software, you can change the "directors cut" to have more dog-heads than the version the studio wanted to send out.

Its not that you cant do it, its just that it really doesnt mean anything. Its just not "special" anymore, is it?

You understand that as a technologist, a computer technologist no less what I have just said is heresy, but it really needs to be said. For an effect to be "special" it has to have the sense of "WOW" in it. You have to know that what is going on in front of you is a result of effort and not some new wizbang software that your kid can download and get working in the same afternoon. For instance, you compare Ray Harryhausen and his "sword fighting skeletons" to anything in "The Matrix" and judge for yourself if that is "special". personally, I'm taking Ray's sword fighting skeltons over anything in the Matrix. For Ray Harryhausen, some guy has to move clay models of skeletons step by step every day for a month for each skeleton, for each swing of the sword - now thats a "special" effect. Compared to a bunch of Apples tied together spinning out bits and bytes day after day, Im sorry but its not that special to me. A truly special effect is invisible. It acts a tool for the actor and director. A true special effect is not noticed. Todays special effects allow actors and directors, and frankly producers to be lazy, to not be artists because they think they can overcome any error and make any landscape with a bit of finely placed CGI. Dont take 100 takes of a scene to get it right, just get it in the can and we'll CGI in another actor later if we have to...

It's not that there are any "special effects" in Twilight Zone, there arent. Its all stagecraft and dammit, its good stagecraft. It was good then and its still good now. I dont care that the effects are of the tin foil and styrofoam rocks variety, I want 22 minutes of good story, excellent directing and fantastic acting. A modern set of special effects adds nothing to the story being told. Replace Burgess Meredith with some goo-goo bright light CGI special effects? Sorry, its not going to make a better story. Frankly, the lack of special effects make me concentrate on the story being told and not the bright shiny object.

Its not that I think I'm in a rut or that I'm a luddite, its that I think I know what I like. "To Serve Man" doesnt get better if the Kanamids have better looking spaceships. "Time enough to Last" doesnt improve if I get to see the atomic explosion. It's not important. What is important is the look on the face of Burgess Meredith when his glasses break. The other 19 minutes are in that episode are there to drive you to that point. Any bank vault would do as a set, you dont need Lucasfilm to make a CGI vault.

I like 12 O'Clock High because I like to see how directors make a single B-17 sitting in 1960's Chino California look like the entire 8th Air Force in 1944 England( Awfully desert like there in England,eh? gee wasnt aware that there were any groves of eucalyptus in England..hmmm). I like "Voyage to the Bottom of Sea" because as much as I think the Flying Sub is an horrid engineering improbabilty, it sure does look cool. I also like seeing how many of the seaweed monsters that the "good sub Seaview" finds week after week are really just leftover props from "Lost in Space".

Posted @ January 01, 2008 11:27 PM | Current Affairs

Comments

It is the writing that makes the series, not the special effects. That is why, like you I enjoy those marathons and also enjoy watching my Firefly, Babylon 5 and the new Battlestar DVD's. The writing is good and the CGI's are used only to promote the writing not for wow factors.

Posted by: s1c at January 2, 2008 04:51 PM

I just showed "Time Enough to Last" to my wife and 11-year old.


As our world gets more complex, shouldn't it be time to dispense completely with non-educational entertainment? EVERYONE should be forced to learn calculus, physics and programming. That way, when they go to vote, it won't be on the basis of ignorance and superstition. Providing and consuming entertainment that idles the mind corrupts our future.

Despite the quality of it's acting and direction, isn't "Jaws" a complete waste of time? Shouldn't we shun providers of pablum? At least "Twilight Zone" made you think (and think about specific topics worth thinking about); what BENEFIT was "Jaws"?

How about living a life where "Jaws" never gets seen again, and instead is replaced with one of these:

The Mechanical Universe
Project Mathematics
Donald in Mathmagic Land
Our Friend the Atom
School House Rock
The Story of Louis Pasteur
Madame Curie
The Spirit of St. Louis
Powers of Ten

To it's credit, at least Pixar is using the power of it's special effects to bring up ideas that make you think about things worth thinking about, like "Twilight Zone" did. But they should make the next step and start incorporating actual technical education into their movies.

Posted by: Some guy at January 2, 2008 08:41 PM

> I also like seeing how many of the seaweed monsters that the "good sub Seaview" finds week after week are really just leftover props from "Lost in Space".


... and how many of the sets are re-uses of the 'meters' from "Forbidden Planet"? Remember, that was why Kubrick destroyed all the models (incl. the plans) used in 2001 -- he didn't want it all reappearing in some other film.

I partly disagree with you, Frank. I concur very much that lazy directors will sub CGI for story, but it's not like they were actually gonna put in story if they couldn't afford CGI, izzit? That takes work on THEIR part. CGI only takes work on the part of the backers and the CGI techs. No director give's a rat's patootie about those mundane things. They've got their "art" to think about.... (smirk)

I also disagree with you about The Matrix. Sorry, that's a thinking SF movie by any measure. You can enjoy it on the purely visceral level, but it does hammer home the basic question of epistemology. If the watcher doesn't want to go there, they weren't going to anyway -- but it does leave the notion hanging out there in case they ever DO get in a thoughful mood.

The biggest problem with enhancing CGI is that you get more sensitive to the older stuff with the older, poorer CGI. It says a lot that the old ST:TOS looks pretty dated. It says A LOT MORE when you go look at ST:TNG and realize that IT is begining to look technologically dated TOO. I once was impressed with Harryhausen's works. I still very much appreciate the work it took, but it does actually distract nowadays. And, being, like you, involved in computers, I suggest to you that there is even MORE true magic (not *just* patience and attention to detail) involved in modern CGI -- there are a lot more than just one or two "FX" techs involved in anything -- there are graphic designers, computer whizes, specialists of all kinds -- and all the support magic (Intel, Apple, TI, "Tru-buru", etc) and everything else that has to come together Juuuusth Right to make a spectacularly impressive bit of work like "The Incredibles".

For every "Chain Reaction", there's a "Matrix".

For every "Seven Voyages of Sinbad", there was a "Manos, Hand of Fate".

Nothing's changed. 40 years from now, the good stuff will still have a place, just like TTZ. The dreck will lie mostly forgotten in some bit-vault somewhere -- unless some genius like those at Bad Brains dusts it off and makes such fun of it that it works far better than it ever did the first time 'round.

Posted by: Vootie at January 11, 2008 04:10 AM