By I think I’ve made it very clear that I am not a fan of CGI. Films like Rise of the Planet of the Apes are far less effective due to their reliance on CG characters. Fortunately, the men and women behind The Muppets felt the same way, and wanted to keep the film feeling real (visually speaking). I recently interviewed Max Ivins, supervisor for the VFX company LOOK Effects, which did work for films such as Black Swan, The King’s Speech, and Limitless, and he had this to say:
[We] don’t let that digital feel get into it. They didn’t want to take it out of the “Hey, this is either shot by a helicoptor or by a crane.” There’s no “Wow… that was obviously an all-CG shot.” They wanted to keep it tangible, as though some object is really shot even if it doesn’t look like something you’d run into in the real world… I mean, it is puppets after all. Reality has to be suspended some, but I think there was a big effort to not make it look digital.
I am very happy to hear that, because (at least in this case) “digital” equates to “bad.” From what I have heard from him (and Jenika), I’m very excited to check this thing out. Speaking of things to check out, come back on Friday and Monday for our full interview with Max Ivins, which has been broken into parts due to length and greatness. Oh, and if you want to know what in The King’s Speech was CGI (I know I did), watch the company’s film reels. Pretty awesome stuff.