OUR TOWN
ONE FILM STUDENT’S OPINION ON CGI
story by Jakob Burnham design and illustration by Makayla Zayic
CGI Changes Watching movies with terrible CGI may tend to take you out of the movie, and lately there hasn’t been much good CGI. CGI stands for Computer-Generated Imagery and without it not a whole lot of things are possible within the film industry. But why now? How is CGI getting worse? First off, there are many reasons why CGI has gotten worse and most of the time it isn’t just one reason. Throughout time there have been great movies with CGI, maybe audiences are spoiled because of good CGI, but that’s not the case. Slowly but surely CGI has been getting worse and it may take some time to get better again.
CGI is a Trend One big reason CGI has gotten worse is that every filmmaker wants to use it. Filmmakers know they can make some good money with good CGI, but half of the time now it isn’t even that great. In the 1990s CGI started to get popular with movies such as Jurassic Park and Toy Story, which is known to be the first ever entirely computer-generated feature film. In this time everyone started to use it, especially after these blockbuster movies. Now because everyone is using it, people are using CGI with such a low budget or cheap VFX which causes them to have poor CGI. Not every movie needs this though, practical effects exist and oftentimes it can work better than CGI. But since CGI is such a “trend” people will follow it, especially when there is no limit and no one telling these people no.
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FALL 2022
“Working on #Marvel shows is what pushed me to leave the VFX industry. They’re a horrible client, and I’ve seen way too many colleagues break down after being overworked, while Marvel tightens the purse strings.” - Dhruv Govil