CMU School of Drama


Thursday, July 06, 2017

Location, Location, Location!

Computer Graphics World: Not everything appears as it seems on television. Sometimes an environment is so imaginative that it can only exist thanks to computer graphics. Other times, CGI is used to sell a realistic locale to television audiences, whether for convenience, cost, or some other reason.

In the case of two television series in the spotlight, CGI and VFX helped establish vital story lines. In Designated Survivor, 3D imagery destroys the US Capitol, an event that is at the heart of this political series that just ended its first season. In the award-winning The Crown, CGI re-created famous British landmarks as they were in the early years of the queen’s reign, as opposed to their appearance today.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I think it's really amazing how much can be done with cgi, whether environmentally or with characters. I have always been interested in film, and recently got into cgi. I started by watching behind the scenes videos of movies and tv shows, and it's amazing how much is done on the computer, from the smallest little change to a building, to, as the article mentioned, creating a destroyed capitol building. This is one of the things that really sets film/tv and theater apart. While I really enjoy both, it is nice to know that with theater, for the most part, everything you are seeing is really there. While it can be really helpful to a story to add elements in cgi, I believe that watching a show and seeing the set fully built, rather than watching a movie and trying to guess whether or not what you are seeing is really there pulls the audience member in.

Unknown said...

I have been watching Designated Survivor on TV and I was fascinated with the effects of the Capitol being blown up. It was so realistic and I love knowing about what goes on in production to see how they made that bombing possible. Just having a set and rigging it to blow up is still fascinating to watch, but seeing the advancements in computer technology and how it's evolved over the past few years is interesting. I recently got interested in watching the behind the scenes work on movies and TV shows because of the work that I do for the theater, and seeing all of the work that goes into everything is just absolutely captivating. Elements created with cgi really seem to pull the viewer in and makes them even more interested compared to if those effects were not there.