Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Creating the Futurescape for the Fifth Element (2019)

theasc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 119 posts

Re: Creating the Futurescape for the Fifth Element (2019)

#101

Post by peacebeard »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #100
peacebeard wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice digital effects haven’t approached being convincing the way practical effects do. In many cases, especially when used liberally, digital effects still clock as amazing digital effects rather than reality. It can be enjoyable but I don’t see what would move forward other than recognizing cgi isnt the best solution for everything.

This is not true, you just don't notice the vast majority of effects. You sit down to watch a summer blockbuster, there are 1000 shots that have been altered, pretty much anything that isn't two people talking in a room. The advertising tries to tell you "we did everything practical!", it's always a lie and you believe it.

This comment doesn't respond to what I actually said. I said that heavy-handed CGI tends to read as CGI. You responded by "informing" me that more nuanced CGI is commonplace. Everybody knows that.

Re: Creating the Futurescape for the Fifth Element (2019)

#102

Post by hypercube33 »

NoSalt wrote: post #74
Jordan-117 wrote: post #50

Excellent article. And a great opportunity to share one of my favorite scifi worldbuilding artifacts: the 4K matte painting used for the brief view of Manhattan during the take-off sequence: http://web.archive.org/web/20161007133354if_/http://digitald... The overall vision for the city is implicit but wildly creative: sea levels have dropped significantly, with the architecture of the city spreading across the newly-…

This scene takes place so fast, and my attention is always on the departing ship, that I never noticed the fine background details. Thanks a bunch for posting this great image!

The firth element is probably my favorite movie and I too never noticed the obvious that this single shot shows. Wild and thank you as well for sharing it!

Re: Creating the Futurescape for the Fifth Element (2019)

#103

Post by hypercube33 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #25
prhn wrote: post #21

I'm just here to share my love for this film. I'm a big movie fan. I've been watching the Fifth Element since high school, and I've only grown to appreciate it more and more as a film as I get older. It's so full of life, creativity, color, humor, and themes we can all relate to (purpose, love, loss, etc). This is peek Bruce Willis, and the movie is filled with other exceptional actors including Gary Oldman and Ian H…

> but I think eventually it will be lost in time. I don't believe it to be honest; model making and painting remains a popular hobby for millions of people, the only question is whether filmmakers will want to use it. And recently, especially in e.g. Star Wars franchise entries, they have gone towards using models / sets again instead of just using CGI for everything.

CGI has amazing and always given me a wonderful advance for film making as a cinefile but I absolutely do not like how it replaced everything in movies for a while. Absolutely slop seeing actors in a green room trying to act through scenes and sfx puke we get instead of better directing, practical effects and magic of movies.

I agree that now we are finding our way back to a balance of using everything together to tell stories and I'm personally here for it.

Re: Creating the Futurescape for the Fifth Element (2019)

#104

Post by Sam6late »

jr3592 wrote: post #68
Sam6late wrote: post #11

I was in Paris years ago and took these photos of the actual cab models that were on display. Enjoy https://imgur.com/a/txIHpJT

Where did you see these? I'd love to go next time I am in Paris.

It was the HQ of French company, Alstom's French headquarters is located in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, near Paris, at 48 rue Albert Dhalenne, 93400 Saint-Ouen, France. The display shows original props from Luc Besson’s 1997 movie The Fifth Element — including Korben Dallas’s famous yellow flying taxi and the blue-and-silver NYPD police car. Alstom keeps these pieces on display as a fun tribute to their shared focus on city mobility.

Re: Creating the Futurescape for the Fifth Element (2019)

#105

Post by smackeyacky »

cubefox wrote: post #48
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adam Savage covered the Mondoshawan props on his channel last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf5dPrmBvwE It was a fun film, but Chris Tucker broke the pacing too many times for a general audience. Even now on rottentomatoes his role still distracts focus from the character arcs. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fifth_element Was a cult classic for sure, but nowhere near Blade Runner as a film. =3

I think the film would have been better (though perhaps less successful) if Besson had toned down the occasionally exaggerated tomfoolery, like Chris Tucker's character, or the spaceship Evil (the orb described in the article) which felt almost like a SciFi parody taken out of the movie Spaceballs. The pacing, the great costumes and set design by Moebius, the actors Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich, and the unusual id…

My counterpoint to this is that something that threatened to be a standard space opera had the delightful juxtaposition of Ruby Rhod and the opera singer. The initial appearance of Ruby Rhod really jolted my attention the first time I saw this movie. It’s weird but it works for me

Re: Creating the Futurescape for the Fifth Element (2019)

#106

Post by [deleted] »

vidarh wrote: post #41
throwa356262 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this one deserved at least one sequel. Speaking of sequels, who in the star wars universe will get their own show next? Based on who is left, i put my money on Exogorth.

Fifth Element is pretty much Besson doing Valerian before he was able to get funding for Valerian, so we kinda did get a spiritual sequel of sorts. Unfortunately, while I've grown to like the Valerian movie, when compared to Fifth Element it would seem that Besson should have been given a far tighter budget for Valerian rather than the apparent near free reign he got.

[deleted]

Re: Creating the Futurescape for the Fifth Element (2019)

#107

Post by justinclift »

mgoetzke wrote: post #43
vidarh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fifth Element is pretty much Besson doing Valerian before he was able to get funding for Valerian, so we kinda did get a spiritual sequel of sorts. Unfortunately, while I've grown to like the Valerian movie, when compared to Fifth Element it would seem that Besson should have been given a far tighter budget for Valerian rather than the apparent near free reign he got.

For Valerian he should have been better at casting people that had chemistry and felt real

Yeah. Really wanted to like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, but Dane DeHaan's utter lack of chemistry with his co-star (seemed like he was afraid to even look at her?) absolutely destroyed it in the worst way possible. :(

Re: Creating the Futurescape for the Fifth Element (2019)

#108

Post by justinclift »

ModernMech wrote: post #16
rainingmonkey wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imgur is blocked in the UK, and last I checked blocked connections from VPNs too. Which scene are you referring to?

Try this one? http://www.vfxhq.com/1997/stills/fifth/welcome.jpg It's the wide shot of NYC after they leave the spaceport.

Probably not a good example. That one seems to be very low resolution unless I'm doing something wrong.

Re: Creating the Futurescape for the Fifth Element (2019)

#109

Post by Joel_Mckay »

smackeyacky wrote: post #105
cubefox wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the film would have been better (though perhaps less successful) if Besson had toned down the occasionally exaggerated tomfoolery, like Chris Tucker's character, or the spaceship Evil (the orb described in the article) which felt almost like a SciFi parody taken out of the movie Spaceballs. The pacing, the great costumes and set design by Moebius, the actors Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich, and the unusual id…

My counterpoint to this is that something that threatened to be a standard space opera had the delightful juxtaposition of Ruby Rhod and the opera singer. The initial appearance of Ruby Rhod really jolted my attention the first time I saw this movie. It’s weird but it works for me

Most "space opera" folks recognize, are just a close scene-by-scene copy of a classic foreign film title.

"The Hidden Fortress" (Akira Kurosawa, 1960)

https://archive.org/details/the-hidden-fortress

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Fortress

Luc Besson and Patrice Ledoux structured The Fifth Element plot very differently due to their culture. Perhaps one may also find something unique in the classics for your own enjoyment, or continue to choose to be upset with mundane facts. Goodbye =3

Re: Creating the Futurescape for the Fifth Element (2019)

#110

Post by rcxdude »

beloch wrote: post #61
dylan604 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I often get sad that this is becoming a lost art. Great filmmakers with big budgets are still doing this type of practical effects work (Nolan [Interstellar], Villeneuve [Dune]), but I think eventually it will be lost in time. Another one of the things that I appreciated from George Miller with Mad Max: Fury Road. There's definitely CG used, but so much of the stunts were real and not SpiderMan level nonsense.

In the recent Mad Max films, Miller used CG for compositing, but insisted that all the action be real. There are no CG people jumping bikes over 16-wheelers. CG was only used to get rid of safety equipment, change the sky, etc.. The results feel viscerally real.

This has tended to be significantly overblown recently with a huge amount of 'no CGI' advertising coming from studios, which often verges into utter BS. There's an incredible amount of CG at every level of modern productions, regardless of how much stuntwork and practical effects were done as well. (this video series has a good breakdown on it, which has included studios releasing doctored 'behind the scenes' footage! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo ).

That's not to say that doing these things is pointless or unimpressive, but it's often used to denigrate and minimize the work of a lot of already quite underappreciated artists.

Post reply on HN