CGI Effects

When James Cameron made Terminator 2, he was interviewed about the groundbreaking special digital effects he used to make the T-1000. The claim at the time was that CGI effects would make film making less expensive, as it would allow people to reuse animation and effects shots, or only need slight tweaking and adjustments. This would make special effects heavy movies less expensive to make over the long haul.

Cut to 2012. In the last decade, there have been numerous films that have been almost entirely done using CGI effects, and they are some of the most expensive films made. The move John Carter, for example, uses an enormous sum of CGI effects and is reputed to have a production cost of around $250 million, not including advertising. Since it has no big-star price tags, and nearly every shot has a CGI element to it, the vast majority of the cost must be for animation and effects. Assuming a modest advertising budget, the film needs to break $300 million worldwide in order to make a profit.

I guess CGI is not making films less expensive.

T2 had a production budget of about $100 million in 1991. It made about $200 million domestic (and a little above $500 million world wide). It was actually considered a bit of a financial failure at the time, due to only breaking $200 million, even though, back then, $100 million was still considered the gold standard to reach for a movie. Now you have films costing north of $200 million, and yet we still use the $100 million mark as the gold standard. These skewed numbers are why international numbers have become so much more important in today's film economy; without those grosses, most films fail to make a profit.

I have really enjoyed some of the big summer blockbuster failures of the recent past not because I want to see the film industry fail but rather because I want to see the film industry evolve. The time of the big star salary guaranteeing a film's success is over (see the recent strings of failures by Cruise, Diaz, and others as evidence of that). The time of a film being a success just because it has CGI is over.

I have also enjoyed many of the smaller films doing so well despite competition from the big-budget, Hollywood, summer blockbusters. These films often have pretty good effects done in some guy's basement, and that realize the promise of those effects that James Cameron talked about so many years ago. A small film like Monsters (2010) can have really nice, believable effects and the film can be made for under a million dollars. Hell, District 9 (2009) was made for an estimated $30 million and was a high-quality movie with great production values and good effects throughout; compare that to the majority of CGI-heavy movies of the last decade, most of which were made for between $150 -$250 million and simply weren't as good.

I think Hollywood needs to take a long look at its production system and decide if they can afford to make so many movies with so little profit. It needs to learn from the indie producers who can make a film of equal value and quality at half, a quarter, or even less than the production values of the same film made in the Hollywood studio system. And it needs to always remember that story and acting come first and foremost to any production; CGI and other effects should enhance the quality of the story being told, not replace it.