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I was gonna thank Evil for letting me know that Interstellar was a good movie...it's on my list of movies to watch and I wasn't sure if it would be worth it. So I watched it last night. And after 15 minutes I suddenly realized "Hey, I've already seen this one !!! It's the one about the books !!"
So I guess it won't go on my list of "memorable" movies
On the other hand, it had a good story and decent acting, unlike too many movies nowadays. Though I agree it was a long movie. I fell asleep after about an hour and 30. But I kept thinking the space scenes reminded me of the effects in 2001: Space Odyssey. Which were VERY well done, especially considering the technology of the time. Or lack of it.
And since this is an effects thread, I've gotta say that the massive tidal waves they showed on that planet were horrible. Just this big flat wall of impossibly high water. I have this thing about tidal waves. Everyone thinks they are 500-1000 feet tall or something. Usually they're only maybe like 30-50 feet tall maximum. Heck, some tidal waves are only 1-3 feet. But the reason they're so destructive is that they are a slow, continuing surge of water that just keeps coming, rather than just a quick wave that's there and gone. The one in San Andreas was MUCH better, but still way over the top. Though they got the slow, massive speed right, and it really was, IMO, pretty cool.
Oh, and the stuff about the main character going to that inhabitable planet with the tidal waves, then they come back to the space station, and the guy who was waiting for them said they were gone for 27 years? Come on. Poor guy sits in a tiny space station, alone, for 27 years? Yeah, he said he did some long sleeping in those water box things, but that raises all kinds of questions. Like where did he get food, and electricity to power the sleep boxes and computers and stuff, and oxygen for 27 years? Someone was going to make a 2 year each way journey from Earth to re-supply him?
But yeah, this was a story movie, not an effects movie. And it gets you thinking at the end trying to figure out what's going on with the books and stuff. Though personally at the end I was like "Oh, come on, give me a break. That is just so complicated and contrived and impossible that the whole thing just falls apart". Anyway, a LOT different than San Andreas.
By the way, I'll take this opportunity to do a completely OT rant about movies...
Previously I mentioned how one of the rules of movies is this: "Bad guys are polite and take their turn to fight the good guy".
Here's a clip from Kill Bill, where the blonde is surrounded by 50 or so trained sword fighters, all who want to kill her. And she's in the middle.
Now, as Dr. Evil's son said in Austin Powers, "Why don't you just take out a gun and shoot him?"
Anyway, take a look at this video, and especially notice the guys who are waiting their turn to kill the blonde girl. What are they doing? They're just standing there and doing these silly moves and poses, trying to make you think they're being useful. Why don't they just take out a gun and shoot her? Instead, they all politely wait their turn to get sliced in half by her.
That kind of thing happens in just about every movie nowadays.
And by the way, yes, I know that this particular example, Kill Bill, is intended to be campy. But the point is I think it is making fun of this technique I'm describing.
And another thing that I dislike is the attitude "Well if I want to make the audience excited I'll just crank up the dial to 11"
Instead of using nuance and subtlety in making your audience feel something powerful, all they do is make things faster, or add more bad guys, or bigger explosions (or tidal waves...), or more bullets...
Or, and this is EXTREMELY common, they just make the situation more and more impossible to get out of, and find a way to get out of it. Even though it actually IS impossible to get out of it, and nobody could really believe that they could find a way out of it.
That's not, IMO, the best way to convey emotions and excitement. For me, at least. Often you can use subtlety and nuance and other tools to make the audience feel much more powerful emotions.
Although I suppose there's a portion of the audience that responds better to just cranking up the amplitude.
And speaking of tidal waves, I did some searching and found this at the Smithsonian website:
"An earthquake followed by a landslide in 1958 in Alaska’s Lituya Bay generated a wave 100 feet high, the tallest tsunami ever documented. When the wave ran ashore, it snapped trees 1,700 feet upslope."
So as I said, tidal waves (tsunamis) are damaging not because of their height, but their continuing power. Only 100 feet tall, but the big force of continuing water behind it pushed the water 1,700 feet up on shore.
It keeps coming back to the difference between real and believable. On a movie screen a "real" tsunami would just look ineffectual because the audience is too far removed from it, and it's really hard to portray the force of continuing water behind it. So they go big. For many of us our only real knowledge of a tsunami comes from watching the Japanese one play out on TV a few years ago. It wasn't "big", but we saw how it just kept coming and coming, obliterating everything in its path. Hollywood still hasn't achieved that sense of unstoppable terror, I don't think.
Still, big is not stupid. The new Avengers movie ( actually not "The New Avengers" - that was a 70s TV show - John Steed, Purdy and all that) had a pitched battle in a city ripped from the ground and floated to 18000 feet. That's 3/4 the way up Everest, above 50% of the earth's atmosphere, air pressure so low that unless you're a Sherpa, rigorously trained, or on supplemental O2 you'll be hypoxic in minutes and dead not long after, air temperature at minus 30C. So an energetic battle with lots of running around in shirtsleeves is totally believable, right? Er, no. Well maybe if you don't think about it. And that's ignoring the fact that they ripped a city out of the ground and floated it up there in the first place.
I found that Interstellar broke so many laws of physics that it lost all credibility. You can probably get away with one - it is a fantasy film after all - but so much was just unbelievable that it undermnes the whole story. I noticed a 2001 influence too. And the much praised special fx, well they did their job but I generally didn't find them that special. I seem to remember the tsunami in the movie The Impossible was well done, in that it wasn't over-done (it covers the impact on a family caught in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami).
TangoAlpha, yeah I agree. But there are visuals to be believed or not, and feelings to be felt or not. And the point is that you can make people believe what they see, but that doesn't make them feel what you want them to feel.
An example:
The tsunami that hit Thailand years ago. I don't recall how big the wave was, maybe 20 or 30 feet. But incredibly destructive. And there was some amazing video people took of the destruction.
Now one of the things that happens prior to a tsunami is that the water gets sucked out of the shoreline area and drawn into the tidal wave, which is still far away. And in Thailand that happened, and beachgoers saw the water leaving and exposing the sand. And maybe 100-200 yards of ocean bottom was exposed as all water was drawn out of the bay in Phuket. And unfortunately, some beachgoers thought that was cool, and walked out onto the newly exposed sea bottom looking at all the shells and stuff.
And there's a video of a guy who did that, alone, and the video starts with him slowly wandering back towards shore on bare sand. And suddenly this 20 foot wall of water comes up behind him and engulfs him and, presumably, washes him to his death.
Now I willl never forget that video. Chilling.
But you don't need a visual of a 500 foot wall of water. A 20 wall can be even more emotionally gripping if you do it right. And that's my point. Filmmakers are focusing on visuals, not emotionals.
By the way, here's the video I'm referring to.....BTW some might find it disturbing, so don't click if you don't want to be disturbed.
And here's a short clip found of the tsunami coming into SF Bay in "San Andreas". The overhead shot of the tsunami wave approaching the Golden Gate Bridge was pretty awesome, IMO.
Although I don't know of many 75HP outboard motors than can drive a boat up a 200ft vertical wall of water...
Joe,
I believe the wave that took out the trees in Lituya Bay, came not from a Tsunami (from the Ocean) but from an event in the river itself at the head of the bay.. There was a TV program about ten years ago covering this event. Apparently this gigantic wave happens periodically, the last time in 1958. I don't recall the details of what caused it, whether it was an ice dam from the glacier letting go or a land slide...It occured also in the 1850's and there is the visual evidence of an earlier one in the art from the La Perouse expedition (1786). I scanned the image I had of La Perouse's ships in the bay, its a little blurry, but you can see the tree line even then.
I think the Star Wars X fighters has to be near the top of the list for anti science in space, as they fly and bank as if they were in air. It did not take Lucas long to figure that real travel in space is not the stuff to make exciting battle scenes.
We had a tsunami/storm surge here in the Bristol Channel in 1607 killing 2000 peopple. It's well documented, so easy to Google, but the BBC did a programme on Time Watch a few years back.
They did a reconstruction as part of it. If you skip to minute 44.00, you can see how they did the waves simulation. It's only 6 mins to the end, but wraps up explaining the most accepted cause, a landslip off Ireland, so you don't have to watch the whole thing which uses news film from other disasters, etc. We often walk the Severn Way near the power station they show in the clip. Yikes if it happens again!
There are writings and wood-cut illustrations of what people experienced. Of course, they believed it to be a serious act of God.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xlgev9_the-killer-wave-of-1607-timewatch_shortfilms
I am watching these posts of computer generated wave events with interest, so thank you all for them.
Although I do "stills", I have work to do in the future to illustrate the 8000KYA event that swamped Doggerland off the NE Coast of the UK. Although it didn't drown it completely, it was the beginning of the end for that lowland area that connected the UK to Scandinavia/Europe. Hard to believe, but at the LGM (last glacial maxiumum) or ice age, Europe had 40% more land because its coastlines were extended as a result of low sea levels-- with all the water still locked up in the glacial ice sheets.
I shouldn't worry too much Silene, we are more geared up now to cope with this sort of things over here. I (just about) remember the North Sea surge, coupled with a storm and a Spring tide in 1953, and the devastation it caused. The Surge, under similar circumstances, in Dec 2013, although being worse actually caused far less damange, and far fewer deaths.( 2 I think, as agaist more than 500 all told in 1953 on the British side of the North Sea, far more on the other side in Belgium and Holland). I watched it with bated breath as I still have family and friends that live on the East coast of England. BTW in 1953 we were living in a town called Erith, and the local school was flooded, so we got time off school. This was due to the tide up the river Thames. On the east coast of Lincolnshire the flood water was 2 miles inland.
Thanks CH, I did see a programme about the 53 surge on the east coast. That was scary! I am high above the Avon Gorge, so not worried; but whenever I walk the Severn Way, I wonder about that flood and the people that lived there then.
Yes.
The thing I most remember about the 53 floods following the surge wasn't so much the boats going up and down the roads as the fact the we were all taken to the community hall and given a little Union Jack to wave at the Queen, cos she was coming to see the mess, and being very disapponnted cos we didn't get a queen in a fancy robe and a crown, we got a lady in a fur coat.
Silene,
I watched the BBC footage..After seeing the footage from the Thailand and then Japan of a real Tsunami..You can see that they hardly had a chance to escape..especially since few could swim anyway..not that swimming would be much of an option.
I live on the eastern end of Lake Erie..which is some 270 miles long..It can develop very dangerous waves. In the 1830's the city of Buffalo was hit by what they call a Seiche Effect. This is when the wind blows hurricane force for a couple of days in this case from the east, then the wind completely reverses and blows in a hurricane force from the opposite direction, from the west. Whiile it blows from the east it drives the water to the west end of the lake, then when it reverses all that water rushes back to the east end in a Tsunami manner. In 1834 it completly swept through the lower city causing widespreaad damage, putting ships in the streets, and killing many. I started work on an illustration for an article on this event a few years ago, since then higher priorities have taken interceded. It is not finished but you can get the idea of the ferocity of the this weather phenomenon.
With regards to the ice ages...It is very interesting the oscillations which this planet of ours goes through. The vikings settled Greenland in the 10th century, as Europe went through a "Global Warming" (too many fireplaces)..then by the 16th century it was so cold that the Thames froze solid every year, and so thickly that they held an annual Fair on the river. I find it amusing how many people think that we are largly responsible for the swings in the earths climate. My next door neighbor was a Prof. of Geology and an advocate of man's generation of co2 causing global warming - we had some very "warming" discussions. Right now the claim is that the glaciers are retreating mainly due to our production of carbon dioxide...Actually the glaciers began retreating in Glacia Bay, Alaska in the 1790's and it has continued to the present day. It is a hard sell to claim that the pre-industrial world of the late 18th century produced so much CO2 that it started to swing the climate into a warming phase. At present, to my knowledge, no one knows what causes these swings in the earths climate. Whether it is a solar cycle, our part of the galaxy passing through increased dust, or even the earth itself going through spasmodic heat generation - We don't know. However, what information we do have is that we are overdue for both a mini and a maxi ice age. Perhaps that is what we should be worrying about .... Glacias crunching down Regent Street. No need for a chunnel, you can walk to France. In short big weather is like little weather..it changes. Enjoy summer while you can - winter is coming.
There'a a theory going around that the 'mini ice age' was caused in part by a solar minima, where the sun's activity is at it's lowest level. here's how one of the tabloads reported it http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/586404/Britain-freezing-winters-slump-solar-activity Of course, we all know that correlation does not mean causation. Another theory going around is that partictularly active volcanoes in Indonesia at that time caused particulates in the upper atmosphere which blocked the sun. That was particularly true of 1816, the so-called "Year Without a Summer", which was directly caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815. Crops failed all across the northern hemisphere, and an estimated 200,000 people died in Europe alone.
TangoAlpha
Thanks for the link ..These experts concede that the sun may cause this fluctuation in global weather, but manage to sneak ina plug for global warming. I might have some confidence in these metrological experts if they could predict the weather a few days from now with the certainty that they predict the future "global warming".The amount of ingnorence that we have regarding our star, the sun, is not far from total. We have been collecting usable information for not that many decades , there are vast libraries of information yet to come before we can even begin to understand this molton glowing engima. However if you are looking for the cause of ice ages, the sun is tha prime suspect. What amazes me whenever I think about it, is that the earth is a molton ball itself, and if it was the size of a basketball/football, the crust would be close to the thickness of a sheet of paper. I am nothing more than stunned that the heat from the interior is contained by somthing that is relatively so thin. I wonder if this could be the second suspect for climate change. That is the earths heat production is not constant, but goes through cycles of its own, after all the north pole wanders due possible changes in the internal circulation, (we think). Could the amount of heat that penetrates through the crust, also cause a subtle but relentless warming. It would not have to be much, perhaps a 1 degree increase..almost unmesureable - even if we could measure surface temperature. This would really be a global warming. When you think that you do not have to go down that deep into some mines before the heat becomes a serious factor... And then there are the volcanoes that you mention..and the particles they emit..Not to mention the CO2, sulphur, etc. How many smoke stacks belching their worst would it take to equal a good healthy volcanoe....Would it even be a fair match ? I'm all for cleaning the air and the envionment and in not abusing this incredible planet we have, apparently, as the prime species, assumed owneship. I just don't think that our effluents are the cause for a shift in the climate. I think that mechanism predates us by many millions of years.