This week, we have been asked to write about 1 interesting thing we have done during the week that relates to animation or VFX.
I have decided to review the film 'Season of the Witch' for this post as I saw this film for the very first time during the week.
Overall, the film was flat; the plot was boring and nonsensical at times, the dialogue felt extremely manufactured, and there was no character development at all.
The thing that interested me though was the use of makeup vs VFX within the film.
The VFX was weak and made this film look cheap, and even though the film only had a budget of $40million I felt that the VFX could've been utilised much better than it had been; the fantasy landscapes had been inserted fairly well for example, but it was the creature design that ultimately let the film down- the creatures did not blend well with the live action scenery or the actors that had to interact with them.
However, the physical makeup within the film was extremely well done, to the point where I had to look away at times. A part of the story is the spreading of the Plague or Black Death, thought to be the work of a witch, and so there were a lot of rotting bodies and infected characters. I thought that these makeup effects added a lot of atmosphere to the film and I actually felt more of a threat when the main characters were around Plague victims rather than the supernatural creatures!
I think that this film is a good example of why we shouldn't become too reliant on VFX, it is so readily available that anyone can use it, filmmakers have become lazy in their use of it and audiences have grown so used to it that VFX can no longer carry a film like it used to; in fact, below par VFX can now hurt a film.
Instead, I think that physical effects, such as the ones used in this film, should be used more than they are as they are much more organic than CGI and they connect the audience on a much deeper level.
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