NEW FEATURE: "IT'S ALIVE! ANIMATRONICS IN FILM"

[J. Tithonus Pednaud]

Well, for several reasons. First, animatronics is pretty much a level playing field and specific armatures are building for specific functions. Close-ups, stunts, long shots - animatronics robots are really hard to screw up. It takes a total failure at several levels - bad directors, prop master, monster maker and puppeteers - to make animatronics come across poorly. Bad animatronics takes a lot of doing.

To capture shots featuring animatronics, creativity is required to hide limitations or to create new applications. Literally, months were previously spent designing not only the look of a creature, but how it would fit into a scene, how it would house its animatronics, how best it should be shot.

I get the sense that a lot of the new CGI heavy directors are treating their shots with a ‘we’ll put that in later’ attitude. As a result, a lot of CGI, in my opinion, feels tacked on. Now, when the CGI elements are planned out and animated well you get things like Jurassic Park (which still used a heap of animatronics gadgetry and filming styles), the new King Kong and the LOTR films – but for every one of those there are 10 Alone in the Dark’s.

Again, a viewer is not nearly as aware of a poor animatronics performance as they are a CGI one because, with animatronics, there is something actually physical in the scene. Not only does an actor have something to play against, but the ‘creature’ is performing for the camera as well. I think it allows a viewer to better identify with what is happening on screen when they know that object physically exists and they are much more forgiving as a result. CGI still comes across, at times, and movie mumbo jumbo trickery and when done poorly, is almost insulting to the intelligence of the viewer.

Compare an American Werewolf in London to An American Werewolf in Paris. The effects in the animatronics version are still vastly superior to the CGI sequel made decades later.