Did you notice how much was made of the leaked stills of Mission Impossible 5, where Tom Cruise is hanging from an airbus several thousand feet above the English countryside? Now the obvious hue and cry is about the authenticity of the scene: Was ageing Mr. Cruise doing the daredevilry in person, or was it the CGI-simulated pressure that was giving him the wind slap? Amidst the debate, which is kind of futile in a way, one can even say it doesn’t really matter. If CGI can give us a great cinematic image and effect, is it really worth risking life or is it really necessary? But wait, it isn’t that easy.
Digital visuals can create a magnificent scene, but at the end of the day, it remains artificial, which is why directors like Nolan try to separate photography and animation clearly. There is a kind of authenticity in a ‘real’ scene that visuals can never deliver, and this lends photography, it seems, more storytelling power.
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There are pros and cons of using CGI. Although sometimes it is indispensable, a lot of it can be avoided by intelligent improvisation, the way Anne Hathaway did in the recently released ‘Interstellar’: Things like standing on one foot to mimic the weightlessness in a gravity-free space. But that is a little beside the point. The feeling we get from the fact that a real person is doing the shot for real has some significance for the spectator. It is, perhaps, because we never free ourselves of the aura that is around a celebrity, and we wish to see our favorite star doing all the action, instead of his image slapped over a graphically generated scene.
Anyway, you can always argue about the authenticity based on the notion of ‘pure cinema.’ But the truth remains that all of us want to see our favorite stars doing extraordinary things on screen, and a big-budget movie is just the place where it gets fulfilled.
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