Practical Verus CGI

I love a good sic-fi film like the Alien series, The Thing, Predator, and Star Wars just to name a few. What viewers may not realize in most of these films that the special effects are a mix of practical effects and CGI. This video by CRACKED interviewed Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis of Amalgamated Dynamics.  They touch on the debate on CGI vrs. practical. I prefer a combination of both but at times practical can look better, for instance Jurassic Park that was primarily puppets and had very little CGI. Aliens 3 on the other hand was very CGI heavy and as a result the reviews were not favorable. AVP though, returned to a more practical filming of the Aliens and Predator fighting and that was personally a better film. Woodruff and Gillis also touched on how studios are pushing for more CGI effects and less practical. The video takes a good look in the debate and industry perspective.  

Richarg Greenberg and "The Dead Zone"

Richard Greenberg is a motion graphics designer based out of Chicago Illinois.  After getting degrees in industrial design and graphic design he taught for a number of years. He then created a short film entitled "Stop". "Stop" won first prize at the New York Film Festival Student Competition which led to him working under Pablo Ferro. Greenberg then started his own business and has sense created title sequences for Superman, Alien, Dirty Dancing, Death Becomes Her, and The Untouchables. His work is very polished and clean. In The Dead Zone in particular, he does this wonderful, mysterious, slow addition of black shapes in front of some video of a small town. It isn't until most of the way through the sequence that you realize it's the negative space of the title itself. I like this title sequence a lot, because you don't notice anything out of the ordinary immediately. When you first see it you're really only thinking about the peaceful scenery and the quaint town It's a really powerful juxtaposition then, to see "THE DEAD ZONE" spelled out using that same scene. It's simple and it says it all, this town. This beautiful town that everyone has been looking at for 2 minutes now has, with the help of Greenberg and the music become, "The Dead Zone". I really appreciate this fairly subtle imagery in part because it is something I don't see very often in modern movies.