Baltasar Kormakur Quotes

The thing with computer-generated imagery is that it's an incredibly powerful tool for making better visual effects. But I believe in an absolute difference between animation and photography.

Every film that comes out that incorporates CGI or performance capture is a little bit ahead of the last film that came out. You're on the cutting edge for a certain amount of time, and then the new technology comes out.

We have grown up in an age where there is nothing that cannot now, courtesy of computer-generated imagery, be convincingly rendered in the visual field.

CGI is done after the film is done. It's through the computer. Most of the film is not computer-generated special effects. Most of it is that creature that is in the room with you.

What's happened with computer technology is perfectly timed for someone with my set of skills. I tell stories with pictures. What I love about CGI is that if I can think it, it can be put on the screen.

Obviously, CGI in the last ten years has gone through such leaps and bounds that today, people are looking for these kinds of movies to wow audiences with technology.

I grew up watching movies and being amazed at the animatronics you'd see in stuff like 'The Dark Crystal,' and all those kinds of movies. So, I'm always enthralled with how they can make it all work, behind the scenes, with the visual effects.

Now, I just made an animated movie a few years ago, 'The Tale of Desperaux', and that had twelve hundred shots in it. Twelve hundred CG shots is a pretty big plan.

Special effects are characters. Special effects are essential elements. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there.

I don't have anything against CGI.

We're always striving to make Avatar look like a cinematic, live-action movie.

ILM was the first company that I had worked at that had a computer-graphics division.

You look at CG sometimes and its terrible. You look at CG sometimes and its great.

When you take something that's inert, and through motion, give it life, make it appear to be alive, living, breathing thinking and having emotions, that's animation. But when you take something that's live-action, and move a part of it, that's a special effect.

Currently computer graphics are used a great deal, but it can be excessive.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if there were a way to make movies without actors, George Lucas would do it.

Animated films are so precisely engineered - right down to forming lines of dialogue with words pulled from several different takes - how do you translate that spontaneity from the live-action to the digital realm?

With 'Toy Story,' which is a fantastic film but is essentially animation, you get to make all your decisions beforehand. 'Jumanji' is shot much like any other action film.

Obviously, with a CGI character, you're building a character in much the same way as a real creature is built. You build the bones, the skeletons, the muscles. You put layers of fat on. You put a layer of skin on which has to have a translucency, depending on what the character is.

Asylum was good exposure for me and it is still shown quite often on television. I remember the special effects people had fun making a little doll that looked like me - which is not so easy - and it had to move along the floor.

The nature of the movies is different than it was five years ago, and they're all driven by the possibilities of CGI, which means you can make anything happen on screen that you can possibly desire.

I think it's the most extraordinary studio around. I would love to do my next project with Pixar.

I don't use film cameras. I don't do visual effects the same way. We don't use miniature models; it's all CG now, creating worlds in CG. It's a completely different toolset. But the rules of storytelling are the same.

It's always fun when you're doing the CGI stuff, to actually get to work with someone who is real, who's there.

Critics in particular treat CGI as a virus that's infecting film.