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Is clarity in action a bad thing?
January 12, 2026π 20
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#filmmaking #cgi #vfx #cars #movies #films #michaelbay #lucbesson #shazam2 #lucy #badboys #action #cinemastodon #b3d #blender3d
by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
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I often hear how good action film-making is always clear and easy to follow. Camera isn't shaking like crazy and editing isn't filled with ADHD mania. Yet the more I think about it the less this makes sense.
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For example, take the bridge scene from David F. Sandberg's film Shazam! 2. The direction of the scene is very clear. The shots are long and smooth. Every box in an internet guide for a "good action scene" is ticked. And yet you have this:
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Link to the clip of this scene.
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Look at these cars. On paper everything about them is correct. In closeup shots you can see that the cars are modeled well and textured to the standards. They have the surface imperfection maps and everything. The animation is solid. Yet watching this sequence makes you feel that the cars are very, very CGI.
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Shazam! 2 had a reported budget of something between 110 to 125 million dollars. They had the money to do this right. And cars are one of the simplest things to render. Video games from the turn of the century had very realistic depictions of cars. Every 3D rendering website or forum will have hundreds of super-realistic car renders. Hell even films like Bad Boys II that were made 2 decades before Shazam! 2 had much better CGI cars.
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Believe it or not, this is a CGI Ferrari. And that is a movie from 2003.
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I think the clarity is to blame.
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Think about it. It should be a high intensity moment of incredible tension. Yet the shots are so calm and so precise that you don't feel anything at all. You don't know what to feel. You notice small rendering errors from overworked and underpayed artists. And your brain comes to a conclusion that it must be CGI.
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Take for example Lucy from 2014, by Luc Besson. It has a chase scene which has a lot of clearly CGI cars. It was made a decade after Bad Boys II and a decade before Shazam! 2. Yet the cars look ( on a technical level ) worse than in both of those films. Still though, watch the scene in motion...
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Link to the clip of the scene
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... and the direction of Besson is so fucking good that the CGI-ness of the cars could not bother you less. You almost don't even notice it. The scene fucking rules. And while Besson could have made a slow, readable action scene. It would not have made you feel the speed and the anxiety of the moment.
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I think this is how Michael Bay does it too. He can pull off invisible CGI work in 2004, or groundbreaking CGI work in 2007. Or push the whole industry forward while nobody else ( pretty much ) can replicate it, because he prioritizes Adrenalin. Because he wants the audience to feel the scene more than to understand it.
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Happy Hacking!!!
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Is clarity in action a bad thing?
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/thumbs/CGI_cars_michael_bay.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 20 β€ 5 π¬ 108
I often hear how good action film-making is always clear and easy to follow. Camera isn't shaking like crazy and editing isn't filled with ADHD mania. Yet the more I think about it the less this makes sense.
#filmmaking #cgi #vfx #cars #movies #films #michaelbay #lucbesson #shazam2 #lucy #badboys #action #cinemastodon #b3d #blender3d
Part 3: Developing a Way to do Action Scenes Without Money
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/thumbs/cgi_vfx_part3.png)
Blender Dumbass
π 33 β€ 1 π¬ 2
Since the last post in this series the project I've been working on became way more ambitious. The original problem I was trying to solve, was figuring out how to use computer graphics ( mainly Blender ) to cut costs for an action scene in a movie I'm developing. It has cars, so the idea was to try to render some CG cars into real life footage. You can go read Part 2 to see my attempts at this sort of thing.
#vfx #cgi #cars #blender3d #blender #b3d #movies #filmmaking
I bled for this Blender 3D Model
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/thumbs/building_108.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 35 β€ 3 π 1 π¬ 4
Telling a story of the difficulties I went through to model this one building in Blender. The cringe, and the trauma and all of the bleeding in between.
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Lunatics! Episode 1 has dropped. And I have thoughts!!!
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/user_upload/blenderdumbass/lunatics6.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 17 β€ 3 π 1 π¬ 5
Lunatics! is a Open-Movie project by Rosalyn Hunter and Terry Hancock. I was following their socials ( mainly their Peertube account ) for quite some time now. And today, about an hour ago they released an unfinished version of episode one. Why does it matter? Well, they are working on it, if I understand correctly, since 2003, ( based on this video ). This unfinished episode is, therefor, 23 years in the making. My Moria's Race short-film with its 3.5 years is nothing in comparison.
#lunatics #openmovie #libre #blender3d #b3d #animation #review #movies #cinemastodon #film
Part 2: Developing a Way to do Action Scenes Without Money
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/thumbs/vfx_honda_2.png)
Blender Dumbass
π 119
So a real cinema movie project is being developed, and as explained in my previous article about it I don't have the money to shoot a real chase scene. Instead I gonna use CGI as much as possible, to cut down the costs ( but not my sanity ).
#vfx #cgi #cars #blender3d #blender #b3d #movies #filmmaking
Lucy 2014 Pretentious or Profound ?
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/14/Lucy_%282014_film%29_poster.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 16 π¬ 2
On the surface level 2014 Luc Besson film Lucy starring Scarlett Johansson is a scientific thesis that is trying to say some grand truth about the world, while pretending to be an action film, to make people go see it. On the other hand though, it is an action film that injects a lot of profound-sounding pretentious pseudo scientific bullshit, to make itself appear as something better than it is: a dumb action movie. Which one of them is it? Or did I miss something?
#lucy #lucbesson #ScarlettJohansson #film #review #movies #cinemastodon
AI is Box-Office poison
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/thumbs/box_office_poison.png)
Blender Dumbass
π 20 β€ 2 π¬ 4
Why do people go to cinema? A billion dollar question, isn't it? Well, if you ask the Austrian School of Economics you will see that people tend to buy things they value more than the money they need to spend to buy that very thing.
#boxoffice #movies #ai #chatgpt #sora #cgi #vfx #film #cinemastodon
Developing a Way to do Action Scenes Without Money
![[thumbnail]](/pictures/thumbs/vfx_honda.png)
Blender Dumbass
π 86 π¬ 4
I'm in the middle of developing a movie in which there is a car chase. You know me I can't live without a car chase. But this time I'm trying to make the movie properly. By "infiltrating the movie industry" as some people suggested to call it. Which means ( since I live in Israel ) I need to write something that is possible to do in Israel. Getting $40 million to shoot a first feature film in Israel is not something that I can expect to happen. So instead I need to come up with something else.
#vfx #cgi #cars #blender3d #blender #b3d #movies #filmmaking
The Audition 2015 is an interesting short-film, when it comes to film history
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4f/The_Audition_%282015_film%29.jpg/250px-The_Audition_%282015_film%29.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 16
You may think that 2023 Killers of the Flower Moon is the first time Leonardo DiCaprio have worked with Robert De Niro. In fact the first time was 30 years earlier in 1993 with This Boy's Life. Yet a lot of people will suggest Killers of the Flower Moon is still at least the first time both DiCaprio and De Niro worked with Martin Scorsese. That is also not true. That would be 2015's short-film, directed by Scorsese called The Audition.
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How didn't I know about Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec?
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/da/Adele_Blanc-sec_Louise_Bourgoin_Luc_Besson.jpg/250px-Adele_Blanc-sec_Louise_Bourgoin_Luc_Besson.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 25 π¬ 2
D'une manière ou d'une autre, je ne connaissais pas le film de Luc Besson 2010 Les Aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec. Excusez mon français. I will continue in English now. I just had a pleasure of listening to people speak French for 2 hours straight, because I just learned about the existence of a movie that for some reason passed my radar. As you know I'm a big enough Luc Besson fan that sometimes I take his personal life blunders personally. I knew about his more obscure Arthur films. And I am anticipating his upcoming 2 films, that nobody seem to know nothing about. But somehow only now I heard about the 2010 Luc Besson film The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec.
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The Driver 1978 is not quite the original Drive from 2011
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a1/TheDriverPoster.jpg/250px-TheDriverPoster.jpg)
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π 27 π¬ 6
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Lethal Weapon is what happens when a good screenwriter writes his first script
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d9/Lethal_weapon1.jpg/250px-Lethal_weapon1.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
π 13
Directed by Richard Donner ( Superman, The Goonies ) from a script of Shane Black, Lethal Weapon is a film about cops. On the surface there is no concept to the movie what so ever. It is just simply a regular, straight forward police bromance. Yet somehow the movie moves.
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Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are 1994 makes me want a 2 hour long Michael Bay musical
![[thumbnail]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/65/Meat_Loaf_Objects_video.jpg/250px-Meat_Loaf_Objects_video.jpg)
Blender Dumbass
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