Simulating Moviemaking

I am not 100% sold on what I imagine is going to become a more and more popular technique — the complete digital environment world. People are seeing a real opportunity in movies to create these impossible worlds and maybe control their budgets at the same time. Thinking purely with my visual effects hat on, it’s always better for us when we are doing the invisible work and that means keeping the audience guessing and using different techniques. It’s a big challenge to make the magic, repeating the same trick over and over again and not having the audience gets wise. It’s daunting, but in this case it was unique. We were doing things you couldn’t do another way, but in a gritty, real kind of way. I latched onto that and I didn’t want the stylization to come out of the fact that the world was going to be computer- generated. I wanted the stylization to be photographic and it became the mission statement that got us through the project.

[snip]

"It’s really interesting because in vfx, we have to remember that we aren’t simulating reality, we are simulating moviemaking."

-- Stu Mashchwitz of the Orphanage and ProLost [see link on side] discussing the Orphanage's contribution to Sin City over at VFX World [Rego Required]

Hmm. Note that Stu M doesn't specify exactly why he isn't sold on the technique of 'greenscreen movies', although there is an implicit kind of criticism in his discussion of Sin City.