Iron Man posterKCRW’s The Busi­ness hosted by Claude Brodesser-Akner is both a radio show and pod­cast deal­ing with the inner work­ings of the busi­ness of Hollywood.

Claude’s inter­views with direc­tors, screen­writ­ers, adver­tis­ing exec­u­tives and actors/actresses are often fas­ci­nat­ing, if not enlight­en­ing, espe­cially if you share an inter­est in how films are cre­ated like I do.

In his inter­view with actor/director Jon Favreau enti­tled “No Spe­cial Effects, It’s Really Direc­tor Jon Favreau”, Jon reveals his love/hate rela­tion­ship with CGI effects and why home brewed effects are still rel­e­vant and use­ful. His phi­los­o­phy is that while com­puter gen­er­ated imagery has its place (namely a tool­box of end­less pos­si­bil­ity) it can also cloud the visual aes­thetic of a movie.

While CGI has improved over the years, pro­vid­ing the back­bone for things like sci-fi vis­tas and mytho­log­i­cal crea­tures as well upping the ante on dis­as­ter sequences it’s also — in most cases — imme­di­ately rec­og­niz­able if it doesn’t blend in with live action.

Recently Favreau was cho­sen to direct the film adap­ta­tion of Iron Man, a task not to be taken lightly and even though the film itself has a much big­ger bud­get than his other films, he’s also made the deci­sion to bud­get the spe­cial effects. His rea­son­ing is two-fold; that the film’s bud­get is tar­geted at a spe­cific amount and to effec­tively blend CGI with live action with­out going overboard.

In all hon­esty, this is some­thing that I wish more direc­tors (includ­ing George Lucas) would come to terms with. Audi­ences are typ­i­cally over­whelmed with joy when a superb CGI sequence is pulled off but to echo Favreau’s thoughts, in most cases it’s eas­ily noticed and can take you out of the movie, detach­ing you from the film’s oth­er­wise engross­ing atmos­phere and aesthetic.

Yet, to play devil’s advo­cate I sup­pose it’s a tricky thing to avoid and I’d imag­ine why most direc­tors and pro­duc­ers go out on a limb blind­folded, hop­ing that what­ever is put together by their mas­ters of illu­sion comes across suc­cess­fully not only in a visual man­ner but also allow­ing var­i­ous CG ele­ments to inter­act with live action in a real­is­tic way.