James does indeed make an excellent tour guide.He knows all the right places and people locally here. Just like me when i have shown overseas guests around the NZ scene.

I too have written tour guide info for the New Zealand aviation preservation scene in the past on the Wings Over New Zealand Forum and elsewhere, which I know several visitors from Up-over have made good use of.

Yes a good idea for a Britain At War sub-forum.

I also suggested very recently to Andy Saunders that it would be good if Britain At War could create a podcast in which its historians and writers could talk about various battles and their research and tactics and history, etc. Dan Snow has recently started an excellent history podcast where he talks with experts, something along those lines would be great.

Last I heard, Granada Media Clips are the archive in charge of the former Thames TV collection

http://bufvc.ac.uk/archives/index.php/collection/214

Sir Peter Jackson’s film King Kong is now a decade old and in my opinion the CGI still looks fantastic.

And face facts, non-CGI effects also date in films, particularly models of aeroplanes in flight.

Special effects using CGI is exactly like everything else in movie making. You can enjoy a great film when everything is done right without really thinking about why it was so good apart from an excellent overall result – but if you get any one of the elements not being right, from a bad script, acting, direction, costume design, set design, historical inaccuracy, music score, sound quality, lighting, etc, it’ll make the film look bad and you won’t enjoy it so much.

Every aspect of making feature films and television is a craft in its own right with specialist skills and specialist tools, and when you get all of them working in perfect unison it is seamless – get one of those aspects not performing quite up to par, whether it be down to lack of budget, ineptitude or inexperience, or whatever else, it can let the whole production down and leave the viewer feeling flat or even cheated. It’s like an orchestra, with one player slightly out of key. CGI is an excellent tool in the filmmaker’s tool kit, and when used well by a craftsman it is perfect. People who moan about poor CGI don’t think about this. They’ll pick on it more than they will a bad script or bad acting, etc, only because it is the newest tool in the filmmakers toolbox and they perhaps don’t understand how important it is and how often they’re actually seeing it without noticing it.

In a nutshell – CGI is only as good as the team behind it and the person using it.

Which can be said about everything else in film making – such as the script, direction, acting, cinematography, costume, make up, set design, budget, marketing, etc, etc. CGI is no different, so why anyone picks on this medium as ruining films is beyond me.

Thanks for the link Hampden. Great to see they acknowledge the advances New Zealand has made in the industry too.

Till now I have looked in the futile and ever decreasing hope there might be something new, positive, and interesting about the film or the real historical events come up – which very occasionally and in ever decreasing frequency there might be, amongst all the inane, childish, snide, racist and downright stupid comments that get posted by the majority in these threads, over and over again.

Where’s the button to stop receiving email alerts to this thread? This thread hurts my brain.