I was watching a recent VFX Artists React and they were talking about a shot of an explosion from the trailer of The Creator. Apparently they used video of the Beirut explosion and comped CGI elements over it. Thoughts? Is this ethically or morally wrong? Does it make you rethink seeing the movie?
I think it’s a little morally questionable to use real footage like that from an event where many people lost their lives. I can understand using it as a guide for building your own cgi shockwaves and stuff but it kind of feels like they crossed a line there.
I dare to disagree that it is wrong to use such footage. Yeah people died, but people die from explosions in general.
I dunno - people drown all the time as well, but if I found out that someone had taken footage of a tragic event in which my grandma and a couple hundred others drowned, used it, and added their own special effects to “enhance” it for their purposes, I’d have mixed feelings to say the least.
I agree with the other comment saying that maybe using the footage as a reference would’ve been FAR more palatable.
I wonder if this decision was a callous one, or if the potential controversy was just another factor in calculating reach and engagement.
It’s just wrong.
Oh, I just watched this!
I’m pretty much aligned with what Niko said in it: if the point is entertaining value (as proven by the sci-fi stuff added to the shot), then I find it off-putting that someone is trying to sell me real-life suffering and death as sci-fi entertainment, enough that it makes me not want to go see the movie. Not out of protest, but because it’s just gross.
Don’t movies and tv shows commonly use real footage of catastrophes or riots, for example, in news reports or to establish the state of the world?
