With Granny and CGI

I must admit that almost every movie today contains at the very least color grading and CGIs. During our Father's Day family trip, we went to the movies together. My grandmother was stunned at the beautifully made scenes of Disney's Moana. She said she would have thought it was impossible if she saw this 60 years ago. Indeed, the CGI industry has developed exponentially in just a decade. I used to think that Barbie and Toy Story had the best 3D graphic ever, but looking back at them now... not quite.

We went on showing her the whole MCU movies and it left her speechless. Grandmama isn't the person who watch movies very often. The only type of movie she watch is Chinese soap opera with flying Kungfu masters. 

The scene where Ant-Man turns into 'Giant-Man' in Captain America Civil War was met with granny's scream. She told me that it would have been very dangerous for the directors to come up with a giant robot like that as a prop, and that young Peter Parker could have been squashed by holding the trunk, for she saw no wire cables attached to it. She also stated matter of factly that it would be very expensive for the producers to hire that much actors for Loki's army in the Avengers. For Guardians of the Galaxy, she doubt that Rocket Raccoon is a very well trained beast, and wondered how many takes it took to be able to capture each of Rocket's different scenes.

I told her that most of the works were done within studios with blank green screens and background. Rocket Raccoon isn't even a doll to begin with. She didn't quite believe me. "Then how can they look so realistic? Take a look at the fur. The FURS!", she said. So I said, "Let me show you how, granny. It is very much like what they did for Moana, only adding more details into their graphics to make it even more realistic." I also told her that making these effects today is very fast and easy. Some movies shoot most of their film in studios to reduce production cost.

And so, we sat down together, Grandmama and I, with Photoshop open and ready. Here are the results of my experiments on creating 'unrealstic' looks and super powers just to emphasize my point for her:

Started off with the Latest Dr.Strange

Then Harry Potter, inspired by Fantastic Beasts ad How to Find Them...