Very Curious Indeed

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

For this assignment I choose to go with the Oscar Wining Movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The main reason I chose this movie is because is a very good example of CGI being applied. At some point it was clear that make up would be able to achieve what was trying to be accomplished with this movie. As Director we have David Fincher and as the main character Brad Pitt (Ethos). Remarkable things where accomplished with this movie. I decided to focus more on the aging factor. The good impressive thing is that the face and all the facial movements that were being made by Benjamin were Brad Pitt but not the body. Everything had to be replicated in a very accurate way. The special effects start taking place to have Brad Pitt’s face in somebody else body and have that same face age with time. Actually, Brad Pitt might look like that when he’s older since they try to be as realistic as possible (Logos).

Ed Ulbrich, also worked in the creation of the movie, he does a very interesting overview of how everything was done for this movie. We can see that many of the special effects used wouldn’t be possible if this movie was filmed a few years back. As Giannetti says in Understanding Movies, Special Effects; “In the past, whole scenes often had to be reshot because of technical glitches,” “Today, such details can be removed digitally.” Also, we can see Ed speaking of having to use databases to register many things Brad Pitt (Benjamin) face can do at very different ages. In different words Giannetti also talks about it, saying that "Computer-generated images can be stored for future use, when they can be digitally altered with new costumes, new backgrounds or foregrounds or with totally different atmosphere."

To conclude, in this case I have to agree that the special effects indeed enhanced the movie experience on itself, since many of the things wouldn’t be accomplished in a very good way if was only being used make up and traditional methods of special effects. It enhanced in a way that we were able to better understand Benjamin Button condition and how his face was changing with time. Therefore, I’ll give three directors cut for this one.