4/30: To Mario, happiness is a warm question-mark box

I'm wondering exactly how easy it is to make "good" special effects. Not world-class, but good: whatever is on network television sci-fi. That's the constantly raising standard of "good." Five years ago we'd all be falling all over ourselves aghast at how wondrous V's production design was: now we can see right through its bland greenscreen virtual sets. "Oh, so a spaceship looks like a bunch of gray hallways, filled with people having boring conversations. Who knew a spaceship looked like a late-model hockey stadium?"

Having gotten that off my chest -- every week I would watch a new V and a Wire rerun, and my brain had some sort of metal-fatigue from the quality height difference -- let's take a look at the same sort of shaky-cam CG-elements-in-real-life VFX put to much better use. And remember: send this footage back in time ten years, and it would be cooler than The Matrix. Now: eh, it's maybe okay for a comedy bit on YouTube, In five years' time we'll be interacting with photorealistic film characters on our cheapo flipphones, taking it for granted that the world deserves to be this rich and morsel-y for us.

40 seconds in got me, too.