When “Beetlejuice” was released in 1988, viewers noticed a lot of fun practical effects in the movie. Because “Beetlejuice” came out before CGI got popular, the effects were created with physical techniques instead of computers. Thirty-six years later, CGI is everywhere. Michael Keaton said he would only return to his role as the film's titular character if the sequel prioritized old-school handmade effects.
With the proliferation of computer-generated effects in today's movies, we thought it'd be interesting to talk about the evolution of special effects in movies over the past few decades.
To do that, The Show spoke with Susan Weeks, VFX professor at Arizona State University’s Sidney Poitier New American Film School.
Just for reference, VFX stands for visual effects, which are done on computers — that’s opposed to special effects, which are generally done on set.
Weeks began with a look at how VFX have changed since people first started doing this.
Full conversation
SUSAN WEEKS: Well, when people first started doing this, they performed something called compositing, where you marry one piece of footage to another piece of footage through an optical printer. They would create mattes and then put two pieces of film together. And that’s how they, you know, would put in matte paintings or whatever up until about 1982 or ’83, when computers started coming into play and creating visual effects. And they didn’t really come roaring into the scene until about 1990.
MARK BRODIE: Once computers started really being used, I would imagine — like most things with computers — the technology kind of took off and the cool things that people like you could do kind of took off too.
WEEKS: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's been growing exponentially. I’ve learned so much software over the years because it keeps evolving, you know.
BRODIE: So when you go back and look to let’s say the mid ’80s, when the very early versions of this were being done, and then let’s say the early ’90s when the computer stuff started happening, what do you see through the lens of your eyes compared to what you’re able to do now?
WEEKS: I see a lot of limitations, but I also see a lot of really great work — for example, the “Jurassic Park” movies. Those movies still stand up really well, and they were the foundational visual effects films that we first saw.
And now, I think visual effects has become kind of a hammer sort of tool. People use it to fix everything in their film instead of carefully planning it and getting it right. Now we’re doing things like changing the timing of actors and putting scenes in the ’50s and ’60s, things like that. It’s more invisible than it was before. Now you can be looking at some film or something, and there’ll be loads of visual effects in it, but you’ll never know because they’re so invisible.
So the purpose has really changed. We’ve moved from the big old huge CGI characters to kind of more everyday sorts of effects, as well as these over-the-top effects movies. I’m thinking of the Marvel Universe movies, where pretty much everything in the shot is a visual effect except for the actor.
BRODIE: Well, that’s a really interesting point, because at least for me, as sort of a movie outsider, when I think visual effects, I think of things that are done for the purpose of the audience knowing and noticing that they’re being done, not as you’re describing things that the audience would have no way of knowing were done as visual effects.
WEEKS: Right. That’s exactly right. And that’s always been part of it. The invisible part of it has always been part of visual effects. But now filmmakers are using it to save time on the set.

BRODIE: To you then, does that sort of take away from the filmmaking or the storytelling if directors and producers can just fix everything on computers as opposed to what the actors are actually doing on set?
WEEKS: For me it does. I kind of don’t like to do that kind of work, because I think directors who just get it right on the set, they should work with the actors and just, you know, get it right on the set. Because it’s expensive to do that. It’s very fiddly to do that. And I think a lot of people are overusing it quite a bit.
I worked on a film recently where there was no reason to do that, but they did that anyway. They would take one actor from one footage and another actor from another footage and put them together just to fix whatever they thought was wrong. So yeah, I am kind of against that.
I prefer using visual effects to enhance the story in some way, to make it more believable or more fantastic, however you want to do it. For me, visual effects is about storytelling, not necessarily technique.
BRODIE: What is the rationale for doing that? Because as you say, it’s kind of expensive to do. And I would imagine it’s fairly time consuming to have you fix some of this stuff afterwards. So why do directors and producers decide to do it that way?
WEEKS: It saves time on the set. That’s the only reason to do it, is that they can get through their shooting schedule a lot quicker if they’re not worried about getting everything just right. They know that “we have the tools” to fix their backgrounds or remove that cube truck o change the timing or take out the markings on the street. They know we can do that. And it saves them enormous time on the set.
BRODIE: So I won’t ask you to name names — unless you want to — but are there particular directors that seem to find the right balance between using visual effects and making sure that the storytelling happens on set, to the extent that you think it should?
WEEKS: Yes, absolutely. The one that comes to my mind right away is Christopher Nolan. He’s really great about doing that. He has used CGI with tremendous effect in a lot of his movies.
BRODIE: So when you watch a movie, I’m sure you’re watching for plot and storylines and dialog and all that stuff. But are you also watching to try to see, “OK, this actually happened on set. This happened in post. This is how they did it,” and trying to sort of dissect the making of the movie also?
WEEKS: Always. I’m always doing that. I can’t ever watch a film without my disbelief being not suspended.
BRODIE: Yeah. Does that bother the people with whom you’re watching the movies? Do they ever tell you just, “I want to watch it. Let me disbelieve. You don’t have to, but I want to”?
WEEKS: I try to be thoughtful about the people I watch films with. I think it to myself. I don’t necessarily say it out loud until after the film is over. Because that drives me crazy when I’m watching it with somebody who has to talk through the whole film and have all these comments about it. I prefer to wait till after the movie before we start talking about it, and then I can point things out. And then it’s fun.
BRODIE: That is fair. So I’m curious what you think the future of visual effects and CGI looks like. Like if we go to the movies in three years, five years, 10 years from now — what are we going to be seeing that we’re maybe not seeing now?
WEEKS: Maybe a lot more virtual sets. Right now they do a lot of filming in front of green screens as opposed to going out on location. And I think we’re developing more skillfully how to use virtual sets, where we have the actors in front act in front of an LED screen that has the background for them, carefully designed by world designers.
I think we’ll see more of that. I hope we see more creature work. I always love creature work in CGI. I think that could only get better. It’s only ever gotten better. It’s never gotten worse. So those are some of the things that I see. The use of virtual production is one of the biggest ones. I think.