Special Effects from Bizarro.......

[superhippie2000]

Talk about the effects here.

[smallsville]

they usually go all out on the season openers so i'm expecting some good stuff!

[Routh]

*crosses fingers for decent dam break, water torrents, heat vision*

[yosemiteangel]

*crosses fingers that Bizarro's cracked face doesn't look too fake*

[MidgardDragon]

Bizarro's constant re-cracking, his lightning-laden heat vision, healing with greenk, flight, Clark's heat vision evaporation, Kara's underwater shot and first flight, so much awesome in this episode.

[chloefan]

A Galaxy far, far away. I love how they got that in!

I loved the Blur Effects, the Kara flight and the effects when Clark was using his superhearing.

[Jlandsw]

A hell of an improvement from last year. The shot of Clark healing under the yellow sun was awesome. All the flight shots looked great as well.

[myankskent]

I'll tell you what, I don't know about the other episodes this season, but after watching the premier, it certainly looks like Smallville is stepping it up in the effects department. There were some great effects in the episode, from the water scenes to Bizarro's face, it was amazing.

[Queenrocks77]

I loved the water scene! I loved the fight scene in the woods!!

[Routh]

I wish the Bizarro-face-cracking didn't look so horrible. :\

[erikamichelle614]

my favorite effect was when bizarro used the heat vision and it was all crazy!!

[legolazzz04]

great special effects all around. even MM got a piece of the action when his eyes turned red.

[Heroes4Hire]

The fx of the season premiere was awesome. The superhearing power was a sweet improvement and everything else is great.

[erikamichelle614]

the superhearing reminded me of Superman Returns when he goes into space and can hear all the sounds.

clark had to separate all of the sounds that he hears.... exactly what happened in SR.

[STFanatic]

The super punch through the treetop was my favorite, when Bizarro broke off the tree top when he smashed through it was really good.
The healing was good, but we have seen those before on this and other shows/movies.

Kara's underwater scene was really good, Lex seeing her as an angel was really good.
The flying was good, but they could slow it down a little, flying doesn't have to be an all out zoom, it seemed (to me) they wanted to get it past the screen fast before you could make out details.
Bizarro's CGI face was rather good, a lot better than I had expected, I was so afraid they would go the latex route.
All in all, IMO, the best I have seen on Smallville.

[Super Maverick]

yea flying supergirl!

[U-d]

heat vision at the beginning was definatelly an upgrade

[smallsville]

not disappointed at all with the special effects here. they really stepped it up and have outdone themselves. best i've seen of the series so far. what about all that violence? bizarro with that thing stuck through him and all. totally wicked!

[2chloewithluv]

Amazing special effects!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[mctor]

Fantastic special effects!!!!!!! every single one was amazing

[DivineDreamer]

Originally posted by U-d
heat vision at the beginning was definatelly an upgrade

Oh yeah. The heat-vision was awesome ;)

[DANO MAKI]

The only thing that I wish they could do, is make the flying scenes better. I know that it's selfish to want the same kind of effects from SR in Smallville but I wish we could have them. All in all...


EFFING AWESOME!!!

[MidgardDragon]

Really, for a TV show, the flying looks great. At least on par with Heroes and that's on NBC, one of the big three networks. How they accomplish this on such a small budget is beyond me, but I'm not complaining. It can be voodoo for all I care.

[smallvilleobsessor17]

I thought the special effects were truly horrible in Bizarro....they all looked completely fake, not at all realistic.

[spicyblark]

His face made my day...so bad.

[smallvilleobsessor17]

:rotfl: Oh, I know!

[spicyblark]

But it also made it histerical, which is good.

[smallvilleobsessor17]

Hysterical, Meredith.

[spicyblark]

Whatever, I loved it.

[OneWayFilms]

The evaporating scene was SO AWESOME, much more like a feat from SUPERMAN an dnot so much SuperBOY. Clark is gettign closer to becoming the hero we all love.

[ClarkRules!]

i thought all the effects were incredible

what separates this show from the rest is the little touches that they do. like the dam break being reflected in the car window in the Lex close-up!

fantastic!

[theWatcher]

I rather enjoyed the scene where Clark vaporized the Dam water that was raging down the river before it could overtake the man and his son! Pretty awesome!

[STFanatic]

From the Director's cut I was really expecting the water in that scene to be really bad, it turned out that the water part of the scene was my favorite effect in the epsode :D

[Lexgirl33]

Great special effects.

[MidgardDragon]

Originally posted by STFanatic
From the Director's cut I was really expecting the water in that scene to be really bad, it turned out that the water part of the scene was my favorite effect in the epsode :D

Why would you expect anything effects wise from Director's Cuts? We've seen time and time again that the DC's are unfinished as far as effects go, I don't get why people still think the episode will look anything like those.

[STFanatic]

Because I had high hopes, and they pulled it off when I was afraid they wouldn't, I had been hyping the premiere to several people.
Geez, I won't say they did good again.

[MidgardDragon]

They did good. I said it for you. :P I'm just curious why you thought it'd look bad from the DC's. I'm not being mean or anything, I just don't understand why anyone would think the completely unfinished effects of the DC had anything to do with how it'd look in the epi.

[clarkbunny]

I can't believe I am alone in thinking that the water scene was the lamest piece of CGI ever. I was so excited when the episode started and I was watching the water then suddenly the water stopped and the scene looked really fake and then Clark used his heat vision and the water evaporated leaving some equally fake looking trees.

Honestly it was like I was watching special effects out of the Power Rangers! I think the whole wall of water evaporation was a bit ambitious so they did the best they could with their budget which was very poor. Luckily the rest of the episode more than made up for the laughable start.

I really think Clark should have used his laser vision on the water in real time not bullet time. So water would still have been moving then it would have just evaporated.

Also did anyone else think that the china scene looked like a drawing at the end? It looked really fake until it panned down to the people walking at the bottom, it just looks really odd.

If the directors or actors don't mention a balls up on CGI on this episode in the commentary I shall eat my hat!

[MidgardDragon]

"Looking fake" is possibly one of the worst complaints I hear, and it's a common one so that's pretty depressing. Of course it looks fake, it is fake. There's no way to make a torrent of rushing water that is slowed down because the point of view we're seeing it from is super-sped-up look real. This isn't real, it's not supposed to look real.

[DANO MAKI]

agreed!!!

[clarkbunny]

No, no, no the whole point of CGI is to make the impossible look possible - AND REAL. That's what these CGI studios are paid mega bucks for. When the impossible looks fake - that's bad CGI! We all know cybernetic robots do not exist but the terminator scared us all none the less as he looked damn real in all the films. We all know spiderman doesn't exist and people can't really swing from building to building with webs but that looked real too.

The water scene in Smallville did not look real, if you cannot make CGI action blend in with the live action don't bother.

For that brief moment it took me out of the imagination bubble of smallville to think oh my god what is this crap ?!? :\

The directors speak in the commentaries about shots & scenes that didn't work, they even laugh about it. So I am not wrong in being critical about some CGI that just didn't work.

Oh and on a side note, I watched a program the other day - not sci-fi but just a normal documentary about surfers chasing the big waves.

In analysing how they do it they had a shot of the live action stopped and they went into the wave showing the stopped water and the surfer and the water dripping off the surfer and the wave all stopped in mid air. I have no idea how they did it but it looked real and it wasn't like it was a sci-fi show - so it is possible to make stopped water look real. The water in smallville didn't even look like water any more it looked like plastic or a drawing.

Hey I love the show but i've got to call a spade a spade when I see it - and that was some bad cgi right there.

[Alexander III]

MM's red eyes makes me horny

[Mr. Clark Kent27]

I liked how they did the super hearing effect a lot. I agree with the ones who were talking about it. Bizarro's heat-vision was cool, but it's supossed to be cold vision not heat vision. Clark's heat vision was also good, but not as I hoped it would look like. I knew they would change alot from the director's cut.

Just like from Progeny, it was originally planned to be longer when Clark was going to save Lex filmed in slow motion, but they cut the rest of Clark deciding weather or not to let Lex live, out because Clark wouldn't really let some one die like that even if he didn't like them and he couldn't let Chloe kill him. It was a good idea that they cut that out though.

I liked all the healing scenes espcially Bizarro's healing scene. Ohhhh. That creeped me out. Bizarro's face from the sun light scenes were good too. Kara flying was great at the end and the moon. It was amazing stuff.

[Rub-in]

I loved the clark slo-mo shot, when he jumped to hit Bizarro Clark, i like the upgrade. in other season the slow mo shots had the ripples under contril but in this episode the ripple was more controlled.

Does anyone know how do do that effect in photoshop, i got speed, heat and working on hearing, i just need slow moe and i got the effects, any help?

[Mr. Clark Kent27]

I still wish that the scene of Clark stopping the rushing water from the dam with his heat vision was longer. Their budget is lower now, but they've had more visual effects that I can remember. Hmm. It was probably payed by Toyota which changed it all. Clark's heat vision in Prototype was red and white like the laser beams and because of that problem they had to make us think that he was using all his energy power of heat vision he could, that's why it looked different. How are they going to bring it back? We saw Bizarro use heat vision of course it was different because Bizarro is different. I mean regular heat vision when Clark is just aiming at something, not in too much action. There's no more x-ray vision. Super hearing and heat vision have changed. Why can't they make it look like it used to? The paused shot of the rushing water was lame actually, in the director's cut, it looked like it was going to be longer and it didn't look like they would pause it in Clark time.

All of the new Metropolis shots of the DP and LC all look like they worked on it too much. It looks real but too real.

[Dean_19]

The CG was good on the whole. TV gets a lot less time and less cash for these things than movies. Plus water stuff is notoriously hard to do, especially with very little development time.

The only thing I didn't like was Bizarro's face effect. It was too obvious, it needed to be more subtle. You didn't even need an effect for that, they could have just taken it as simple logic, the sun makes supes stringer, so if Bizarro is opposite it makes sense it would make him weaker.

[MidgardDragon]

The face effect was mostly a nod for comics fans, since Bizarro is traditionally white and pasty. I think the cracked-face made him much more menacing and was, although not realistic (it's not supposed to be people, this is Sci-Fi), a very beautifully done effect. I was surprised they managed to make it look as good as it did, really. The last flying scene of Phantom was good, but a closeup of a quick effect is a lot different then having to do it with him moving around and doing stuff. Glad they didn't have it cracked all the time, though, because then it would've gotten a little old.

[Jaded Wolf]

Originally posted by clarkbunny
No, no, no the whole point of CGI is to make the impossible look possible - AND REAL. That's what these CGI studios are paid mega bucks for. When the impossible looks fake - that's bad CGI! We all know cybernetic robots do not exist but the terminator scared us all none the less as he looked damn real in all the films. We all know spiderman doesn't exist and people can't really swing from building to building with webs but that looked real too.

The water scene in Smallville did not look real, if you cannot make CGI action blend in with the live action don't bother.

For that brief moment it took me out of the imagination bubble of smallville to think oh my god what is this crap ?!? :\

The directors speak in the commentaries about shots & scenes that didn't work, they even laugh about it. So I am not wrong in being critical about some CGI that just didn't work.

Oh and on a side note, I watched a program the other day - not sci-fi but just a normal documentary about surfers chasing the big waves.

In analysing how they do it they had a shot of the live action stopped and they went into the wave showing the stopped water and the surfer and the water dripping off the surfer and the wave all stopped in mid air. I have no idea how they did it but it looked real and it wasn't like it was a sci-fi show - so it is possible to make stopped water look real. The water in smallville didn't even look like water any more it looked like plastic or a drawing.

Hey I love the show but i've got to call a spade a spade when I see it - and that was some bad cgi right there.

CGI never makes anything look real. Look at the Star Wars prequel. CGI made it look all fake. The point of CGI is to take what once required manual labor and many pulleys and moving parts and make it easier to produce on film. People need to take a look at Joss Whedon's Serenity. That movie was produced with minimum special effects and the scenes looked real. As for the dam scene, for once I have to agree with MidGardDragon and say that the dam scene will look fake because there is no one on this earth who can slow down time and make a river of water evaporate that quickly.

[MidgardDragon]

CGI never makes anything look real.

Probably the first thing I've ever agreed with JW on. And it's not supposed to make it look real, nor is that a bad thing, IMO. Sometimes fantasy should look fantastic. Realistic would be the opposite of that.

[clarkbunny]

Well we will have to agree to disagree on the CGI then. As I think CGI is supposed to make the impossible look possible and believable. The integration of CGI with live action should be seamless when done properly. Most of the time I am very impressed with the special effects in Smallville this time I was disappointed.

[tornoofo17]

Did they just run out of money by the end of the episode? Seriously, the ending with Lana had to be cheesiest green screen job I've ever seen. Oh and Clark getting clocked in the face in slo-mo look really, really funny.

[Clark/Lois-fan]

Clark using heat vision at the water was awesome. Wish it had been longer though, but... :D

When Clark uses his super hearing at the hospital. It's done so much cooler than before, when we get inside his ear...

At Reeve's Dam when Clark jump & tries to hit Bizarro- that looked amazing, & when he got hit in slow mo

That's my favorite speciel effects from Bizarro