Tron 1982- CGI's Stillbirth

Director Steven Lisberger's freshman feature Tron was a failure at the box office in 1982.  The rumors at the time for the cause were surrounding computer animations ability to only represent the artificial.  Though Tron used computer animation to illustrate the inside of a computer, this could do little to alter the opinion of the people viewing it at that time.  Many saw Tron as a test run of the viability of computer animation.  A test that many people thought failed, thanks in no part to the storyline (or lack thereof).  It could be said that many of these viewers lacked the ability to see what was available in the current day, much less the ability to foresee future possibilities. Even today Tron receives a wide range of reviews and critiques.  

Today the concepts pioneered by the filmmakers of Tron have propelled forward thinking animators and filmmakers alike, in addition to creating the basic styles of computer animation.  What was once seen as a failure has replaced many standards of the past including the use of models and filmmaking techniques.  The first feature film to have fully rendered live action sequences was made so long ago… have we really gone that far since Tron?  Sure, now we call it by a name, CGI. 

Shot in 70mm and in black and white for all of the computer world scenes.  The actors in the film wore white costumes covered with black circuitry detailing.  Each individual frame was then enlarged and placed on transparencies.  These transparencies were then placed on a backlit animation stand and rephotographed using color filters or gels.  This process, also known as rotoscoping, could have anywhere from 5-25 layers for each element of the composite image (face, body, background, eyes, etc.).  This style of backlighting 'from the inside' intensified the sharp colors of the gels and gave a saturated feel for the colors on film.  To better enable the filmmakers to perform this task, all of the computer world sets were almost entirely black.  This enabled the sets to be lit without affecting the still to be added effects, backgrounds, and sets themselves- only the actors faces.  They could also then add additional lighting affects to the sets and backgrounds, matching the shading and the like to the computer-generated objects.  Sounds like a lot of work for an animated film right?

 Tron was on the cutting edge of computer animation.  At that time the world had finally evolved to two primary styles: raster graphics and vector graphics.  Vector graphics are a grid or skeletal structure created in the computer to form a frame (this is also know as mainframe graphics today).  All vector images are based on geometric shapes (i.e. points, lines, curves, polygons, etc).  Raster graphics are based on a patterned shading of an area to give three-dimensional shape and/or different levels of shading (today we refer to this as a bitmap).  Represented by a rectangular grid filled with pixels, raster graphics use the three base color system to define its image.  The size and shape of the rectangle affects the perceived color based on the number of assigned pixels and their color.  The biggest difference in the two is the fact that vector images can be scaled indefinitely without a loss of clarity or degradation, whereas raster images lose quality due to their bitmap structure.

 These two types of animation were both used in Tron, in addition to the frame-by-frame live action animation/special effects/layering.  The ‘reel’ skill shown by the filmmakers was their ability to blend all of the images and create continuity onscreen with the varying styles. 

Though many might argue the impact Tron had on the state of computer animation at the time, the further away from 1982 we get and the better the advancements in animation get, the more a film like Tron can be appreciated.  It was a movie that created something entirely new without any reference point.  Two things were certain though, there was no limit to the point of view of the camera and no limit to the physical reality of the objects occupying the computer world.  The directions taken in CGI since Tron have continued to make use of these elements, for they seem to have endless possibilities for creative minds.  The simplicity of the computer animation, though young in concept, had a story that matched the environment for which it was created.  But the real charm and magic of the film lies in the animation itself.  Tron blended real world action with computer generated images better than any before or since (unless you count Roger Rabbit).  Even the recent Star Wars films aren’t as good, the CGI is surreal, too good looking at times, and this is something we all can agree on.  Somewhere along the line the challenges and hurdles the makers of Tron had to face allowed them to create something different from reality, a truly otherworldly experience.  Men did all the calculations necessary to ‘move’ the camera in the computer by hand.  Every item, wall and vehicles was created the hard way, manually.  There weren’t any software programs for walls, wheels, or even water (one of the only non animated items in the electronic world aside from the bipeds).  Today it would be fare to say that all of the CGI created is based on software and hardware.  Today CGI is simply trying to mimic what we see as reality or reusing a program that’s already been created (Pixar continues to reuse almost everything it’s ever created), at times its biggest flaws.  Tron never made that attempt, the attempt to seem real.  They crafted a whole new world, a new civilization.  In the beginning all of the programmers had to write everything themselves, a long arduous process.  Creating something that had never been tried and that no one knew how to do.  Everything since the beginning of computer animation has been built upon itself.  Tron was that beginning.    

 Much like the inability of formula filmmakers and Hollywood executives to see what possibilities existed in the world of Tron in 1982, the two worlds in the film mirrored life.  The electronic world emulates much of what our lives hold.  Authoritarian control figures, social and political beliefs - many centered on a spiritual belief, underlings trying to climb the ladder, and lets not forget technophobia.  The ‘real’ world represents the spiritual world beyond reach, a metaphor for our analogues of humanity.  The 'real' world and especially the ending illustrate just how close our world is to what the perceived world of Tron is like.  We watch the last image burn and fade out, the lapsed image of a city at night with its street traffic glowing and streaking… commenting wryly on today’s society, from the past, in an eerie manner.  Metropolis did something similar so many years ago and still remains a timeless work of art as well as a future prediction.  Someday maybe Tron will be viewed the same way.  Or is it already? 

Have the computer geeks taken over the planet or have the computers?