Introduction

Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) has been around for decades and will continue to do for many more decades. Computer Generated Imagery was used in the 1970’s for flight simulation to train pilots (Yan, 1985), but as is common with new technologies, improvements can be made, and these initial improvements came over a decade later in the 1980’s thanks to the developments in electronics and algorithms (Yan, 1985). These improvements have continued and the result is the Computer Generated Imagery films to which there are many around today. Some of which are completely CGI like Surfs Up (Cohen, 2008), while others are partially CGI like Transformers (Cohen, 2008).

Stuntmen have fallen foul of the advancing technology that is Computer Generated Imagery. Weinman commented on this in his report, while discussing the issue of stuntmen going head to head with CGI he said “stunt work is the only element that is actually worse than it was 20 years ago” (Weinman, 2008). Weinman makes additional comments stating that the reason for this decrease in the need for stuntmen is due to the fact that fight scenes are “limited to the things that humans can do without getting killed” and as films try and create something that will impress the viewers, Computer Generated Imagery allows films to “show things that couldn’t possibly be done in real life” (Weinman, 2008).