After watching the Grand Budapest hotel over break, I was amazed about how they were able to create such an amazing look to the movie from the sets to the color. After looking up videos of behind the scenes of the movie, I was able to find a youtube video that shows some of the shots in the movie with and without the effects. While watching I noticed that besides for the great amount of color correcting in each scene, there are also many miniature and CGI- created structures. In the movie, they also used a lot of matte effects and green screen technology. A lot of the movie used green screens in order to fit the characters on a miniature and in front of CGI animated structures. I also though it was interesting that they added stop-motion in the sledding scene which gave the scene a special look.
I’m glad you posted this because in the last few years CGI has been getting more and more difficult to recognize, and many directors have now started making great use of the tool in films where it previously would have been used at a minimal level. Obviously there are a lot of things that contribute to this increase in CGI, including money, time management, etc. I mean, why spend more money on building or changing a set when you could do it digitally, without the audience being able to tell a difference I might add, for half the cost. For example, in the Wolf of Wall Street, there were a number of times where instead of building a set or flying out to a location, CGI was used to gain the same effect, possibly an even greater one, without having to spend more money. This effectively saved them thousands of dollars that would have been spent on location scouting, set production, and travel expenses among other things. If you want to see just how much CGI was actually implemented in the movie, check this video out
https://vimeo.com/83523133