I do this at my job. Of course, for my company it's just to show what things will look like when they're done, rather than pretending they're nicer than they are. I'd think doing it fulltime would be rather boring, though.

There is a difference between retouching for ads and stills, and blatantly re-rendering scenes with better mapping, polys, etc...

The Bullshot in question in the PA comic is the latter.

I always assume claims made on ANY box for ANY product are inflated or otherwise dishonest.

Reminds me of the circulars for TVs, which traditionally say "screen shots simulated"

I always used to think that was just a CRT thing (since they don't photograph well), but they do it with LCD and plasma, too.

@Courteous_Gentleman: Based on the screens I've been seeing industry-wide lately, I'm guessing the re-rendering happens a lot.

I think the most notable case of this is the notorious Killzone demo on the PS3 a few years ago. The whole video was a "target video", but people got the impression it was rendered on the PS3...or the impression that the developer wanted us to believe it was rendered on the PS3.

Either way, it caused quite the stir.

You don't want to know what they do to food in ads.

@Plates: You mean like the mashed potato "milkshakes"?

Consumerist wins mad cool points for linking to Penny Arcade

So basically, the bullshots have just about as much to do with the actual gameplay as the trailers we typically see (both in-game and in RL).

not a surprise.

This is sorta related, but it kind of reminds me of the screenshots used on the boxes of sports games like Madden or NBA Live. Ever notice how they never put in-game graphics on the back of the box? It's always the replay shots which look much better. Kinda shady but fortunately I know better.

Seems like a cool job.

What do you want them to do, post up shitty shots of the ingame? Its no big deal, you kind of know what to expect from an xbox 360 or a PS3.

This is done everywhere. I even heard those Whoppers on the menu are painted.

@theblackdog: They add artificial colors to the items. Which is pretty scary if you ignore the fact that no one is going to eat that particular piece :P

Hey Activision, Nintendo called from 1985 and recommends you use the actual game in the commercial, it will sell way better.

@AlteredBeast: Except all the reviews I've read say they matched or even surpassed what they initially showed.

@1stMarDiv: I know what you mean. Even if a cut sceen, or replay shot, is rendered with the in game graphics engine, I still find it a bit missleading not showing what the game looks like while you are actually playing it. You see that with role playing games too, like Final Fantasy. Lots of screen shots of in game cut scenes, with a handful of gameplay shots.

@Lucifer_Cat: A lot of times they hire professional food sculptors for things like ice cream and they sculpt it into the perfect looking scoop often with spacers and other supports you don't see from the angle of the shot. Food photography is actually quite elaborate and interesting.

@Victor15b: I'm going to run right out and stab someone in the mouth! No more trachea punching for me!

@Raekwon:

Food photography is a unique area of photography.

Here's a couple of my favorite examples:

That hamburger you see in the ads with the perfect grill-lines? Actually, it's practically RAW - just cooked enough to brown the outer surface, and then they take a hot skewer and carefully burn those grillmarks into place.

How about that juicy, delicious turkey, all glazed and shiny? Barely cooked, and doused in motor oil for that "Fresh on Thanksgiving" look.

Often times the product you see is not the product being photographed. Like a previous poster said, they use spacers that are out-of-frame to keep things perky, and in just the right shape.

Next time you order food and you think to yourself, "This looks nothing like that picture" you can be thankful that it doesn't!!!!!!!

@Plates: I worked in an Ad department of a chain of supermarkets. They did their own circulars, and had a food stylist to do the food. The turkeys were browned with a creme brule torch. Insides would be raw/frozen. They used the tilt-shift lenses to get perfect focus. It wasn't nefarious, but done to expidite the process. All in all pretty amazing.

@Raekwon: Have you ever noticed how photos of food done without professional food photography skills, like on the menu board of a local mom-and-pop eatery, look AWFUL?

@Raekwon: Oh, that is true. From what I know the game didn't dissapoint.

The issue there, I think, is that most gamers who follow game development are savy to these kinds of "adjusted" screen shots.

But in the case of Killzone, it was a CGI movie, not just a doctored shot. I can see why people felt they were being dupped. Luckly their target video was accurate, but I think the controversy over it has made companies wary of relasing a "target video" without making it very clear that is what it is.

@AlteredBeast:

I believe there was also that persistent rumor that the demo cutscenes were made at 1/5 the speed, and sped up because the engine wasn't optimized for the PS3 at the time...

don't know if that counts as bullshot or movie.

@Plates:

we already knew!

[consumerist.com]

@Plates: Don't forget that for the cereal commercials, they mix in glue with the milk to keep the cereal in place. I remember that little tidbit from my Econ class back in High School almost 10 years ago.

This is a SERIOUS pet peeve of mine. When Nintendo was showing off shots of the upcoming (at the time) Zelda: Twilight Princess they were sending out beautiful 720p shots that were clearly from a development PC as the Wii quite obviously can't output anything greater than 480p.

That's not just misleading, that's wrong. You're essentially selling people a misrepresentation of the product (like selling an abused, base-line used car by using stock photos of a new fully-equipped top-of-the-line version - actualy, it's worse because there is no "top-of-the-line" wrt2 the Wii).

@moore850: Nintend's just as bad as the rest of them.

Activision was doing this with their Atari 2600 games back in the 80's ... some things just don't change, even when video game systems do HD imagery.

@Raekwon: My cousin married a professional food photographer. Apparently it can be an insane amount of effort.

@Plates:

Keep in mind also, that not all of those practices are done to be shifty or to dupe the consumer. I used to work in the creative dep't for a major appliance manufacturer. Shooting things like ice cream, frozen drinks, or other cold items is near impossible without using something different. These things melt almost instantly under hot photography lighting. So the ice cream was Crisco and food coloring (or something similar)... iirc, the frozen margs were not even anything edible... photgraphing food is a tricky operation, and the food stylists know ways to make food appetizing, and still hold up throughout the photography process.

Well Fuck. This is exactly the sort of job I am qualified for. Except that I haven't *touched* Maya or 3dsMax in the 2 years I've graduated from college and wasn't good at modeling to begin with. But posing things *other* people have modeled and taking pictures of them?! IN CALIFORNIA?!

/cry

@1stMarDiv:

I always use that as a sort of measuring stick on game commercials and ads.... are you showing me gameplay or cutscenes? Do I see any sort of HUD going on in the commercial or screenshots, or is it all cut scene renderings? If they can't show any gameplay, it's usually not a good sign... they're hiding something behind glossy graphix...

@Ash78:

Yep. In the industry those are called "screen fills." The advertising agency working with the TV manufacturer provides hi-res screen fills to the retailer's circular artist, who resizes them as needed and inserts them into the TV "frame."

@Mirshaan: When you are talking about food photography its pretty reasonable to assume the food is being altered. I don't think anyone thinks that a scoop of ice cream is going to look EXACTLY like the one in the commercial. Ice cream only lasts a few minutes if you are lucky in the hot summer heat before melting so I can't imagine it lasting much longer under hot lights. I haven't heard many complaints about this issue either. Frankly I am not looking at my food long enough to worry about how it looks, when I am hungry I just want to eat it!

@Plates: @Dooley:

I found it amusing to see some of the burger photos on the Wendy's menu are identical except for the extra patty or cheese slice photoshopped into the triple compared to the double.

@Ash78: For what its worth, photographing a live screen is rather difficult.

@Sndtrkman: I learned that one from Consumer Reports kids' magazine, maybe 20 years ago? (They had an article on CD interest rates and one on how the Gap determined what colors were in for the season, too.) One of those childhood facts that's always stuck, hehe.

Whats wrong about it is when you use a PC to demo something and dupe people into thinking its a console game system.

I remember at one of the E3 Expo's when the Xbox 360 was first demoed that they either had an empty display unit of the console and put the real guts in the back of the unit where you couldn't see it or they put PC guts in a Xbox 360 case to make it seem like you were playing the Xbox 360 but what you were getting wasn't really the Xbox 360. I think Sony was also found to have done the same thing with the PS3. So if you go to these Expo's for the demo stations, you should definitely be aware of this.

@Dooley: ...color me ignorant, but isn't motor oil black?

@mariospants: Not in their home market they aren't.

@MikeGrenade: You're right, but I'd say prohibitively difficult. As someone who's tried it, it's virtually impossible to photograph a moving image (even paused) and get anything comparable to the actual picture quality in real life.

@Etoiles: Zillions! I loved that magazine! (But kind of hate CR...mainly because their TV reviews suck. Stick to toasters and cars, guys.)

@Parapraxis: Early builds do normally look like crap and are doctored. I would say it doesn't become bullshot if it is well beyond what the company knows they can do or the end result comes up short and the company still releases edited screens anyway. Case in point, when Ninjabread Man (best video game name ever!) released screens they were bullshots since they knew they would never reach that level. Killzone always planned on reaching the level of their initial hype and so I wouldn't classify theirs as bullshot. Had they not succeeded and kept releasing similar doctored shots/movies then it would classify as bullshot.

@boxiom: Yes, I'd like to see the actual product before I buy it.

@jamar0303: Only after it has been used. Straight from the bottle, it's like runny honey.

@Courteous_Gentleman: The question is what does "advanced" retouching mean? Is it still just retouching, or is it something else?

Gee Whiz. I guess somebody has never seen a doctored up trailer for a TV show or Movie either.

@jamar0303: Depending on the weight it can be from a light tan to a dark rich brown and is mostly translucent when new. Quaker State sells some of it's oil in clear containers, looks pretty cool, but I'll stick to my Mobil 1.

I used to do this for a home shopping network website auctions. We would take pictures of the gemstone/jewelry, and then photoshop it so it looked better.

Largely this was done to remove color distortions from photography but pictures went out looking better than the real product all the time.