Slashdot Mirror
Will CGI Collapse the Hollywood Economy?
Some Slashdot Reader writes "Computer animation is getting so cheap that it is practical for use in some TV shows. s1m0ne is an upcoming movie those story is about a guy who secretly creates a real-looking digital character who become famous overnight.
Eventually, it will become more cost-effective to produce whole movies on computer as a standard. And when the technology and costs permits, non-scifi TV shows with an all-digital cast(fully copyrighted of course) will come forth. But the real main issue is: If this takes off, what will happen to all the people like the background characters, costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc."
At least we'll be killing Hollywood!
This could be great for people too ugly to be on camera...and by this I of course mean voice actors! :-)
...but no thanks. I like the CGI in Star Wars, etc., but on the whole I kind of like actors who are ALIVE! I just don't think computers make good actors... maybe it's just me.
Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
:)
Nah really, i don't see this happening any time soon. If these "laid off" support crews do anything, they will just learn computers.
We aren't ridding society of these jobs, just morphing them into different areas. We will need graphics artists, developers, computer technicians and people who can script, do voices and come up with the "soul" of these CGI shows/movies.
Times are changing, not dissapearing!
Its a mute point in that Hollywood already lost when not respecting its own workers and consumers in the early 1950s to 1980s..
Now a independent can put together a movie for under $100,000 and often do..
Once the distrubtion old economy falls and you can get digital movies via internet like through dtv and itv Hollywood will be no more as far as a monoplistic controlling dyke
Don't Tread on OpenSource
As long as the current generation of stars still have their power to attract viewers, Hollywood (TV or film) won't be going all digital any time soon.
I mean, let's say Jennifer Aniston wants to have her own series after Friends ends. Do you think some nut at NBC/CBS/ABC/FOX/wherever is going to say, "Sorry, we're going to use a computer-generated star instead." Probably not.
Right now this does not seem very likely as i don't think movie producers nessarily go with the most cost effective solutions. Often they will choose the trendiest. So its obviously trendier to hire Gucci to mkae your costumes than to contract ILM to do it.
Also we can look at the public's approval of Final Fantasy to see that people aren't really ready to accept CG as a replacement to real people.
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
"...what will happen to all the people like the background characters, costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc."
Why do people who come up with questions like these always think in the most ridiculous extremes? "One day, there'll be no need for actors!"
Well, I'll tell you something: I'm a CG animator. There'll ALWAYS be a need for actors. We don't just make stuff up out of thin air, we need REFERENCE to know how to make a character do something. We'll always need costume designers, afterall, CG characters are not naked. (Not to mention that cloth simulation is a bitch.) We'll always need construction people to build practical models. If anything, it helps with the texture generation and lighting rig.
Face it, we can't simulate reality without something real to base it on. Don't believe me? Look at all the miniature work that went into Episode 2. They could have done that all in CG, but they didn't. Think about it.
Trust me dudes, nothing is going to disappear. Despite the mass market appeal of movies, we still have opera, we still have plays, we still have circuses, and we still have a very diverse market. There is no 'one genre to rule them all', so don't worry about it.
All that's happening with the new technology coming out is we're getting better tools to let our imaginations make it to the screen. It's an accessory, not a replacement.
The history of decentralizing power is that little guys win at the expense of the big guys. We may think it's pretty bad now, what with the FBI wanting to search library lending records, DRM isolating and freezing "content", but it was much worse a hundred or thousand years ago. The printing press helped end the Roman church monopoly. Cheap CGI will help end the Hollywood studio monopoly. The result will be lots more small home-grown studios, if you can even call them that, just as blogs and the Net in general are putting an end to big press, radio, and TV monopolies, and MP3 and file sharing will eventually kill off the few record labels and their marketing driven mega-bands in favor of lots of small bands. The so-called small guys will be all that's left.
Infuriate left and right
Think about it, so many people idolize actors so much, its stupid. I mean, they accomplish absolutely nothing and contribute nothing to society yet they make millions and live easy. Maybe if they get replaced by 3d models people will realize that the whole idea of paying actors millions for playing a part in a movie is horribly stupid.
Movies never managed to replace theater, or even come close. They did change the market, and the customer bases shifted, sometimes signicantly, but Broadway is still a big part of American culture.
I do think we will see movies becoming cheaper, but actors are not just placeholders. An animation will always retain some of its animatronic qualities unless its movements are being mapped from someone real anyways, and that means hiring an actor.
Another large cost of a movie is shooting on location. All who saw The FOTR can vouch that real scenery is still damn impressive, and I would guess unlikely to be replaced completely. After all, while one can add details to digital scenes (IE the recent Star Wars movies), those details tend to look repetitive. I really enjoyed Star Wars' digital scenery, but it had an artificial look, and it only worked for me because Star Wars is at heart a fantasy, a somewhat whimsical one in fact. And I doubt there are many movies that had more time and money spent on them.
And of course, time is one of the biggest issues. If you want a complex and non-artificial looking scene, you need to create hundreds, or even thousands of elements uniquely for every scene. That takes time, and time is money (or so I have been told).
For to end yet again.
You could redo the old Star Trek series," mused Bonchune. "The original mission was only three years. You could do two more entirely in CG."
Uh, oh...
Star Trek, The X Generation
"Bones, this latte is too cold"
"Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a Starbucks"
I think we've been here before, several times during succesive agrarian, industrial & other revolutions.
Which part of "demand for them falls; they retrain and do other things; there's a modicum of structural unemployment until they find other things to do; there's some individual hardship but society adjusts fairly smoothly" were you unable to dream up for yourself?
Now, where's that confounded Stocking Loom
But... But... I wouldn't know what to think without Hollywood Actors and Actresses!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I read a comment not long ago that I agree with: turn the movie/tv industry into a "normal" industry. An industry that is relatively easy to break-in to. Where we regard the best as great workers and give them a bit more money; but nothing as absorbitant as $1.5M/week to shoot Friends. More like $125,000 or so for a season. Let everyone work, spend a LOT less money per movie/episode, and make a lot more of them; allowing everyone to work. I'm a capitalist at heart, don't get me wrong; but isn't the industry working somewhat backwards now?
put the what in the where?
what will happen to all the people like the background characters, costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc
;)
simple... they'll have to get real jobs
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
Oh, baby! I can't wait for my 3D partner! We're gonna make sweet love!
Final Fantasy tried to do everything in CGI, and it pretty much failed in the box office.
Although the CGI was pretty much top notch, it was the story that, IMHO, was the reason it failed miserably.
But seriously, even if the story would have been really good, it is pretty difficult to identify with characters that are either animated by hand, or animated by CGI. Movies are just simply better with real actors (when the actors don't suck). The kissing scene in Final Fantasy was so incredibly fake, for example.
If you went into a movie, however, that you didn't know had CGI characters from the start, it might have been a different experience, provided the CGI was able to fool the audience. But if an audience knew it was fake from the start, it would probably be a failure since noone would be able to take the characters seriously.
I wonder if hollywood has the guts to try something like Final Fantasy again, considering what a box office failure it was.
I suppose they'll be replaced with programmers and computer artists. So what's wrong with that? It's how the world has always worked, and pretty much the only way to live with progress. I guess we could all become satisfied with our current level of technological advancement, but c'mon... Besides, it's only going to hurt the industry, not destory it. I highly doubt even most people from this generation would forgo all real actors for computer ones.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
Policing the p2p networks and hacking into every computer in America will create far more jobs than CG technology will destroy.
This will be just like when CG started replacing landscapes, trees, canyons, cities, etc... Remember how after The Matrix and The Fifth Element were made, there was no need for cities anymore?
Man, I wish we'd had some more foresight.
Oh yeah, and remember how once they started making animated movies, we didn't need actors anymore? What a tragedy.
Alarmist bastards...
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
But the real main issue is: If this takes off, what will happen to all the people like the background characters, costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc.
Umm, who cares? Get with the times, get with the program. If technology changes, we can't be responsible for people left behind. Their personal business models failed, and it is their own fault.
At least that's what most slashdotters have to say about the RIAA member companies when confronted with cheap/easy distribution.
Why should these people be any different from Hillary Rosen's buddies?
FWIW, we're still a long way off. And as far as I can tell, there will always be work for voice actors.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Yeah, just like robots took all the jobs away from factory workers, and just like computers took the jobs away from data processors, etc., etc.
The economy shifts. Deal with it. The rest of us have for many, many years.
Especially us in the tech sector where your job can be made obsolete so fast. Everyone in every job has the possibility to get replaced or have the market shift. Lets stop protecting people like this in a free market geesh
***I GOT NUTHIN***
erm, sorry...ther nerds from the previous story have me all freaked out.
If this takes off, what will happen to all the people like the background characters, costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc.
The same thing that happened to all the cobblers, blacksmiths and buggy-whip makers.
Anyone else notice this? I mean, it's chock full of links and everything... except that the links were all created for this movie. It's as if New Line wanted the world to actually think she exists. They have "The Real Simone" with pictures, books(!), and music. Absolute craziness, I tell you. Absolute craziness.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Not much left for our imagination to do in the modern version of storytelling which is TV drama and movies. What's next, just wiring up the pleasure, pain and emotion centers of our brains to be sure we not only *see* the story one way, but the *feel* about it one way as well? Reading a good story makes your own brain the special effects generator, and surely involves more parts of the brain than having everything imagined for you. Good grief, now we have "reality shows" where we watch other people live & do things, rather than doing things ourselves. Watching someone have fun or interesting experiences *for you* rather than *by you*, is that really healthy?
FUCK THEM! They will have to go get jobs doing something else. Maybe they are the reason that movies cost $100,000.00+ to make nowadays?!?
I bet the caterer makes a shitload. It doesn't bother me one bit to see these people out of work. Half the time our local government doesn't have enough budget to operate vital services like schools, water-treatment, and sanitation. And, here we are acting concerned that some costume-maker in Hollywood is out of a job? HA! Maybe the costume make can go run for office and try to solve some real problems for a change. It would be nice if schools could have the money they need for education. Maybe we should re-think our priorities?
ask the guy who brought you fresh ice for your icebox.
four-oh-four
It's been pointed out to you before that it's moot point, not mute point. I went to your website to see what else you had to say.
It's filled with comments regarding what an idiot everybody else is. The best part is that it's filled with misspelled words.
If you're going to behave as if you have a monopoly on brains you should learn to spell. My advice to you is to gain a little humility.
What sort of TV shows will rise to fill all the time currently taken up by such vapid claptrap as Extra and Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight, who currently make it a major news item when Alec Baldwin cuts a bean-burrito fart in public? Once there are no flesh-and-blood celebrities killing ex-spouses, getting DUIs, and, marrying/divorcing each other, killing themselves, etc, what will we do? They'll have to shut the E! channel down, and put Joan and Melissa Rivers in cryostasis.
How will Playboy and Penthouse stay in business without the occasional blockbuster sales brought by an issue with candid shots of some current celebrity sunbathing nude, or a washed-up actress or singer willingly getting naked for the camera in an attempt to revive her career? I mean, trading popular bootleg actress AI's could be the next big P2P rage-- who needs an old-fashioned nudie magazine when one can spend a few minutes downloading the actual Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Mira Sorvino* on Kazaa and simply order them to engage in a hot lesbian threesome just the way one likes it, on one's own computer?
*-names of current real actresses used for effect, but I really mean popular CGI actresses of the possible future.
~Philly
Modelling characters well is still a lot of work, plus the voice actors.
You also still need the writers, they're already in short supply (don't believe me go to the movies)
Like most things it will change the type of work, and make it more efficient, the jobs will be displaced.
I like the automated checkouts at stores
You know, that depends on a lot of factors (social not technological). I guess when computerized animation, like Futurama and the new "cel-shaded" video games, really get off the ground, then someone will try to replace traditional Korean animators with 3D modelers... All of the Hollywood scene is not likely to disappear because of computers for another 100 years, though. First it will fall into the ocean just before the Rapture...
hollywood, original as always...
the plot of cg characters pretending to be real actors existed in:
macross IV (see Sharon Apple) 1994
megazone 23, parts 1 and 2, at least (Eve) 1985
I don't think actors will go away. An actor produces complex patterns of faces and vocal tones far to complex for a computer for the concievable future.
This will most likely produce a golden age of indie films and it will be wonderful. It is very possible that indies often will be made and touched up if they become popular like George Lucas did to the first Star Wars.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
We've seen this in every old-economy industry where technology has been introduced. Most recently in the music industry; there are only two possible outcomes. Either the business models and practiced witin the industry change to take advantage of the new technology, or through legislation and legal maneuvering, industry trade organizations act to preserve the status quo, thereby damaging the economic efficiency of the market, and reducing the overall customer utility of their products. This latter strategy is doomed to failure in the long term, but does protect the interests of the cuttent industry players, at least for the one generation it will take for the leaders of these organizations to retire and move on.
In short, the movie industry is destined for great termoil, but the result will be a more efficient marketplace offering products of greater customer utility. While the requirements for creation and delivery of these products is not the same as those of the previous generation, there are plenty of service sector opportunities around every new technology. The players must simply be fleible enough to adapt and identify a service requirement of the new technology, which is compatible with that company's earlier business.
It will be a painful transition but we will all be better for it.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
on the whole I kind of like actors who are ALIVE! I just don't think computers make good actors...
Acting isn't in appearance but rather in the voice. Have you ever watched a well-voiced anime?
As CG characters become more common, and "voice actor" begins to come close to "screen actor" in the American public's ranking of professions, it's not Hollywood that'll collapse but rather the cosmetic companies, as they won't be able to sell their wares with li(n)es such as "This actress uses this expensive makeup, so you should too!"
Will I retire or break 10K?
They'll have to get real jobs? Some job that requires an education, perhaps?
Hollywood is REAL. No matter how far we attempt to capture the real out of the imaginary artistry of our creations, there will always the be the human thirst to know what is really real and to see that. Movies are no different. I know that I will always want to see movies that have real actors. You will never be able to resemble them that closely to make me fooled into thinking it was a real person. I love the CGI movies and animations. Will they completely take over? No.
a mute point would be one that no-one could hear....
Well... let's face it, it was/is bound to happen and the fault is only in one side...
Those pesky laws about copyright and ip and the like that have the effect to add value to the wrong hands.
In the former days, those laws arrised from the necessity of protecting the author/inventor. Now those laws are used to rip off authors and inventors and to give protection to corps.
"Who is Nicole Kidman? I only buy Universal movies..." - someone said...
Good luck all...
There will always be a need for live interactions as I doubt that computers could emulate humans to that degree. We all know that AI is far from being indistinguishable from humans. If CGI does get to the point of being good enough and cheap enough to replace actors, you'll still need actors to do the acting (thus the ractors).
As for the "costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc.," well they could get a new education and shift jobs. It happens all the time when major technological/industrial shifts occur. Someone will need to do the programming, modeling, building of new equipment.
The only problem I see is that the CGI might not be as good as the real stuff, but it might be cheaper so that the big corps will switch anyway and we'll get shafted.
That's right, the music and movie and entertainment industry is a great deal larger than the famous and sometimes rich.
....studio musicians, etc...then there is in what you can classify as the famous and sometimes rich.
....... When real people are interacting with real people and use well known actors and such from the entertainment industry.....
There is a great deal more money being spent on such things as trade shows, carpenters, painters, graphics created and applied to real objects
What CGI is better at and will always be better at is creating environments and characters that are not real, like the cave troll in LOTR....
And that is constrained to video/film production only.
Real actors and unsung heros can do what they do faster, better, and far more unique than any character generation can hope to achieve, for it is a combining of mind, creativity and real human interaction where alot of what you see is created from. Just compare something like "Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within" with how you know it could have been done with a combination of real actors and CGI, rather than totally CGI.
This doesn't dismiss the artist who might produce such amazing work as has been done in some of the 3D films.... but these works are few and recognized for their artistic valuse more than information or entertainment value.
I know these things because I've worked in set *theaterical and movie) and trade show work....there is alot more money and far more steady work t o be found in the trade show and corporate theater industry
It's just not there, and will be a while before it is. Last time I checked even the guys over at Square had a very difficult time emulating the look of fabrics. When I hear stuff like this, I'm reminded of an IBM commercial with the actor that played Sisco (Cisco?) ..
WHERE ARE ALL THE FLYING CARS? I WAS PROMISED FLYING CARS?!
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
If this takes off, what will happen to all the people like the background characters, costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc."
They get real jobs.
While I don't think it'll put people out of work, it might get rid of the current system where we have to put up with movies featuring attractive people with the acting skills of cardboard cutouts and the brains of rocks.
I'm sure there are wonderful actors/actresses out there who don't get a chance because they're not sufficiently photogenic. If they can take Pretty Actress A and digitize her, they can then send her off to gaze at a mirror somewhere or do a feature on Entertainment Tonight, while Talented Actress B does the actual acting that they map onto the model.
Maybe they could even get Intelligent Person C to provide quotes/thoughts for occasions where Pretty Actress A has to be seen in public. I'm sure there'd be many people grateful for that.
I certainly wouldn't miss the current system which in many cases idolizes perfect cheekbones and then expects the styrofoam brains behind them to come out with deep thoughts. It's so sad when they can launch a new TV series whose "gimmick" is that the heroine is "less than perfect" (yet who you can clearly see from the ads is just another typical TV actress dressing down and slouching a bit).
Yes, there are actors and actresses who are attractive, talented and intelligent. It's just that there aren't many who are all three.
Take those Coors commercials featuring John Wayne, for instance. John Wayne's been dead for a while, but he still does cameo appearances.
Now imagine the James Bond movie after "Die Another Day" starring Carey Grant. Imagine "Tommy Boy II" featuring Chris Farley brought back from the dead. Or, imagine Marilyn Monroe in just about any role today... people would pay to see that, and Hollywood would be happy to let them.
libertarianswag.com
Obviously capitalism will fail, thus we will enter a Star Trek type communist utopia!
Wasn't that the premise of the movie Looker?
What do you know I wrote a novel
Don;t need em anymore.
Did the Japanese, Czech, or Yugoslav animated movies kill of Hollywood moguls? Nope, and they will not this time either.
Then I am all for it.
A few other *actors* that I would love to see go jobless due to technology:
1.Brandon Frasier
2.Whoopie Goldberg
3.Adam Sandler
4.Keanu Reeves(seriously though, come on)
I know I'm missing a few incomponents millionaires, please submit.
If you think
What synths have done is make it possible for new kinds of music to exist, and make it possible for people who previously couldn't to make music [like me].
Note to article submitter: please disembark the hypetrain
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Let's replace athletes with CG characters. No more million dollar salaries to hit a ball with a bat. Just have the computer animate a fantasy baseball game. Hell the TV show could even be interactive, taking the best fantasy leauge players' teams from around the world and pitting them against each other.
Bah whatever.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
normally i would say never say never, but in this instance thats not the case. basic human nature, we want to see naked wemon, not naked computer models:)
CGI is not going to make actors, costume designers, score composers (like John Williams), or directors obsolete. Its simply going to be a tool to supplement and aid.
Even when computers graphics, sound, and physics get so good that we could design exacting realism via CGI, it would still be painstaking, consuming too much time. Think about all of the things that real-life actors do and real-life scenarios do, which would have to be emulated. All of the little habbits, motions, etc etc -- not to mention voice and emotion. Sorry, but there's no way that one guy is going to be able to sit at his computer and create a complicated movie with several characters, and accurately express emotion in their appearances and voices.
Ultimately, it will still be much cheaper to higher real actors for major parts -- they won't be necessary for background parts, like crowds, armies, etc; but for the main parts, completely necessary.
CGI will, of course, be very useful in many movies (don't count on it being used for Soap Operas, though). It will be used to eliminate flaws, or even to place characters in a virtual or modified world (as was done in Jurassic Park 1/2). CGI will also be useful for things which simply aren't possible in the real world -- like dinosaurs, for example; or space-ships, aliens, etc etc.
But real-world models will also still be used. Though computer CGI is evolving at an exponential rate, so is animatronics. 10, 20 years down the road, it may be possible to do a movie like Jurassic Park using life-sized robotic recreations. What's the advantage to this? Well, in terms of the creature, very little. But in terms of the actors, alot. Its hard for an actor to seriously act terrified when some head on a stick representing a T-rex is chasing them.
Of course, if such is used, CGI will also be used to supplement it. Animatronic models may be able to walk and look like dinosaurs, for example, but don't count on them steaming up a window with their breath, or many other things which real animals would do. So CGI will be used to add that.
CGI will (already has been) very useful. But it does not completely eliminate the need for traditional approaches. I'm sorry, but a person created entirely on a computer will never have the same emotion as a real character.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Not only could you DIVX the latest movies,
but you could have the CGI chariters on you PC acting them out!!!.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
They're the ones pushing the DMCA and other crap legislation. I pray that the asteroid that is supposed to hit the earth breaks up and hits Hollywierd and Redmond. That would be sweet!
the same agument was made when animation first came out. People were saying Daffy Duck and Porky Pig were going to be taking away actors jobs and it looks like that did not happen.
sooner or later, someone here has to mention celebrity culture and hero worship.
People need people to emulate, and I don't believe that the human psyche is ready to yearn to be digital Brad Pitt. It will never be a secret (the conceit in S1M0NE, for example) that there are no real people in a film because we're just too interconnected, informationally-speaking, so it'll be a choice by the mass market, and I guarantee that sometimes we will want to see real people doing things that we can't do, that we wouldn't do, that we want to do.
It's already been mentioned that the market will just expand to accommodate the new styles of entertainment, but the end to film and the use of human crews to make movies is inconceivable.
Consider, also, that the Teamsters wouldn't hear of it. Trust me, if this ever becomes a major threat, the East Coast Council will just sign a deal with everyone outlawing CG. Don't think they can do it? You've obviously never dealt with them. I happen to work on feature films for a living and have.
"Keaton always said 'I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him.' Well, I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Kaiser Soze."
Anyway, I'm not afraid for my job, so I don't expect anyone to be afraid for it for me. Thanks anyway.
Every five years, this question comes up. In the early 80s, the question was raised in the form of the movie, "Lookers," directed by Michael Crichton.
In Lookers, actors and actresses are being replaced with computer-generated equivalents, to optimize their impact in advertisements. A techno-thriller "ahead of its time."
[
They are the buggy whip of todays era.
If CG makes movie making exceptionally inexpensive, but box office, DVD, and spin off revenue remains constant (or more likely grows) the profit margin will go through the roof, and Hollywood will be in better shape than ever.
>>
they will all be flipping burgers at McDonalds, you want frys with that???
Some Slashdot Reader writes "[Composition and Duplication of music] is getting so cheap that it is practical for use in [my mom's P100]. [...] Eventually, it will become more cost-effective to [distribute] whole [albums] on computer as a standard. And when the technology and costs permits, non-[electronic music] with an all-digital [arrangements](fully copyrighted of course) will come forth. But the real main issue is: If this takes off, what will happen to all the people like the background [singers], [studio musicians], [multi-track tape engineers], [CD presses], [record] companies, etc."
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
There's no way actors will ever disappear. Media producers have learned the value of the "star system": you promote certain entertainers (regardless of their talent), mainly by feeding interesting stories to the press. How big is J-Lo's butt this week? Who was that I saw checking into the Betty Ford Clinic? Whoops! Brittney did it again! A CG character just can't generate that kind of interest. And that interest is what pulls the rubes^H^H^H^H^H audience into movie theaters.
You can compare this to the rise of the phonograph record. Everyone predicted that live performances would disappear. Hasn't happened yet. Some people will always want to see live actors (REAL actors) on a stage.
Aside: I love to tease the wife about this. She has her Equity & SAG cards, but every time a new & improved CG effect is produced, I tell her, "See, it's just a matter of time before you'll be fetching my Mt. Dew!"
My friend's pointy haired boss type once told him that something was a "moo point." When my friend asked him what a moo point was, he explained "you know, like a cow's opinion, it just doesn't matter."
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Not to mention, unless synthesizer technologies are better than I think they are, we still need voice *actors*. And if CG does become the norm, then there will be that many more jobs in those shops, thereby taking up the slack for any lost jobs in traditional film. Now to something in which my knowledge is very vague: even if CG is cheaper, is it faster? I'm sure there are plenty of people who do not have the patience to oversee that long a project. And would it be fast enough to be practical for weekly TV shows? (or daily, in the case of soaps)
When it becomes cheaper to create CGI 'actors', I think we'll see the renaissance of theatre as an idiom that the common man enjoys. It takes much more skill and talent to excel at theatre than it does to excel on the telly or silver-screen. Most of the actors/actresses out there are nothing more than Barbie and Ken dolls; they hardly got where they are due to their skills as thespians. CGI will shift power away from these pretenders and back towards /real/ actors and actresses. You, as much as people like technology, they need visceral and intimate, as well as vicarious, experience. This tendency has been called 'high-tech/high-touch' by some scholars. Don't lament that true acting by carbon-based lifeforms will become extinct; remember: for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction!
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
FUCK YOU LUDDITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111 .a.d.d.g.dg.dg.da.dg.ahgh..dadf.adfassssagdagasdga sdgasdgasdgasdgfasdgasdgasdgasdasdgfsadfadsfasdfas dfasdf
Time for the rest of them to get a new job. This was going to happen whether anyone foresaw it or not. If you even gave it 10 minutes' time for thought, you would have concluded in the first 30 seconds that this is how it would turn out. I remember my dad predicting this way back about 8 years ago or so. At that time I didn't think it was possible, but many things have changed since then.
Personally I'm glad. Hollywood is too big for its britches, and for no good reason either. They don't produce quality entertainment anymore.. hopefully this will help.
You're nothing; like me.
His story Gold discusses many of these issues. A good read, and definitely interesting.
CmdrTaco??? This is your handle? How lame. Get a life and stop living with your mom. What a geek. Yes, I'm an anonymous coward, but who the hell cares? So stop bitching.
A character in a movie is always composite -- a combination of the character that was envisioned by the person who wrote their lines, blended with the personality and imagination of the actor that ultimately ends up portraying that character. It is because of this blend that you will be hard pressed to find two characters that are alike, even if they have had their lines written by the same person -- In fact, you may even find that different characters in different movies, portrayed by the same actor, have more similarities than any two characters whose lines were written by the same person.
If you replace the characters by CGI, suddenly not only are their lines written by a small group of people (sometimes even only one person), but the characters themselves become a presentation of an equally small group. There are two measures that can minimize this problem -- _really_ good writers and good voice talent. However, these measures cannot take things any further than you can expect from any other well-done cartoon.
So, unless or until the movie-going public is ready to accept cartoons (no matter how well done they are, that is what they would be) as the standard movie form rather than the currently more popular photographic form, we won't see CGI actually replacing actors in a large scale.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Computer generated actors replacing humans?
Let's see: Jeri Ryan joins Star Trek Voyager and the ratings skyrocket. Point made, loud and clear.
There would be no ugly people in porn.
Imagine seeing a hot babe, secretly taking a few pictures, then going home and putting her in a porn flick!
Even better, if she turns you down for a date, put the flick up on the web! Whips, chains, large groups of ex-cons, dogs, salamanders, let your sick mind run wild!
For the time being, I don't think CG is lifelike enough to replace real actors in non sci-fi movies. The reason is that CG chacaters, even good ones, still seem to lack realistic motions... even if they have lifelike appearance as a still.
Over the long run, however, I still don't see it happening. The reason being is the entire culture that has been built upon the obsession of movie stars and their lifestyles.
For some reason, one that I can't explain, people seem to enjoy reading about the daily lives of their favorite celebrities. They like reading about the rediculous things these actors do with their money. They like reading about Hollywood divorces. They like obsessing over famous figures, and dream about someday meeting them. They like watching their favorite actors win academy awards.
If you replace actors with computer generated characters, all of this goes away. The allure of
celebrity vanishes because a computer generated character isn't real. They can't win awards in the same way. They can't have a lifestyle that the common person envies because they aren't alive. A common person can't ever hope to meet a celebrity who only exists as a computer program.
I believe a huge part of the film industry relies on the attraction people have to the actors themselves. I believe that replacing actors with CG will affect just about everything but kids films negatively from a money standpoint, because people will lose interest.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Signs. I saw it last night; the acting was so forced and methodical-- it must have been robots
With the advent of the automobile what happened to the buggy and carriage makers; the harness makers; the stable hands etc. Some adapted and others threw in the towel. The Fischers (became part of GM eventually) and the Dodge Brothers and the Studebakers switched to making automobiles. Time marches on and and those that do not adapt become another casuality in the course of time.
Adapt or perish!
That's not a full CG character. The technology isn't that good yet. I think there's some compositing, but not full 3D character generation. Nor are cloth and hair simulation anywhere near that good yet.
This all reminds me of a Howard Chaykin comic book called "American Flagg", where the main character was a former actor who had been replaced by digital a look-a-like. Not bad for a comic that was produced in the early eighties by First Comics.
"But the real main issue is: If this takes off, what will happen to all the people like the background characters, costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc."
Do you really think CGI is going to get good enough to fool human beings any time soon? Or even any time at all?
The human brain is designed among other things to detect subtle motions that indicate emotional state, physical condition, intentions, a host of things with just a look. To generate a synthetic character that could be as popular as Julia Roberts, one would have to know and duplicate the visual traits that make her popular. Not going to happen soon, if ever. It is easy to CGI a robot or a monster, probably impossible to do it for a human.
Second is the sheer number of pixels to be calculated. If you want something to look real on screen, you pretty much have to duplicate the dot size of 35mm film. At 32 frames per second, that's a hell of a lot of computing which is not that cheap.
Third, where are you going to get all the motion capture to program all those "extras"? No two human beings move the same way, therefore all the extras will have to be "performed" to the same level of complexity as the lead characters. That is one hell of a pile of work for the CGI team to do. If they don't do it, the result will be cartoonish, which will spoil the "realism". Which means ten seconds of "random bum on street corner" will cost the same as ten seconds of "Julia Roberts".
It will probably ALWAYS be cheaper to photograph real humans than create fake ones, so all the set painters etc. will still be needed. CGI is great for impossible special effects, monsters, all that stuff, but it will not replace humans.
However even if it did, I have to ask why anybody should care if a bunch of Hollywood painters etc. lose their jobs. Ask yourself when the last GM car was painted by hand from the factory.
Progress baby! Suck it up!
From the Director to the "stars" to the intern who gets coffee for the assistant key grip, I could care less if they all choked on their matzo soup infront of their families the night before a big movie opening. I hope CGI turns that industry upside down, maybe the RI@@ will be too busy then to bother hacking our boxen.
With companies switching to Linux on x86 instead of expensive SGI machines the cost of adding a workstation is greatly reduced. That means they can hire more animators who can then work on lots of shows. Windows just eats money and sends it to the empire, reducing productivity and cutting jobs. Linux is freedom because it lets you save money on software costs, and therefore you can be more productive by hiring more people. If more people saw the linux light, then we could be out of the recession faster because companies wouldn't have to fork out for Microsoft's new licensing scheme.
Using CGI to make movies to save the price of actors is like improving the horse carriage by inventing an electric buggy whip. Since the human imagination is what it's all about anyhow, direct stimulation of the brain's dream centers is the technology which will prevail.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
To a considerable extent, CG is already talent-limited, not tool-limited. There aren't that many people who can really use a 3D animation system artistically. Look at amateur CG. Spaceships, robots, rollercoasters. But very, very few people can do a good model of their cat. Nor is training the problem. Looking at demo reels from art school students shows how few people, even with training, are any good.
Since I've done tools for 3D animation, I'm very aware of this. I've been down to major Hollywood animation shops. I know good animation artists and have watched them work. The good ones have very clear internal pictures of what they want out, and work until they get there. This is a rare skill. And it has nothing to do with the tools. These people do their creative work with a pencil. I can run the same programs they use, but can produce only mediocre art.
As much as I can understand your argument about the 'realness' of theater actors, I don't think theater performance gives you a visceral and intimate experience.
One reason is distance in a theater, because actors and viewers are usually quite a few meters away and that is no good for intimacy. Stage actors almost always have to *yell* so the audience can hear what they say. This creates quite unnatural situations.
Theater has another "problem": suspense of disbelief. Movies (CGI or no) create stunningly real scenarios you can feel totally immersed in. Theater play always reminds you that aou are in a theater and those are actors on a stage that has obviously been painted and glued together. You could even say that theater concentrates/relies solely on the spoken content, just because it lacks the power of illusion.
So you might argue that the movies and theaters are profoundly different with regards to their audience's expectations and experience, it is very difficult to compare them.
"vcr's will kill the cinema!" "tv will kill radio stations!" "computers will kill books!" "contraception pills will put an end to mankind!" "no one can survive travelling on the railroad!" "cgi will remove the need for actors!" time and time in history, new inventions where made that, at first, looked like they would make something else obsolete. time and time again, that was wrong. the same can apply here. even if cgi gets better and better, an animated character will never have a soul.. and to act good, you need a soul. now, there are cg films like final fantasy or shrek with great artwork and fantastic animation. but now, just for a second, imagine "Casablanca" based on CG. qed.
Karma
Assuming this could ever happen, new jobs would be filled by new people to take the place of the old.
I'm talking sysadmins, 3D modelers, network specialists, project managers (to manage concurrent work on multiple portions of the movie at once to reduce overall production time), and so on. Some people wouldn't go, like voice talent and those who record the audio and write/perform the score.
Oh, and you'll still need caterers. The need for cast and crew (voice talent, at least) to eat will never be replaced by computers.
That said, I confess I'm quite fascinated by what animators can do these days and I don't begrudge them their work one bit. As many people have already pointed out, it's quite supplementary to what we do, although the work is a bit steadier
It didn't kill off live-actor movies, did it? Indeed, it seems to me that the Disney organization made a few live-actor movies itself...
Besides, the animators couldn't do it all by themselves. All of the figures in the Disney cartoons that had to look human--such as Snow White--were "rotoscoped," a process that basically allowed animators to trace over film of human actors.
I don't know if you remember the Disney publicity material that implied that actors were hired to spend lots of time "modelling" so that the animators could see and draw how the folds of the clothing moved, etc? That was disinformation--they didn't make drawings of the "models," they rotoscoped the actors who did the actual performances you saw in the film. I mean cartoon.
The modern analog to this is, of course, motion capture.
All the "doing away with live actors" is just another version of the managerial "robots-don't-call-in-sick-or-have-strikes" fantasy. If you're a manager, it seems as if it would be nice to have total control and not have to deal with those difficult human beings all the time... but those pesky machines have problems of their own--to say nothing of the human technicians that operate them, the human field service engineers that repair them, and the human vendors that sell them to you in the first place and want to make money out of them...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Who cares what happens to those people in the future? As long as I can still pirate Hollywood's warez on a sweet, sweet P2P network. Sooooo 31337.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
I believe the next step would be that people no longer watch movies, but are joining in (logging on to a service) and are becoming their own director of a movie, in some kind of computer game or similar (mass-roleplay or whatever). If something really exiting happened, the on-line service will analyse the data and sell the REPLAY (of what happened) to the world as a "movie". Still, this would be the next step for making movies more and more interactive, and finally I guess some people may dedicate their lives to services like this.
In other words, we will see a big MERGE, where Movies/hollywood will meet the game-companies. I think this merge may be comparative to the computer and telecom merge that is taking place right now.
I am both sorry and happy about this. Happy because it will make a more thrilling life for people that take part in these big on-line services, and sorry because they will lose their real-life. I know several people that allready "live" for EverQuest, Counter-Strike and Anarchy Online. I fear for their future.
I think that, to a large extent, Hollywood will see some of this occur. Simple economics will see to that: when you can produce something for much less cost and much less risk (no temperamental stars ODing or stomping off the set, no climate problems to deal with, etc.), and absolute creative control, the business will gravitate toward that. No doubt some purists will continue to use the old ways, but they'll be under increasing pressure to justify the additional costs.
For an example, look at photography. By and large, professionals no longer manipulate images using darkroom techniques, they use Photoshop. Some fine photographers no doubt still use traditional methods on occasion, but the meat-and-potatoes work that is the mainstay of photographer's income is all done using Photoshop these days. Hollywood will end up beng no different.
As for lack of live celebrities, maybe that'll be a factor, but it hasn't seemed to hurt The Simpsons, or South Park. I think people would adapt.
One phenomenon I expect to see is, as the technology gets cheaper and better, very small groups of people will be able to produce Hollywood-quality entertainment for very low cost, and distribute it via the internet. If it's good enough, it might further cut into the real Hollywood's revenue, and be yet another source of pressure for the entertainment industry to use these techniques itself.
I don't know how many times I've heard the 'What will happen to all the people?' technology argument, I think it's pretty obvious by this point that people are more adaptable then we think, and these shifts take time.
But in this case, it's a stupid question.
Yes, I heard also about new machines that will replace humans everywhere. Those machines can proccess information much faster, they also serve as an advanced typewrter (just think of all the repairmen out of work!). We must fight this evil! Because when we less suspect it, they will replace people at factories, airlines, schools, everywhere. Oh my! mankind is doomed!
Unless society just took a 180' about while I was off getting my snack (Poppycock, Yum!), people are always going to want to see real people behind the camera. Of course, things could get ugly when the cast of Friends demands another insane increase in salary for their next season, only to have the Director say, "I have replaced you all with very small shell scripts. Go away."
If CGI ever gets that good, I'm betting the pay vs. talent scale will be rearranged in short order. Maybe then we'll get as diverse voice acting as they do for anime in Japan...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Lots of people have pointed out that CGI is not showing any sign of replacing actors, in main roles, any time soon. But they missed the other aspect of the story.
CGI is already being used in place of sets, locations, crowd scenes, etc, that are too expensive to physically create. Expensive CGI is already at the point where it is hard to see any difference between CGI and a physical set. When cheap CGI gets to this point then pretty much all acting will take place in front of a blue screen, and all but the cheapest and most readily available sets will be virtual.
If we can dispense with sets, and filming on location, and extras, then that is a big slice of the Holywood economy.
Would conclude that plummeting costs would collapse an industry.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Edgy? this motion-sickness-inducing, MTV-abused, BlairWitch amateur hour crap is still called edgy?
Call me oldfashioned, but I I'll take a steadicam shot over this crap any day. Sure, sometimes the camera needs to tumble, and vibrate for effect, but most of the time you don't want to watch a movie as if it was shot by a crackmonkey with a camcorder...
--
Power to the Peaceful
Would that be a bad thing?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
210 comments and not a one of them at -1?! WAHT IS THE WORLD COMING TO!?
well here is the problem, you will never be able to replace HUMAN actors and with CGI ones and people accept them as real. Sure CG movies like Monsters inc are great, but even Lassater knows that humans are hard to make look real because we know how we move and if it is a tiny bit off, the believibility goes away. Look at Final Fantasy, all the characters were done with motion capture from real people, and even that was awkward and poor looking, sure in a still frame you might second guess yourself but no computer animator can ever know what an actor is thinking, feeling enough to animate him/her frame by frame. So maybe someday in 20-30 years when technology thinks on its own, but still there is the human error factor, all software is created by humans, and humans are naturally flawed.
i guess these people will all have to back to school and learn computer animation. with there nbackground in ding set work in reality, they could probably do a better job at animation.
UPGRADE YOUR SKILLS BABY !!!
while hoping for a boon for ugly actors, don't quit your day job.
What is it? I've never been able to figure it out. The article mentioned CG, but not I. Thanks, Andy.
For others wishing to see the trailer with mplayer/xine and without Flash installed, you may find the following command helpful (tested with mplayer 0.90pre6)
;-) )
mencoder mms://63.236.6.6/simone_trailer_500k.asf -oac copy -ovc copy simone_trailer_500k.asf
The other stream is 300k (replace the 500 with a 300 in the above command line) and the files are 4.9MB and 7.7MB.
No, asfrecorder does not work on this url, I tried and would not have gone to all this trouble if it did.
Stream it once. Watch it n times. Effectively using 1/nth the bandwidth. (n > 0, of course
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
What it will do is make impossible stunts possible, and allow filmmakers and screenwriters the freedom to write whatever they can imagine. CGI isn't going to destroy filmmaking as we know it. It's going to continue to do what it's already done: enhance it and make it cheaper to do, so there'll be more of it over all. With the new markets available via satellite and cable TV, all that will happen is that more movies will be made and pretty much everybody benefits. Except the guys with their butt-cracks hanging out who stand around all day collecting $80 an hour waiting for somebody to tell them to turn on the wind machine who call themselves special effects men. And the guys who make giant plaster effigies of monuments and historical buildings. But that's about all.
Seriously. If there's one thing people in Hollywood know how to do, it's waste money.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Don't we?
Besides, there's a line from the movie Rockstar - something along the lines of, "Girls want you because you're larger than life. That makes the guys want to be you. And the guys buy the records. Your job is to live the dream so other people don't have to." Without the appeal of the glamorous moviestar lives and everything off screen, there's only a fraction of the appeal. 1s and 0s just aren't that sexy.
Sorry, but you're assuming that future CG will require the artists to explicitly define every last detail of their scenes as they do today. Not so. Much more likely they'll have "living" virtual worlds and actors that they can direct at higher levels of abstractions by default, rather than spending 2 hours painstakingly perfecting TomCruise2.0's smirk, and 3 hours getting Bimbo3.0s boobs to jiggle just right.
Its hard for an actor to seriously act terrified when some head on a stick representing a T-rex is chasing them.
And in those same 20 years augmented reality will be a reality. Instead of wasting time and money on animatronics, the actors will be wearing (green) augmented reality glasses so they WILL be able to interact with the CG world around them.
Sorry to come down so hard on your naysaying, but you said "never" at the end of your post, so I felt compelled. :)
--
Power to the Peaceful
So just how exactly is the Common Gateway Interface going to collapse Hollywood's Economy?
Hee hee I had a biochemist housemate who thought my book on CGI programming was all about how to make animated films.
Call it CG!
Human movement has been hard to make convincing. The problem does not seem to be technology, but the modeler's ability to tell the machine *how* exactly to make things move. IOW, It is the feedback (judegment) process that is the weak-link, not the generation.
The subtleties of human movement is just very very tough to get right. For one, different people will notice different things "wrong". Thus, a group of geeky modelers may get it "right" from *their* perspective, but a 25-year-old socially-adept bimbo in the audience may notice unnatural oddities that the geeks didn't.
It is hard to articulate such subtleties, and those best at noticing may be the least able to describe what "bothers" them about it. It is an "emotional thing".
(Some studies suggest that males and females process facial expressions differently.)
Further, when you watch the same movement over and over again during review and debugging, you start to get "burned in" to what you expect. IOW, you lose that "first glance" objectivity. I am sure many other programmers have had similar experiences when somebody points out a problem that should have been obvious to you, but you were too "deep" in it to notice. Or you write something that seems clear to you, but it confuses others because you assumed stuff that you forgot to state explicitly.
One approach is to use actual actors to capture movement, as described in parent, and then model on top of that (track coordinates, etc.), but unless you are making a "character", you might just as well use the real actor if you are going thru the trouble, perhaps with some minor digital adjustments.
facial movements and expressions are going to be the hardest.
It might be possible to make a "library" of natural movements, and use the perfected movements over and over again, but after a while the repetition will be noticable to more sophisticated audiences and new sequences will have to be evaluated and added.
In short, for close-up personal, touchy-feeling movies and dramas, I don't see digital actors replacing the human ones any time soon. But, for action pictures and kid flicks we will probably see some acceptable stuff just around the corner.
Table-ized A.I.
Modern armies have been moving away from having large numbers of soldiers. The Iraqi army in 1991 was about 3 million, suffered 200 000 casualties. Raw numbers didn't help.
Pilots in the airforce is another example. Unmanned aircraft are starting to become important to the military.
You make an excellent point. For some reason, artists seem to be the only ones who understand that.
Computers can do all kinds of lovely simulations, but human creativity is an integral part of making animation interesting.
Wish I could mod you up.
Have you ever had sex with an actual female human? I think not.
What made you think I was either male or lesbian? And what does my virginity have to do with my opinion of motion pictures?
They really DON'T deserve that much money
According to high school/undergrad economic theory, screen actors deserve whatever a studio is Willing To Pay(tm).
Mr. Football player, you do NOT deserve $5 million a year because you can run and throw a fucking ball.
That's not why professional football players claim to deserve high pay. They claim to deserve high pay because they can run and kick a ball better than anybody else in the country.
Will I retire or break 10K?
People love hearing about people. Personally I don't care about stars; I rarely go see a movie because somebody is in it. ie Who the fuck is Mark Hammel? But I enjoyed his three big movies.
Other people just go watch every movie with Julia Roberts or Brad Pitt in it because they like those stars. There are shows like Entertainment Tonight, magazines like People and Teen People, and of course tabloids. There are tons of people, usually not geeks, who love gossip about real people. Is it true Britney Spears is emailing Prince Philip? Gives them something to talk about around the water cooler or whatever.
Right now Eninem is hottest trend with the high school kids. Is it because of his songs? Partially. Is it because he acts like an idiot? Paritally. Until we get the holodeck where we can create a new Eminem, Fred Durst (Limp Bizkit), Alice Cooper, or Ozzy Osburn to run around like a goof real world stars will always have an edge over corporate created stars. Sure the first CG star will be a gimick and be go through a nice scripted interviewed on ET, but seeing a real person "interviewing" a CG person will get old soon. What kind of funny stories about making the movie are they going to be able to tell?
BTW I enjoy most Jackie Chans movies. Not because they are really all that good, they aren't, but because I am watching Jackie Chan do amazing stunts. Its like going to the circus, but in a movie. With CG we can have Keanue Reeves dodging bullets, but in the end even though it is "more spectacular" it just isn't quite as cool as watching a real person jump off a real bridge onto a real hovercraft.
Celbrities are going to be hard to replace, even if we can make images just as good on film.
What's really got this town (collective for Burbank, Culver City, Hollywood, West Hollywood) shaking is the fear that all the cg work will go to Canada!
Utter lack of vision.
If you have not noticed, computers can do something very interesting. It is called automation. They can automate all sorts of tasks. There is no reason why emotions, different voices, different looks, music, etc, etc, can't be generated automatically. Hell, our genes are basically a complicated set of data that follow a few rules. There is no reason why a computer could not automatically generate a fake human. Tweak a few knobs for a general personality and let the computer fill in the rest.
Of course, barring some breakthrough, I don't think this could happen any time soon. Computational power is still too limited and we hardly understand anything about AI and artificial-life.
With that said, you view may depend on if you believe "people" are more than their genes (do you have a soul?). Assuming there is more than just physical parts to a human, then yes, it might be impossible for a computer to generate a true-to-life fake human. I believe it could still get close though.
oh.... er, nevermind.
Excellent point. But you missed one good use of CGI that needs an actor: using CGI to paint a realistic mask over an existing person (face, body, clothes).
:-)
This would be done for many reasons, like using a stunt double to transparently replace an actor for a stunt. This is already being done, but it'll get better and it'll get "real time" (for at least an on the set copy, later to be fully rendered out).
Or, if you have an actor whose too old/young for a part (or for the movie you need flashback/forward footage of the actor of a different age), but you have a enough source material (past scans, old movies, touched up current originals). Then you could just film the actor (sans makup) and use CGI to do the age replacement. With real time mapping and digital cameras, the actor and director could get a pretty good idea (better than they have right now w/ film) of what the take will turn out like. The control points for the virtual actor should be fairly easy to do, since the face/body is a close match. You get the actor to deliver the emotion, body movements, facial expressions and map those onto the virtual actor.
Or, do a similar task from above, but add in full CGI "makeup". Make someone a weird alien w/o makeup or a double for Bogart. Why would you want to do this, after all makeup is fairly cheap? To save the actor from hours of preperation each day or endure sometimes painful makeup (read about Jim Carey's makeup for the Grinch). Instead they have to go through the process _once_ (a few makeup jobs, endless scans, etc) and then the virtual mask is done. After that, the actor walks onto the set and is ready to go. Maybe some minor makup added (more for the "feel" to get the actor into character and to help the other actors react right). The best part of this is can make _really_ alien aliens, just as long as you give the actor "control points" for them to map facial movements onto the cgi screen.
Lastly the same technique could be used to remove a few extra pounds the next time the actor shows up a bit overweight for the part.
Now if only Martin Hash Animation:Master would port to Linux...that would make me a happy camper...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
The big technological road block is getting from the script to the emotions. With an actor, the director can give directions such as "No, no, your character is cereberal. When he gets angry it has to be cold and steely, less is more." Without an actor, the CGI puppet master has to spend hours tinkering to try to get the right effect.
So I see a battle, CGI puppet masters versus actors. A good CGI puppet master can do several characters. As the sole creator of ensemble pieces his work is freed from the constraints of the egos of the actors. The advantages of CGI props and settings can be exploited to the full without the difficulties of integrating with live action, or the expense of real props and location shooting. Against that, CGI puppet masters will slog for hours to get OK renditions of emotional nuances that come to actors, literally, naturally.
The effect would be still digital. Capturing what makes Robin Williams such a great comedian is going to be next to impossible. Sure, you could develop technology to easily render him, but the inflection, the body language that he doesn't even think about that goes into the camera would be nearly impossible to simulate.
Also, ever notice how eye contact in a movie is never quite as effective when one of the characters is a toon or is animated? Well think about if all the extras were like that. They wouldn't contribute to the scene because the main characters wouldn't have them there to react to.
Of course this technology is very effective for nonhuman characters in abnormal(ly good) movies such as lotr.
Live actors aren't gone yet. They'll still be useful as long as people still enjoy looking at people on the big screen (and based on society, we like looking at people. Many of us are visually stimulated.)
Brian
I work in Hollywood and know what all the rates are for various types of work. For all you idiots that think that the piddly amount of money that extras make is breaking budgets and driving up costs, here are some numbers for you.
Typical principal contract for first season on a WB drama: $15,000 per episode
Second season: $35,000 per episode
Now, an episode takes 8 days to shoot. Let's assume that there are 5 pricipals, that's $75,000 in just salary for the pricipals for the one episode first season and $175,000 for the second season. Now that's not counting their trailers or other support people.
Now let's look at the costs of the extras
Union (SAG) is $110 for 8 hours, time and a half for the next 4, double time up to 16 hours and day rate for each hour past 16.
Non-union is $54 for 8 hours, time and a half for the next 2 and double time there after.
TV shows are required to have 15 union extras, the rest can be non union. Movies are required 45. So, if a TV show has 35 extras every day for an entire episode, here is what it costs, assuming a 12 hour day, which is typical.
The union extras cost $192 each and the non union cost $101 each for a 12 hour day. Total cost per day is $4912 and $39,300 for the episode. That ain't even enough to think twice about compared to the pricipals. Even if you add in the cost of the catered breakfast and lunch and high ball it at $20 for breakfast and $35 for lunch, it's only $2475 per day and $19,800 per episode. So, the extras cost $59100 per episode. Now these numbers are a bit contrived because not all extras will work the entire day and not all days will have that number of extras and the food costs are just guestimates. Anyway, almost $60k per episode is not exactly a piddly amount of money, but it is far less than the cost of the pricipal actors and when you consider the amount of money spent on the crew, it pales in comparison.
Of course there are other issues. Films with big name stars making the extras take cuts in bumps and penalties so that the big name star can have his $20 million salary. And SAG going along with it. The only time I will agree that cost of the extras is a real consideration is when you have many hundreds or thousands. Most arena scenes use a few hundred paid extras and the rest are people that show up for free. They usually are enticed with a free lunch and raffle prizes.
Anyway, most extras are not replace able by cgi at this point because they are used to close to the main actors. It would cost way more than the above cost to do CGI for a bunch of extras in those situations.
But the real main issue is: If this takes off, what will happen to all the people like the background characters, costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc.
Just like everything else that has been made "easy" with a computer, this too will find it's place where the people who really know what they are doing in the business will learn to use computers as a tool. It definitely doesn't mean that anyone, or any geek, will be able to make feature-length movies at home.
Let's take for example the publishing industry: one used to need some expensive and specilaized equipment as well as knowledge to layout a page. Now anyone who is decent at using a computer can do that with minimal software. The problem is evident everywhere: quality. Just because you know how to use a computer does not give you an eye for layout or graphic design. The page layouts produced by an amateur look like crap. You know the ones I'm talking about....they are on community bulletin boards and stuffed under your windshield wipers all the time (usually on some obnoxious colored paper). But the people who are talented and actually know how to make a decent page layout have simply assimilated computers into their process and use them as a way to reduce costs and turn-around time. They still need to bring their skill in the actual layout with them to make something professional.
Computers have taken the base mechanical complexities out of taks like layout, sound editing, NLE for video production, and undoubtedly soon CG. But it will still take the same people who are silled in these fields to really make use of the technology, simply as another tool in their trade, to make anything useful of it.
It's fantastic in the way that is reduces costs and increases the pace of production. It even better how it reduces the entry barriers into these markets. But it's not going to turn everyone into producers.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Does anybody else think this idea is ripped off of Macross Plus/Sharon Apple?
So she won't be making movies anymore. So what? She'll just work another job doing makeup, like Fashion Magazines, or the Makeup counter at Field's.
Plus, let's not kid ourselves. Hollywood is such a youth-oriented industry with so many young people willing to do any job for no cash. Fannie's probably been working the Makeup counter since 1966.
There's still work for the trades. The dude that builds sets? Construction still pays last time I checked.
A lot of the "Film" trades won't be effected, their tools will just change. Film editors used to use a Movieola to edit film. Now they can use iMovie. Most of their skill doesn't depend on the new tool, it's applying their knowledge that counts.
The trades which will be most impacted are those where the creative process will change. The guy who builds Latex Masks might have a bigger change in store. If he's a technician, he may have to work in a Halloween mask factory, if he's the creative (he designs the face), he'll adapt to the new technology.
Work may change, but creative types either adapt and learn new tools or stick with their 'old tools'. Some become Moby, others stick to Bluegrass.
My father is a blogger.
Actually, I find most of the voice actors in anime to be not too attractive, but their voice sounds good and their character designs are also quite good (most of the time).
Another thing is that unlike real people it is cheaper to exagerate emotions on their non-real counterparts which tends to add to the quality of the film.
Archie - CIO-for-hire
As much as I enjoy all-CG films, and cool CG effects, the last thing I want to see is every movie made entirely within a computer.
1)Not everybody wants to make all-CG movies, myself (an amateur/independant director and cinematographer) included. For many people involved in making a film, they do it because they enjoy being there, on the set, shooting an actual movie, and dealing with the challenges that go along with that. Additionally, with live actors (good ones, anyway) there's always the chance of the unexpected: that little ad-lib that makes a scene so memorable, the actor getting so into the scene and character that the performance is amazing, etc. Many directors let the actors do a good deal of ad-libbing, which is either nonexistant or severely limited when doing all-CG movies. And if the actor doesn't do what you want, you spend a few minutes doing another take, instead of potentially waiting hours for the scene to be re-rendered.
2)As the price:performance ratio of computing increases, the demand for more realism and more scene complexity also goes up. In 10 years, the current crop of all-CG movies will be looked upon much the same way that modern audiences look at the original King Kong. All that hardware is expensive, and the fact that once it is bought, it only has a useful life of maybe a year or two, leaves independants out of the scene.
3)Talented animators, TDs, compositors, etc., are expensive, as are the costs of running the studio. None of this, "$700k for the real Jenifer Aniston vs. $70k for a team of animators for a digital version of her" nonsense. And then there's the cost of the motion-capture performers, the motion-capture studio, the time to correct and fine-tune the motion-capture data, etc.
4)Let's not forget the fact that the makers of all-CG films will have to compensate the actors whose digital likeness they're using. Some ego maniacs even go so far as to copyright their faces (*ahem* Tom Cruise *ahem*). If you used a digital version of an actor without the actor's permission, you would most likely get sued, and rightly so.
5)Even the George Lucas doesn't use CG for everything, nor does Peter Jackson. Many of the backgrounds in Attack of the Clones were models. The same for the Lord of the Rings.
6)And finally, let's not forget that you'd be taking the talent and experience of people who've spent their entire adult lives (20+ years for many of them) working in the live-action film industry, and throwing it away. Don't give me the, "No, they'd just have to transition into the computer version of their respective fields." because for many of them it just won't happen. I doubt you'd see Tak Fujimoto (cinematographer for Episode IV, The Sixth Sense, and Signs, among other films), Darius Khondji (cinematographer for City of the Lost Children, Seven, The Beach, part of Panic Room, among other films), or very many of the other talented cinematographers making the transition to all-CG movies, simply because the mediums are so different (all the cinematographer's knowledge of film stocks, lenses, filters, film processing, etc., would be worthless).
....but I'll tell you who does - Stuntmen. They get paid pretty handsomely for putting their lives at risk in front of the camera. And in the past it was pretty obvious when a stunt double was used, like for Ah-nold in Terminator 2 during the truck chase. Now, for far less money, moviegoers can actually see Schwartzeneger on fire, not someone that _kinda_ looks like him.
Heck, the PC crowd will probably consider replacing stunt doubles as the humane thing to do!
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
It's still a LOT cheaper to have live actors. It is not cheaper if you want to have the top actors though. So, in the end, most movie studios will have a choice, to either pay $100,000 for a digital character per movie, or pay live actor $50,000 for that same role (they'd probably won't even consider paying 20 million or something to a single actor in a few years). Movies aren't going to go anywhere, it's just that salaries of actors and all the people involved will be cut somewhat.
This article is pure filler, written by some guy who clearly has no idea what he's talking about.
CGI is not just getting cheap, it's so close to free, that it's a possibility for anybody to star making their own computer graphics.
What costs and what is always going to cost are the professionals. Even if you can use the software and you have the hardware your CGI will look crappy if you don't know anything about movies, arts, etc. Still, nobody thinks that cheap and easy video cameras are going to make camera operators and directors of photography useless, even though it's the same thing.
RIght now there's a bad case of cgi blindness going on. Having lot's of effects is more important than having good effects. Even episode 2 looked like crap most of the time. My prediction is, that cgi will become just another tool.
And relistic humans in five years? Hah.
Why do questions like "If XandX happens what will happen to the people who support it? And is it a good idea to move forward?"
Casting directors and costume people will go the way of horse and buggy makers or lamplighters. Most will move on to other jobs or careers, a few will stay around for the fewer opportunities around, but people will simply move on. I am sure there will be people who don't want things to change, because they will lose control or can't stand change, but things will change and it will effect peoples lives, it happens and it will keep happening as society changes. Maybe it isn't a good change but if you can't roll with it or try to resist it it will roll right over you.
Imagine this place where you go and sit down, and REAL people in a REAL space RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYES put on a show. And imagine, if you will, that the show people, call them "actors" actually respond to the feedback of those watching IN REAL TIME. What a concept, eh?
In my limited experience, television shows tend to be trite and plastic, with more emphasis placed on pleasing a target audience then anything else. There is a theatrical equivalent of this, it's called Broadway, but artistic theatre types tend to try and insert something intelligent into their shows ; they have this silly notion about actually being creative. The result is that, when done well, even something written to be trite and plastic has a shot at actually being halfway decent.
There is more money and availability to be made in television and film, I'll grant that, but to actually choose to go into something so emphemeral as costume or set design, you actually have to like and want to do it. I dare say you have to try very hard, and I think the result of this will simply be that a lot of these folks wind up working for regional theatres.
Even then, I still see a need for lighting designer, set designers, and costume designers on the "set" of a computer generated show. These people actually study things like texture and color, and shadowing, etc., which are things that most high tech people (again, in my limited experience) want nothing to do with. Just because you're not cutting it out of cloth doesn't mean you no longer need a costume designer, it just means that they are designing with a different medium. Hell, most set and light designer make computer models of their designs these days anyway; this just means that they have to be a bit more detailed.
It amuses me a great deal to think of all the computer illiterate back stage types doing their internships behind keyboards and leaving the old screw gun at home.
I know geeks tend to think of CG as a replacement for an actor, but I think the real power is going to be in letting multiple humans play a single actor.
.sig
In the really expensive video productions (a.k.a. commercials) it's already common to have multiple actors play different body parts.
The stars of the future are going to be entire teams of people, not just one guy. They might be blended together with CG, but the motions, expressions, voices, acrobatics, dancing will all be done by a human - and usually a human expert in that one field.
-- this is not a
Dude, just because he's richer and better looking than you, doesn't mean you have to be happy that he's been in a horrible accident.
Get a clue. Just because you're a geek doesn't make you superior to anyone (often the quite the opposite in fact, as this post proves).
Cinema is an artform, and that artform may take many differnt paths depending on who is deciding its direction. CGI is a new addition to cinema and has become very popular due to it's potential for limitless expression, as well as it's plain "wow" factor. I don't think that it will ever fully replace what we have now, just add a new formula for enjoyment of movies...since a good movie would essentially take in the most profit. I believe that we will always crave the classic take on films, even if the technology changes beyond the medium. It's much like preferring live orchestra over synthesized. There will be layers and tones to the analog that are difficult, if not impossible to convert to digital.
Step 1: CGI gets cheap
Step 2: Popular sitcoms start using more CGI
Step 3: someone figures out how to do the actors in CGI
Step 4: Actors get fired
Step 5: All the jobs move off to Delhi
What will the MPAA say then? What % of the biggest movies in the last year were made in the US? LotR wasn't. Harry Potter wasn't. Major parts of Star Wars weren't. Sydney is beccomming a hot spot to film major action films.
Bab 5 was using virtaul sets back in its 1st season. Trek has been using computer animated "actors". How long ago did the Simpsons production move off shore? This isn't new.
Hollywood? Who cares about hollywood? I'm still in shock over the collapse of the abacus and slide rule industries!
And my poor grandpa... He never was the same after they laid him off at the buggy whip plant.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
To anyone who thinks that computer animation comes close to reality ... please, toss away this notion for a second: go outside, on a sunny day, and watch a tree rustle in the breeze. Look at the way each leaf responds to each small movement ... yet is influenced by, and influences, the whole scene. Step back, and see the richness of the structure. It's not just fractals. It's not just spatial frequencies, nor is it just symmetrical solids. Look at the shapes everything makes. It's not trig, plane geometry, or calculus. It's not describable by simple physics, unless you have a thousand years to figure this scene out. Feel it. Hold your hand in front of your face, and make more beautiful shapes by playing with it against the shape of the tree ... what you've just done cannot be modelled convincingly by all of the world's computing power put together. Aspects of reality can only be mildly suggested in a CG scene. The trick is to put those suggestions together to make a watchable film: but replace reality? Please, take a closer look at reality itself ...
We take Moore's Law and it's cousins for granted these days. But it's worth remembering that those things are fueled by profit from computer-market turnover and growth. There are good reasons to believe those things are durable, but it is--even if unlikely--possible they will strongly diminish at some point. Keep this in mind while pondering the situation of cgi being fantastically cheaper than ordinary production in the future. Or instead, ponder a deeper, more interesting question: what would compel consumers in 2020 to pay a premium for a 133 Teraflop HP over an everyday 100 Teraflop HP?
Are you saying that CG films don't need actors, and thus casting companies to find them?
Anyway, who cares? It's called frictional unemployment... new technology makes old jobs obsolete. You could ask that question about just about any industry.
Personally I don't think this'll be a big deal for quite some time, for one thing you can tell real motion from computerized stuff pretty easily, mostly because animators are lazy, and/or don't have enough time to produce really good motion. If you wanted to do a feature film with CG that looked totally real, you have to spend as much on animators getting the motion down as you would on all the other stuff... so jobs will be transferred, not lost.
The other issue is image quality, particularly reflections and lighting. Radiosity rendering takes a long time, and anything else is pretty obvious right away. It will always be cheaper to whip out a camera and film a tree and a field then trying to calculate every single ray of light as it bounces around and multiplies all over the place. It would probably be cheaper to have a costume designer make a dress and film it then have a costume designer work with more difficult tools to build one on a PC... and I suspect it'll be cheaper to hire and actor and get all the quality facial movements and stuff down rather then animating them.
A good example of this is in minority report. In one scene a bubble comes out Tom Cruse's nose while he's under water. It looks almost like CG, but it isn't. He just let a bubble out of his nose. Imagine how much money they saved by doing things that way rather then on a computer.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
> There are 3 types of people in this world, those who can count, and those who cannot!
I like this version:
There are two types of people in this world: population bifurcators and non-population bifurcators.
Zing!
Chances are, the resason you need that friday night money is to consume some form of entertainment. So basically this technological innovation that makes lives easier really is just an entertainment fullfillment system.
While I see both as important, I would prefer to be a creator of enjoyment for people's free time than a creator of productivity (life and work) increases. That's just me. But I am a movie lover.
-matt
I think acting is in the subtle looks and body movements to really cast what a person is thinking. It will be a long time (if ever) before computer animators will get a hold of this. Especialy because it won't be cost effective to add this extra layer of detail.
Actors' jobs are to create an entire person. Researchers say that so much of our communication is non-vocal - that is why actors will never be replaced.
-matt
If Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, and Rob Reiner never open up their mouth to spew liberal garbage again, that's fine with me.
I can't say for sure, but I think all those films/shows you menioned were financed, produced and owned by american companies. It isn't like foreign companies are out producing the US in the film industry. It is just that american companies want to keep production costs as low as possible.
Thats not news.
-matt
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Sure, Hollywood could collapse because of that. I mean Bruce Willis or Schwarzenegger or Brad Pitt could be easily replaced by virtual actors and the average Joe wouldn't know. But real cinema (i.e. that of the non-Hollywood kind) will not collapse. My favorite directors have names such as Carl Dreyer, Andrei Tarkovski, Ingmar Bergman, Satyajit Ray, Kon Ichikawa, and so forth. Those that follow in their footsteps will never use virtual actors because their films are about the human condition, not the computer condition. And they use talented actors.
Personnally I think real-looking actors are relatively far into the future. Sure you can make monsters and beasts for TV at the moment but humans don't look too good, especially at the movies. I haven't come across a film where they make CG human characters walk realistically for example.
Moreover I don't think even realistically looking humans would put actors out of business. Cinema has not killed theatre any more than TV killed radio.
Lets take the example of LoTR. Here's a film with a huge lot of CG, a large part of which spent on Gollum. There is still a human actor who play it even though he was replaced with CG in post-production. Also this for this film, far from relying exclusively on CG for the scenery, they went as far as physically re-creating most of the locations (Rivendell, Weathertop, etc), same for the costumes, the weapons, everything. For realistically looking stuff nothing beats reality.
Finally, in SW2 I thought the CG looked crap. Give me the 1980's SW5 plastic models anyday. If with the best current technology can offer even CG machines look cheap and poorly done it's going to be a long way for humans.
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They can all use their creative ability to do something that actually improves society.
Should be good.
The real challenge for synthetic characters is for them to replace actual top-name movie stars. This may not be so hard: the human acting is very low-standard in most films, and a realistic-looking synthetic movie star could easily become known enough to pull in audiences too [imagine a much-improved Lara Croft - though she was played by a human in the film version, an impressive synthetic version would have had the same name recognition.... that role made that actress well-known, rather than the other way round].
Actually, I think synthetic characters could strengthen the Hollywood studio system, unfortunately. Imagine owning the software comprising such a synthetic 'actor'. They have no lawyer or agent, they never get sick, and you can make fifteen films at once with them if necessary -- your only constraint is whether that dilutes the brand. You can age them backwards or forwards - keep giving them roles in their '20s' for forty years if needed.....
I can imagine human audiences could get to like synthetic actors quite quickly. The test is outside sci-fi. If they can be indistinguishable from human actors and take part in historical movies, straight romances, comedies. I don't see why not - just involves a lot of work.
Think about it...
If CG effects reduce the need for certain support fields in moviemaking (one or two costuming designers instead of a whole costume shop, one or two set designers instead of a workshop) and CG effects become cost-effective to the point where mere TV shows can feature decent CG effects, wouldn't this be a boon to ending the stranglehold of the MPAA and their ilk on motion-picutre entertainment?
Imagine in 10 or 15 years when the CG technology gets to the point where you can buy a cluster of (then-)affordable workstations for a renderfarm and create your own sci-fi & fantasy epics? Maybe instead of hiring 20 set designers for a movie, you'll have 2 set designers each working on 10 movies.
Sure, distribution will be a problem with movie houses, but if there's an open DVD standard or something similar that can be played on existing hardware, people will be able to pick up a couple copies of Freddy Finkle's Galaxy Raiders (after downloading the trailer from www.freddyfinkle.com) for less than the cost of an MPAA-sponsored film.
Of course, the MPAA will fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening (and some would argue that it's already happening), which only means it can be a good thing for the public...
Jay (=
When the porn industry starts using CG then I'll believe it. And I'm not talking that bug-eyed big-boobed anime crap! I mean stuff so real your mind cannnot tell it is faked. If the porn industry did CG using today's technology, it would be like watching an actor with a blow-up doll - damn funny but not realistic.
Face it, the porn industry is behind every major technology development just look to the Internet and see what is paying for all that bandwidth (you got it - porn). Who was first to foray into VCR's and DVD's? (right again - porn). see the pattern...
I don't tend to watch porn, I watch what the porn industry is doing with technology. This is so I don't go and buy technology ( e.g. beta or 8-track that never caught on except in Arkansas and the Ozarks)
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
How will Playboy and Penthouse stay in business without the occasional blockbuster sales brought by an issue with candid shots of some current celebrity sunbathing nude, or a washed-up actress or singer willingly getting naked for the camera in an attempt to revive her career?
s .j pg
The future of Playboy... akinude
http://www.geocities.com/ffclips2/maxim/14_hire
Actors in movies are simply there to drive a story. Sure, that's the basic job description of why they are on the set. But CG actors will NEVER NEVER NEVER replace human actors.
Here's why: people don't care about CG characters, on or off screen (ok, Lara Croft is a notable exception, but that's mainly for an audience of 13 year old boys).
Answer me this: Could a CG character have played a more interesting Joker than Jack Nicholson in Batman? Would we have cared as much if a CG Gandalf had shown as much intensity as Ian McKellan? Would a CG character have riveted us as much as Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man? The answer is "No," because we find the actors to be just as compelling as the characters they play.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure CG characters are going to grow much more popular over the next decade. But, I predict, that popularity is going to be more faddish than anything.
I think as cgi gets better we will simply see a shift in what skills are in demand. Artists, designers, writers, editors and similar creative types will not be affected much. Modellers and such will be computer based rather than building sets from physical materials. So we will see fewer carpenters in Hollywood.
Actors? It seems to me that the great actors deliver so much in terms of interpitation of their roles that it is going to be impossible to replace them with CGI. I cannot imagine a CGI ever being able to match Alec Guiness as Fagin in Oliver Twist, or Olivier in Henry V, or Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice. They are not merely faces, but creative in their own right. Will a CGI technician be able to contribute at the same level? Would a CGI technician be able to invent a Groucho Marx or Charlie Chaplin? I don't think so.
On the other hand, if I were a Jean Claude van Damme, or similar hack, I would be very worried about CGI.
Dead wrong. CGI is still in its infancy, akin to programming in Assembly. Sure, you can do great work in assembly but its painstaking work.
Higher and higher levels of abstraction are the key here. There is no reason at all why you can't load a sufficiently complex human model with a "personality" (modified methods of movement, facial expressions etc) and then have it run through a programmed script.
Sure, this might be a way off but never say never.
Sorry, but no matter how complex algorithms get, they'll never be quite the same as real actors.
Computers cannot convey emotion. Period.
Despite the rave about AI, it will never be anywhere near what humans are. Why? Well, that's obvious. There is no way any combination of computer architecture and programming could come anywhere near the complexity of the human brain -- ever.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
*pfft* Like I really care what an AC who doesn't understand humor thinks. Heh.
(and I don't mean actors or "stars", I'm talking about the support crews)
I've worked there for YEARS. It's set up just like the "movie" business, but the jobs are shorter, the pay is higher. the days are just as long.
I work (or should I say used to work) on the Props, Special Effects end of this. Not computer special effects (those are called VISUAL EFFECTS), but live, in front of your face stuff.
I saw this coming YEARS AGO, but did not want to spend my days sitting in front of a computer screen getting carpal tunnel syndrome.
Everything I forsaw came true, but one thing I was wrong on: "They'll always have to shoot the real product" I thought. (This refers to ....having to actually film the REAL food product, or the product boxes or whatever. This part of the shoot always get tangled in legal crap and clients mucking about)
I figured that they would NEVER get away with using CGI candy and food products.
I've made a good living making food products move about in appetizing ways to suit the director's and client's whims. And alot of other people have made careers doing mockups in short amounts of time and building models for filming and still photography. It's hard work on a tight deadline and you charge for it.
But no more.
While I still see many product shots using real food, many of the shots are ones I did YEARS AGO! They're using archived footage! It makes sense, but they NEVER used to do this. Plus a high percentage of the food shots I see are all digital...completely digital. No people. No actors.
Where's the Energizer Bunny?
In the Computer.
Where's the Hamburger Helper Hand?
In the Computer.
The people responsible for CREATING the content of the new commercials are all in their 20's.
They grew up with computers,
They like computers.
They are comfortable around computers.
They create concepts for commercials that are easy to execute digitally.
One day, these people will be running Hollywood. "Live Action" will be a "novelty" at some point.
In fact, a CGI house asked me to bid on a project 3 years ago involving a factory scene for a kid's snack. I said "why aren't you creating all this stuff in-house digitally?"
Response: "The client wants the "novelty effect" of LIVE ACTION"
and this was three years ago!
Change is inevitable. Adapt or die. I've always understood those rules.
I've been adapting for years, and now it's time to change. There are too many talented people fighting for the same crumbs.
I'm outta here.
My opinion is that computer graphics is cool and can be a valid as part of a story, to do some effect that would be impossible or too expensive, could work, but has to be applied sparinglly, not just for an excuse to do something. However, I think that even for low-budget productions, real actors make for a better movie. For example, my pick for the best recent low-buget horror movie "Dog Soldiers" ( http://www.dogsoldiers.co.uk ) where soldiers are fighting a pack of werewolves, where there is no CGI, just actors and actors in werewolf costumes, then the mayhem begins... You can't get the same thing with actors and blue screens, the synergy of interaction between the characters is not there, as with CGI, the actors don't see who they are interacting with.
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... too bad for the actors, they'll need to adapt to the times and learn different skills. They're no different than textile workers and computer programmers who get displaced by technology or foreign labor. If they can be recreated by Chinese computer programmers for 1/100th the cost of their salary, then they are going to have to learn to enjoy flipping burgers for a living. Oh yeah, until the cheap burger-flipping machines arrive.
Of course, I'm not a strict globalist, so I defintely feel for them. The lifespan on careers is so short these days that most people will see their careers destroyed at least once in their lifetime, and perhaps 2-3 times. Globalism never considers the human side of the equation, it just pushes us all towards "faster and cheaper" at breakneck paces.
The cosmetic companies will not collapse, you fucking retard.
Being someone who grew up in Hollywood, I'd be happy to see the industry change. As it is now, many are in the positions they are in not because they are competent or because they are the best, but because they screwed someone over (literally and figuratively) to get to where they are. Once they are in a position of power, it's kiss ass time -- they want others to kiss their ass, and kiss it big time at that. Unfortunately, if you don't want to kiss their ass, tough luck, because there are thousands -- and I'm not exaggerating -- just waiting in line to take your place. It's a rather sad industry. I sure hope that with the quality of digital video cameras increasing, the excellent editing software available, alternative forms of distribution, and of course, excellent independent film makers, that the Hollywood machine would become unnecessary, or be forced to change.
Yeah right buddy, if you didn't know who she was before Tomb Raider then that is your own fault. She was in hackers and she happens to be John Voight's daughter. Add thast to the fact she is fucking hot and I am beginning to suspect you are little fagboy who jerks it to gay pr0n.
You're talking in 1980's terms.
Actors have been doing scenes reacting to a stuntman dressed in a green-screen suit for years.
With SAG, you have to pay residuals for.....billions of years. And I know several people who just did a few National TV commercials and they live off those residuals checks. Very lucrative
In CANADA...they do a Buy Out for $3000. That's it. No residuals. They can run that ad or show that film whereever they want, as many times as they want and they don't have to pay residuals.
that's ONE reason that American Film Companies shoot out of the US. In Canada, they also get a "rebate" from the Canadian Government based on how much local crew and talent you use. This is NOT the refund of the VAT. This is a kickback from Canada for bringing them the work.
They will lose their jobs, of course. This is after all the whole point of technical progress: let machines do the work of people.
If the overall project of technical progress succeeds, and there is no reason to doubt it, eventually only very few people will need to work. This is a good thing (if your country has decent redistribution policies in place).
No matter how good the actor, it still isn't quite the same thing when they're acting terrified, as when they really are.
Proof of point, The Blair Witch Project.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
People wont lose their jobs, that's why they have unions.
You can't criticize FF that much. It's one of the first, and naturally, the makers don't have enough experience, or they didn't have the tech, et. al. And of course, they were obsessed in making Aki Ross (and only her) as human as possible (except for the facial expressions).
I believe that main reason it wasn't very acceptable to viewers is the story that was way too "anime" (like watching Akira - I wonder how many ppl understood it).
ex. Charlie Sheen = Parole Officer
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
... to Homer?
I suppose when Disney's first animated films were becoming popular there might have been a similar sort of discussion going on - although this is purely speculation and I'm certainly no film geek.
But it appears not be the case that Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willy, and all of their spirtual heirs, have failed to cost actual human actors jobs. Shoot, they've actually created jobs for humans: think of all the people who work at Disneyland & Disneyworld wearing overstuffed character costumes and you'll see my point.
And I really doubt we have much to worry about as regards Jar Jar Binks, other than if/when and (hopefully) how soon the hard drives containing his models & animations are formatted for all eternity.
In any event, it would seem that much of the attraction of human actors is that they are, well, people, and also that they provide entertainment value far beyond whatever they convey (or fail to convey) on-screen; in other words, they are celebrities whose personal lives are exposed for our amusement. When they get divorced and remarried for the nth time, we know. When they beat somebody up and go to jail for it, we know. When they make home videos of their lovemaking that end up on the Internet, we of course know.
I think you could argue that the majority of "entertainment value" human actors provide stems from their offscreen antics, and I will respectfully refer you to the nearest supermarket checkout line for evidence of same.
So how are CG characters going to compete with that? Mickey hasn't beat them yet in the seventy odd years he's been bouncing and squeaking around, and he and his kin don't seem to show much promise of being tabloid fare, so I suspect human actors may be around for awhile.
Just as television did not decimate the film industry, and VCRs did not decimate the film industry, and the film industry or any of its descendents did not decimate live theatre, use of CGI animation will not replace current fare so much as add to it.
The people whose lives will be (or have already been) altered by CGI will be those whose product (hand-drawn animation) is replaced by it with no alternative outlets for their work.
There are plenty of local repertory theatres where set designers, costumers, et al can find work -- assuming that CGI-generated TV actually replaces human-based programming -- but not many alternatives for non-computer animators.
What? nobody commented about CGI pron?
Sure, beat our self esteem down even more with those oversized CGI dix and teats and 10 feet come shots
We'll have an actual digital character when no voiceover actor is used, and they can go straight from a script to a performance.
In a not so distant time no live actors will be needed to make movies. The technology will allow movie makers to go with all cg. The time will come when cg animation will be so good that you won't be able to tell the difference between cg and live actors. Text to speech will become so good that voice acting won't be needed. The writers will be the only people needed. I don?t know if this kind of movie would be any good, but it will happen. You may not even be able to tell the difference.
These articles about synthetic actors taking real actor's jobs or all-digital films being more cost effective or more time efficient than filmed films make me laugh. They show such a lack of insight or expertise in what they're actually about.
I'd hope a slashdot contributor would be a little more in the know but I guess you can't expect them to be any more on the money than the ignorant mainstream press.
"This is your life, good to the last drop. It doesn't get any better then this." --Tyler Durden
Got news for you bud: if you meant for your post to be humorous, you failed spectacularly. Sheesh, and you accuse ME of not understanding humor.
All you've proven is that pathetic geeks find humor in people of higher social stature getting in accidents. You're still stuck in a high school mentality of dreaming that the Quarterback gets in an accident so they know how "your type" feels. You see, not only do I understand your "humor", but I understand from where it originates.
Grow up and get a life.
Imagine a movie made with an entire cast of plain boring actors, recorded by a fresh-out-of-college photographer. That is what you get if you try to make a movie with simulated animations (many years from now). There is no point in making a movie unless there are some people behind it to give it personality.
The exact same argument applies to present day music. So many people argue that music created entirely with electronic instruments has no nerve, no personality, no ... artistic expression.
They just tend to forget that there were actually some people playing - or programming - those instruments. And that those people are making music just as interesting as they did in the good ol' days. There is one important difference, though. In the old days music was performed. In real time. Today it is possible to edit it until it is right (ignoring for a moment the live-performing musicians).
that being said, there is a lot of nondescript, uninteresting music being published today.
My point is just that even if there are no more live actors, there will still be people behind the movies. Someone to write them, someone to edit them, someone to direct them, someone to create the animations, the voices, the camera movements.
"Got news for you bud: if you meant for your post to be humorous, you failed spectacularly."
I'm sure the guy I was responding to who was complaining about over-coverage of celebrities found it quite amusing. Your inability to see my response as silly is your own.
"All you've proven is that pathetic geeks find humor in people of higher social stature getting in accidents."
Uhh, I didn't prove anything. I just made a silly comment. Sorry bud.
I hope you get your irrational anger under control some day. Some might mistake you for a pre-menstral woman!
"...if you meant for your post to be humorous, you failed spectacularly. Sheesh, and you accuse ME of not understanding humor..."
You didn't understand his humor, but you're confused about him saying you don't understand his humor?
Lol! I don't think you understand anything! Lemme give ya a piece of advice: If you're drawing conclusions about people, telling them to grow up reflects more on you than it does on them. Don't believe me? Then it's probably because your anus is obstructing your view.
"Derp de derp."
So, whilst I don't disagree with your analysis of what would happen to the creative arts, take the blinkers off. See the wider impact if your belief that sentient AI will become commonplace turns out to be correct.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
"If this takes off, what will happen to all the people like the background characters, costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc."
They'll lose their jobs. Duh.
the VCR didn't do it.
Joe McCarthy didn't do it.
the DVR won't do it.
how TF could CGI do it?
'less they're talking about the Common Gateway Interface. that could do it... blow a security hole right through it. If Hollywood lived in 1995 on the Internet time scale anyway. which they don't.
nah, it'll effect Hollywood, but it sure the hell won't kill it.
-- haaz, digging out his Thin Man video tapes now.
-- haaz.
and thats when it gets interesting. you just scribble the outlines of a plot, select the characteristics of a few characters, backgrounds in a general way, genre, music, and combinations of all these and press enter. Maybe you could even point the computer to a few stories you like and tell it, 'something like that'.
now will this resulting masterpiece be uder riaa?
"Computers cannot convey emotion. Period."
why?
It may be more cost effective to use CGI than real people. It may be more cost effective to cast a bum off the street for a role than to cast Robert DeNiro, but I know who I would want..
Seriously, I'm getting tired of all this "the sky is falling" editorial that people submit with their stories. The world will move on, so just submit your @#$%ing story sans idiotorial.
Hey - what if this means the return of the good movie? It seems to me that CGI movies are a natural way to go for the blockbusters - the high-power actors demand so much money that you can distribute that amount into CGI and marketing and make more money that way. Interestingly enough - if you kill the actors, maybe people will stop going to the movies to see Ben Affleck in another mediocre movie, and rather go to see that awesome new movie about two kids bonding through some interesting adventure?
On the other hand, real-life actors will still exist in the indie/international tradition. The cost of making a good indie movie is so low it will take years for CGI to be good and cheap enough to replace real actors and a hand-held steadicam.
Stop the brainwash
They will be out of a job. Dah.
Some of you will say that the public wont be interested in them because they wont be real, but how will the public know? The media companies will have fake Hello interviews, and news items of bust ups and shoot outs at Spago, all on the "real" news, like that isnt total fake newsewage already.
etc etc etc.
Technology advances, jobs change. Not exactly news, tell it to the weavers, riveters etc.
The people who get highly paid in the future will be the persona designers, they'll design the look, attitude, voice of the CG actors.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
This is a fallacy which comes out of not understanding the nature of software. Write a procedure which allows one CGI actor to make coffee, and suddenly all your CGI actors can make coffee. If the level of abstraction is right, all of your other CGI actors will know how to make coffee while exhibiting their own individual personality quirks.
Next week, you're making another film about another set of characters, and one of them has to make coffee. Do you write the procedure again? No, you use the one that's already in the library. Over a very short period you build up a very rich palette of behaviours which are available to all your CGI actors. Furthermore, each actor has some 'while undirected' behaviours so that it isn't just standing around like a dummy when it hasn't specifically been given things to do.
It's not just feasible that we will soon have a system which takes as input an XML representation of a screenplay, and outputs a complete movie; it's inevitable that we will soon have that system. Initially the movies produced might not be very good, but let's face it the average movie isn't very good now anyway; the synthetic ones should be at able to compete.
I could today sit down and write the high-level architecture for the system I've described. I know in principle how all the modules would work and none of them are rocket science. The only bits I don't know how to automate are how to write a satisfying screenplay, and how to rate screenplays in order to determine which one to film.
This is the future, whether you like it or not; and although initially building the libraries of locations, physical appearances, and behaviours is going to be need a lot of human creative input, once they're built endlessly reusing them is not. If you don't believe me think about what you can achieve today with a modern 3d role playing game toolkit like (for example) the Neverwinter Aurora toolkit. It isn't up to movie quality but it's not really that far off.
On the contrary, soap operas will most likely be what gets fully automated first. The sets are limited and endlessly re-used; the range of characters is limited; the budget is low; the audience expectation is low; and episodes need to be produced quickly. With a fully automated all-CGI soap opera, the investment in the initial design of sets, characters and costumes would be high but this investment would be ammortised over a very high number of episodes. The CGI actors wouldn't get sick, need holidays, get drunk, or have unscripted affairs. Neither weather nor unions would interrupt the shooting schedule. All you'd need would be a chunky render farm and a pool of scriptwriters.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Get rid of the scams, the tax scams, the casting couch, the drugs, the organised crime and perhaps we'll have a place that turns out good movies instead of remakes.
And what about those poor, underpaid actors cruisin' around with their shaggy gags and mellow yellows?
How... unfortunate.
This is fantasy stuff. They've been saying this since SGI first made it big. The only outcome I ever saw from that, were craply done CG puppets acting as virtual presenters, in cheaply made kids TV programs. Then they went out of fashion..quickly.
Only geeks would think the idea of replacing hollywood actors with CG was a cool/viable idea.
When these people grow up they may actually gain a taste in films that have quality acting instead of this Summer's cheesy blockbuster, at which point they may realise how they'll never make quality films with CG actors. They'll probably make a heap of low budget trash with the technology though.
The fact CG is getting cheaper is no surprise, all it will do is become a commodity in TV programs, and the result you will see is that naff TV shows on low budgets will have access to the technology, and continue to produce naff TV products.
This is just like consumer technologies - when they first come out, they cost a fortune, and are made beautifully by top class manufacturers, ten years later, and you can by the same technology, for $10 made in some cheap brightly coloured plastic by some slave paid $0.01 an hour in China whose husband beats her with a stick when she gets home. (Ok...I made up the bit about the stick)
Angelina Jolie was quite famous before Tomb Raider. She was in Gia, Bone Collector, Girl Interrupted and several other films.
Then all those useless tofu-eating parasites can get real jobs, and their former $$$ salaries could be redirected to people who actually produce for society.
This story makes it sound like this hasn't already happened. A number of my friends that used to be in the model making, physical effects, and animation business are out of work because of the increased use of CG in film. A few of them are rolling with the punches, and are developing CG tool proficiency, but that takes time and money. The traditional Hollywood model keeps most effects contributors living from hand-to-mouth, so that will be a difficult road for most to travel. I suspect that most folks who have been involved in physical effects in the past will be displaced to other fields - outside of Hollywood. And my mother wonders why I never went into professional model making for Hollywood...
I need a new moderation category - "-1, Uninformed"
Ah - sorry. I was generalising from my own ignorance.
like save the orphaned bits, or feed the hungry M$ programs that do not have enough disk space
<sally_struthers>For only 100MB per day your sponsor M$ program can have space and system resources, your sponsor M$ program will write you General Protection Faults</sally_struthers>
Or maybe this will smack live actors and actresses in to focusing on there job so that they are not replaced by a machine...
I can dream can't I?
More of my thoughts
Soon, the MPAA/RIAA will completely take themselves out of the game. All there work will be practically inaccessable to any consumer with individual prefrances (beyond broadcast.) Those consumers will always check the Internet sources first. Perhaps NY will be the new center of filmmaking, starting with a NY city/state wide subsidised broadband initiative.
Lobby against broadband all you want, your time will come.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
HAHAHAHAHAHHA
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAH
AAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA
also, LOL
hahahaahahahahh. well voiced anime
i bet you meant the dubs too....
haha hahahhahahahhahah
We aren't ridding society of these jobs, just morphing them into different areas.
/ FCC-02-231A1.pdf )and the lessor known, but perhaps more dangerous, BPDG, and so forth, for the banning of individual, non-corporate possession of general purpose computers and the crippling of the internet.
... anyone with a TV antenna and a VCR can already do that, and has been able to for twenty years ... this is about preemting the possibility of any competition from private citizens now and forever.
This has always been true, with every technological innovation. I'm sure horse dealers felt threatened by the invention of the wheel, when a cart carrying eight people could be pulled by two horses (instead of the 8 that would have been necessary for each person to ride). Most (but not all! There are still horses and buggies for hobby/tourist purposes around) Buggy whip manufacturers had to find new work with the invention of the automobile, radio felt threatened by the advent of TV, and all the old media and copyright cartels feel threatened by the Internet.
Yet, in each of these cases, the jobs lost in one area were created in another, and anyone willing to learn a new skill could migrate to a new profession.
Unfortunately this flexibility has been lost on the recording industry, Hollywood, and indeed on the media and copyright cartels in general, and this inflexibility to some degree seems to permeate much of the corporate culture that surrounds the profession.
Take your thought, and the thought of the article itself, to its logical (and, IMHO very desireable, conclusion): CGI will allow anyone with a good story to tell the ability to animate and create a movie, perhaps a blockbuster movie, in the comfornt and convinience of their home, on their home PC. Not today, but given moores law, almost certainly within 5-10 years.
Think of what that means. The cartels suddenly have competition from every direction, indeed, from everyone with a creative bent and a personal PC powerful enough to render animations in a reasonable time (today, a few big clusters, in five years, nearly every home PC). Assuming the software improves over time in the same fashion it has to date, these animations may well be indistinguishable from real actors on real sets.
Soon anyone will be able to make a movie on their own PC, and distribute it to a world-wide audience via the internet. That is, assuming there remains an internet such as we know it, and individuals are still allowed to possess general purpose computers, both of which are assumptions we can no longer take for granted.
Is it any wonder Hollywood is using the Red Herring of "piracy" to push on so many fronts (legislative via several bills including Hollings', back door regulatory via the FCC ( http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch
This isn't about the "horror" of people being able to download and store television shows and movies
The fact that, in the process, they will be able to take away our ability to record television programs for the first time in twenty years, supreme court rulings notwithstanding, is merely icing on the cake.
Times are changing, not dissapearing!
Yes, but if we are complacent, they will be changing in very, very negative ways for anyone working with or interested in digital technology or artistic freedom. There is a steam roller bearing down on us in Washington D.C. and in the conference rooms where UN and international treaties are negotiated, and we are for the most part behaving as though we are oblivious to this unpleasant fact.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Of all the jobs that have been replaced by computers, I think I'll lose the least amount of sleep over these ones.
Damn.. I only made 5 million this year.
Isn't CG the term used in this context?
ie: Computer Graphics.
Does CGI not stand for Common Gateway Interface? As in forms and misc interactive web content?
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
cgi will win
can you say 'blue screen of death'
I hope you get your irrational anger under control some day.
No anger, just pity and annoyance. The annoyance comes from watching geeks who have so little control over their personality problems. I fully understand why you think your comment is funny, yet it's pretty pitiful that you don't understand WHY you find it funny.
You know who you remind me of? The bully in the play-yard who picks on smaller kids, and who thinks it's pretty damn funny. Yeah, if someone doesn't find it funny to watch a bully pick on people, it must be because of their lack of sense of humor.
Of course, the difference between you and the bully is that at least the bully has the guts to pick on people in person, rather than bark at people from a place like Slashdot.
Isn't it ironic to watch the geeks on Slashdot who were always picked on as children turn into the people they despise?
Heh you're trying reaaaaaaaaaaally hard to wind me up. Doesnt that make you the bully?
Can't say I'm terribly phased by your inaccurate assumptions. Sozz man. Get some help, really.
Its not a matter of me liking this future or not liking it (though the apparent consensus on /. that a program and set of algorithms can completely eliminate the need for human beings in acting is disturbing), its simply a matter of what's realistic.
/.ers to replace actors with computer programs somewhat disturbing. Today, its we replace actors with computer programs. The trend continues. In a few centuries, human beings will be doing nothing but eating food provided by machines, sleeping, having sex, and lying on the beach.
Firstly, to be able to realistically have a computer CGI character emulate what a real-life person would do, we'd need to know alot about real-life people. Fact is, we don't. We simply do not know enough about human beings to accurately emulate them in a CGI world. Its doubtful that we ever will, but certainly no "profound understanding of human beings" psychologically, physically, or biologically will be come about in the next century or two. Sure, we're making leaps and bounds; but, all things considered, of what there is to understand about human beings, we understand 1x10^-6% of it. In other words, very little at all.
Because of this, CGI characters will not (unless you naively think that we will soon learn 50% or more of all there is to know about human beings) accurately emulate human beings, no matter how complex the algorithms, subroutiines, and routines may be.
Your insistence that CGI characters will be able to perfectly emulate human beings, or so close that the differences will be imperceptible, shows a rather large ignorance of the complexity of life, specifically human life.
There are problems out there alot less complicated than human behavior patterns which could bring the most poweful supercomputers in the world to a crawling halt. All the computers in the world working as one computer couldn't give you the phylogeny (by Bayesian Analysis) of 10,000 species. That's a simple problem. Human behavior is a much more complicated problem than maximizing local optima of probability.
That said, there's no way that CGI characters will accurately emulate human behavior in the near future.
On a ideological note, I find this apparent desire among
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
is what will happen to ticket prices when it's no longer required to hire background characters, costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc.
Why, they'll go up, of course. Aren't monopolies grand?
In any case, my main point was that we'll have a lot more things to think about than Natalie Portman's career opportunities if AI succeeds :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
...and so would the estates.
Chances are, Hollywood (or at least Disney) would try to establish exclusive copyright on long-dead famous people. Most of the estates of these people have realized that there is more money in licensing to lots of people than there is to an exclusive contract.
I've been predicting this for at least 12 years. Oh, it's good to be right, yes it is.
Look, this is a natural progression. As with all things, the cost of producing the characters will get cheaper and better, and eventually the cost of using an actor will surpass the cost of using a CGI character, with little or no loss in effective realism. They say Vin Diesel is about to join the $20 million club in Hollywood. Perhaps he's one of the last of a dying breed. Soon, you won't have actors, you'll have high paid models who will sell their likenesses to the studios. They'll be scanned into a computer in a variety of positions, facial expressions, and movements, and they'll bargain for a percentage of the royalties of all movies made with those images.
Think about that. In the future, *everyone* will get scanned and Hollywood won't even need extras. You'll get a royalty check if your image is used.
On the other hand, the "realism" of movies will suffer. Since anything is possible in a CGI movie, Jackie Chan's moves are going to be a lot less believable.
"Yeah, in my day, we had STUNT MEN! None of this sissy computer FX. Some actors even did their own stunts, and the broken bones were real! Dang kids and their CGI crap..."
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***