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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."
:)
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!
"...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.
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.
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
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?
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
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
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
"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."
Nope. He deserves high pay because he's directly responsible for the ridiculous amounts of money his play brings in. He wouldn't be demanding 5 mill if they were raking in only 1/10th of what they are now.
It's kinda like the ridiculous amount of money big name actors get. The movie studio's not paying $20 million dollars for extreme high quality acting, they're paying that much because they're betting more people will go see the movie if Harrison Ford is in it. It's about audience draw.
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.
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.
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.
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.