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."
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
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.
"500 years ago people would say, you think the earth is round?? Probably not..."
There's also people who believe that today. Nothing ever dies out.
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
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 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.
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.
ask the guy who brought you fresh ice for your icebox.
four-oh-four
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
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?
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'
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.
While I might agree that actors get paid more than I think they're worth, I would not classify their role as something that is "horribly stupid." Through their roles (and how well they execute them), they can lend a great deal of believability to the story being told. The fact that they're human actors being observed by other humans, allows the observer to identify with the actors in a way that I don't think is possible with CGI. CGI-based actors may work for some certain genres, but I just can't see it replacing the human element carte blanche.
Wasn't that the premise of the movie Looker?
What do you know I wrote a novel
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?
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.
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."
[
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!"
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
His story Gold discusses many of these issues. A good read, and definitely interesting.
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'
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
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.
Kevin Costner. If there is one actor who COULD be replaced by a computer, it would be him.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Let me get this straight: hearing a live actor speak is "unnatural", and, I suppose, hearing a recording of an actor through speakers is "natural"? I think this is backwards. And I've stood in ancient Greek theatres where the back rows are quite far from the stage. If that's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.
Since I became wise to the world, I've never been fooled by the so-called "stunningly real scenarios" in the movies; I know that they are stiched together from the technician's bag of tricks. When I go the theatre, I know that what I am seeing is really happening, so I can focus on the quality of the storytelling.
Perhaps you've never seen a well-done play. A good production will move me every time. The theatre is very powerful, because the actors can't fall back on "good editing" or "digital enhancement" to improve their performances; they have to know how to create the illusion with their own bodies. This is not an easy thing.
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
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.
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.
"And would it be fast enough to be practical for weekly TV shows? (or daily, in the case of soaps)"
Oh it could do that, but as I said a human needs to drive at some point. At best, CG will become very fancy puppets. There's nothing wrong with that, but puppets aren't exactly making actors nervous. Heck, it didn't even happen in Greg the Bunny. Heh.
oh.... er, nevermind.
"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.
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.
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.
Simone already did an interview with TechTV. The even asked her what she thought of digital characters replacing real people. She said she noticed alot of animators and other crew members working around her that were real people.
Besides, I live in the San Fernando Valley. We aren't scared here. If pr0n goes completely digital, we'll adapt.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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
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.
They accomplish nothing? Why'd unusual amounts of people flock to movies after September 11? To escape from real life and get their minds off some awful things in the real world. Movies can be an escape, they can be entertaining, they can be thought provoking... yes, they're probably overpaid, but they're not worthless.
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
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.
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.
/^[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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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 (=
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.
Modern armies have been moving away from having large numbers of soldiers... ilots in the airforce is another example. Unmanned aircraft are starting to become important to the military
(emphasis mine).. you've made my point...
Sure, eventually military hardware will make all soldiers obsolete - at this time, the "army" will consist of a couple of generals, and a computer to control everything..
Of course, by then we'll also have transporters and warp drives...
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.
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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.
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
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.
We'll have an actual digital character when no voiceover actor is used, and they can go straight from a script to a performance.
"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?)
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.
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
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.
Agreed.
Advances in technology often cost jobs. Just look at robotics. But however, with technology to produce goods and services with less manpower and money, we consume more. This increased consumption leads to the job market holding steady with no more than a few percent unemployment.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
I need a new moderation category - "-1, Uninformed"
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
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
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?