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First All-Artificial Feature Film Released
Hugh "Nomad" Hancock writes "Machinima.com have just released the DVD version of Killer Robot, award-winning filmmaker Peter Rasmussen's buddy movie about two mining robots who set out to protect their "meat-sack" masters from a master mining robot gone insane. The twist here is not only that it's Machinima, made in 3D Game Studio, but that even the actor's voices are computer-generated using programs like Festival, making this possibly the world's first all-artificial movie."
Nothing real in that .. both genres are done purely by silicon.
Wouldn't that be a movie written, directed,
post-produced, and distributed by bots?
So, celebrity actors are on the way out? RIAA, Save us!
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Is this the one with Will Smith, and is Will Smith computer generated? If so, that's a great achievement! I hope that the sound is better than the national weather service's Mac plus (i'm assuming) that reads those weather alerts on channel 26.
stuff |
Seriously, did the textures they use start off as photos of real life objects? Then this isn't an all-artificial movie. The first all-artificial movie will be made by an AI that has no access to any outside materials. Everything until then is just a matter of degree of human involvement.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Actually, the first all-artificial movie was Gigli I believe. :)
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Go check out www.redvsblue.com The funniest Halo stuff you'll see outside a warthog jumping contest.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
making this possibly the world's first all-artificial movie.
It seems to me that humans still did most of the work. It would be more accurate to say movie with environment and actors fully computer modeled.
When I read the first all-artificial movie, I thought of a program that wrote the plot, picked main characters and background characters, edited the models and the envirnoment and generated all that without any human involvment.
Together everyone. Humor intended, toungue in cheek...check...
...even the actor's voices are computer-generated...making this possibly the world's first all-artificial movie
:-)
Just Think about all the Artificial Pr0n you can create with this technology! Wait...No need for Actors or Actresses...Oh the Possibilities are Endless!
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. -- Hunter S. Thompson
i'd like a freely available phoneme pack (or whatever i should call it properly) that sounds as good as AT&T's natural voices. last time i used festival, i was just so put off by the available voice packs that i gave up on the project i was working on. That was a few years ago, but I bet it hasn't changed much. (i use a program called swatch that watches my log files and then plays computer voices just telling me what the hell is going on. sitting on the couch watching family guy and hearing that someone just arped on my lan is more intuitive than me getting an email about it. and it has its own channel on the mixer so when i have my harem over to please me on thursday nights, i just put the slider all the way down.) yeah.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Most of the posts so far are pointing out that because it was not made by AI it is not a completely artificial movie. What they are trying to say is that it is the first completely artificial movie product(basically when you see the movie there aren't any real traces of human actors/voiceactors).
Creative Demolition
I'm sorry, but as much as I like the geek factor in this, I like to see people in my movies. I admit that Toy Story and Monsters Inc. were really good movies, but if eventually all movies were computer generated they'd lose me as a fan.
There's magic in acting: controling your every emotion to become someone you're not, and then making other people believe it. That's art man. What they're trying to do sounds to me like trying to replace a Picasso with a fractal image. No magic.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
This is a neat idea, but my - too hard to listen to. Until these voices get easier to understand, I think I'd rather listen to actors voices.
Sorry folks.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
If the reviews aren't there, then the novelty aspect won't get my ticket dollars; they might need to make a virtual audience, too.
The CB App. What's your 20?
I just tried the festvox.org site, I am surprised the movie directory didn't consider using something like the AT&T voices or the Neospeech voices, both which are much more advanced and natural, and are frequently used in Home automation environments (I use them myself).
I set it to robot guard mode when I go to bed. God help any intruder it encounters its frightening suction power, unless of course the intruder is a pervert and enjoys that sort of thing.
Anyway it was just telling me it cant wait to see this movie, apparently one of the actors is a real hell raiser, sort of the Colin Farrell of the robot entertainment industry and the other one is quite cute (purely from an engineering perspective so it tells me).
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
...making this possibly the world's first all-artificial movie.
So is the soundtrack done in MIDI?
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
> ...making this possibly the world's first all-artificial movie.
As luck would have it, there's already series of all-artificial awards they can earn.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
"This is the first computer animated movie"
"This is the first computer animated movie with photoreal humans"
"This is the first computer animated movie rendered with global illumination"
"This is the first computer animated movie rendered with global illumination, on a render farm of Linux servers"
"This is the first computer animated movie where the main character is green"
"This is the first computer animated movie where the main character is green and one of the characters is a cat"
It gets silly after a while. At some point you have to ask "is the movie any good?"
j
In Howie Chaykin's comic American Flagg, Reuben Flagg has to leave his job as a soft-core porn actor when he's replaced by a holographic verion of himself. (Excellent reading, BTW!)
Just for the record, there is a big difference between silicon and silicone.
Silicon: is a non-metallic element used in the manufacture of electronic components like Integrated circuits, as well as glass and many other things. In its raw for it is rather like sand.
Silicone: is a rubbery or liquid compound which includes silicon as one of its primary components. Silicone is used for rubber materials including molded plastics, sealants or caulks, and breast implants.
Silicon != Silicone
Dear Valued Movie Executive,
You have been replaced by a very small shell script. Good day.
Sincerely,
C. Ron Tab
There are two major schools of thought among actors: internalist and externalist.
Internalist is most often associated with the Stanislavsky "Method": feel it inside and it will come out on the outside. The Method has been taken to stupid lengths that have been much parodied ("What's my motivation?"), but the core is extremely sound. Audiences are extremely sensitive to faked emotions, and internalist acting makes for very compelling performances.
Externalist acting predates internalist acting, but it's still much used. It's basically the school of thought that says, "I don't care what you feel; as long as it looks good on film, I'm happy." It's necessary for a lot of things. You can't lose yourself in a fight scene, for example, because that's how actors get hurt (especially on stage.) But other than that, it's largely out of favor among top-flight actors and directors.
Most modern actors use a combination of the two techniques, but the balance is different for every actor.
I bring this up because computer animation is the ultimate externalist acting. You have a physical control over the "muscles" of a virtual actor far beyond that which you have over yourself. That's why externalist acting often fails: you may think "this is what I look like when I'm angry/happy/sad", but you just don't have the control over the hundreds of little muscles in your face.
I've been incredibly impressed by what emotions they can get a virtual actor to do. I remember thinking it for the first time watching Barbie at the end of Toy Story II, doing her flight attendant "bye bye, buh bye, bye-ee" routine. She clearly had a "fake smile", in contrast to the real smiles. Everybody knows the difference, but it takes an extraordinary eye to reproduce it precisely.
Shrek and Fiona showed me layered emotions I'd be hard pressed to reproduce myself.
Now these guys are adding voice, where there are even more fine gradations, and it hasn't been as well studied. Artists have been dissecting people's faces for centuries and every art student knows the name, origin, insertion, and purpose of every single muscle in the face.
The voice will prove harder, but I've looked into some of those programs and it looks like a good start. It's a lot of work to specify the exact shape of a line reading, but as with faces, they'll probably get it eventually.
It flies precisely in the face of what I've been taught as a director. I tend to the internalist school most of the time, and you never, ever specify the details of a line reading to an actor. You give intents, motivations, impulses, and try to help the actor find the natural way to get what you want out of a line. If you give the actor a line reading, it will read falsely to an audience, because the line reading won't match up to the rest of the clues that the audience gets about what the character feels (body language, timing, facial expressions). These details are too hard to control, so you give emotional directions instead. It's tedious, but the result will be more compelling.
It would be interesting to direct an actor who did have minute control over voice and body, as this film will show. It's probably too early for the thing to be 100% successful, but I'd really like to find out.
But I'm more impressed b/c this is the work of one man!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
You know, this just can't be that far off. Sex and war drive technology, and all that. Give them time, and I'm sure the adult industry will find a way to drive the costs of this down to levels where it's reasonable for everyone.
I agree that computer-generated porn is inevitable but I disagree that it is going to become so cheap as to replace the real thing (such as it is) anytime soon. Let's face it, it costs almost no money to make a porn flick. I'm sure they spend no money on the writers. There is essentially no budget for props. The actors and actresses don't have an awful lot of career choices so they can be paid a pitance. And it's recorded on videotape for chrissake. You are arguing that replacing this dirt-cheap operation with an all CGI environment is economically a great idea? I don't think so.
The question is, will people be interested in this for its own sake, or will it have to wait until things reach the point where it's indistinguishable from the real thing? I'm guessing from the preponderance of cartoon porn on the internet that it's just around the corner.
I suspect that the "real" porn will continue much as it has for decades and that if CGI evolves to the point that it is feasible to make pornos from it will satisfy a slightly different crowd or need. You pointed out the cartoon porn. That stuff is pretty different from flesh and blood porn. Those films feature fantastical characters or situations. A typical film would feature a female ninja with green hair who can change into a warewolf battling monsters on behalf of some ancient clan rivalry. You couldn't make something like this with flesh-and-blood porn without it being absolutely laughable. Now, granted, the cartoon version isn't meant to be taken seriously but the audience is more willing to accept it just because of the choice of media that is used. And the non-consensual nature of a lot of cartoon porn makes it a definite no-no for anything remotely realistic. But I think the reason cartoon porn florishes is precisely because it is not realistic. It is fantastical. I suspect that CGI porn would fill the same niche -- something completely wild rather than a substitute for mainstream porn.
One possible avenue of CGI porn is letting amateurs and hobbists make their own porn films. If easy-to-use authoring/animation tools get created, you could have guys making their porn flicks. People could play out movies for whatever crazy fantasies that they have. And with p2p software, I can easily see people trading their homemade pornos with others. This would actually be an interesting development. Let's face it: there aren't a lot of creative minds in the adult film industry. Once you give people (and there are a lot of people who secretly love porn) the ability to author what's on their mind, I think you will see an explosion of all sorts of porn. Some of it will be real sicko stuff, I'm sure. However, you'll also get people who can actually write decent stories creating some porn. CGI may end up being the greatest thing that ever happened to porn within a decade.
GMD
watch this
"Too many connections!" says the download page. Can anyone post torrents?
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
As long as a human is writing the script / directing, it doesn't strike me as "All-artificial".
...
Now, once a computer, sensitive to the fact that the timing is profitable for "Shrek 12", kicks off "Hollywood.pl" to generate a movie, I'll be more inclined to give it the "All-artificial" tag.
Of course, the only ones who'll go and see it are machines on their lunch breaks
Thanks,
Peter
Judging by the amount of times "people" have posted "it isn't all-artificial until AI writes the screenplay", I'm wondering whether the slashdot comments system may consist of all artifical postings.
I swear the whole comments system here could be replaced by a small shell script. A cron job that posts "Microsoft sucks" and "BSD is dying" would take care of a good chunk of the system right there. What else am I missing?
And why am I talking to a small shell script?
I interviewed an "adult film" producer once, and you are right - there are no scriptwriters in porno. At all. Ever. The dude who scrapes together the money to make the movie is the producer, director, writer, etc. You cull your cast from the local tanning salon, borrow your aunt's bungalow for a couple days and there you go - movie. Overhead is all in the film (unless you're shooting on that fancy camcorder).
This was NOT the kind of guy who would trade being able to bang his leading ladies for a fake chick on the screen of his laptop.
Sorry for the tangent, carry on!
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
More specifically, silicon is an element, and silicone is a molecule.
...-Si-O-Si-O-Si-O..., with two electrons available from each Silicon for bonding (typically with hydrogen, but you can add most functional groups there and still get a stable molecule). While it is most famous as a lubricant in standard long pure chains of Si, O, and H, it gets a lot more interesting, chemically, when you start replacing the hydrogens (just like hydrocarbon chains do ;) ).
Silicone is a chain of
You can make pure Si chains, but they don't get very long before they fall apart. Silicon comes in two primary forms: amorphous and crystaline.
Other common silicon-based terms:
Silicates: Silicates are primarily SiO4 tetrahedral structures (compared to Silicone which is usually in chains - think of it as the difference between diamond and petroleum). Probably their most useful form, industrially, are zeolites (wherein one of the silicons is relaced by a metal ion); these have all sorts of useful absorbative, catylitic, and even superacid properties in some cases.
Silanes: Chains of silicon bonded to hydrogen; the simplest form (often called simply "silane") is SiH4, and is roughly a silicon equivalent of methane, apart from the fact that it spontaneously combusts in normal atmospheric conditions. They are less stable than silicone and their hydrocarbon equivalents in general, although this can be remedied by having functional groups being involved (organosilanes). Silanes are very useful in sealants and paints, as well as their electrical and optical properties.
Silanols: Silanes with an OH; generally being water-soluable, they are widely common in earth's oceans, and have all sorts of interesting chemical properties and bonding structures naturally. More than anything else, silanols have led to speculation that silicon-based life could be possible on other planets. They can form hydrogen-bonded membrane-like sheets, various catylitic complexes, etc.
Various types of silicon compounds can also form rings as carbon chains do, although you won't get any benzene-style rings (also, silicon resists double and triple bonding as well).
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Alas It is not all computer, nor 100% digital. Only when the machine conceives, writes, directs, plans, and develops the movie from concept to finished product will it truly be a fully computer generated movie. Even then a human had programmed the machine. Perhaps we'll have to wait till a machine makes a machine and the subsequent machine creates a movie....
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-