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Filming an Invasion Without Extras
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Kevin Kelly has an interesting blog post on how a World War II D-Day invasion was staged in a few days with four guys and a video camera using batches of smaller crowds replicated computationally to produce very convincing non-repeating huge crowds. Filmmakers first used computer generated crowds about ten years ago and the technique became well known in the Lord of the Rings trilogy but now crowds can be generated from no crowds at all — just a couple of people. 'What's new is that the new camera/apps are steadily becoming like a word processor — both pros and amateurs use the same one,' says Kelly. 'The same gear needed to make a good film is today generally available to amateurs — which was not so even a decade ago. Film making gear is approaching a convergence between professional and amateur, so that what counts in artistry and inventiveness.'"
While that is cool technology, it also means my chance of ever being in a movie just dropped from "extremely slim" to "Nicole Richie". :(
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
...the Townswomen's Guild reenactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbor.
Chris Mattern
...they didn't use this technique to generate huge crowds of servers.
Invasions that involve hardly anyone at all?
Too bad we can't do that in real life.
Gosh! That was deep and out of character for me.
Um, uh, in Soviet Russia... uh... you profit from a beowulf cluster of these... or something.
It can only do our stagnant societies good to make some cheaper megaphones.
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