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James Cameron On How Avatar Technology Could Keep Actors Young
Suki I writes "An article at EW discusses another use for Avatar's sophisticated motion-capture technology: 'Sure, it's terrific for turning human actors into big blue alien Na'vis. But the photorealistic CGI technology James Cameron perfected for Avatar could easily be used for other, even more mind-blowing purposes — like, say, bringing Humphrey Bogart back to life, or making Clint Eastwood look 35 again. "How about another Dirty Harry movie where Clint looks the way he looked in 1975?" Cameron suggests. "Or a James Bond movie where Sean Connery looks the way he did in Doctor No? How cool would that be?"' The article goes on to quote Cameron as saying you would still need actors to play the roles, and that an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere."
NO
Those weren't humans, they were blue skinned aliens with very different facial features. The uncanny valley was not addressed, so we have no idea how this "photoreal" technology stands up to that close inspection.
I'm far far FAR from unbiased on this, but if you wanted to speculate on making actors look younger, you'd still be better served looking at Benjamin Button.
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"How cool would that be?"
I don't know. Depends on how good the movie is.
What ethical line? It's all business, actors are very expensive and often behave like divas so removing the actors and replacing them with rendered models can increase the profit margins for the movie studios.
Using rendered models not only saves you the millions that big name actors typically demand, but you no longer need to hire filming locations, stage stunts etc... Actors face becoming obsolete sooner or later.
Movie production of the future will be done in third world countries, where hundreds of poorly paid workers beaver away in a callcenter like environment constructing and animating digital models.
The fact that it's profitable does not automatically sidestep any ethical considerations. Case in point: It would be very profitable to chain your workers to the factory floor and have them work 18 hours a day for no money, and consumers would be able to buy the wares much cheaper, yet it would not be ethical.
In this case, one can question whether the studios have the (moral and legal) right to the actors' image beyond what they've filmed.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Hasn't tech like this already been used to put a younger looking Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Salvation?
Video clip (may spoil the movie): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY57vJOQIlE
+1 Funny Signature
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/zombie_reagan_raised_from_grave ?
Who single handedly invented, revolutionized and perfected 3D animation. This is the message I'm getting, what did he really do? He told some engineers he wanted a motion capture camera smacked on the forehead of the actors to capture their facial expressions better, he co-developed some camera system for 7 years (I doubt he did any coding).
For crying out loud, he's a 'director' with lots of cash and a name with huge momentum. I don't flame him for making CG flicks, but taking glory for the whole franchise like some demigod, please, don't start calling motion-capture 'Avatar-technology'.
At most it may need some tweaking.
That's what my boss usually says right before I pull a week of all-nighters
Who gets remembered is not who uses pieces of a technology, but who puts the pieces together into a gestalt. We can look to Apple for that. Before the iPod and iPhone, the pieces were around, touchscreen UI, multitouch, app stores, and smartphones. However, who got the mindshare to Joe Sixpack wasn't RIM, it was Apple who spun existing technologies together to make something cool.
Cameron is the same way. The CG aliens are not new, but the way they were done as a main part of the film is, making sure the uncanny vally is bypassed by having different facial features (ears way high on the head, larger irises, flattened nose, the facial shading). 3D is not new either, but Avatar is the first widespread movie that used 3D technology without having to force theaters to upgrade their projection equipment.
These days, it is not who invents something that gets the cash (else Xerox would be in the Fortune 10 with their PARC inventions.) It is who manages to package existing stuff and sell it who takes home the prize.
But the photorealistic CGI technology James Cameron perfected...
Whoa. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. It was damn impressive, but it most certainly wasn't perfect. It was always clear that what I was looking at was CG. It is not yet at a point where the computer is going to fool the viewer into thinking that what they are seeing is real. It's come a hell of a long way but we're not yet at "perfected." Not by a long shot.
The point of human actors are that they're good at their job - acting (and marketing themselves, in some cases). They are not hired for their face or body as much as their acting ability. There are a lot of people out there who have great faces and bodies but do not end up as superstar actors. If the goal in casting was to have a perfect-looking human, many of our top actors today would not be where they are.
The whole point of avatar was that there were good human actors driving the CG effects.
There's a reason that many cultures have a tradition of respecting the dead.
While you're alive, you strive to do the best you can, because once you're gone, the only legacy you pass on is memories of you, in the people who knew you, and anything you've written or produced.
If it's all of a sudden allowable in the name of entertainment to say complete lies about you and pass it off as fact (well, apart from the fact that historians have been doing this for as long as history has been recorded), it adds in one more thing to worry about, and life's full enough of those as it is. How would your descendants would feel if, for example, someone wrote a movie, in which you were explicitly identified, and represented as a hard right wing mass murderer responsible for ethnic cleansing initiatives?
Yeah, I know, it's not a hard argument. There again, very little in ethics is a cut and dried matter. To be ethical, you should present the truth as closely as you can, in the spirit with which the person lived their life once they're gone. Your proposal blatantly doesn't do this, and most likely goes in direct opposition to what their wishes were. This is unethical.
Definitely agreed that skinning will be a far greater problem (unenforceable, but unethical against illegal, as celebrities own the rights to their own image).
On the Child Porn thing.. Hmm.. Very contentious.. I don't know enough about the effects on the active libido, and how that in turn affects the desire for real world satisfaction. I don't trust the politicians' voices on this, and the psychologists have to tread very very carefully while researching this.. I'll leave that one for scientific debate with people who get more of an idea of the real implications, backed up by hard data..