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."

Comments

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH no

[Anonymous Coward]

NO

Re:HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH no

[Shadow of Eternity]

A one word AC first that's also pretty much exactly what I wanted to say? I need to mark this on the calendar.

Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[shidarin'ou]

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.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[Suki I]

The article covers what you mention. Sigourney Weaver's Avatar looks 20 years younger than the real "version". The CGI is described as accurate enough to replicate the actor down to the pours. My take was that it gives the director another tool for making an interesting movie and they still can't replicate what is inside the actor's head.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[ivoras]

I don't know for sure but I thought some of the "real" scenes were also CGIed - specifically, the scenes where the jarhead records his log at the various stations - to me they looked completely artificial - and the uncanny valley effect was there.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[Clover_Kicker]

replicate the actor down to the pours

pores?

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[gaspyy]

You are correct but still, for the most part the Na'vi did look real and more importantly they looked alive.

I've looked at the movie and at high-res stills and I never thought "this looks so fake". In fact, one scene with a Samson helicopter and a bunch of mercenaries did look like CGI to me; then, reading Cinefex I saw a picture of the scene and it was real (1:1 model of the helicopter, the people and even some of the grass)

I am doing 3d work (not at that level) and I usually know where to look for imperfections... the only place I could spot things looking fake was in the night scenes with the Na'vi tribesmen by the fire... the light on their faces was wrong, way to orange. Again, in the Cinefex article this was alluded - they had to make a special shader for that, otherwise blue skin + orange light = zombie gray.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[Zarf]

replicate the actor down to the pours

pores?

No, no, it really is "pours" ... see it's very hard to mimic the way an actor pours milk.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[Fred_A]

I don't know for sure but I thought some of the "real" scenes were also CGIed

I thought they all were. Wasn't that the point ?

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[Suki I]

replicate the actor down to the pours

pores?

LOL, my bad usage.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[Yvanhoe]

Note that what we call "Hollywood looks" is a sort of uncanny valley we learned to love. Were you in front of someone really as good looking as a movie star after make-up and post-processing, you would certainly have an uncanny valley feeling. But when seen through the screen, that looks okay. Actually, many actors are already being "smoothed" in movies and pictures.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[shidarin'ou]

I was not trying to say it looked fake- not at all. I don't think it can be qualified as photoreal when a colorist has jacked up the saturation 200% (thank God it was turned down from the 400% Saturation it was at during early previews), but I also don't think that's a problem with any of the technology.

You and I are probably in total agreement that the textures, modeling, shading etc were all 100% up to photoreal par- they just weren't taken in a "photoreal" direction; a move I feel resulted in some real scenes (like your green screen helicopter) look fake because they were pushed past what we know is normal in comp or coloring.

What I was more trying to say was that the avatar technology was cool, but it's not some kind of omni-drug. It won't solve all of humanities woes and sometimes there are other methods that have already proven effective at something.

In VFX there are ten ways to do any one thing; and god knows I'm a fan of doing things a complicated new, expensive way just because it's complicated and new; but I just wanted to say, making actors younger has been done before, and the uncanny valley still hasn't been addressed.

PS: You have a website?

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[timeOday]

For me, Avatar bridged the uncanny valley. Ignore the Alien scenes entirely; there were many humans in the picture too. And they looked incredibly good. Real enough to appear next to live-filmed humans, probably not, but not "creepy" either.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[cntThnkofAname]

*The uncanny valley was not addressed I haven't herd of this until just now, so I wiki'd it. You make a very good point. However looking at the graph on the wiki page, at the bottom of the graph I see zombie and corpse. A little higher I see prosthetic hand, and then almost level with the line before the dip I see a life like puppet. I think the face capture technology can probably beat a puppet.

Failing that, I would say that many of us doubt the abilities why have to have compassion and empathy in the littlest and most inhuman of things.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[yacc143]

Actually, if you think about this, all the movie was rendered. Also the scenes where only humans are running around.

So yes, I realized this already in theatre, it's a quantum leap. The plot was just average, but the rendering was brilliant.
The first movie computer rendered movie that is 98% looking like a real-world movie.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[WCguru42]

How often do you run into people under that amount of light. Trust me, anyone without makeup under that much lighting would not look too good, hence one of the needs for makeup on actors.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[davester666]

"and that an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere"

I'm pretty sure any ethical line the movie industry comes up with will be drawn by money.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[chaos215bar2]

The uncanny valley refers to the fact that CG animation which looks almost human, but not quite, just looks odd. This is not an issue when you're animating an avatar, because the viewers have no point of reference as to what an avatar should look like.
Being able to replicate the actor down to the pores tells us nothing except that they are using quite high resolution textures. Accurately replicating human skin requires a very complex lighting model that accounts for the fact that skin is slightly translucent. While there are certainly examples that come very close, this is not a solved problem. Hair is more complex because even when motion capture is used, the hair itself must be simulated later. There is no motion capture for hair.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[absurdist]

No, no, poors. As in reverting their appearance to when they were young and poor and hungry for fame.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[AK Marc]

I am doing 3d work (not at that level) and I usually know where to look for imperfections... the only place I could spot things looking fake was in the night scenes with the Na'vi tribesmen by the fire... the light on their faces was wrong, way to orange. Again, in the Cinefex article this was alluded - they had to make a special shader for that, otherwise blue skin + orange light = zombie gray.

Night has always been hardest. Much of what was made until the 70s was filmed in broad daylight, then underexposed to look like night. If you look and see the sharp shadows on the ground, they are obviously from the sun, not the moon or stars. Much the same will happen with CGI. The colors won't look right, so they change the shader to add an unrealistic color to get the desired effect. It's been done since long before digital. It will be done long after digital. Directors want to show something reality won't let them, so they use effects.

At least my least favorite effect wasn't visible. I didn't ever see the watermarking. I wondered if they would watermark it, since it's 3D. Theoretically, someone could put one lens of the glasses over their camera and get half the movie clearly, right? Or did I just miss it. I don't ever try to look for it, but I end up seeing it over half the time.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[weeboo0104]

Ahhh, I see the grammar Na'vi's are out in force.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[Howitzer86]

I agree, however, some actors can be reproduced. A CGI version of Keanu Reeves (such as the one created almost 10 years ago), would never be noticed as odd, unsettling, or surreal.

- because he already looks that way.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[caitsith01]

Man, for all the geeks on slashdot, nobody really understands what they saw.

In case you missed it, *all* the actors you saw on screen were CG'ed from motion capture. They captured the muscle movements of the actors and used that as the basis for CG. All those wrinkles on Weaver's human character? CG. They didn't have to put them there. They could make her appear as a 20-year-old, or as a man.

Ummmmmm... no.

Not quite sure if you're joking/trolling, but assuming you're not then, no, you are wrong. The human actors were real humans being filmed optically, not computer generated.

Cameron is banging on about how the avatar version of Weaver was made to look younger than the real actress. And also blue, and a huge alien cat thing. So I'm not convinced he can pull of everything he claims.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[shidarin'ou]

In case you missed it, *all* the actors you saw on screen were CG'ed from motion capture. They captured the muscle movements of the actors and used that as the basis for CG. All those wrinkles on Weaver's human character? CG. They didn't have to put them there. They could make her appear as a 20-year-old, or as a man.

Uhm. No. Most of the actors you saw on screen were keyed and then composited in to CG environments.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[caitsith01]

Those weren't humans, they were blue skinned aliens with very different facial features.

And they still looked animated to me. Apart from one or two extreme close up shots, which admittedly looked amazing, a great deal of the time the Navi still had that odd, plastic, overly smooth look that is a telltale sign that CGI is in effect.

I seriously question the sanity of anyone who claims they couldn't pick which bits of Avatar were rendered.

The real breakthrough was the 3D, which was phenomenal.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[Gabrill]

I'd like to see that done for the express purpose of getting milk from actresses.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[Gabrill]

It's a movie for crying out loud. There is no ethics to worry about, short of creating snuff films and/or underage porn, and this technology is even making those obsolete. The entire result falls under (incredibly involved) free speech.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[wisty]

In Shrek 1, they actually made Fiona look more "cartoonish", because she was almost photo-realistic. But the slight differences made her look like an animated manikin, rather than a real human. Freaky - thus the uncanny valley.

IIRC, Final Fantasy (the movie) tried to beat the uncanny valley by matching the actors lips very well. But then they re-dubbed it from Japanese to English, and made it even worse.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[wisty]

Movies have lots of tricks to make the shots look "real", and CGI plays catch-up a bit. Remember that scene in Starlight Express, where the two kids looked cross-eyed when they stared at each other? No "grabber".

Or Radioactive Man:

Martin Prince: Uh, sir, why don't you just use real cows?

Painter: Cows don't look like cows on film. You got to use horses.

Ralph Wiggum: What do you do if you want something that looks like a horse?

Painter: Usually we just tape a bunch of cats together.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[WCguru42]

Sun light has the tendency to shine above a person and not directly into their faces. And when it is directly into their faces it's generally at an angle where the atmosphere is pulling a decent amount of that luminance away.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[rtb61]

Of course if acting skill is the only driver for selection as appearance will be all CGI created, it will certainly change the whole acting landscape. Ugly, pretty, young, old, black white or brindle, all of it will not make a lick of difference, me thinks a pretty but stupid skilled liar is going to really struggle in that market or at the very least make very little money.

The only real problem now is the cost of high quality CGI, but as that continues to fall and they start to develop virtual droids that can interact with a created virtual environment, the whole content landscape will change, a veritable flood of new content and the end of the celebrity era, harumph, no loss there ;D.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[smcn]

Ahhh, I see the grammar Na'vi's are out in force.

I think you mean "fours".

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[vegiVamp]

they still can't replicate what is inside the actor's head.

True, even our best pumps have trouble getting below 1 µPa.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[lawpoop]

My bad. I was wrong. The whole thing looked CG to me. For instance, images like this. There were also some close-ups of his eye and face in the avatar chamber that seemed just seemed to give off a 'Final Fantasy' feel. Combined with Cameron's statements, I jumped to a conclusion.

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[caitsith01]

My bad. I was wrong. The whole thing looked CG to me. For instance, images like this. There were also some close-ups of his eye and face in the avatar chamber that seemed just seemed to give off a 'Final Fantasy' feel. Combined with Cameron's statements, I jumped to a conclusion.

I assume that Cameron did as much as he could to blend the CG stuff with the live action, so it wouldn't surprise me if some deliberate attempt was made to make the live stuff ever so slightly less real looking to make it match up.

I would be awesome if they could do that stuff with computers, but they just aren't quite there yet...

Re:Avatar did not address the uncanny valley

[lawpoop]

I think your theory is right. This image looks particularly wax-figury. I got that vibe from the whole movie. CG-ing up live-shot images is a good way to get around the actual CG stuff looking different from the rest.

Ethical line ? In movies ?

[bytesex]

"and that an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere."

Eh. No.

"How cool would that be?"

[Laxitive]

"How cool would that be?"

I don't know. Depends on how good the movie is.

Re:"How cool would that be?"

[Bacon Bits]

Yeah, if it's one thing that George Lucas has proven, it's that good special effects don't make a good movie.

Just like amazing graphics don't make a good game.

Re:"How cool would that be?"

[TBoon]

And how good the actor acting the actor is acting. Otherwise it would be like a tone-deaf Elvis-clone in a wheelchair...

Re:"How cool would that be?"

[Suki I]

Yeah, if it's one thing that George Lucas has proven, it's that good special effects don't make a good movie.

Just like amazing graphics don't make a good game.

Was that a diss against Howard the Duck? It was, don't deny it!

Re:"How cool would that be?"

[Bacon Bits]

Hey, the best thing about that movie was Lea Thompson, and she didn't need any special effects at all!

Re:"How cool would that be?"

[colinrichardday]

Even Aristotle knew that (substitute plays for movie).

Spectacle is something very enthralling, but is very artless
and least particular to the art of poetic composition.

Poetics 50b16, see also 53b

Re:"How cool would that be?"

[bill_mcgonigle]

Yeah, if it's one thing that George Lucas has proven, it's that good special effects don't make a good movie.

Check out Hitchcock's two "The Man Who Knew Too Much" versions, from '34 and '56. The latter is beautiful, and in Hi-Fi, but the story lacks the punch of the original.

uncanny valley

[GeLeTo]

Cameron sidestepped the uncanny valley ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley ) by making the navi different enough from people. I have yet to see a believable CG human character.

Re: uncanny valley

[GIL_Dude]

I have yet to see a believable CG scene period. Whether the actors were real or not. In fact, I guess it is worse when the actors are real and performing in front of a green screen and the CGI is composited in later. I've noticed that many people can sit through scenes like that just fine (including my wife), but for me they are just jarring. It's usually something with perspective or lighting sources or whatnot that just screams "something is wrong here" and blows the immersion I am trying to get in the movie. I can generally back up the movie and point out to my wife the things I am seeing and then she will "get it", but it really seems like only some people notice this stuff. (perhaps like only some people notice 60 hz flicker on CRT monitors).

Maybe it is something like being "hyper observant" or something. The other thing that always jars me out of a scene is the continuity. Something like a glass in the actor's hand that is 1/2 full and then a cut to another view and it is all of a sudden totally full. A different number and placement of flowers in a vase. A scene in a House episode where he pulls out a syringe, bleeds the air out and clearly has it less than half full then a cut to another camera and it is 3/4 full.

Both types of scenes - the CGI and the "continuity error" just seem to rudely pull or push me back out of that immersion in the film.

Re: uncanny valley

[Anonymous Coward]

What you are describing is OCD and not just being hyper observant.

Hyper observant would be noticing that the revolver in the original saw was empty ( no spent shells ) so that the "dead" body on the floor at the end could not have killed itself.

OCD is noticing that there are 17 flowers in the vase and not 16.

Re: uncanny valley

[zarathruster]

Get off your nuts

Re: uncanny valley

[yahwotqa]

There are three flowers in a vase. The third flower is green.

Re: uncanny valley

[khallow]

That really bugs me. Green is like the easiest color possible for a flower. Surely they could have done better.

Re: uncanny valley

[Anonymous Coward]

They're getting really close: http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/DigitalEmily/

Re: uncanny valley

[Minwee]

I have yet to see a believable CG human character.

No, you just have yet to see a CG human character who was unbelievable enough for you to notice.

Come on, it's been two years already and you still think that Barack Obama is real.

Re: uncanny valley

[Toonol]

And... which flower is the THIRD? Count from the left? Too many questions!

Re: uncanny valley

[kklein]

I have yet to see a believable CG scene period.

Amen to that. Everyone's raving about the "effects" in Avatar, but there actually aren't any. It's a cartoon. That's the only reason it works; it looks unreal.

Think back to the first movie where we really started having entire scenes put together in CGI: The Matrix. That didn't look real, either, but that was the point: in the story, nothing was real. The kind of "well, this looks right, but something isn't..." feeling was used as an important part of the story.

Since then, we've moved to CGI everywhere and as a result, I just find movies a lot less interesting. I mean, if I'm going to watch a cartoon, I'll watch a cartoon. I have no problem with cartoons, because they have no pretense of being real. CGI scenes with actors, though... Meh.

Give me miniatures and expert set design any day.

Re: uncanny valley

[chowdahhead]

How about CG Arnold in Terminator 4? While making believable virtual actors might be a bit further in the future, bad actors are a lot easier. Joking aside, it looked pretty cool in the movie (he really does suck at acting though)

Re: uncanny valley

[bill_mcgonigle]

Cameron sidestepped the uncanny valley ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley [wikipedia.org] ) by making the navi different enough from people. I have yet to see a believable CG human character.

The scenes with the humans were artificial too. At least some of them, like with the grumpy old guy giving the briefing. Either that or they forced some bad 3D on the scenes in post.

How about the scene when they first tried transference with SW's character? Was that just a composite? It certainly looked like SW was done as a younger version of herself (that, or she's quite an amazing 60-year-old. Has somebody published a scene/effects list?

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[RobVB]

Yeah, this coming from a guy who tried to murder an entire alien civilization for our viewing pleasure.

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[omgarthas]

Looks like Matrix, as long as you believe it's real, IT IS REAL

Bad Idea

[hfsys]

"...and that an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere."

Yeah. The line is, 'Don't do it'.

Hollywood has plenty of new, undiscovered, actors. This only allows for the studio executives to cash in on famous titles, by developing terrible sequels that should never be made. i.e. Terminator 3, or Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls.

..Or maybe this great power could be used for the forces of good. Ooh! I know! They could finally make Rocky X.

Re:Bad Idea

[Captain Hook]

Hollywood has plenty of new, undiscovered, actors. This only allows for the studio executives to cash in on famous titles,

You are thinking about a business where celebrity is the driving force of a film and as such a single actor is able to command a huge fee.

Why would a film company rely on a single actor to create a character if they didn't have to, especially in a world where the sequel is so important. I'm sure you are right, to start with this will be used to create new films based on old franchises but I see a future where the character is entirely computer generated.

Once you remove the actor from being right in front of the camera/audience the film company can create a character and never have to worry about the actor dropping dead during filming, or demanding huge fees because if he did you just drop the next body actor in front of the camera and let the computer carry on making the movie.

In fact I can only see 1 reason to have celebrity actors, real life promotion of a film. It's hard to have a CGI character walk up the red carpet of the Oscars (although not impossible of course). I'm not sure we as an audience would accept actorless characters. Think about how big the gossip mags are which all add to the feedback loop of publicity.

Re:Bad Idea

[Landshark17]

The more I think about it the more I agree with you that this is a bad idea. I'd love to see Humphrey Bogart in a new movie, but he's dead and that's that. CGI Bogey is not an acceptable substitute. There's a big risk for abuse that I think outweighs just about any possible good. The worst I can imagine is something like what was suggested in Thank You For Smoking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxIGcpas_wk see 3:04 for relevant part) where some moral busybody goes back and tries to politically correct old movies...

Why not use this technology to create photo-realistic CGI actors that are totally unique? You side-step the "But it's not really him!" problem at the very least, and it guarantees you an actor who will do exactly what the director wants, how the director wants, never lock themself in a trailer, never snort coke, never die unexpectedly. I'd pay to see a totally CGI actor that could pass for a human... assuming it's in a movie that I would want to go and see in the first place.

No Thanks

[Khith]

This is great! I mean, just look at how wonderfully they de-aged Patrick Stewart for his brief role in Wolverine. Oh, wait..

As cool as this is for creating aliens and other strange creatures, it does NOT work well. Even if it ends up looking better in the future, this is NOT something that I would be looking forward to.

Re:No Thanks

[Khith]

Err, rather it does not work well for HUMANS. Hit submit too quickly.

Oh my dream will come true!

[nanospook]

Bring back Ronald Reagan!

Re:Oh my dream will come true!

[sadler121]

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/zombie_reagan_raised_from_grave ?

Re:Oh my dream will come true!

[couchslug]

"Bring back Ronald Reagan!"

To hell with that, make my dream Golden Girls/Roseanne Barr 3D high def. Crisco party!

Re:Oh my dream will come true!

[tthomas48]

What would really be cool would be that they could bring back Ronald Regan and actually make him a good actor. Although probably we'd be more entertained if they used the tech to bring back Bonzo.

Mix The Best

[b4upoo]

The obvious goal is the elimination of human actors which will assure higher profit margins for the film industries. Since legal issues will arise if a character is duplicated by computer art the trick will be to take the admired characteristics of several stars and combine them into a "new" image. Blending Bogart with Eastwood if done by an artist may well present a new film star to the public and create a complex situation in which the Bogart estate and the Eastwood interests both have little if any claim at all to the proceeds. Finding a way to combine voice characteristics might actually be more difficult than the visual elements of film. The monetary interests are large enough that this work will surely be done. Obviously some of it has already been done such as with John Candy completing a film after his death due to computer replications of his voice and person. The trick is to get the cost of the computer work down.

Re: Mix The Best

[iwaybandit]

Does your comment make this movie S1m0ne prophetic?

Re: Mix The Best

[tonycheese]

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.

Re: Mix The Best

[winwar]

"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."

Hmmm. Cruise, Schwarzenegger, etc.

Plenty of actors are hired for their face, body and/or name rather than their ability to act. Of course, when I mean the ability to act, I mean the ability to play more than one type of character. Plenty of "great" actors play the same character over and over again. I still enjoy their movies but I have no illusion about their ability.

Re: Mix The Best

[ajlisows]

You are correct, but it just so happens that a pretty large number of actors and actresses also happen to be in the Very Attractive to Smoking Hot range....probably more true for women than it is for men. There may be some exceptions, but I can't think of any films with young women in lead roles who are downright ugly. I think audiences in general have a tendency to like/sympathize a character who is at least marginally attractive.

Perhaps this technology could be used in a way that would give otherwise talented actresses (awesome ability with speaking/perfect mannerisms) that don't have that Hollywood friendly face a chance to go in and make a career of what they do best.

Re: Mix The Best

[dbIII]

True, despite all the hype it's just another way to do animation. It's just a cheaper and better way to animate from motion capture than what was used in the 1978 "Lord of The Rings" film (Ralph Bakshi) and before.
Differences are plain with examples like "Aladdin" with a good cast and the spin offs without one.

Re: Mix The Best

[drinkypoo]

lord of the rings, you mean the unfinished rotoscope? these days you can do that low-grade crap in software. although they didn't for Waking Life or Through a Scanner Darkly. They instead basically have film-illustrator (compare film-gimp) except with way less functionality than illustrator. I came to hate both movies deeply when I found out they were done by hand, and still look fucking distracting.

Re: Mix The Best

[CAIMLAS]

The obvious goal is the elimination of human actors which will assure higher profit margins for the film industries.

Will. Not. Happen.

The studios have been trying to "kill off" the movie star for almost 50 years now. It's a wet dream that keeps resurfacing, and is not likely to be possible at any time.

Why?

Stars become stars due to their on-screen personas. That persona is partially the script, but it largely the personality of the actor shining through. That personality is not something which can be 'manufactured' in a studio: it belongs to an individual. Imagine: another Die Hard movie in 30 years, but with someone who not only has the ability of someone like Christopher Lambert, but the personality. Yeah, not going to happen: you'll need that original 'personality'.

Star actors sell movies, not only by their looks but also by the characters they play, and their personalities. There will always be "we need a Harrison Ford type" (I think Shia LaBeouf is it, currently, until he gets replaced, the brand/variety dies, or it becomes the "Shia LaBeouf type"), but there will never be "another John Wayne".

That, and if it could be done, it would be prohibitively expensive. They'd still need actors to display emotions and personality, and would likely at least want good ones so pulling it off wouldn't be completely half-assed. People would stop going to movies if they were bad.

You most certainly could not do "studio developed characters". Even if done well, such attempts seem to come off kind of generic and 'plastic' - and not due to technology limitations. There are enough generic people in the world; most of them do not watch movies to see more of themselves.

Re: Mix The Best

[Dr_Barnowl]

The other point being of course, that if you can map someone onto a CGI mannequin, anyone could be a big box-office ; being a successful actor now only requires acting ability and not a fortuitous convergence of acting ability AND looks.

Re: Mix The Best

[dbIII]

My point is the motion capture stuff is just rotoscope done a lot better and is not a new idea.
I suppose the biggest problem with that version of LOTR was Ralph Bakshi and his tendancy to never deliver what he had promised (just like with Wizards where the wonderful bits were done by people that thought they were going to be paid but most of the film is the rest slapped together after they left).

Ethical?

[Bert64]

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.

Re:Ethical?

[RobVB]

Movie production of the future will be done in third world countries

Don't you think you're overreacting a bit? Sure, California has been hit hard by the recession, but it's not a third world country yet.

Re:Ethical?

[Eudial]

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.

Re:Ethical?

[lukas84]

It would be very profitable to chain your workers to the factory floor and have them work 18 hours a day for no money

Yes, but that's illegal. Any company doing this (in the first world, obviously) be forcibly closed down. I don't think ethics figure into the decisions to not doing this.

Re:Ethical?

[Nadaka]

Most actors are cheaper than the >$300 million it took to poop out avatar.

Re:Ethical?

[briareus]

"but you no longer need to hire filming locations, stage stunts"

You clearly don't understand what motion capture is.

Re:Ethical?

[Bert64]

Actors are pretty much made by the movie companies, in future you will see the movie companies creating virtual actors (ie artificially created characters) that get reused in multiple movies...

This already happens, but only with cartoon characters because the level of realism hasn't been there.

Re:Ethical?

[Ihmhi]

I'm sure that in the actor's contracts there's some sort of clause to use their image in any related film promotion or even future works (i.e. a flashback in the second movie with a scene from the first movie, and the actor does not appear in the second movie otherwise). Such a clause could probably be shoehorned into being used in this manner. Legal battle would ensue and that's where the policy on this sort of thing would ultimately be decided.

Re:Ethical?

[mikael]

Didn't a TV advert do that - I think it was the Gene Kelly "Singing in the Rain" where they used an actor but replaced his face with Gene Kelly's

Golf GTi advert

Re:Ethical?

[Attila Dimedici]

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.

Actually, it wouldn't be. Slave labor is actually significantly less productive than free labor, even after you factor in the wages.

Re:Ethical?

[u38cg]

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.

Actually, it wouldn't. Slave labour is bad for an economy, because you have to feed and house your slaves (and you generally can't treat them badly, as they are expensive and difficult to replace), which is costly, and by allowing slavery the market for your product is smaller by the total number of slaves in the economy. You don't have to bother invoking ethics: it's just a dumb idea.

Re:Ethical?

[westlake]

Actors face becoming obsolete sooner or later.

The showman has always known that the star is the best guarantee of a return at the box office.

Tech become routine. You keep reaching for the next big effect. New ways to tie the heroine to the railroad track.

But that won't be enough to make you care about the character and the story.

Is Ben Burtt a technician or an actor?

The lead animators for Eve and Wall-E? The geek who says "tech" doesn't know what acting means. Not in CG and not in live action.

He doesn't have the "face." He doesn't know how to use the "face."

Re:Ethical?

[VShael]

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.

But a better analogy would be chaining robots to the floor and making them work 24/7.
Luddites might complain, and the people who lose their jobs, but the robots won't.

Re:Ethical?

[lennier]

"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."

And yet, historically, that's pretty much exactly what did happen in 18th century England - to the point of actual slavery, in America. And the manufacturers generating that profit from abuse of their workers not only found no ethical problems with it, but argued that 1) profit was an ethical imperative for the improvement of society (Adam Smith), and 2) they were doing the workers a favour by improving their living conditions - 'why, if not for us they'd be living in mud huts in bogs in Ireland/jungles in Africa!'

(Hey there, Roald Dahl! Willy Wonka mouths EXACTLY those platitudes in his 'Oompa-Loompa' speech in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Only apparently without a trace of irony.)

So, in *our* history, yes, 'the fact that it's profitable' did very much sidestep all ethical considerations. The manufacturers simply got to redefine ethics in their favour. That was neat! Ah, the golden age of Classical Liberal Economics.

And guess what, that's exactly what's happening today in China and Mexico and the Phillipines. Same kind of conditions, same kind of ethical arguments put forward about how the rigors of low-wage industrialisation is 'doing the workers a favour by giving them jobs they couldn't get elsewhere'. Have we raised our ethical standards as a society? No we have not, we have dropped them. Back to the Dickens era.

What stopped that kind of insanity in our history was when workers and anti-slavery campaigners started organising and *forced* the manufacturers to change their ways. But that's Communism.

Re:Ethical?

[lennier]

I agree that it's dumb - but it's interesting how such a dumb idea flourished for so long in the American South, isn't it?

Re:Ethical?

[Gage With Union]

But doesn't the company have an ethical obligation to its shareholders to maximize profits, and doesn't that trump all potential human suffering?

Though what you suggest is deeply unethical, you can certainly find it in labor camps in totalitarian states where it's perfectly legal. Special bonus for businesses operating in circumstances like these: no risk of investigative journalism...

Re:Ethical?

[mgblst]

Is it ethical to out source work to India?

Is it ethical to replace workers in factories with machines?

Is it ethical to replace horses and there carers with cars?

Re:Ethical?

[CAIMLAS]

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.

You haven't thought this one through, I don't think. You still need to hire big-name actors, especially if you want a "character franchise" (which many people like due to the continuity and studios like due to compulsive sales - "oh look, another Clint Eastwood film!").

Once a character is developed, they're stuck with the same actor unless they want to kill the character in the process of finding a new actor. I doubt that's something they'd want to do.

On the other hand, the character - arguably something very close to IP in the movie world would remain with the studio which develops it, which is a bit of a throwback towards what studios have been after since it stopped: "owned" actors who worked for one studio, and one studio only. So maybe they'd push it through anyway.

Re:Ethical?

[u38cg]

There's an old saying - the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Don't get me wrong: it took over a thousand years for the Roman Empire to over-extend itself, and with the massive supply of fresh bodies from Africa, it would have taken simple economics much longer to do for the American slave trade than it actually lasted due to other factors. But ultimately, it's comforting to know that in the long run you don't have to rely on people's moral sense to solve these problems.

Re:Ethical?

[bingoUV]

In this case, one can question whether the studios have the (moral and legal) right to the actors' image beyond what they've filmed.

Which actor are you talking about? GP was talking about rendered models. Which don't even necessarily look like an existing human being: it could be totally imaginary. There is no "actor" involved.

Re:What's next?

[gbjbaanb]

depressing for the big stars who can no longer demand a jetplane or two as part of their fee...

We might get a few new talented actors working instead, Joe Wannabe as Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine in Casablanca 2.

That's got to be better than remaking a modern version of Casablanca with, say, Brad Pitt.

Reminds me of Max Headroom:

[lobiusmoop]

"My Word. You could have all your politicians in little boxes - very handy."

Too bad they didnt have this for basic instict 2

[voss]

Im sure sharon stone would have happily looked like she did in the first film and shes a better actress now than she was back then.

Terminator Salvation

[D J Horn]

*SPOILER*

As mediocre as the movie was, I couldn't help but smile when Arnold shows up as a fresh T-800, looking like he just stepped off the set of the original film. Granted while there are only brief shots of his face - the rest of the scenes using typical hide-a-stunt-double camera angles - it was still a really cool scene in my opinion.

But as far as doing something more elaborate like a new Bond film starring a 'young' Sean Connery? I don't think the tech is there yet. The uncanny valley is really hard to get out of. Sure a still shot can be rendered to look flawless, but as soon as they start talking it just feels terribly uncomfortable.

Re:Terminator Salvation

[Spatial]

Really? I didn't even know it was CGI until that guy pointed it out.

The special effects in the movie were pretty incredible. The movie has many problems but looking fake isn't one.

Re:Terminator Salvation

[AK Marc]

It looked to me like they took footage from the original and cleaned it up. Did they actually use him for the shooting, or just get his permission to re-use footage from the first? The shots lasted for such a short period of time, I was trying to scrape my memory to recall similar shots in the original.

Re:Terminator Salvation

[Totenglocke]

They didn't do either. Back when they made the first Terminator they had to make molds of his face (for doing the parts of the movie where he gets bits of his face ripped off) and they simply scanned those molds in to a computer to make the models for T4. I was very impressed with how real it looked.

Re:Terminator Salvation

[westlake]

But as far as doing something more elaborate like a new Bond film starring a 'young' Sean Connery?

The Connery Bond films are as firmly anchored in the sixties as the classic image of Bogart is in the forties.

An actor with a minimum of common sense abandons these roles as he grows older and their time is past.

Re:Terminator Salvation

[caitsith01]

*SPOILER*

As mediocre as the movie was, I couldn't help but smile when Arnold shows up as a fresh T-800, looking like he just stepped off the set of the original film. Granted while there are only brief shots of his face - the rest of the scenes using typical hide-a-stunt-double camera angles - it was still a really cool scene in my opinion.

See, I thought this looked really fake and obviously rendered. I reckon if you put a gun to their heads and made people choose which was real on pain of death between that and some old footage of real Arnie (with both appropriately degraded to look the same quality wise etc) I think 99% would still pick it.

Re:Terminator Salvation

[CAIMLAS]

Actually, Terminator Salvation didn't have "young Arnold" in it, as CGI or old footage. They used a stand-in actor (I think it was this guy) who wore a 'prosthetic' face/mask. The guy's body/physique was a bit off, but it was close!

Using existing actors is only the first step

[Tanuki64]

I cannot wait till actors are 100% artificial. Finally we can get rid of most of those grossly overpaid attention whores. This might be the only case where I am glad when the computer destroys a job.

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[RobVB]

But then who is Conan going to interview?

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[Suki I]

But then who is Conan going to interview?

CGI Conan or real Conan?

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[EnglishTim]

If they've got to a place where actors can be completely replaced, I think it's safe to assume that by that time every single other profession will have been replaced as well. What is it that you do, exactly?

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[Tanuki64]

If they've got to a place where actors can be completely replaced, I think it's safe to assume that by that time every single other profession will have been replaced as well.

I doubt it. Perfect computer graphics won't remove a bad appendix.

What is it that you do, exactly?

I am software developer. :-)

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[AliasMarlowe]

But then who is Conan going to interview?

He'll interview himself, of course. Possibly a whole debating panel of Conans in CGI.
TV celebrities are as bad as any other at being narcissistic attention whores.

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[briareus]

Not gonna happen. To truly get rid of grossly overpaid celebrities (whether they're actors, athletes, whatever) you'd have to get rid of the grossly overpaying audiences. Not everyone's a slashdot geek eager to watch artificial actors.

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[Tanuki64]

Not gonna happen. To truly get rid of grossly overpaid celebrities (whether they're actors, athletes, whatever) you'd have to get rid of the grossly overpaying audiences. Not everyone's a slashdot geek eager to watch artificial actors.

Hard to say if there really exists a grossly overpaying audience. Problem is that hardly anyone says he is groslly overpaying when he pays $10 to view a movie. But if millions want to see the movie.... And how many would mind artificial actors when the technique becomes that good that nobody can tell the difference?

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[el3mentary]

Cybersluts 15? That makes Backdoor sluts 9 look like Crotch capers 3!

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[ianalis]

I guess you'll love S1m0ne

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[Tanuki64]

I have seen this one. I did like it. :-D

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[Oligonicella]

CGI won't, but a robot could. With sufficiently developed software.

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[couchslug]

Synthetic attention whores will then fill the demand for such drama.

As technology becomes more accessible, fanfics may also improve in quality...

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[EnglishTim]

I think they'll be able to get a robot to remove an appendix before they can get a digital actor to convincingly act.

I'm sure they'll hit the graphical realism required for a digital actor fairly soon, but you'll still need an actor and a large team of animators for some time.

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[mgblst]

OK, fair enough. But do you think they are going to charge any less for a film? No.

So where is all this extra money going to go? To orphaniges? No, to the same greedy people who run the studios and control the MPAA that we all hate, and keep extending copyrights.

Yeah, that is a fucking brilliant idea.

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[CAIMLAS]

But the studios like those attention whores: they sell movies. A big-name actor is more than just someone in a movie: they're a sales aid, a movie feature, a plot device, etc. They're good for business.

You realize that studios used to "own" actors through exclusive contracts, right? The problem is that studios do not "own" the actors exclusively anymore, as they did then. They would "trade" actors amongst each other, but at the end of the day, a studio would essentially/mostly profit from a single actor's work. There was none of the diversity that there is now.

So yeah, if studios went to artificial actors, you could expect to see 20 of increasingly generic films with the same actors in them. The new and exciting would likely go away, and the cost of movies would likely go up, if anything. But the studios (you know, the same ones which pushed the DMCA?) would, at least, own all of the film assets again!

Re:Using existing actors is only the first step

[hazydave]

Real Conan would interview CGI Conan, then they switch. As long as it's Conan, and not Leno. Just say LeNO!

Or, really class it up like real Elvis Costello did, when he brought in real (oh so real) Mary Louise Parker to interview himself (on "Spectacle").

Schwarzenegger inTerminator Salvation

[Kenz0r]

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

Re:Schwarzenegger inTerminator Salvation

[glrotate]

Video clip (may spoil the movie)

Don't worry. The plot, screenplay, direction and acting take care of that nicely.

Re:Schwarzenegger inTerminator Salvation

[CODiNE]

Don't forget Judge Dread. I'm probably wrong but that may be the first. They couldn't get the CGI bike to align with Silvester Stallone's body so instead they made a 3D Stallone and put that on the CGI bike.

Re:Schwarzenegger inTerminator Salvation

[mobby_6kl]

Are you sure Stallone at any point in time played a British reggae musician? To be honest, I can't see that film being any good. Not that Judge Dredd was a masterpiece, but at least it was fairly entertaining.

Re:Schwarzenegger inTerminator Salvation

[mackil]

Not to mention S1m0ne

The end of prosthetic foreheads

[argent]

I think the biggest advance would be to eliminate the prosthetic forehead that has been the distinguishing mark of TV aliens since the original Star Trek.

Re:The end of prosthetic foreheads

[BlackHawk-666]

Star Trek has the most homogeneous and boring alien design of any sci-fi. "Hey, is that an alien stumbling towards us?" "No, that's just a dude with grilled cheese stuck on his forehead."

We don't need no stinkin actors

[tomhath]

A few years from now all movies will be cartoons. Next will politicians, they're already puppets anyway.

Re:We don't need no stinkin actors

[tepples]

A few years from now all movies will be cartoons.

Show me a high-grossing animated drama film about one of the major wars of the twentieth century, and I'll agree with you that cartoons aren't just for kids anymore.

All bow to the Great Cameron

[Anonymous Coward]

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'.

Re:All bow to the Great Cameron

[whatajoke]

If there weren't people in the open source movement who had a vision for its future (think RMS style 'leaders') then where would it aim?

Visionaries like RMS and Bruce Perens are/were great coders. So thanks, but We need more Karl Sims and Steve Wozniaks, and not more Camerons and Steve Jobs.

Re:All bow to the Great Cameron

[couchslug]

"don't start calling motion-capture 'Avatar-technology'."

Quite right. 'Avatech' has a nicer ring to it, like 'Sensurround'.

Re:All bow to the Great Cameron

[winwar]

"Who single handedly invented, revolutionized and perfected 3D animation. This is the message I'm getting, what did he really do?"

He used the tech to create a movie that made a titanic amount of money. Even Hollywood accountants might have to acknowledge that this movie made a profit (or they will have to put in some extra hours at work). In any case, Cameron proved you can make money with the technology. And making money is the only thing that matters to the beancounters in Hollywood.

So, yes, Cameron has essentially single handedly invented, revolutionized and prefected 3D animation. It's a proven technology in Hollywood-someone without the clout of Cameron can now use it. If the movie had crashed and burned, nobody would have touched it with a ten foot pole.

Re:All bow to the Great Cameron

[Anonymous Coward]

What Cameron and his colleagues pioneered for Avatar goes well beyond "motion-capture". The camera-helmets that gathered performance data from the actors faces are somewhat new (but the data from them was supplemented by numerous witness cameras and plenty of key-framing). The real innovation was the virtual camera that Cameron used. The headline is that he could walk around the capture stage, look through the "viewfinder" (monitor) on his virtual camera, and see a *real-time preview of the CG world*. E.g., see Sigourney Weaver as her Na'vi character, from the perspective of the camera, with CGI scenery elements (trees, rocks, etc.) included. This is unprecedented, and is likely to be a major efficiency boost to the filming of CGI heavy movies.

Re:All bow to the Great Cameron

[zippthorne]

Indeed it is an audacious and temptingly original idea by Cameron. Truly groundbreaking. I hope the first film they remake is "Simone." That would be great to see in a modern setting with the "original" actors.

Re:All bow to the Great Cameron

[RealErmine]

Actually, James Cameron's brother, Mike (an aeronautical engineer and stuntman) has invented a number of special film cameras. They are mostly for underwater filming: IMDB link. So I wouldn't be surprised if James and Mike actually invented new camera technology themselves for Avatar as has been reported.

Re:All bow to the Great Cameron

[chenjeru]

None of it is unprecedented. Image Metrics technology was used for facial capture, which has been around for years in the games industry. We have used virtual camera work and real-time animation for our CG TV show Sprookjesboom since 2004, and other games like Resident Evil used virtual cameras long ago.

Cameron is to be applauded for tying all the tech together so nicely, and the animation teams' work on rigging and lighting is breathtaking - but the key mocap and camera tech was already in place.

I'd go the opposite.

[tjstork]

I like classic actors and classic films as much as anyone, but, if the United States is to continue, we need to have the arts be alive and stories be retold through new actors, directors and minds. Like, I'm glad Trek got a new crew, but I think we could go even beyond that. We need to break out of racial typecasting. Like, why can't a black or asian guy play the lead in MacBeth? Are greedy kings somehow relevant only to white people? Or why couldn't a white guy play a role as a slave? Acting is -acting-. Screw computers bringing back dead people. Let's use computers to make it possible for anyone to be Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, let every high school play have great special effects. Let's mix high art and low, TV and theater, toss it all into the pot, mix things up, and do something new.

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[malkavian]

*Shrug* You can have whoever you want in any act role. Depends if you're going for historical accuracy, or put anyone into the role.
By the same token, you could redo the stories of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and have them cast as a white skinhead with swastikas on his arm. I'm guessing that it'll detract from the canon of the story.
Hey, much better idea. Why bother with rehashing the old stories, which have a vast amount of accepted roles behind them, and create NEW stories, where the hero is a particular person from a particular background? That's what art is supposed to be, creating new. There are a goodly many 'updates' to the Shakespearean plays, with all kinds of people playing the roles. And that works nicely..
Personally, I've seen Shakespearean plays with black leads, and they were good.. Have you watched any movies at all? There are a goodly many that spring to mind with white slaves (contemporary Human Trafficking stories, or older ones circa Roman Empire, and there were plenty).. Greedy white kings? Watch the news! There are still stories on that in real life, not to mention god alone knows how many movies.. No idea where you're getting this concept that all this can't happen in stories, movies and shows when it already does.. To be honest, I think people just need to get over this absolute obsession with race, and wondering why people of a colour skin can't do something (when they blatantly do), and just get on with putting the good people in the right places.
That little rant aside, the mixing of various artforms is absolutely alive and vibrant out there.. Not for everyone, but it's good to see people experimenting with it.. Long may it continue!

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[tjstork]

By the same token, you could redo the stories of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and have them cast as a white skinhead with swastikas on his arm. I'm guessing that it'll detract from the canon of the story.

In the case of Malcom X, would it?

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[AliasMarlowe]

Like, why can't a black or asian guy play the lead in MacBeth?

It's been done. It's been done more than once, and not just as "modern" reinterpretations. For example, there was a 1937 U.S. theater production of Macbeth in which the whole cast was black, and the setting was Haiti rather than Scotland. Orson Welles did the adaptation which employs bullwhips and muskets as well as swordplay, but kept the spoken words unchanged from Shakespeare's version. It was apparently quite successful, and toured widely. There's a video excerpt of one performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PiZYGfRDgo and the Orson Welles script is available at http://dspace.wrlc.org/doc/bitstream/2041/60695/Macbethdisplay.pdf Note that the PDF is a scanned version of the typewritten original, and hence rather large.

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[tjstork]

For example, there was a 1937 U.S. theater production of Macbeth in which the whole cast was black, and the setting was Haiti rather than Scotland.

But why did they have to be in Haiti? Why couldn't a black actor play a scottish king, or a white guy play someone in Haiti.

That's kind of the point. You have to let race go.

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[Altima(BoB)]

Also check out Throne of Blood, Akira Kurosawa's samurai adaptation of Macbeth, in Japanese, with a few minor story alterations, and naturally none of the original text.

And while a scottish guy who happens to be black would be fine in a production of Macbeth, it's a little naive to think that race could or should just disappear. In modern settings and contexts, in multiracial countries where race and nationality are distinct, then casting should be colorblind, but in productions set in certain historical settings or in racially homogenous societies, it wouldn't work.

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[AliasMarlowe]

Kurosawa also made Ran, a Japanese samurai adaptation and interpretation of Shakespeare's King Lear, with additions based also on Japanese history http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089881. It's well worth seeing, as elements of King Lear are revealed in different contexts, and often in changed form.

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[Dynedain]

Watch the 2006 Chinese film "The Banquet".... about halfway through, it dawned on me that it was Hamlet set in the Forbidden City.

And there's been many many productions setting ethnic actors in Shakespearean roles. Just because you haven't seen it just means you need to get out more.

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[zippthorne]

Every movie is an update of one of the Shakespeare plays. They're practically axiomatic. For instance: this.

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[BlackHawk-666]

Like, why can't a black or asian guy play the lead in MacBeth?

There's so many things wrong with this statement. I'll start with it being a British part of the United States canon. Then I'll mention that MacBeth is Scottish, and a part of the monarchy as well. Not a lot of 'black guys' or 'asian guys' were known to be medieval Scottish monarchs. You would be hard pressed to find a worse example - unless maybe you wanted to cast Uncle Tom as a genial elderly white guy from Kentucky.

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[drinkypoo]

But why did they have to be in Haiti? Why couldn't a black actor play a scottish king,

Congratulations on today's stupidest question on Slashdot. I do congratulate you on finding something sillier than Sean Connery as a Spaniard though.

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[ScaryMonkey]

Like, why can't a black or asian guy play the lead in MacBeth? Are greedy kings somehow relevant only to white people?

Ummm... why not indeed?

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[CAIMLAS]

Seriously?

Like, why can't a black or asian guy play the lead in MacBeth?

How about an Othello re-imaging with a black male lead? ("O", 2001)

Are greedy kings somehow relevant only to white people?

No, guy in blackface (or something similar) in that role played a Persian in that role a couple years ago. (If we're going to keep repeating the lie as a society that "race doesn't matter" the least we could do is not give any credence to claims of racism for something like blackface).

Or why couldn't a white guy play a role as a slave?

Because we have been told, as a society, that it is racist/socially unacceptable/whatever to have films which are such racially insensitive to those who "actually have been enslaved" (as if blacks enslaved by whites are the only kind of slaves).

Besides, there's Sparticus, if you haven't seen it. Good film.

(Also, are you a troll? I can't think of a single "slavery" movie since Gladiator, and there was only one notable black slave throughout that film. Seems to me you're race baiting.)

Acting is -acting-.

Ah, I see. Seems to me you don't understand how it works, and would likely be one of about 5 people who would enjoy watching purple dome-headed aliens which speak Bulgarian and wear kilts invade the alps on flying carpets.

Acting is not just acting, it's creating a character. It has to be believable, or it will suck. That is why studios can't just pull anyone off the streets, or hire any old SAG member: they won't accomplish the same thing as a name brand actor.

Let's mix high art and low, TV and theater, toss it all into the pot, mix things up, and do something new.

I'm so tired of recycled culture. Can we let Grease die already and stop using it for high school musicals, reimaging franchise after franchise, and so on? We're getting to the point of mixing franchises (AVP, which was, coincidentally, very profitable due to the lack of a name-brand actor/actress) and regular franchise parodies (the "dog" in Planet 51), reimaging of books into films... all of this having a near-spiritual cultural significance to many. It's fucking nuts.

I'm glad at least a couple newer films are mostly original, like Law Abiding Citizen or the stuff put out by Pixar and Dreamworks. But for the most part, the best we have to look for is a reimaging of a 20-year-old franchise (AVP, Terminator), another sequel to a majorly overdone franchise (Spiderman 23), or some such thing.

I know a lot more becomes capable with CG, and some good films have resulted from it (LotR trilogy comes to mind). But c'mon, lets not raid the popular fiction of the past for the popular fiction of the future: let's make something interesting and new, and not nostalgic. I'm tired of having flashbacks to my childhood as a direct result of the stuff coming out of the studios today.

Failing that (very likely), how about we go outside and do something with our hands, sit and do something with our minds, and make something new? Failing that, go fuck around.

Re:I'd go the opposite.

[k-macjapan]

I was recently in Vienna and went to see an opera(The Barber of Seville) performed at the Wiener Staatsoper. The lead charcter was played by a Korean by the name of Tae Joong Yang(http://www.zagovec-artists.de/index.php?s=kuenstler&g=4&IDK=68&lang=sp2). I really enjoyed his performance.

Input-Output...

[denzacar]

Input part - the facial-capture tech is obviously ready. At most it may need some tweaking.

The output part... Like you said. Uncanny valley effect may still be present with humans. BUT..
Considering that Battle Angel*, which Cameron plans to do as (one of) his next project(s) is based around exactly that kind of implementation of the technology - I'd say that he is more than "just talking".

*The main character is a 200+ year old cyborg girl that changes several bodies throughout the story while keeping the same face and similar body size)

Re:Input-Output...

[RichardJenkins]

At most it may need some tweaking.

That's what my boss usually says right before I pull a week of all-nighters

Re:Input-Output...

[ultranova]

Considering that Battle Angel*, which Cameron plans to do as (one of) his next project(s) is based around exactly that kind of implementation of the technology - I'd say that he is more than "just talking".

Ah, Alita, lovingly nicknamed "The Angel of Death", and the lovely world she inhabits with its two-pupilled (in a single eyeball) mutants. That's one of the few movies that can actually benefit from the uncanny valley. The physics engine is going to be need some extra optimization for soft-body dynamics, considering the amount of guts and assorted organic material flying everywhere in a typical fight Alita gets involved in :).

Re:Input-Output...

[denzacar]

There ARE strange creatures in the GUNNM universe (particularly in the Last Order storyline) but for the most part it is mostly just humans, human-faced cyborgs and your regular run-of-the-mill giant robots.

Most of them won't even get close to the uncanny valley, considering that you could do most of those with the same tech that has been around since Terminator 2.
Now... getting those giant robots NOT to look like a bunch of non-coherent trash thrown together into a humanoid for and then animated (Like Transformers in their non-car form) and to have that interact with regular and "upgraded" humans... THAT might get tricky.
Cause those are not the Avatar's mecha-vehicles that interact with CG aliens or Transformers' giant robots that mostly just stand around or do their thing unrelated to regular non-CG humans.

Battle Angel's giant robots are actually cyborgs, built from living humans that used to walk and talk like living humans.
Not like a robot controlled by a human or human wearing their robot-suit. Those appendages are a part of their body.
And they do a hell of a lot of interacting with humans or human-sized and human-shaped cyborgs.
Giant cyborgs will have to feel more like Ironman and less like Terminator (Well... T-800 at least) AND interact with humans of regular size - both cyborgs and regular fleshie-ones.

Now, getting miss Octopus-lips to be both cute, human-like and beyond the valley...
They get that right without making her into a robot, doll or a human pretending (s)he is a robot (like Summer Glau in T:TSCC)... they can start churning out Dirty Harry: The Early Years sequels.
Or better yet - the next Batman sequel with Heath Ledger.

Re:Input-Output...

[GrubLord]

So he is doing the Battle Angel Alita film? Cool.

However, the most recent example of this I can think of is the Original Arnie Terminator they included in Terminator: Salvation.

That, too, only got away with being CGI because it was MEANT to look a little bit alien and disturbing. Try the same thing with Humphrey Bogart or Clint Eastwood, and you're still going to have trouble getting it realistic.

Re:Input-Output...

[denzacar]

Battle Angel movie is old news. He has been wanting to do that for about as long as he wanted to do Avatar.
Before and while Avatar was still "Project 880" it was the stuff of rumors if 880 is Battle Angel or "something else". It turned out not to be Battle Angel.
Also... Remember "Dark Angel"?
It doesn't take much to realize how that was influenced by GUNNM.
Jessica Alba's Max was a carbon copy of Alita's fighting ability, looks and emotional problems.
Logan is an Ido surrogate. Post-apocalyptic Seattle served as stand in for Scrapyard. Those shots of Max sitting on top of Seattle Needle watching the city are practically copied from "Tears of an Angel" pages 46-47 spread...
Also... there is that photo of him wearing Battle Angel Alita shirt on the Avatar set.
Yeah, he is a fan. He owns the movie rights. He already did a lot of pre-production... There will be a Battle Angel movie sometime in the next couple of years.

As for Terminator Salvation's Arnie...
I don't know... it kinda didn't work for me at all.
One of the reasons for that, I'm guessing is because they didn't really bother to make him life-like.
For a machine that infiltrates into human communities, even the real Arnold was always a bit too stiff. A CG clone trying to emulate that...
Also, those 15 seconds he is on screen didn't warrant better (more expensive, more time consuming...) modeling than that.
If they were going to bring back Bogie or Cagney for a major role... they will probably take a year or couple of them to work on the model.

And besides... Cameron is talking about future implementation, couple of cycles down the road.
Arnie was done with technology that was "yesterday's" even before Avatar's motion and emotion capture.
And Cameron himself said that Avatar tech alone is not ready for Battle Angel. VERY close... but not quite there yet.
Instant Eastwoods are probably a year to half-a-decade down the road from a believable Alita.

So... We won't be seeing any actors brought back to life in a way to fool us into believing they are real this summer or the next.
But a couple of summers down the road...
Hey, the next decade is 2020s. Bringing back Bogie for another run would be perfectly timed.

Re:Input-Output...

[rochrist]

Cite?

Re:Input-Output...

[shidarin'ou]

I don't know of any citations for this, but what he describes is pretty much business as usual in the VFX world right now. Animators use the filmed footage and crummy NTSC reference to animate matching facial expressions as data received from tracking never has anywhere near enough resolution.

Avatar might have been different, but looking at the footage of the actors, you're probably looking at the magnum opus of some extremely talented technical animators.

There's a program that claims to be able to do it automagically...

Re:Input-Output...

[rochrist]

You and he ought to watch one of the making-of documentaries then. They go into some detail about how the captured facial expressions.

Re:There is no ethical line left to draw

[EnglishTim]

I assumed he meant that Clint would still play Dirty Harry, but they'd replace him with a digital version of his younger self.

In which case Clint would get the Oscar for the performance and you'd hope a technical Oscar would find its way to the company who did the digital version of him.

Rebirth of Firefly!

[Sponge Bath]

Now they can finally resurrect Firefly with CGI reproductions of the original cast! It could work as long as the industry does not get too greedy and hire Gilbert Gottfried for Mal and Miley Cyrus for Inara.

Re:Rebirth of Firefly!

[kent_eh]

as long as the industry does not get too greedy

There's the problem. We know they will.
Everything the movie (actually, entertainment in general) industry has ever done tells me that they will always take the "more greedy" path.

They have already replaced expensive (and risky) original story ideas with rehash, written by people who don't seem to know how to write an entertaining story.
Now they are replacing expensive locations and expensive actors.
Maybe the whole shebang should be created using advanced Eliza software feeding into CGI and dialog synthesizers.

Yes

[Rix]

If those factory workers were just a drawing in a computer, sure.

Not yet

[comm2k]

One example I know - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7edm5fkD1E - looks very uncanny.

Re:Not yet

[RevWaldo]

Yeah, I'm 99% sure this was just done with cutting and pasting in old footage, not a server farm.

Re:What's next?

[dunkelfalke]

You mean like in terminator salvation?

why?

[xcut]

Why would anybody be interested in seeing Sean Connery act in James Bond the same way he did back then? Why would you not just watch the old movie? Does anybody really give a damn if the explosions look slightly more up to date? If you want to use fancy toys, use them to innovate, and find the icons of the next generation.

Re:why?

[mgblst]

I think they were postulating for new James Bond Movies, not remaking Dr No again.

Sparticus?

[Rix]

You seem to be under the impression that the world in general wants the US to continue. Interesting.

twentysomething teens

[sophomoric]

I hope they use this to make all those twentysomething actors actually look like the teenagers they are supposed to be portraying. 17 year olds are supposed to look awkward, not like Kristin Kreuk!

Re:twentysomething teens

[mbone]

To you, maybe, but not to the people making the movies. If they wanted awkward teens, there is no shortage of them at Santa Monica High School.

Re:twentysomething teens

[AliasMarlowe]

I hope they use this to make all those twentysomething actors actually look like the teenagers they are supposed to be portraying.

Just skinning the actors may not be enough. If they need a teenage character, they should use a teenager (not necessarily a professional actor teenager, although it might help). Gawkiness is hard to get right in acting after you've lost it naturally.
One of the movies with excellent teenage performances was Batoru Rowaiaru / Battle Royale, which concerned a whole class of teenagers placed in an extremely difficult situation. The actors were mostly kids, 14-17 years old during production, and I doubt if older actors could have done better. For many of them it was a first or second or only acting appearance (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266308/fullcredits#cast).

Good actors

[mwvdlee]

So now they can replace all the pretty people with people that can actually act without affecting the "look" of the movie?

James Cameron perfected... what?

[Rui del-Negro]

the photorealistic CGI technology James Cameron perfected [...]

James Cameron is a mediocre film director and a terrible writer, but I'm willing to bet he's even worse at coding, 3D modelling or animation.

James Cameron did not "perfect" anything. He paid some people to put something together so he could make more money from it. Most of the technology used to streamline the CGI production in Avatar was in fact developed for other films (ex., "Benjamin Button").

And, in any case, the "new" part about Avatar is the (nearly automatic) "performance capture", not the "photorealistic" rendering, which has been around for ages (how realistic you want it depends on how much time or render nodes you can afford to throw at it).

Re:James Cameron perfected... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:James Cameron perfected... what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, jealous much? Like him or not, but given how successful he is, Cameron must be doing SOMETHING right.

Put another way: if he can't direct, can't write, can't code, can't model and can't animate, and if the only thing he did is to get certain people (Fox) give money to other people so that those other people would then do all the things necessary to make a movie... why aren't you doing the same thing? Obviously, if it takes no effort, no skill and no talents, then every random Joe should be able to do it.

Go on, try it. I'm waiting.

Re:James Cameron perfected... what?

[Backward Z]

Wah, this kid tried to deliver my paper this morning and he only managed to throw it halfway up my driveway so I yelled at "MWAH! Don't you kids these days know how to throw? My infant niece can throw better than that!"

Then I went to Starbucks to get my regular drip coffee but they didn't leave enough space at the top of the cup for me to put my cream so I asked the barista, "Where the fuck am I supposed to put my cream? Are you stupid or something? How hard is it to make a cup of coffee with enough room for the cream?"

Then that night, when I didn't think things could get any worse, my wife wanted to bring me to some new steak restaurant with "new and innovative" cooking techniques. I was like, "What the fuck? You take the meat, you put it on the grill. You grill the meat, then it's cooked, then you eat it. What needs to be new or innovative about that? YOU COOK THE STEAK THEN YOU EAT IT."

So then I drowned myself in scotch and called it a night. Where do all these stupid people get off?

Re:James Cameron perfected... what?

[Rui del-Negro]

Terminator was a mystery to me for a long time, because it actually has a pretty good script, with no huge plot holes.

And then Cameron was sued for plagiarism and my universe made sense again.

Re:James Cameron perfected... what?

[Rui del-Negro]

he made most of the most profitable films.

No, he made a handful of very high-grossing films (sold a lot of tickets but also cost a lot of money to make). If you define "profitability" as the ratio of income to expenditure, he's not even close. But all that is irrelevant, because my comments were about quality (and the ability to not make a whole script hinge on some obvious plot hole).

If your definition of quality is "how much money it makes", then I guess you think Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates are the pinnacle of human evolution.

Re:James Cameron perfected... what?

[Rui del-Negro]

still Cameron will be where he is now - on the freaking movie Olympus for his organisational and fundraising skills

Absolutely. He's an excellent producer. He's just a so-so director and a terrible, terrible writer. In fact, by now even he has figured out the last part, and doesn't really try to write anything anymore.

I'm sure "Aliens" made a lot more money than "Alien". And yet the latter is a suspense classic with a solid script and a consistent atmosphere, while the former is a mad race between bullet holes and plot holes. Entertaining at times, but hardly on the same level in terms of storytelling (you know, that part of the film that makes you feel things, not just go "Whoa! Geat explosions, dude!").

I'm always amused (though not amazed anymore) by that fact that, whenever someone says "X is a pretty low quality product", someone (usually an american - maybe it's a cultural thing) immediately replies "no, it's great quality because it made a lot of dollars".

I guess heaven must be eating a Big Mac while you use Microsoft Windows to watch Oprah Winfrey.

Re:James Cameron perfected... what?

[Rui del-Negro]

Absolutely, he's a very competent producer. But that doesn't invalidate that the summary gives him credit for perfecting technology that a) already existed and b) he was not actually involved with in any way.

I have a bad feeling about this...

[erroneus]

I understand that many contracts and agreements state that the movie studios own the likeness of whoever or whatever, blah blah blah but this could mean an even further shift away from [expensive] actors from entertainment.

The music industry's quality of output has been noticeably poor over the past few decades. The primary reason for this is not lack of talent, but lack of talent that can be controlled by the industry. Superstars are harder to control, after all. Movies and TV shows have always suffered from actors who demand a larger [more fair?] cut of the pie often leading to projects that never get completed or cancelled.

But with this tech, a sequel can be made without the original actor's participation. Worse, actors may not be in control of their careers if some executive producer wants to include near pornographic portrayal of, say Summer Glau, where she otherwise refuses to do such scenes.

There is heavy potential for abuse here. And where there is potential, you can be assured that it will happen.

Re:I have a bad feeling about this...

[briareus]

"The music industry's quality of output has been noticeably poor over the past few decades."

Way to confuse opinion with fact. Yeesh. Every generation makes that statement, grampa.

Re:I have a bad feeling about this...

[erroneus]

Trends bear this out, however. I'm 40 years old. The music I listened to when I was a teen is still quite popular. Meanwhile, music made 10+ years later is all but forgotten. The same can't be said of the 50's during the 70's.

Re:I have a bad feeling about this...

[John Hasler]

> The same can't be said of the 50's during the 70's.

Yes it can. 99% of pop music is forgotten within a decade or two (modulo a bit of nostalgia) and for good reason: it's crap. Always has been, always will be.

Re:I have a bad feeling about this...

[u38cg]

Worse, actors may not be in control of their careers if some executive producer wants to include near pornographic portrayal of, say Summer Glau, where she otherwise refuses to do such scenes.

Could you have chosen a worse argument to make your point? ;)

This is great

[houghi]

The same old scripts done by the same old actors. Over and over again, but with a minute change so we must buy it all over again.
As an extra: http://www.slashfilm.com/wp/wp-content/images/zz4b70bcca.jpg

Re:This is great

[JSBiff]

". . .so we must buy it all over again."

Wait a minute. . . When did MPAA and RIAA pass a law mandating purchasing crap I don't want? Damn, how the HELL did I miss THAT?

Last time I checked, there are very few things you are *forced* to purchase (at least, in most democratic countries). Why would I buy another copy of the same movie just for a minute change? I mean, one well known example is the original Star Wars movies remastered a few years ago. I didn't buy those. Had absolutely no interest in them.

People are responsible for their own buying. You don't *have* to pay to see the same old crap remade. Take responsibility for your own self. I'm tired of hearing people whine about movie remakes. You know why Holywood remakes old TV and Movies into "new" movies? Because EVERY TIME THEY DO, they MAKE MONEY. So, obviously, there is a market for it. *Somebody* wants to see them. If people aren't that interested in remakes, then frankly, they should not throw money at them, and the problem will go away.

That doesn't strike me as a particularly good idea

[obarthelemy]

Part of what makes life interesting is that things and people change ?

Sean Connery was my favorite James bond, but what makes him so is that the ones after him were not as good, and that he stopped doing it ?

I already find today's entertainers way to artificial, what with all the nip tucks, the postprocessing, and the training... the last thing I'd like would be for them to be REALLy artificial.

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[Zarf]

but it *looked* so real.

Here comes the bootleg porn

[IronDragon]

Something tells me that being able to take virtually any actor and use them virtually in a film is going to open up two rather annoying types of movies:

Porn movies with well known actors

Chinese alternative history movies where well known US actors find themselves on the losing side of World War 2.

Re:Here comes the bootleg porn

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Chinese alternative history movies where well known US actors find themselves on the losing side of World War 2.

Are there movies like this now? I'm not sure the average Chinese person would want Japan to win in an alternative history movie, given that Japan occupied China, last I recall, pretty brutally. Animosity against Japan is still pretty strong, though again, last I recall.

Re:Here comes the bootleg porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese alternative history movies where well known US actors find themselves on the losing side of World War 2.

How about US alternative history movies where the US takes credit for the capture of an Enigma machine even though in reality the British did it? Oh, wait...

Re:Here comes the bootleg porn

[AdamHaun]

Chinese alternative history movies where well known US actors find themselves on the losing side of World War 2.

That would be rather odd given that China and the US were on the same side in World War 2.

Re:Here comes the bootleg porn

[sznupi]

How about British alternative history movies where the UK takes credit for the breaking of Enigma ciphertext even though the Poles actually did it? (on top of that - the traitor in the movie is a Pole, while in reality the only one at Bletchley Park was British) Oh, wait...

Re:Here comes the bootleg porn

[DigitalCrackPipe]

That would be rather odd given that China and the US were on the same side in World War 2.

Not in the remake. Don't underestimate the Chinese govermnent propaganda engine.

Re:Here comes the bootleg porn

[DigitalCrackPipe]

Porn movies with well known actors

How about personalized celebrity porn, starring the customer? The only problem is that they would still need a stand-in.

You've got to ask yourself one question ...

[maestroX]

... do I feel lucky?
just isn't that impressive when Clint carries a baby-face.

Doing to movies what Microsoft did to Programming.

[malkavian]

Could this be the start of the "Quick button click movie maker"? Something akin to a rather more advanced version of the game "The Movies", where you can set a scene from a variety of landscapes (similar to Vue D'Esprit, or some other landscape renderer), add actors (taken from stock modifiable ones, as per Poser, or similar), add in movements and pathing.. Voices taken from a modifiable bank.. Add in stock effects and so on.. And have the bulk of it in a nice GUI development tool..
I get the suspicion that it'll draw a lot of derision from the real movie makers, but as something that'll be the Visual Basic of the movie world.. Hmm.. This could dispense with a lot of the actors in low prices movies, and if it grows, even in big budget ones.. Though the quality will likely still be missing that 'human touch'.. Still in mass market, like with VB, mostly the only people who'll care will be the ones that really understand the skill and craftmanship behind it.. Your average guy on the street wouldn't care two hoots..

Re:I'd be happy with them....

[briareus]

Bah. I have no problems with her tattoos and I'm not into trailer trash. You don't need sophisticated motion capture to remove tattoos.

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see anything unethical there. Let's take that Hitler+Stalin having sex, for example. Why exactly is it unethical? Does it hurt Hitler's feelings? Hell, I am a communist (not only on internet forums but am actually active in a political party, etc.) and still don't find that so offensive.

You gave examples of people who have all passed away. I think that the potential ethical problems would be when models are made of people who are alive and haven't given a consent. Can I watch a porn movie and choose someone I know as a "skin" for one of the characters? Can a political party make videos where a politician from another party appears? Is a small "This isn't really Barack Obama" disclaimer enough? It will be a pain in the ass to create laws for this stuff.

As for this being used to child porn... The idea appeals to me. While there is some debate about the subject, I believe that if pedophiles have more access to porn, that will cause them to have less desire to go and molest a child. The problem is that we can't make child porn without harming children... Except that this technique might change that.

Perfected

[whisper_jeff]

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.

Re:Perfected

[ljw1004]

It wasn't always clear to me -- I didn't even realise that Quarritch was CGI until I read it on the internet!

Re:Perfected

[mathx314]

While I'd like to agree with you, I'm not sure I can. This raises the following question: was the reason that parts of Avatar looked unrealistic the fault of the technology, or the fault that we couldn't suspend disbelief to the point of believing in tall blue aliens riding on miniature pterodactyls?

Re:Perfected

[Dr. Spork]

Wow, you mean in the future, films will make us think that 9' tall anatomically impossible blue aliens are real?

Re:Perfected

[dafing]

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.

When you say that, what needs to be done for it to seem "real" for you? I ask because we all know how fast technology is improving, the CGI in a decade old movie will most likely seem "obvious" compared to a more recent movie, like Avatar say. If its not ready now, then it will be ready in 10 years, if not then....another 10 years....at some time, surely we will be able to "render in real life resolution" etc. I'm 22 and expect this will easily happen within my lifetime.

I think part of the problem is we know how photoshop etc work, so we can almost deconstruct how a photo/movie was made. I've starting podcasting, and I realise that after editing and producing my episodes, listening to the final result, I realise "ok, so in 2 seconds the first track will fade down..." and be able to visualise what GarageBand looked like at that time. Its especially obvious to me what effects etc I used, since I did it, but my friend is an ex sound engineer who has worked with absolute A grade productions, Disney movies, famous rappers etc, and she could do a much better job.

I almost think that CGI "spoils" real miracles, I like butterflies, I like Michael Jackson, but during This Is It, I noticed one of the forest scenes, where a small girl held a (presumably real? I wasnt paying attention) butterfly, and then magically a whole flurry of butterflies spiral about the screen. It was instantly obvious it was just a computer effect, there were no real butterflies. Yet, butterflies would move like that in real life! I think the effect was rather obvious, but done better, it could honestly be identical to real life butterfly movements. I think about Video Game graphics, I remember when PS1 "looked awesome", I remember when PS2 "looked awesome", how PS3 "looks awesome"....

Surely in time, and with skilled artists, CGI will be absolutely, positively "better" than real actors, I think its a "Moore's law"-esque rule.

Re:Perfected

[linuxpyro]

You're right, it was still kind of obvious that it was rendered for most of it. But I thought they used that too their advantage. For me, at least, it was enough that most of the time suspension of disbelief kicked in and I didn't think about it. I thought they did a good job making it that.

Then again I did end up thinking instead about the plot similarities to Pocahontas, but that's another matter.

the new voice actors

[simplerThanPossible]

This will reduce star-power to that of voice actors... and copyright of an actor's image will become even more valuable. Studios will like this.

Re:What's next?

[nine-times]

depressing for the big stars who can no longer demand a jetplane or two as part of their fee...

I don't know about that. Right now, we're still talking about motion capture, which means you still need an actor. Great actors aren't just good looking, but they know how to improvise, use their bodies and voice, and bring life to the part. As advanced as Avatar was, there were still times that I was aware of it being CGI because the movements of the characters were too smooth. Even with motion capture and voice acting, there still wasn't enough... I don't know what. Imperfection.

So while this may be fine for altering someone's appearance (assuming we can get past the uncanny valley), but it won't be a straight-up replacement yet. I guess it could open the door for a new class of actor. Like right now they have voice actors, but maybe they'll have body actors or something. I guess we're already seeing that with actors like Andy Serkis, Doug Jones, and Ray Park (who hasn't done motion capture, but has had multiple parts that seem to boil down to "mute or nearly mute acrobatic fighter").

Sounds Dreadful

[mbone]

I am sure that some in the studios would love to do this, and I am also sure that it will lead to results that James Cameron won't like.

To see why, just imagine that this technology had been invented in the 1930's, and that every "major" motion picture today only used actors that had been dead for 30 - 50 years.

Well...

[Aredridel]

I, for one, welcome our new ractor overlords.

Avatar's CGI

[the roAm]

Oh yes, oh so advanced. Subsurface scattering and high-resolution textures. WOW! Who EVER thought that was possible? Oh, wait, that's right, this technology has existed for years it's just most firms, like Pixar, are happy making cheap cartoons rather than trying to push the boundaries of photorealism. I'm not going to say I have anything against Pixar or Dreamworks or the other "big" CG production houses, but I will say they havn't really contributed anything truly innovative in the last 10 years.

Re:Doing to movies what Microsoft did to Programmi

[Schadrach]

...unless they start doing it to porn, in which case he'll give two hooters...

Simone?

[DarkofPeace]

I thought this topic was covered already. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258153/

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[mbone]

"and that an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere."

Haven't you figured out movie speak yet ? In movieland,

"yes" means "maybe"

"maybe" means "no"

"soon" means "never"

and "somewhere" means "elsewhere"

Re:Ha

[tjstork]

Do you lot make anything anymore? You don't have any oil.

We have about 50% of our oil needs from domestic production, and a number of options for closing that gap through domestic resources. We could increase CAFE standards, produce more biofuels, go with coal to liquids (and we have plenty of coal), figure out how to drill the Bakken, and so on. We don't need middle eastern oil at all, its just a tad cheaper.

Do you lot make anything anymore

No, we don't, but there's a lot of people that know how to do it, and we could relearn pretty quick.

Humphrey Bogart? I don't think so

[hcdejong]

This technology may be usable to make actors look younger. But to bring back Humphrey Bogart, you need someone who acts and sounds just like HB. Just using this technology to apply HB's image over a random actor isn't going to cut it.

Re:What's next?

[Suki I]

That touches on something my fiction writer friend was thinking the future would be like 20 years from now.

Things in virtual and real swing to the "too perfect" side and a market emerges for attractive but natural things. In adoption, relationships, erotica and modeling a premium on natural but attractive is emerging.

Works well the way he wrote it, especially since the female lead is looking for an entrepreneurial, bright guy with no cosmetic tweeks and just happens to find him.

"ethical line" schmethical line

[argStyopa]

This is HOLLYWOOD we're talking about, where they f*ck their best friend over 2x before breakfast.

I'm pretty certain that this technology will be used to REPLACE extras by the 000's within 10 years, and prima donna actors within 25 years.

Once you've mo-capped 10,000 people walking in a straight line in your database, how hard would it be for a director to tell his cgi guy 'yeah, I want the actor to cross the room', and the cgi can pull up a menu and reply 'you want a sashay, swagger, jaunty gait, stalk, slide, stomp, amble, limp,or other sort of walk; also, do you want John Wayne, Johnny Depp, Jack Nicholson, or Carrot Top as the main feel?'

Sure, you might need/want mo-cap for some sort of core framework, but any doofus off the street could do that for 0.0001% of what Tom Cruise would want for it.

Re:"ethical line" schmethical line

[Phillibuster]

I'm pretty certain that this technology will be used to REPLACE extras by the 000's within 10 years, and prima donna actors within 25 years.

And then the tabloid industry will file lawsuits to try and stop the loss of celebrities for their weekly rags, and the MPAA will be complaining about using lawsuits to support a dying business model.

Re:"ethical line" schmethical line

[Phrogman]

I agree completely. The Extras are already on the chopping block - look at the armies in Lord of the Rings, only a few were actors I believe. Once the database of mocap data, skinning data etc is built up, they can be provided for a film without the necessary bother of finding and paying them etc.
Actors will be next, at first in niche shots - oh wait, that's been done too already - then in entire roles.
Eventually studios will rise and fall based on the film components databases they maintain and the software to support them.
Then the hacking of each other's data will begin and we have a new Neal Stephenson novel :)

Re:"ethical line" schmethical line

[Gaffod]

So if this actually works, and makes the expenses that low, what happens to reliability of camera recordings and the like for legal purposes?

Re:"ethical line" schmethical line

[pommiekiwifruit]

Considering the entire population of New Zealand has volunteered to be extras in The Hobbit, I don't think they need to make them CGI. They might even need to add a few battle sequences to get everyone in :-)

Re:"ethical line" schmethical line

[dafing]

As a NZer, I'm proud to know people who were in the LOTR movies. The Worlds Fastest Indian was set in my city, Invercargill, our mayor was a good friend of the main character (played by Anthony Hopkins), and I saw people I grew up with filling an entire movie screen.

But, think of the cost of the costumes etc for large battles! Its crazy, why pay "$1,000" (lets say) per person in a million person battle when you can easily do it all in CGI? If not capable now, it will be in a few years.

Re:"ethical line" schmethical line

[argStyopa]

I just happened to be thinking about that.

To me it seems a commercial opportunity - which I'll lay out here freely since while I'd love to get some $$ out of the idea, I have none of the technical skills/connections to make it happen:

Digital cameras are wonderful for many reasons ASIDE from the easily-edited medium. Wouldn't there be a number of customers for digital camera tech that would provide non-falsifiable digital pics?

The idea: hardware that imprints steganographically both a checksum for the picture, an identity of the camera (a s/n), and the date/time of imaging - stored with some sort of public-key method, so that the origin of the image could both be made certain, and the inviolability of the unedited picture can be confirmed? It seems that police, lawyers, insurance co's, as well as a host of other professions would find such a thing useful. Edit the pic, the checksum for the image would be changed. If there was a legal case, you could provide the image, and if necessary the hardware to corroborate the data.

How about..... NO!

[rec9140]

"..., 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."

I say NO!

If I want to see a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry movie I will get the DVD out.

Same goes with Bogey! Bond or anything else you dolts might dream up....

Go do something original for once instead of the same old tired stuff. And head my warning LEAVE THE REAL CLASSIC CINEMA ALONE! Just like turner and his idiotic "colorization" stint just LEAVE MY CLASSICS ALONE! ! ! !

Some of us don't think your tech is so great or useful, or the movie was all that.. that would be ME.

"... and that an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere."

There IS and SHUOLD BE, and this proposal CROSSED IT, no BLEW PAST IT!

NO NO NO NO NO NO!

The Death of Movies

[koan]

The deal with these great actors like Bogart is that they had a chemistry with the other actors and the audience, that's something that can't be replicated.

Re:The Death of Movies

[winwar]

"...great actors like Bogart is that they had a chemistry with the other actors and the audience, that's something that can't be replicated."

Get nostalgic much?

Chemistry with the audience? It's a movie. There's no studio audience. That's your way of saying "I liked it".

Chemistry with other actors? Overrated. That's why they call it acting. That's your way of saying "I liked them".

Defining great actors and acting is awfully subjective. Popular actors are routinely called great. The "critics" aren't much better-they routinely rave about actor x who upon closer inspection seems to have played the same character in every movie.

Re:The Death of Movies

[koan]

But we know it when we see it don't we? And computers can not emulate that to a satisfactory end.

Re:The Death of Movies

[Cederic]

And yet.. I'll be genuinely stunned and impressed when a computer can recreate the scene between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper in True Romance.

Even with the original as a guide.

Actually...

[denzacar]

I guess it could open the door for a new class of actor. Like right now they have voice actors, but maybe they'll have body actors or something.

We already have those.
They are called "theatre actors".
You know... those who actually went to a serious university-level acting school as opposed to have been a model or some other type of celebrity (athlete, reality-show contestant, stand-up comedian, child star, musician...) who just decided that they can also be actors.
After all - it's just standing there, looking good while saying your lines. How hard can it be?

A good example is Hugo Weaving in "V for Vendetta". Nearly all of his acting there is done with gesticulations and voice only.
Which is very similar to acting for both first and the last row at the theatre. No dynamic zoom there.

Re:Actually...

[nine-times]

Well I meant actors who would not speak and would exist only for the sake of motion capture. What I mean is, you could have something like a "body actor" who does the body language through motion capture, a model who is scanned to provide the computer model for the character, and then a voice actor who does the voice. Three different people.

Like imagine you had a Pixar film where the facial expressions and body language is provided through motion capture of an actor who trains for that particular purpose, but you still keep separate voice actors. Now imagine you swap out the cartoonish characters for photorealistic representations of models. You could take a good-looking but talentless hack and give them the qualities of a better actor, and then pick a voice actor to match the look you've generated.

I don't like the idea, and I don't know if it would actually be cheaper, easier, or in any way better, but we're getting to the point of being able to do it.

Re:Actually...

[gbjbaanb]

Well I meant actors who would not speak and would exist only for the sake of motion capture

You mean like Andy Serkis, my precioussssss.

Re:Actually...

[nine-times]

Well in that case I believe that he also provided the voice for the character. I think there was another movie, though, where he provided the motion capture without any voice. (Maybe for King Kong in Peter Jackson's version? He's credited as "Kong" in IMDB.)

Re:Actually...

[hairyfeet]

In other words a cinematic version of Milli Vanilli? The horror!

Closer to a third

[Rix]

Have fun running your economy on that, even without the extra demand restarting manufacturing would impose.

Also, manufacturing requires imports other than oil. Remember why you invaded the Philippines? Where do you intend to get rare earth metals?

You need the world. The world doesn't really need you.

Re:Closer to a third

[tjstork]

Have fun running your economy on that, even without the extra demand restarting manufacturing would impose.

If you haven't noticed lately, the USA imports of natural gas have already dropped to 0 because we are now getting it from our own reserves. Oil is next. Next year.

Also, manufacturing requires imports other than oil. Remember why you invaded the Philippines? Where do you intend to get rare earth metals?

Space.

You need the world. The world doesn't really need you.

No, not at all. PS, we have all the food.

Re:Ha

[rec9140]

While I agree that if the world doesn't want the US to help it in any shape or fashion any more... NO PROBLEM.

We will pack up our !@$! and go home! Close all embassies, dump the UN and that includes KICKING THEM OUT OF THE COUNTRY AND RECLAIMING THE LAND IN NY!, dump NATO, but the problem at this point..

If you wanted to make stuff in the US who is going to make it at the same price point so costs do not dramatically increase?

Theres a reason stuff is $3.00 at Walmart or any other retailer, its made in countries with very lax to no labor laws where persons work for $2.00/MONTH if that. And you need look no farther abroad than to the south of the US for examples! Compare that to a $8/HR MINIMUM US WORKER. Thats an astronomical change in labor costs alone. Lets look at another item... steel. The majority of steel production companies are controlled by FOREIGN NATIONALS, not the US. USX, barely makes steel, they do more chemical work than steel thats why they changed from US Steel to USX. Lets look a semiconductors if the US is not careful the ability to make critical defense parts will be in the hands of questionable "allies" at best.

I am all for taking our ball and toys and going home, and when the next this or that happens, say I don't know like, Hati. We tell the world to !$!@$ off! And deal with it yourself! Unfortunately the reality is its not possible with out a severe economical meltdown.

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[Suki I]

Once you cross that twain (sic), anything is possible.

Posting AC obv.

Becky Thatcher and Tom Sawyer? Not seeing that is blowing up big, but maybe.

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[malkavian]

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..

Surrogates

[RevWaldo]

Not to give this POS film any credit, but they used CGI (and some makeup) to make Bruce Willis look young in his "surrogate" form. Details here: http://io9.com/5366325/how-to-get-your-future-robot-self-high

Re:To cesar...

[briareus]

You're confusing "ignorance" with "bias". Art encompasses more than you define art as.

why not?

[cashman73]

Why not use this technology to bring back Michael Jackson? I mean, he was mostly plastic anyway, so it should be easier than for others, right? Maybe, we can reprogram him as a real black man this time, and without all the kiddie loving weirdness, too!

Virtual Actors are Not Human Actors!

[Anubis333]

The studios are pushing hard on this. In order to get actors on the performance capture bandwagon, they have to convince the Academy to give an Oscar to a person for a virtual performance.

You see this in every frickin' video of Avatar where Cameron or the actors talk about the production. It's almost akin to a Bush-era media blitz how they parrot the same sentences again and again.. "This is not an animation --it was me!"

We cannot give an Oscar for best performance to a virtual actor.

This is a slippery slope. One of the entire reasons to use performance capture is to leverage the fact that it's all data. In a split second you can take the smile from take 6 and blend it into the nice squinting eyes from take 8.

Even the mere 'mapping' of a performance onto a character of different proportions alters it.

We shall see if their millions in marketing pay off, but I hope that there is no best actor or supporting nominee that didn't actually show up in a single frame of a film.

And I have worked on performance capture films.

Mmmh

[SmallFurryCreature]

Recently I have been thinking about a new Star Trek series. To get back to the root, something between TOS and TNG.

But what would you do if you wanted a cross-over. Actors are expensive or dead. But you could create a CGI model of past actors, have them acted out by an impressionist and voila, continuety with no timeline problems.

And you could also finally make aliens that look really good without just slapping some plastic on their face. And you could have kids played by adults so you get rid of the horrible acting, wesley acted by an adult. All you need to do now is to hire better writers and you are done.

You could also get rid of the need to cast actors for their similar looks to historical actors. Anyone could play Churchill, they would only be selected on how well they can act not their looks.

Finally we could cast women in Sci-Fi who can act, not just by how far their nipples poke through their jumpsuit.

I can see plenty of future for this tech. Not so much to make a new Dirty Harry movie (Clint Eastwood couldn;t act it even with CGI, he is an old man and moves like an old man) but to seperate the looks of an actor from their talent to ACT. Mind you, a lot of current actors would be out of a job.

For gaming another advance needs to be made. Voice acting. Imagine what you could do if the voices in a game were computer generated. No more commander Sheppard. You could pick whatever name you want, without it needing to be pre-recorded.

Oh and for those who think it is a really bad idea, Doctor Who essentially made this a part of the story. Change the actor whenever you want because the character can continue, so what would be that different if the actor changed but the face stayed the same?

Re:Mmmh

[Cederic]

All you need to do now is to hire better writers and you are done.

If only Cameron had thought of that for Avatar.

Re:Mmmh

[Dr. Spork]

Good post. I especially like the idea of kids played by adults. I can't wait for the day! But I don't understand why everyone wants this as a tool to reanimate some people from the past. I mean, it's one application, but not the most interesting one in my opinion.

Your idea of just using good actors (who may not at all look the part of the characters they play) is much more interesting. But also, the director will just have much more control. If a scene is reduced to a sequence of face-point captures, aspects of different takes could be seamlessly melded into a single sequence, or the captured data could be manipulated directly (to briefly broaden the eyes at the utterance of a certain syllable, for example). Since computers will exist to give a rough render of the results in real time, directors could just play with the underlying data until the performances are perfect.

For now, digital technology seems to remove a sense of depth from acting. But in the future, it could serve to create the opposite effect. I think that Cameron should produce a short demonstration film with the technology, maybe a conversation between JFK and MLK in the booth of a diner, something like that. Or how about a portion of a video lecture of Richard Feynman, using a cleaned-up version of the audio that was recorded in 1961?

I like you. You're funny

[Rix]

Forgotten that you're cancelling your manned space program this year?

I'm not terribly fond of corn fructose. You can keep it.

Re:I like you. You're funny

[tjstork]

Forgotten that you're cancelling your manned space program this year?

1. The Shuttle is not the sole manned flight program. Manned missions to asteroids using Orion are on the drawing board.

2. Robots are pretty effective for space missions.

I'm not terribly fond of corn fructose. You can keep it.

We grow cane sugar in Hawaii, Florida and Louisiana just fine. It's fun having a continent at your disposal.

Re:I like you. You're funny

[Rix]

And I've got daily blowjobs from Kirsten Dunst on the drawing board. Say hi to the Russians, Indians, Europeans and Chinese for me if you ever actually get there. Unless, of course, you're just hitching a ride with them.

You don't and couldn't grow enough cane sugar for your own consumption, even counting the more plentiful sugar beet.

Re:I like you. You're funny

[tjstork]

And I've got daily blowjobs from Kirsten Dunst on the drawing board. Say hi to the Russians, Indians, Europeans and Chinese for me if you ever actually get there. Unless, of course, you're just hitching a ride with them.

Looks like an American flag on the moon to me

You don't and couldn't grow enough cane sugar for your own consumption, even counting the more plentiful sugar beet.

Oh bother! We already do grow more than enough sugar for ourselves. We have steep tariffs and subsidies for sugar imports, creating a vibrant domestic sugar industry. In fact, sugar is a great model (as was the whole American industrial expansion), for how protectionism actually works, and how it should be expanded.

But the larger point is thus: You argue that the United States needs the world, but that the world does not need the United States. I honestly don't care about what the world thinks of or if it needs the USA, but your thesis rests on the world possessing some quality or attribute that is absolutely indispensable for USA to continue to exist. The best you have offered up are some rare earth metals, and sugar, and that's really all you've got? The USA needs the world for some raw materials, and some sweeteners for its desert dishes.... sounds to me like even if you were right on those two points, you don't have much of an argument at all.

In terms of land, resources, and culture, the USA does not need a single thing the world has to offer, and we certainly do not need you.

Re:I like you. You're funny

[CAIMLAS]

Let's mix high art and low, TV and theater, toss it all into the pot, mix things up, and do something new.

I hear him saying one of two things.

1) We need the finite resources and labor which others provide, and we're SOL when it comes to actually acquiring those materials in a non-manipulative fashion.
2) He's suggesting we enslave the world for those resources and labor - through militaristic action and threats, like the Chinese are doing, successfully.

Of the two, I'd pick the second.

Re:What's next?

[Suki I]

With this level of CGI I think Terminator Vacation is just around the corner.

Feathers?

[Suki I]

Submitted an Ask Slashdot question, posted to our blog and a few others too. Where are the Na'vi finding feathers for their clothes and arrows? They are the only native creatures to Pandora that grow any sort of hair and I didn't see any feathered critters anyplace. Did I just miss it or is it accounted for elsewhere?

Re:Feathers?

[Cederic]

Sorry, you're suggesting that the dozen species portrayed in the film would be the entirety of the fauna on that world?

They didn't show people gathering plants for food either, but I'd guess they weren't exclusively carnivorous.

They didn't show how alien reproduction occurred, or even whether they had genitalia, but I'd guess it's possible as there distinct sexes and there were children around.

You'll be telling me next that there's an issue in Blade Runner that the police spinners were never seen refuelling and asking whether the perpetual motion machine is accounted for elsewhere.

Hint: It's made up.
Hint 2: It doesn't fucking matter.

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[sentientbeing]

Tell that to the families of all those dead Na'vi.

Oh, lookee!!

[tjstork]

We're going to have nuclear fusion on the board this year...

Ah, energy indepence. Fleets of Chevy Volts and Ford Fusions driven by a fusion powered grid.

Re:Oh, lookee!!

[Rix]

You do know the Ford isn't actually fusion powered, I hope.

Unobtanium is also fiction, just so you know.

Re:Oh, lookee!!

[tjstork]

You do know the Ford isn't actually fusion powered, I hope.

Weak! Weak! Weak!

Unobtanium is also fiction, just so you know.

Yes, but the National Ignition Facility is most certainly not. Everyone laughed at Apollo, and the USA put a man on the moon. Everyone laughed at Star Wars, and now we can shoot down missiles of all shapes and sizes with ease. Everyone laughed at the Surge, and it worked, and everyone laughed at the National Ignition Facility, and this year, hundreds of laser beams are going to blast a little piece of deuterium into a miniature star and, coupled with emerging free electron laser technology, will lay the groundwork for practical fusion.

What is your country doing?

Sigourney Weaver?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Am I the only person who thought Sigourney Weaver's body looked surprisingly hot, considering her age?

Re:Sigourney Weaver?

[John Hasler]

Have you never heard of a body double?

And the winner is...

[OpinionatedDude]

Now they will have to start CGI animating the Golden Globe and Emmy shows too... Nobody wants to see a 60 year old grandmother accepting an award for a movie where she played hotness.

Re:And the winner is...

[Dr. Spork]

Didn't Andy Serkis win something for "playing" Gollum?

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[bigdavex]

"and that an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere."

Eh. No.

That was also my first instinct, but I can see some problems. Can a person sell his likeness? What if he sells his likeness and the movie studio uses it in a way that he finds morally repugnant? What are the implications of creating CGI films containing models of public figures? Or models just strikingly similar to yourself or a friend?

Tales from the Crypt brought Bogart back.

[taxman_10m]

You, Murderer (1995)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0716912/

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[Oligonicella]

Which he murdered by making the Unobtanium unobtain.... ium.

This has been a topic for ages

[HalAtWork]

This has been a topic for ages and certainly there is still a long way to go on the road to perfection. This is very good marketing, no doubt, but on the whole it sounds like Cameron had a few hits of what Peter Molyneux is smoking.

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[ultranova]

What if he sells his likeness and the movie studio uses it in a way that he finds morally repugnant?

Maybe he should have thought of that before selling his likeness?

What are the implications of creating CGI films containing models of public figures?

Are those any different than, say, political comics? Anyway, there's a precedent, amazingly enough from Finland. So if even a country that tries to imitate China doesn't have a problem with them, why should any country?

Or models just strikingly similar to yourself or a friend?

Why shouldn't I be able to use my own likeness in wherever I please? As for my friends, I'm pretty sure that there's existing laws governing, say, using photoedits or something that would be applicable here.

Cameron is going to be richer than Bill Gates

[Nyrath the nearly wi]

Oh lordy. Do you know how much aging actors and actresses pay to hide the ravages of old age? The face-lifts, hair dye, and all? I have a feeling that they will pay top dollar to Cameron to use this technology to make them look young again on the big screen.

James Bond "merge branch"

[halcyon1234]

"Or a James Bond movie where Sean Connery looks the way he did in Doctor No? How cool would that be?"'

That'd be awesome! I can picture it now:

Except from Scene XXVI, after Bond disposes of villain's Red Matter

Daniel Craig-Bond: How did you persuade M to keep your secret?

Future/Alternate Uncanny Connery-Bond: I inferred that universe-ending paradoxes would ensue should she break her promise

Daniel Craig-Bond: You lied.

F/AU Connery-Bond: I implied.

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[couchslug]

When the movie industry no longer needs actors, it will be freed from their limitations. There being no obligation to a virtual character any more than a character in a novel, this opens up avenues for creativity.

As for porn makers having no ethics, that depends on ones preferred ethical construct. They have no obligation to avoid story lines you don't like, and laws vary by location.

The more art and media can use technology to free themselves from anyone who would impose any restraint other than voluntary non-consumption of product, the better IMO.

Is there a point?

[Quiet_Desperation]

I honestly don't get the point of this drive to photorealism for characters. Some of the best CGI human characters have been in Pixar films where they deliberately avoid realism, and some of the worst have been the attempted real ones in the Zemeckis works (Polar Express, Beowulf, etc). The Na'vi were fine because they were alien enough, and I think we're all tired of the StarTrekish, latex-faced humanoid species of the week. Only the Harry Knowles crowd still orgasms over men in rubber alien suits.

If you want real looking humans, there's these things called "humans" you can use. Save the CGI for everything else like "300" or "Sky Captain" did.

Another Sean Connery Bond film? Why? We did that already. You really want the second century of films to star all the actors from the first century?

Stars are celebrities, not actors.

[John Hasler]

The star's job is marketing, not acting. The studios will continue to pay them millions even when they never appear on the set (what set?).

Out with remakes, in with reruns!

[Vegan Pagan]

What would be so much simpler than trying to de-age actors would be Hollywood rurunning all their classic movies in theaters using the new DLP projectors in theaters to keep the distribution cost down. The long tail works not just for new indies, it can also work for old classics. A steady stream of reruns in theaters would make everybody from movie fans to studio execs question the need for remakes, and then Hollywood could spend more of its current money and talent on more original movies.

Re:What's next?

[Quiet_Desperation]

What's next?

Movies bred by genetic algorithms. Everything will be allowed to evolve: the actors, the script, the story, everything!

Successful films could be put out to stud.

The fitness of each generation will be determined by focus groups.

So we'll still have "Saw XXXVI" and "Big Momma's House 29" and "Terminator: What The Fuck Were We Doing Again?", but we'll get there via awesome technology!

Flawed assumption: We actually want this

[SecurityGuy]

Personally, I really don't go looking for the next $ACTOR movie. Ever. Many actors, I've found, have a limited number of characters they can portray, so if you've seen them in a couple movies, you've seen them period. It's annoying to go to see a story told and you see $ACTOR instead of $CHARACTER. That's something I liked about Avatar. With two exceptions, I didn't really recognize actors, so I could get more involved in the characters.

So, thank you, but no, I don't want a new movie starring Young Sean Connery. I want a new movie starring someone I've never heard of.

Re:Flawed assumption: We actually want this

[BlackHawk-666]

Agreed, there's a list of actors I just have no interest in seeing again because they don't 'act' they just walk in front of a screen and say their lines. In no particular order: * Jack Nicolson * Josh Hartnet * Jim Carey (exception for ESotSM) * Tom Cruise * Alec Baldwin * Vin Diesel * Jude Law * Orlando Bloom * Hayden Christensen * Keanu Reeves * Matt Daemon * Hugh Grant

Not for me

[dave_d]

Why would I want to watch ageless actors? Really? I haven't seen Avatar, but from the previews, I'm not that impressed by Cameron's "photorealistic" cgi. It seems to be a big deal over nothing to me, but I'd rather watch a movie with a good plot and character substance rather than some fancy cgi effects....maybe that's just me.

Oriville Redenbacher

[PsychoticSpoon]

Orville Redenbacher's popcorn already did something like this, and the results were pretty creepy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcn4p213Zg8

Re:To cesar...

[Toonol]

The meeting ended on a boisterous note. "That fuckin' rocks!" Cameron called out in response to an image of a snarling maw of thin blue-veined tissue, the mouth of the pterodactyl-like banshee that Jake's avatar domesticates for his ride. "Look at the gill-like membrane on the side of the mouth, its transmission of light, all the secondary color saturation on the tongue, and that maxilla bone. I love what you did with the translucence on the teeth, and the way the quadrate bone racks the teeth forward. It's a sharky thing. As wacky as this creature is, it looks completely real. Maybe I'm getting high on my own supply." He was practically out of breath. "The banshee lives! He's a fierce-looking sonuvabitch."

I think Cameron was a motivator and drill sergeant, heavily involved in the technical aspects of the work, and was certainly not someone that just handed the job off to the SF guys to do. Interesting article here. I'm not sure I'd want him for a boss, honestly.

Yes x2

[denzacar]

Yes on both of those.

Re:What's next?

[colinrichardday]

depressing for the big stars who can no longer demand a jetplane or two as part of their fee...

Yeah, because those poor studio executives need the money. . .

Those would be mimes...

[denzacar]

Thing is... any real acting school has pantomime classes. They don't just go hunting for them on the streets of Paris.

You COULD get pretty-boy(girl) models and attach a better body-actors and voice-actors to them but... why bother?
Completely imaginary models are cheaper and you can register them as property. So you could not just own the franchise and the characters but also the actors.
Make more sequels of the next Star Wars 20 years from now, instead of prequels.

On the other side of the scale, you get your mimes from the same place you get your "regular" actors. As they ARE regular actors.
And unknowns will still be cheaper than the famous ones, and good actors will be better than bad actors.

It won't be the death of an actor that "climbed up from the ranks" doing commercials and sit-com walk-ons, instead of going to school to study to be Laurence Olivier.
But just like fencing and riding horses used to be a sought-after skill for an actor, so will pantomime become a more important and sought-after skill for an actor.

these kinds of comments always make me laugh

[circletimessquare]

where the random internet troll heavily bashes some of the most successful politicians/ directors/ writers/ musicians/ businessmen/ programmers/ etc

based on his vast reserves of authority, based on his obvious advanced knowledge of a given genre

you don't have to like cameron, but he's obviously extremely successful and knowledgeable. and you are...?

and then it gets modded 5, Insightful! LOL

hilarious

its the great useless ignorant mass of human drek, moved to its great unifying passion: tearing other people down in howling unison

moronic mindless internet hate is the great dependable resource of our generation. lets put it to political work, harness it for power! oh wait, the tea baggers beat me to it... ;-P

some of you loud negative losers: why don't you try for once in your life actually making a small positive effort on your own? and redeem your sorry pathetic asses

this is your chance to bash this comment. you do it SO well. its all you know how to do, mindless negative feedback, to everything vaguely positive in your empty pointless lives

We should be scanning actors like mad today

[VShael]

before the concept of their 3d image as protected property comes into play.

Forget Sean Connery. Imagine a young Angelina Jolie and a young Megan Fox in a hardcore remake of ... well, pick the movie yourselves...

End of the Cult of Celebrity?

[Zobeid]

If this technology becomes widespread (which is far from certain, because the price needs to come down a lot). . . It could mean an end to the Cult of Celebrity, or the Cult of Stardom, that actors today enjoy.

Human beings are instinctively "hard-wired" to recognize and respond to faces. When we see the faces of actors on the screen, and become familiar with them, we begin to feel -- falsely -- as if we know them. They start to seem like friends. They become trusted. And thus the Cult of Celebrity begins.

The Avatar technology could eventually lead to actors being treated more like voice actors in animated features, or like the puppeteers who made The Muppet Show and The Dark Crystal. Because that's effectively what they become. . . Puppeteers. They lend their voices and actions to characters, but you don't see their real faces. Such persons can be recognized, and often are recognized, for their talents. However, we tend not to look toward them for. . . political endorsements. . . social activism. . . gossip about their private lives. . . and so forth. They don't get the Cult of Celebrity.

And I think that's healthy. I'd like to see the Cult of Celebrity lay down and die.

Re:End of the Cult of Celebrity?

[mjwx]

I'd like to see the Cult of Celebrity lay down and die.

Except that this will not happen. If stars are virtualised then the cult of celebrity will just start worshipping the virtual celebrities. The only difference is that it will be worse, the virtual actors will have no flaws. No nasty drug habits, no prima donna outbursts, no affairs or moments of indiscretion, perfect for all intents and purposes. This is exactly what the movie studios want, a blank slate that can be modified in any fashion to be appealing to the highest possible number of people.

For those who have read PKD's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep can immediately draw comparisons to the Buster Friendly character. Inhumanly likeable, every character made to be perfect and desirable. This is what will happen with virtual celebrities and I have no doubt we will have them within 20 years.

What is the biggest problem facing a music producer this day and age, no it's not piracy it's talent. They've spent years crafting the perfect image for the latest Pop Sensation(TM) and then she goes and does something or says something that puts that in jeopardy, people stop buying albums because the perfect illusion of the pop stars purity and virtuousness begins to show imperfection, its almost as if they have a mind of their own. No, no, this cannot be allowed to continue, just as Stalin asked for a soldier "impervious to pain, indifferent to the quality of food it eats" the music exec asks for a celebrity that is "unthinking, never acts of their own accord and is perfectly likeable". The only difference being that Stalin never got his soldier, the music exec will likely get his virtual celebrity.

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[Prien715]

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?

Probably about the same as the Nirvana fans who played the Guitar Hero or especially Madden '09.

Kurt wouldn't have wanted his music and likeness used in this way, but there's nothing in the law to stop it.

Mr Cameron needs to learn...

[Orlando]

..that technology alone does not make a good film. In the case of Avatar, not even a mediocre one.

Rain Man

[Leo Sasquatch]

I still remember a dream I had about 10 years ago, in which I went into my local video store and asked for a copy of Rain Man, but with Arnold Schwarzenegger in both lead roles, and being asked to wait 5 minutes while the computer re-formatted the film appropriately and applied his voice pattern.

Not long to wait, it would seem...

less agism and more story

[MrKaos]

I can't see how I can expand on that in a way that would make it any more meaningful, less agism and more story, please.

Except you actually can't

[Rix]

Your funny little missile program hasn't actually managed to shoot anything down on it's own. Which is why you cancelled it.

Did the surge find Bin Laden? I hadn't heard that.

Re:Except you actually can't

[tjstork]

Your funny little missile program hasn't actually managed to shoot anything down on it's own. Which is why you cancelled it.

LOL. Except, that, it hasn't been cancelled. I laugh at your dumbness.

Did the surge find Bin Laden? I hadn't heard that.

Nah we didn't, but we sure killed a fuckload of muzzies.

Is that still there?

[Rix]

Seems to me you ran away from it with your tail between your legs shortly after. Perhaps you could ask the Japanese to check?

I'll also point out that neither the eastern seaboard nor California could keep the lights on without Canadian hydroelectric. Your uranium comes from there, too, so no nuclear.

But hey, wall yourself off if you like. It will be most amusing. We will, of course, be expecting you to pay off your debts first, and given that you won't be able to maintain a modern military, you'd best do so.

Re:Is that still there?

[CAIMLAS]

Typical.

I suppose you'd want us to remit a bill for services rendered to the UN after we quit that, too?

Which brings up an interesting possibility. After the UN disbands due to lack of funding, I can certainly see the world's rabble pounding on the doorsteps of Europe with a heightened fervor due to the lack of the US there at their shoulder. Chances are Europe would have their hands full with warring nations coming to loot and plunder (whether as organized groups or individuals) from Russia, Arabia, and Africa.

Good luck!

Re:What's next?

[Dr. Spork]

In Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age," trained actors had had tens of thousands of microtransmitters implanted into their faces so that the essence of their acting could be captured without the need for a conventional camera. Then they could play literally anyone, as their face-points could be re-mapped to a monster's face or whatever.

And this is not even close to the most interesting idea in that book, my favorite piece of scifi ever.

Groucho Marx and Sheena Easton

[Kittenman]

Didn't they dance together in a coke/pepsi advert about 20 years ago? And one of them was dead. And I don't just mean professionally.

At that time the media and us contemporaries wondered about how owned the actors' images. "If Groucho was alive, would he have done the advert?". Yatta yatta yatta...

Technology vs quality

[Raul Acevedo]

I saw Avatar yesterday, and thought it was a terrible movie. I had a deja vu to watching Titanic: within 15 minutes, the entire plot of the movie was completely obvious. The entire movie was recycled and there was nothing original or interesting about it.

I say this because technology doesn't make up for a terrible movie. You can spend millions of dollars in CG tech, make actors seem young or revive them from the dead, but if you don't have a good story, and the skill to make it real as a director, no amount of technology will cover that up.

Tron Legacy

[Purity Of Essence]

Disney appear to be doing exactly this with the new Tron movie. Check out the end of the concept trailer for Tron Legacy to see an avatar (CLU?) portrayed by a youthful-looking Jeff Bridges.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1dHhktFLPs

no fun

[PopeRatzo]

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.

What a spoil-sport.

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[sznupi]

Hm, so in essence it is because people, deep down, don't really believe in afterlife?

(also, I think the motivation you present, while most likely correct, can be said in much simpler terms - people know that if they don't show respect to the dead, other living humans won't show respect to the "abuser" now...because we have almost universally convinced ourselves that this is wrong, we know that saying bad things about the dead will inevitably result in the same thing happening to us after we will die...hence triggering such fallout also while we're alive)

Re:Ha

[tjstork]

not the US. USX, barely makes steel, they do more chemical work than

You would be, as I, very pleased to know that

a) USX renamed itself to its original US Steel. They had a moment of sanity and sorta undid all the non-steel crap and focused on steel.

b) US Steel is very committed to making steel, and is still one of the largest producers in the USA, holding around 10% of the USA steel market.

Save Star Trek?

[istewart]

What if the tech is used on a character who's supposed to look slightly inhuman? I'm thinking chiefly of Data from Star Trek, whom Brent Spiner has said he will never play again since an immortal android doesn't age. But if you could reset his looks to 1987, while also setting the character further apart from the normal humans surrounding him, I think that would be an enhancement rather than a drawback.

Re:Like Simone

[Mr. No Skills]

Which was somewhat similar to another movie which name escapes me. Late 70s? Early 80s? Scanned actors then killed so the studio could use their likenesses without having to pay them. Maybe it was a made for TV movie...

Re:CGI will not be "perfected" anytime soon.

[dafing]

I agree about the overuse of production tools such as Autotune, especially now that the average listener has heard of it.

Still, technology is increasing every year, I'm 22, and in many ways, I'll be surprised if we dont have absolutely flawless rendering of human characters within my natural lifespan, wouldnt you? I would assume computer modelling is easier to improve than say, flying cars! Resolution for one, is just "how many dots are used", double the "dots", and the overall picture (presumably!) looks better.

great!

[greywire]

Now that we have the ability to keep using old and even long dead actor's likenesses, all we need now is some kind of advanced technology for recycling the plots of old movies. Then we wont have to come up anything new at all.

Oh, wait...

Re:Doing to movies what Microsoft did to Programmi

[CAIMLAS]

I don't think you give "the average guy" enough credit. After all, good movies are not made popular by movie geeks. They're made popular by the common man (and woman). People would quickly stop going to the movies if every actor were like Dolf Lungden (or w/e his name is). You need a Bruce Willis or Angelina Jolie to sell films.

Gaia Cult

[CranberryKing]

Not going to see. It's pretty obvious what that film is about. More earth worship religion propaganda. Humanity is evil for the poor spiritual planet.

Re:Ethical line ? In movies ?

[indiechild]

I don't think viewing child porn would cause pedophiles to have more or less desire to molest a child. The desire to molest/rape was already there all along.

So I don't see any benefit in making artificial child porn.

Re:Doing to movies what Microsoft did to Programmi

[master_p]

Actually, what you describe may be the next killer app. From what I know, there is no such application in the market, but it seems people would be wildly interested in it, judging from the amount of machinima videos floating around the web...

Re:so we do away with need of 20 million$ actors

[Daengbo]

This would make the MPAA happy. Oh, yeah, and saying "an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere" about the MPAA seems ridiculously naive.

You owe the UN money

[Rix]

So yes, we'd like you to pay off that debt. Since you haven't been pulling your weight there anyway, leaving won't cause it any harm.

Implications of imitation...

[Psaakyrn]

I wouldn't want to be immortal if it isn't me.

Looker

[psych0fred]

Just track down the movie Looker, directed by Michael Crichton and starring Albert Finney. In it someone is killing supermodels because they've been digitized and the real people are no longer needed.

Re:Looker

[johnkzin]

I was going to bring that up too.

What Cameron is bringing up is basically a re-hash of the "Looker" plot-line. Though, Looker adds in a gadget that is also a little bit novel (and almost, but not exactly, like the non-lethal flashlight weapon that uses flashing lights to induce vomiting ... only the one in the movie induces blackouts).

Once we cross that gulf that makes truly human-looking CGI characters, you can bet we'll see movies that use virtual versions of real actors. That does NOT mean it'll be successful ... there's more to a successful movie than a real looking actor, you'll still need good writing, good directing, and good acting (voice acting, in this case). But it'll almost certainly have an impact on how many movies are made ... and it'll probably have an impact on the admissibility of video evidence.