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James Cameron On How Avatar Technology Could Keep Actors Young
Suki I writes "An article at EW discusses another use for Avatar's sophisticated motion-capture technology: 'Sure, it's terrific for turning human actors into big blue alien Na'vis. But the photorealistic CGI technology James Cameron perfected for Avatar could easily be used for other, even more mind-blowing purposes — like, say, bringing Humphrey Bogart back to life, or making Clint Eastwood look 35 again. "How about another Dirty Harry movie where Clint looks the way he looked in 1975?" Cameron suggests. "Or a James Bond movie where Sean Connery looks the way he did in Doctor No? How cool would that be?"' The article goes on to quote Cameron as saying you would still need actors to play the roles, and that an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere."
NO
Those weren't humans, they were blue skinned aliens with very different facial features. The uncanny valley was not addressed, so we have no idea how this "photoreal" technology stands up to that close inspection.
I'm far far FAR from unbiased on this, but if you wanted to speculate on making actors look younger, you'd still be better served looking at Benjamin Button.
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"and that an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere."
Eh. No.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
"How cool would that be?"
I don't know. Depends on how good the movie is.
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.
Yeah, this coming from a guy who tried to murder an entire alien civilization for our viewing pleasure.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Bring back Ronald Reagan!
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
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.
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*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.
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
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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'.
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.
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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".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
but it *looked* so real.
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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.
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..
Who gets remembered is not who uses pieces of a technology, but who puts the pieces together into a gestalt. We can look to Apple for that. Before the iPod and iPhone, the pieces were around, touchscreen UI, multitouch, app stores, and smartphones. However, who got the mindshare to Joe Sixpack wasn't RIM, it was Apple who spun existing technologies together to make something cool.
Cameron is the same way. The CG aliens are not new, but the way they were done as a main part of the film is, making sure the uncanny vally is bypassed by having different facial features (ears way high on the head, larger irises, flattened nose, the facial shading). 3D is not new either, but Avatar is the first widespread movie that used 3D technology without having to force theaters to upgrade their projection equipment.
These days, it is not who invents something that gets the cash (else Xerox would be in the Fortune 10 with their PARC inventions.) It is who manages to package existing stuff and sell it who takes home the prize.
But the photorealistic CGI technology James Cameron perfected...
Whoa. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. It was damn impressive, but it most certainly wasn't perfect. It was always clear that what I was looking at was CG. It is not yet at a point where the computer is going to fool the viewer into thinking that what they are seeing is real. It's come a hell of a long way but we're not yet at "perfected." Not by a long shot.
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.
~The roAm
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.
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.
-Styopa
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..
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?