Slashdot Mirror
Someone Used a Deep Learning AI To Perfectly Insert Harrison Ford Into "Solo: A Star Wars Story" (gizmodo.com)
Andrew Liszewski, writing for io9: Casting anyone other than Harrison Ford in the role of Han Solo just feels like sacrilege, but since Ford is now 76 years old, playing a younger version of himself would be all but impossible. Or at least impossible if you rely on the standard Hollywood de-aging tricks like makeup and CG. Artificial intelligence, it turns out, does a pretty amazing job at putting Ford back into the role of Solo. The YouTube channel "derpfakes" has been posting videos that demonstrate the impressive, and at times frightening, capabilities of image processing using artificial intelligence. Using a process called deep learning, an AI analyzes a large collection of photos of a given person, creating a comprehensive database of them in any almost any position and pose. It then uses that database to intelligently perform an automatic face replacement on a source clip, in this case replacing actor Alden Ehrenreich's face with Harrison Ford's.
down already.
It's far from perfect, and the bitrate on that video is abysmal. If he tried this on Blu-ray footage and kept the quality up, Harrison Ford's face would stick out like a sore... face.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
no not perfectly at all
...the acting profession...
It's a dark muddled mess, what was I supposed to be amazed by?
The uncanny valley comes to mind. In some scenes the face droops a bit too much for it to be unrealistic. He's done similar ones on his channel in which the problems are more clear, fitting one face on another is possible but not invisible.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Shit like that shit movie
Frankly I preferred the original actor face to the replacement.
Now what I would have liked, was to tweak the audio so he sounded more like Harrison Ford, with at least a bit deeper voice. This clip was educational in that respect as when watching the movie I was trying to think why he didn't seem much like the original.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Using a person's likeness in photos or videos without the person's consent should be illegal. (Save for certain "fair use" criteria.) Using them in sexual videos without their consent should be considered sexual assult.
would be better with blockchain.
Can they erase Jar-Jar? Or replace Hayden Christensen with an actual wooden post?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
His previous work of inserting Elon Musk as Bond is even better.
I think it's not unreasonable to find more de-aging being done (like in Ant-Man and the Tron Sequel). Actors better have good estates that can defend (and license) their likeness because it's going to get easier and easier to replicate them as technology gets better and better. The money involved would be crazy. Imagine if Terantino got Clint to do voice over work for a new Spaghetti western style flick where the actor is being played by a stand in that is manipulated by CG to look like Clint from the 60's. If it was done right and believable people would line up at the theater to see it.
Looks as realistic as Jar-Jar. But it is deep learning AI so it must be good.
Now let's go back to Episodes 4,5,6 and remove all the added Lucas crap to the original theatrical releases, and oh yeah, Han shoots first...(yeah I do know about the fan versions and have them.)
Then back to 1,2,3 and remove Jar Jar, except for killing the character in EP 1
Then you could make it look like Hayden actually cared about being in a movie, instead of waiting in a line for a new iPhone.
... as much as the atrocious writing in that tire fire of a movie. And their ain't much we can do to fix that, at least not for the foreseeable future.
Found the NPC!
Deepfakes is using only existing footage of the actors and of the movie it is inserted in.
In your scenario, there would instead be access to a 3D-scan of the original actor's face which could be fixed up and animated based on motion capture dots on the new actor's face. With those, you could produce an even better result.
While Peter Cushing is not alive, life-casts of his face remain -- once made for making rubber appliances for make-up effects. The same goes for many actors.
As with any old genuine movie props, there are also people who collect nth generation life-casts of famous actors...
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I think part of why it looks so weird is Ehrenreich has a rather wide face to cover up with Ford's. So it all looks a bit 'blown up'. If the original actor's head were of a similar shape to Ford's, this might work better.
Wouldn't defamation of character be a better charge for this?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Short people are easy to spot based on the head to torso ratio. While not exactly short, Ehrenreich does not have the same stature as Ford. It makes the fake look really weird to me.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Pretty amazing job my ass. Looks absolutely terrible.
Yeah I know this is a fanboi job and I give *him* credit for this, but boo on Gizlozer for overhyping it.
... You never stopped to ask if you should.
Oh lawdie: captcha is 'gaslight.'
Ian McKellan was masterful and I don't think there will ever be a more perfect actor to play Gandalf, but I always thought it would have been cool to see Sean Connery as Gandalf as well (if I remember right back in the late 90's he was supposed to be on the short list to play him when the films were being cast but of course must have fallen through at some point).
that the word perfectly now means hacky and badly
One of the worst aspects of "Solo" was the actor's thin reedy voice v.s. Ford's deep super-masculine voice.
I know, Comrade Wang, it's quite clever.
Next step;
Keep Ford, and replace everything else with the footage and story from A New Hope.
Awww you poor poor victim.
The article doesn't say anything about the technology, other than to describe it as "deep learning AI." What exactly does this mean? Is it a neural network? If it's not, it's not really "AI." Deep learning? Maybe, or maybe it's just brute force that runs on really powerful equipment. Can't tell from the article.
Yea, If I were a big movie star I'd have my face detail mapped when I was young (or immediately to retain as much youth as possible) so that in my later years the accuracy would be there. I wonder if some big actors are voluntarily doing that yet?
It looks like someone wearing a Harrison Ford mask. It shows, very clearly, just how good Harrison Ford is as an actor.
This is certainly his face, but it isn't his facial expressions. It isn't his smile. It isn't his brow furl. Those aren't the way that his eyes widen.
Simply put, it doesn't move correctly.
And that means that the mechanisms by which Harrison Ford's face is attached to his head are betrayed. Dimples might be there, but they don't restrict the skin's movement.
It's awesome, in terms of technology, and it's certainly enough to make a casual viewer believe that this is Harrison Ford. But it's also enough to make an expert acting coach believe that Harrison Ford is a terrible actor.