Imagine an actor without an entourage, an agent or even the itch to change the script in between takes.
Sound like science fiction? Not for long.
A computer company claims it’s on the verge of creating digital actors who can’t be distinguished from the real deal.
I’m suspicious. The currently technology is amazing, no doubt, but it’s easy to spot the computer wizardry whenever it meshes too closely to flesh ‘n’ blood humans.
But what if this comes to pass, and it’s likely to do so sooner than later? Will actors suddenly show up on time, all the time? Will we see holograms chatting up the likes of Jay Leno and David Letterman?
And will the technology mean we’ll see new films starring John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe and Paul Newman?
(Photo: Will technology be able to bring back screen icons like the late Paul Newman back to the silver screen?)
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I'm an award-winning journalist and film critic with more than a decade of experience in newspapers, magazines and the Web. I'm a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association and the Denver Film Critics Society.
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There was a “Final Fantasy” movie where the characters were very photorealistic human like. Personally, I found it creepy and very distracting as the character presentation tended to pop between realistic and almost but not quite realistic. The human eye can detect extremely small variations in facial qualities, which is why most people can recognize hundreds of different faces by small variations, so I’ll withhold judgement on how good this new technique is until I’ve samplied it personally.
I agree, K … even when they get very close to looking human it just doesn’t look quite right. And the result is downright creepy. But technology marches on pretty fast …
They’ll always need a human controlling the performance even if they do manage to bring the graphics up to snuff. It will likely be a mixture of motion capture,(Final Fantasy,Gollum,KingKong ,Beowolf), and hand animated cgi.
Unless they can perfect AI enough to create a performance I don’t see actors ever being completely replaced.
I sure hope not, Opus, but I think the digital effects coming down the pike will give film studios some interesting leverage when it comes to working with actors.
Technically they already are replacing actors in live action movies they’re just not the lead characters They’re replacing extras that would normally be hired to make large groups of people.
Perhaps as the tech improves the one’s being replaced will be, if not the leads at least characters who get closer to the camera.
This could explain Pauly Shore.