Hollywood immortality is now iron-clad.
Hollywood immortality is now iron-clad.
Jan 19For the longest time, if someone wanted a dead star to appear in a movie or commercial, you went with look-alikes, or you would use a body-double whose face you would never see, but a voice immitation would be heard. In the past ten years this took a big jump forward, as computer technology allowed filmmakers to insert an actor into old footage, or to isolate an actor from old footage and insert them into a new scene. Actually, the former was around before, using optical techniques, but it was pretty limited, and spotting “the blur” of the SFX usually gave it away. But with computers, these same effects got very sophisticated, allowing Tom Hanks for example, to appear in a lot of historical footage.
Computers now allow Hollywood to do a lot of things, but replicating humans has proven hard. At the very least, you can have Fred Astaire dancing with a dust-buster or the face of Gene Kelly mapped onto three different break-dancers (again, The Blur spoils the effect somewhat – admittedly, commercials don’t have the budget for perfect clean-up passes.) At best, you can take a digital, 2D scan of an actor, and put that 3D version to work.
But the holy grail that was always just out of reach was 3D models for dead actors – they, as mentioned, are dead. You can’t sit them down for a 3D scan. And some who are near death, look their age – 3D scanning them locks them into that age (plus or minus a decade, with a little tweaking.) There has been no perfect solution to resurrecting the dead, until now.
The math behind this must be isane, and it should be pointed out that as a demo, they are obviously showing us the best results, but the implications are there. All you need to revive a long-past actor is a photograph. It doesn’t even have to be colour. And it’s not just one actor, but that one actor at various ages. It gets wilder from there, when you think about it. You want fat De Niro from Raging Bull, find a picture. Want him that fat, but 20 years older? Find a picture and fatten it up.
The effect will not be perfect – for the time being, putting a digital actor next to a live actor will always reveal the fake. But add established technology like motion capture, or mapping a head on a living body that actually exists in a scene, and you can do some amazing things.
For example, the future of the Terminator franchise is now secure, as not only can the T2 Arnold live forever, but he can now be cloned, allowing a scene with multiples of the same model killing machine. Or an actor is slightly too old or perhaps incapable of doing a stunt – not a problem. Head-on-stuntman will save the day.
The sad part is that while the technology is amazing, and some incredible possibilities come to mind, I can’t help but think that this will be used to bolster a growing market for recycled ideas. Time will tell.
This requires more thought, particularly since there is still the question of whether there isn’t something creepy about bringing the dead back to life like this, regardless of whether their estate gets paid or not. Can a studio use an actor in certain contexts without the permission of the individual or their decendants? And hell, if we’re in a public domain photo, does this mean we’re fair game as digital fodder?
Not to pee on your parade, but I’m pretty sure ILM did this type of thing fairly extensively on the prequels, specifically the placing of a digital “head” onto a stuntman to allow, for example, an ancient Christopher Lee to jump and flip around as a Sith Lord.
That\\\’s only a small part of my parade you\\\’re whizzing on – Actually, I don\\\’t even thing it\\\’s part of my parade. If I gave that impression, then I screwed up. It\\\’s a given that they can have done this stuff before, but remember, they had Chris Lee\\\’s head to scan from, so, not a big challenge for the technology as it exists to date.
But with the technology suggested in the video clip (and it should be watched, specifically the bit starting at about the 2 minute mark) I\\\’m talking about Oliver Reed in Gladiator, where he croaked during production, and they had to jury-rig his face onto another body, essentially digitally cutting and pasting from existing footage, with mixed, and obvious results.
The implications of this technology is that you could take a publicity still of Reed, taken during production, and viola – instant and super-versatile head model. Or if Lee had died during Star Wars production, but they hadn\\\’t taken a scan of his head yet. In that alternate universe, they would have had to have a 3D modeler try and aproximate his face.
But this little demo suggests a new, big step up, though still not the perfect solution. For all the money they threw at modelling Keanu in The Burly Brawl of the second Matrix film, you can still tell when it\\\’s not him, but a digital double.
Making it indistinguishable from a filmed human, a lot of time and money has to be spent working on the musculature and light reflecting properties of skin etc. But to be able to magically reproduce a face from a photo, that\\\’s a big deal, or at least as I see it.
And send me a mailing address, Parade Peeing Lad!