Conference bookie::movies

	Nothing new here :-)  Ray tracing and other methods have been
	around for quite a while.  There are even yearly competitions
	for computer generated shorts.

  I doubt that they will replace actors all that quickly. For some reason every
nation has it's royalty and in the United States, Hollywood is our Buckingham
Palace. Big names draw people to the theater and reading about the personal
lives of those people is a major industry that interests millions of Americans.

  Think about it for a minute. Considering that for every star there are 10,000
hungry actors who are just as talented, if people didn't care who was in the
film stars would never get jobs. Why pay big bucks when a starving unknown
would work for scale? Fact is, people want to see stars so stars get jobs. Same
will go for automation. 

  Advanced techniques will free producers to do stories they couldn't do before
but in the end it's the story and the actors that count. Jurassic Park was able
to get away with terrible acting because the dinosaurs were a novelty but that
won't work a 2nd time.

  What it will do is allow stories that couldn't be told before. All through
Jurassic park I kept thinking that at last they have the technology to do
Ann McCaffrie's Dragon Riders of Pern stories. There is potential there to
do some really 1st rate films.

  I can picture Dragons flaming "thread" as I type.

  George

    computer animation may replace puppets, models and complex sets, but
    probably not actors for a very long time.  It is very hard for a
    computer to "emote"  to show varying shades of facial expression, to
    ad-lib lines and actions.  Computer generated images are also too
    perfect in many ways, they do not have blemishes on their skin, they do
    not blush unevenly, sweat, exhibit slight, nearly imperceptible
    "ticks", they do not have subtle variations in style of movement,
    speech, their skin color does not fluctuate naturally with exposure to
    sun, wind, water, temperature, emotion, etc.
    
    Human actors exhibit far too many subtleties to be practically replaced
    by computers, it would take a great deal of memory and extremely
    skilled programmers to bring it even close and you would still lose all
    that fine emotional stuff and those occaisonnal ad libs that really ad
    to characters.   Computer generated movies would have all the life of
    an extremely accurate model or computer program, because that is all it
    would be.   Jurrassic Park suffered from too much handling by
    technicians, and not enough attention to the human situations, there
    was too much focus on the beasties and requisite effects, not enough on
    the characters.  I think that the skill of some of the actors saved
    their parts, or maybe it was just their inherent personalities.  Jeff
    Goldblum, for instance brought a little interest to an otherwise
    boorish character, as did the actor who plays the attorney, he is a
    good character actor.  Sam Neil is a personal favorite of mine from his
    Reilly: Ace of Spies days, he plays mysterious and dangerous characters
    better than Dr. Grant types though, malevolent amusement is one of his
    better expressions.  Sean Connery is another actor who is a pleasure to
    watch, even in poor movies, as is James Earl Jones and Harrison Ford,
    these are good actors who bring something to the role with them,
    something unique, A computer generated character cannot do that.
    
    Cant replace a human with a machine, even the CIA is figuring that out
    and starting up human intelligence programs again and relying less on
    orbital satellites.
    
    Andrew
    
    "Don't overestimate this technological terror you have created..."
    					James Earl Jones as Darth Vader

>     It is very hard for a
>     computer to "emote"  to show varying shades of facial expression, to
>     ad-lib lines and actions.  Computer generated images are also too
>     perfect in many ways, they do not have blemishes on their skin, they do
>     not blush unevenly, sweat, exhibit slight, nearly imperceptible
>     "ticks", they do not have subtle variations in style of movement,
>     speech, their skin color does not fluctuate naturally with exposure to
>     sun, wind, water, temperature, emotion, etc.

	It's all a matter of programming!  The art has progressed and
	continues to progress.  And computers getting faster helps
	that progression.

>     Cant replace a human with a machine, even the CIA is figuring that out
>     and starting up human intelligence programs again and relying less on
>     orbital satellites.

	You know they said the same thing to assembly line workers
	before they replaced them with robots.  And they said the
	same thing to room fulls of accountants.  And so on and so on.

	It's all a matter of time and money .......

    I think an earlier reply hit it on the head.  People want to see actors
    that have marquee value.  "No-name" actors will work for real cheap
    nowadays, so there's not much cost savings in replacing actors with
    computer animations.  And, if you simulate an actor with marquee value,
    you'll still have to pay license fees.  So, though we may see more
    computer animation, we'll still see "name" actors because they bring in
    the crowds as well as "no-name" actors because they work cheap.
    
    Steve

    Leave us not digress too far into a general discussion of artificial
    intelligence; there are other forums for that. As to the application of
    computing power (intelligent or not) to movies, I tend to agree that
    computer animation/simulation won't replace human actors in a big way
    any time soon. First, the technology would have to get to where it's
    cheaper to animate a person than to hire one (note that I'm not talking
    about hiring a mega-star vs. having the computer emulate that
    particular person; rather, the comparison between the cost of computer
    technology that could satisfactorily mimic any ordinary person's range
    of emotions vs. the cost of hiring one of the gazillions of movie-star
    wanna-bes who would work for - comparatively - peanuts).
    
    Now, if the cost _did_ get to reasonable levels, or if lower-quality
    computer simulation could be done more cheaply than filming real live
    actors,  there might well be a market for "semi-automated" films, in
    which the computer generated all the heavies (who don't get to emote
    much anyway, so who cares if they all make the exact same grimace when
    they get shot), and the real people are reserved for the key roles.
    
    If the quality was high enough AND the cost was less than that of
    paying a megastar, one might wonder about the likelihood of having the
    computer simulate the star. Selling the rights to one's computerized
    persona might become the "in" thing, especially for aging actors; they
    might get offered more money for the rights to their image (which could
    be "youthened" as needed) than for themselves...
    
    Finally, if it became practical to computerize all the actors, then I'd
    see a couple of things happening: either movies would become stylized,
    with some finite set of "personalities", stock facial expressions,
    etc. - this could be a very large number, mind, but it would still be a
    set of pre-programmed responses - or the programmers/operators
    themselves would become the "stars," with people lining up to see the
    new movie "with characters hand-tuned by Fran Randolph, Oscar-winning
    compu-synth whiz!". 
    
    I suspect, though, that for quite some time to come, the optimum use of
    special-effects technology will be to synthesize the things humans
    _can't_ do cheaply (or at all): believable 7-foot-tall insectoids from
    Altair, winged horses, dragons (and, of course, dinosaurs)... Or
    extremely realistic gore-fests - it might be cheaper to generate a
    computer-person and have it mangled by a (computer-synthesized) runaway
    train, rather than building miniature sets, or constructing a
    life-sized dummy that will rip into anatomically-correct chunks on cue.
    
    It'll be interesting to see where it does go.
    
    -b

> I think an earlier reply hit it on the head.  People want to see actors
> that have marquee value.

	But you are looking at it with the eyes you have today.
	Things & perceptions change.  Many didn't like gasoline
	powered buggies either, they prefered "real" horses.
	And look at TV today, when it first came out they said
	it would never replace radio.  The older generation thought
	it was a brain drain because you no longer had to think.
	And look at music.  With every generation comes a new
	style, of which the previous generations can't stand.

	The same thing will eventually happen with a radical change
	in movie technology.  I'm sure when the talkies 1st came
	out that it had it's critics ......

  ....movies with totally synthetic characters will replace human actors, the
  way that totally electronic music replaced musicians. :-)

  Nari

    I don't know, how do you classify a program like "The Simpsons"?  Here
    we have good comedy writing, performed by good actors who don't look
    the part (Bart's a woman, for one thing!).  Answer; use a cartoon. 
    Matt Groening's crude drawings manage to evoke emotion using a minimum
    of visual information.  Perhaps some types of movies would benefit by
    altering the image as a first step in this automation process.
    
    Also, what about Colorization?  This is also a crude beginning of the
    technology.  
    
    Maybe we're closer than we think!
    
    CArl

    On Entertainment Tonight Monday, July 12th, they had a short clip about
    the new Clint Eastwood movie - In the Line of Fire. Since part of the
    movie has a flashback to when the Eastwood character was providing
    protection to John Kenneday, they needed to show a younger Clint. So,
    they took a picture of him from an earlier movie, changed the suit
    color to black, gave him a "shorter" haircut, then put that picture
    into already existing footage of Kennedy. You have JFK talking in the
    front with Eastwood standing in the back, looking from side to side.
    
    The end result looked pretty good.  
    
    janetb.

    Max Headroom was played by Matt Frewer aka the annoying neighbor in
    "Honey I Shrunk The Kids"  computer animation was laid over shots of
    him , but he provided the base image and expressions.  Cartoons have a
    low, "Suspension of disbelief" factor, as does even the best computer
    animation.  It would take a tremendous amount of number crunching power
    to generate lifelike scenes with lifelike characters moving through
    them.  It takes high end mainframe power to do short scenes and
    fractions of scenes now, a whole film would take major memory and a
    supercomputer to pull off.  Life has randomness, unpredictability. 
    There are so many things that effect an actors performance, many which
    are not even quantifiable and therefore, impossible to duplicate on a
    logical, number driven machine.  You would, quite literally, need a
    "positronic brain"  i.e Commander Data on STTNG, to adequately
    duplicate human emotion, variability, and adaptability.   Human actors
    develop ad libs, attitudes, and styles based on a huge number of
    variables as well as an interpretive, intuitive knowlege of script,
    scene, situation, etc and sometimes in the absence of such knowledge
    they come out with really neat bits.  very often these ad libs and
    such, are things the director never even considered.   Steven
    Speilberg's films are technically extraordinary, but sometimes lack
    that human element that makes a film truly great.  
    	Computer animated films must be written by programmers and
    technicians, special effects folks since, in effect, such films would
    be one long FX piece.  Technicians are a different sort from actors and
    writers.  Techs tend to think in terms of logical systems, logical
    progressions, logical systems, writers and actors do not to the same
    extent, they think in terms of situation, emotional reactions,
    particular psychological impacts and reactions.
    	I admit that given advances in computer tech.  more and more
    realistic simulations will become possible, but will they be
    desireable, or will they fall flat, lacking the edge granted by the
    human touch.  The best nylons and synthetic fabrics are nice, but they
    ain't silk.  
    
    Haven't we dehumanized life enough yet?
    
    Andrew