Recently, a close friend of mine took his son and five of his buddies to see the movie, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.” Not his cup of tea, but he enjoyed the animation and brought up a fascinating topic that wasn’t addressed by the plot or theme, but occurred to him afterwards regarding the logistics of making the movie.
As he termed it, “In fact, it was the best job of combining live actors and computer generated characters I’ve ever seen. You really had to concentrate to tell what was animated and what was real.”
This begged the question, “How long will it be before there are no live actors or outside shots? When will it all be generated on a computer?”
After he posed the question, my first response was that I had never thought about it. I don’t sit around wondering when humans will become obsolete actors. It never occurred to me that that could ever happen.
But he makes a good point. If they can generate action and animals so real like they did in this movie, they could certainly generate human figures and make them perfect. You could also make them jump, bend, roll over, shoot, fly or run at just about any speed in any direction with their bodies contorted into seemingly impossible positions. That’s an added bonus for getting rid of humans and using computer-generated images.
Are we coming to this scenario? I don’t know. I can’t see it happening soon, but my buddy sees it as inevitable. “It’s only a matter of how long.”
If he’s correct, and I don’t subscribe to his theory (though I also won’t discount it), you do have to wonder how quickly we will move down that path and what the consequences are. For one, there will be another huge disruption in the job market as humans are replaced by digitally enhanced replicas of us.
That will be a huge factor mitigating against it ever happening. People will fight it. Actors will weigh in against the change.
Imagine the messiness: “We want Denzel Washington for the role.”
“He’s too old. We can create a perfect replica of him for a hundred grand and use it in perpetuity. We can make him any age we want, and in fact we can change his age in the course of the movie.”
If the movie requires the actor to age over time, the fake Denzel would make an ideal choice. Don’t let Denzel know though.
It reminds me of the lawsuit brought by former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon for allowing a likeness of himself to be used in a video game. Because money was made off of it, he rightfully wants a slice of the pie.
That could be the route – actors give the okay for replications. Then they get a cut every time it is used.
“Hey, Jake, I don’t have to act any more. I just let my imitation do it, and collect all the royalties.”
“Awesome, dude. Where do I sign up?”
You’d probably even get some lazy bums who’d take the dough and run. But I think the human ego would come into play in most cases, and the actor would fight to stay in the flick.
Most of us wouldn’t miss the whole celebrity worship culture so prevalent in our society. There’s no value to that.
We’d probably replace it with Replica Celebrity Worship anyway. We’ll find the new action hero and imbue them with characteristics that we wish we had ourselves just like we do now.
And what about the actors who are cast away? I guess they’ll be selling cell phones.
As he termed it, “In fact, it was the best job of combining live actors and computer generated characters I’ve ever seen. You really had to concentrate to tell what was animated and what was real.”
This begged the question, “How long will it be before there are no live actors or outside shots? When will it all be generated on a computer?”
After he posed the question, my first response was that I had never thought about it. I don’t sit around wondering when humans will become obsolete actors. It never occurred to me that that could ever happen.
But he makes a good point. If they can generate action and animals so real like they did in this movie, they could certainly generate human figures and make them perfect. You could also make them jump, bend, roll over, shoot, fly or run at just about any speed in any direction with their bodies contorted into seemingly impossible positions. That’s an added bonus for getting rid of humans and using computer-generated images.
Are we coming to this scenario? I don’t know. I can’t see it happening soon, but my buddy sees it as inevitable. “It’s only a matter of how long.”
If he’s correct, and I don’t subscribe to his theory (though I also won’t discount it), you do have to wonder how quickly we will move down that path and what the consequences are. For one, there will be another huge disruption in the job market as humans are replaced by digitally enhanced replicas of us.
That will be a huge factor mitigating against it ever happening. People will fight it. Actors will weigh in against the change.
Imagine the messiness: “We want Denzel Washington for the role.”
“He’s too old. We can create a perfect replica of him for a hundred grand and use it in perpetuity. We can make him any age we want, and in fact we can change his age in the course of the movie.”
If the movie requires the actor to age over time, the fake Denzel would make an ideal choice. Don’t let Denzel know though.
It reminds me of the lawsuit brought by former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon for allowing a likeness of himself to be used in a video game. Because money was made off of it, he rightfully wants a slice of the pie.
That could be the route – actors give the okay for replications. Then they get a cut every time it is used.
“Hey, Jake, I don’t have to act any more. I just let my imitation do it, and collect all the royalties.”
“Awesome, dude. Where do I sign up?”
You’d probably even get some lazy bums who’d take the dough and run. But I think the human ego would come into play in most cases, and the actor would fight to stay in the flick.
Most of us wouldn’t miss the whole celebrity worship culture so prevalent in our society. There’s no value to that.
We’d probably replace it with Replica Celebrity Worship anyway. We’ll find the new action hero and imbue them with characteristics that we wish we had ourselves just like we do now.
And what about the actors who are cast away? I guess they’ll be selling cell phones.