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from the Oscar-goes-to-someone-who-doesn't-exist dept.
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/vfx/cg-actors-logan-never-knew-149013.html
A long article going into great detail about how they staged, shot & digitally manipulated scenes in the movie Logan replacing the faces on stuntmen with the respective actor. When I watched the movie, I knew that X-24 had been de-aged and touched up a bit, but I never noticed any of the other scenes, in particular the Limo scene they describe in the article that was heavily modified.
While Hollywood has been relying on digital doubles for many years, the work in Logan is particularly seamless, even if the scenes are relatively brief and do not involve an avatar delivering any dialogue. It's perhaps another example of where things are headed with digital actors and how they can be used to help tell the stories directors are wanting to tell. Cartoon Brew sat down with the studio behind the digital Hugh Jackmans and Laura, Image Engine in Vancouver, who worked under overall vfx supervisor Chas Jarrett, to discuss how the the cg 'digi-doubles' were brought to life.
After being given the task of re-creating cg heads for Keen and Jackman, Image Engine's team immediately knew what it was up for. "Everyone knows Logan, for instance, and that's the biggest challenge," Image Engine visual effects supervisor Martyn Culpitt told Cartoon Brew. "We're literally looking at a real Hugh and a digital Hugh side by side in some shots."
The studio had completed plenty of digital human-type work before, but mostly as either human-esque creatures or as cg stunt doubles – never full-frame actors intended to be indistinguishable from the real actor. That meant Image Engine had to ramp up on their digital human pipeline, while also capitalizing on work they'd previously done in the area. "We basically had to build the whole system from scratch," said Culpitt.
Of particular note, their lighting software is open source.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday March 09 2017, @08:03AM (3 children)
Suppose Hollywood pays an actor and takes heaps of face scans.
What stops them using the image of the actor in subsequent movies using cheap doubles in the subsequent installs of a franchise?
For how long such an image can be used by Hollywood? 20 years, 100 years, forever? Are the face scans subject to copyright laws?
Suppose one of the doubles wearing a CG grafted face acts exceptionally well and receives an Oscar for supporting actor... should the owner of the grafted face receive recognition? Why so or why not so?
Remember Milli Vanilli [wikipedia.org]? Sure, it was fraud involved at that time but the music, the singers' voices and the interpretation was judged as worthy of a Grammy when paired with the good look and scenic presence of the band members.
Now, assume a CG mixture/original creation, announced as so, for this case - would you watch such a "CG lips-and-face sync" concert (in streaming or on offline media).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09 2017, @08:46AM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights#United_States [wikipedia.org]
As long as these techniques are expensive due to computation and experienced manpower, they will only be used by big corporations. They will respect personality rights if they are within reach of lawsuits from actors and estates. Maybe we will see Chinese studios or amateurs use them down the line to "pirate" the likeness of an actor or actress. Even by using copyrighted sources like 1080p/4K feature films in place of comprehensive scans. As we can see from this story, you can just slap a head on another body. Software and hardware may improve to the point where a small number of motivated amateurs can create realistic scenes completely from scratch from video, photographs, and voice samples. The budget could be less than the cost of a high-end camera, or $0 if they already have access to a workstation. Then they can distribute the film anonymously and watch Tom Cruise or whomever try to DMCA the shit. They can get as big of an audience online as they could from indie film fests, possibly with ad revenue, though that could compromise their identities.
Better yet, if the studios get hacked and the scans are downloaded and leaked, there's your high quality source. You can download it now and use it 20 years later. If we are lucky, Moore's law will continue with 3D transistor stacking, and digital acting synthesis will accept all the thousands of cores you can throw at it. Disney and Sony already use GPU supercomputers so that seems likely.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09 2017, @06:00PM
The fact that if they can do it plausibly in a movie scene, then a state actor can certainly use similiar techniques to forge video evidence of someone they want/need to convict?
Furthermore if you use a higher resolution initial video, but then downscale/postprocess it to 1/4 or less resolution, it should be more than possible to cover up artifacts of editing assuming you got the shading of the composited face or figure right.
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Thursday March 09 2017, @04:28PM
Suppose Hollywood pays an actor and takes heaps of face scans.
What stops them using the image of the actor in subsequent movies using cheap doubles in the subsequent installs of a franchise?
For how long such an image can be used by Hollywood? 20 years, 100 years, forever? Are the face scans subject to copyright laws?
The same thing that stops Hollywood from doing anything else they don't do today: Lawyers, preferably damn good ones that aren't working for the studios. So those scans can be used as long as the contract that the actor signed with the studio says it can, whether that's "20 years" or "only for installments 15 through 20 of The Fast and The Furious franchise". After that, the studio would have to request an extension, or risk getting sued by whoever they scanned (or that person's estate).
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.