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Will CGI Collapse the Hollywood Economy?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Aug 11, 2002 02:05 PM
from the bring-me-my-mobile-emitter dept.
from the bring-me-my-mobile-emitter dept.
Some Slashdot Reader writes "Computer animation is getting so cheap that it is practical for use in some TV shows. s1m0ne is an upcoming movie those story is about a guy who secretly creates a real-looking digital character who become famous overnight.
Eventually, it will become more cost-effective to produce whole movies on computer as a standard. And when the technology and costs permits, non-scifi TV shows with an all-digital cast(fully copyrighted of course) will come forth. But the real main issue is: If this takes off, what will happen to all the people like the background characters, costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc."
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Will CGI Collapse the Hollywood Economy?
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Re:Thanks (Score:4, Funny)
Agreed. I think we're still a long way from making 'digital' actors and actresses that are indistinguishable from the real thing. The technology isn't there yet, and may never be.
This is like the people in the 50s who thought that within the decade they'd have robots that were indistinguishable from real people. I'm sorry, there's just something more to a real human being.
It's the same idea when it comes to actors; a half-decent professional actor can easily put to shame an animator and a vocalist.
Oh wait, we're talking about Hollywood actors . . . nevermind, the industry's toast.
Acting is in the VOICE (Score:5, Insightful)
on the whole I kind of like actors who are ALIVE! I just don't think computers make good actors...
Acting isn't in appearance but rather in the voice. Have you ever watched a well-voiced anime?
As CG characters become more common, and "voice actor" begins to come close to "screen actor" in the American public's ranking of professions, it's not Hollywood that'll collapse but rather the cosmetic companies, as they won't be able to sell their wares with li(n)es such as "This actress uses this expensive makeup, so you should too!"
Re:Willing To Pay (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. He deserves high pay because he's directly responsible for the ridiculous amounts of money his play brings in. He wouldn't be demanding 5 mill if they were raking in only 1/10th of what they are now.
It's kinda like the ridiculous amount of money big name actors get. The movie studio's not paying $20 million dollars for extreme high quality acting, they're paying that much because they're betting more people will go see the movie if Harrison Ford is in it. It's about audience draw.
Everyone would just get a real job (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah really, i don't see this happening any time soon. If these "laid off" support crews do anything, they will just learn computers.
We aren't ridding society of these jobs, just morphing them into different areas. We will need graphics artists, developers, computer technicians and people who can script, do voices and come up with the "soul" of these CGI shows/movies.
Times are changing, not dissapearing!
Re:Everyone would just get a real job (Score:5, Interesting)
Most computer jobs aren't real jobs, either, unless one defines realness by how much salary the employee makes. Most of it is basically just modernizing paper-shuffling. Whoop-de-doo. That's hardly more meaningful than the support staff for movie-making, let alone the artists involved.
I mean, sure, I enjoy working with computers and it pays okay, but I don't kid myself that it has a big positive impact on the world. In ten years no one will care much what I did last week. In a hundred years, "Casablanca" will still be worth watching.
Re:Everyone would just get a real job (Score:4, Interesting)
Corruption has never been so blatantly corrupt since the the 1920s. While there are many good corporations out there, the large monopolistic companies have crippled a large section of our tech industry. The ripples have touched many companies I work with, and will cost everyone MILLIONS.
Hmm... yes. You are aware that the Ferengi were written as fictional characters to embody an absurdly extreme stereotype, right? Assigning the "Ferengi Rules of Acquisition" as capitalist values on their face is either disingenuous or ignorant.
You never sat in a board room during a merger, this is evident.
I have never been in a multi-billion dollar merger, but the few dot.bombs I've seen made me sick. I was asked to leave the meetings when I asked about the employees, stocks and profits are the only value. The company I am at now actually wants employees to do community service, they even pay us for those days away from work... I've seen the extremes on both sides. The ferengi would fit right in.
Now STFU.
Re:Everyone would just get a real job (Score:4, Insightful)
Just think about the positive impact compuer jobs hae the next time, on a friday night when the banks are shut and your low on money, you walk up to the hole-in-the-wall, check you balance and draw some money out to go and enjoy yourself with. How often have you done this? And how often have you watched Casablanca?
This isn't advocacy against the movie industry - entertainment needs a constant influx of new material for it to stay fresh, and it is true that there are some just-as-insubstantial jobs in the computer industry (such as the games market).
Re:Everyone would just get a real job (Score:4, Insightful)
More important than genetic evolution is our cultural evolution. Remember the industrial revolution? It didn't have any noticable effect on our gene pool, but it did improve living conditions for a lot of people.
Re:It is possible in the future, but not now. (Score:5, Interesting)
Everybody I've talked to about FF was completely appreciative of the CG. They didn't like the story, and I can hardly blame them.
I'd look at Shrek, Toy Story and others as proof that if a story is good, people is more than redy to give CG a shot. If the story sucks, tough, there's nothing to do.
Oh geez... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people who come up with questions like these always think in the most ridiculous extremes? "One day, there'll be no need for actors!"
Well, I'll tell you something: I'm a CG animator. There'll ALWAYS be a need for actors. We don't just make stuff up out of thin air, we need REFERENCE to know how to make a character do something. We'll always need costume designers, afterall, CG characters are not naked. (Not to mention that cloth simulation is a bitch.) We'll always need construction people to build practical models. If anything, it helps with the texture generation and lighting rig.
Face it, we can't simulate reality without something real to base it on. Don't believe me? Look at all the miniature work that went into Episode 2. They could have done that all in CG, but they didn't. Think about it.
Trust me dudes, nothing is going to disappear. Despite the mass market appeal of movies, we still have opera, we still have plays, we still have circuses, and we still have a very diverse market. There is no 'one genre to rule them all', so don't worry about it.
All that's happening with the new technology coming out is we're getting better tools to let our imaginations make it to the screen. It's an accessory, not a replacement.
Re:Oh geez... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people who come up with questions like these always think in the most ridiculous extremes? "One day, there'll be no need for actors!"
Indeed, not to mention the laws of economics. The day that CG gets cheaper than actors is the day that actor's cut their rates. Human actors will ALWAYS be cheaper than CG.
And yes, you don't have ego when you do CG, but the same rules about ego-reduction apply, too. :)
Re:Oh geez... (Score:4, Interesting)
And also, real actors will always be more interesting than CG ones. There is a reason that the industry for covering celebrities is so huge. The gossip columns, the awards shows, the parties, autographs, etc. People don't want some made up star to follow, they want a real person. And the personalities of the real people are more interesting than writers could ever come up with for fake ones. Think of Cameron Diaz's personality, or Robert Downy Jr's problems. You could make it up I guess, but it wouldn't be as intersting as a real person.
Re:Oh geez... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the personalities of the real people are more interesting than writers could ever come up with for fake ones.
I hate to break it to you, but the actors in movies are acting out some writer's made-up personality, not their own. :)
As for "Robert Downy Jr's problems", the lack of gossip about CG actors would be a feature, not a bug.
Re:Oh geez... (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about it? I have it on my Linux box. (What do you think /dev/null is made of?)
I've never understood celebrity. "Look, it's a guy pretending to be a big-azz robot, and he blows shit up!" is all I need to know about Arnold. Once the credits roll, I don't need to know what Arnold's up to until the sequel.
But you're correct *sigh* in that there's a whole industry built around people who do care what the "stars" are doing off-screen. That industry is effectively a marketing arm of the movie industry -- if the proles don't see Arnold's name in the headlines every day and aren't motivated to see every film in which he stars, they won't see the three other movies that he's contracted for between now and the next blockbuster.
> You could make it up I guess, but it wouldn't be as intersting as a real person.
Don't be so sure. Have you read William Gibson's Idoru? :-) [Plot summary: A real-life rock star falls in love with a celebrity who exists solely as a piece of software.]
An analog (Score:4, Insightful)
What synths have done is make it possible for new kinds of music to exist, and make it possible for people who previously couldn't to make music [like me].
Note to article submitter: please disembark the hypetrain
It wont work (Score:5, Insightful)
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American adults don't think cartoons and cgi is for adults (in general)
- You still have to employ quite a few people like voice acters etc.
- It will always take a ton of time to design all the graphics
- I think real (and good) actors will always be able to play a part more realistically better than some animation.
And ther're are probably many other reasons as well.To boldly split infinitives ... (Score:5, Funny)
Uh, oh...
Star Trek, The X Generation
"Bones, this latte is too cold"
"Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a Starbucks"
Good Lord! (Score:5, Funny)
But... But... I wouldn't know what to think without Hollywood Actors and Actresses [barbrastreisand.com]!
Careers (Score:3, Insightful)
If this takes off, what will happen to all the people like the background characters, costume makers, construction, caterers, cameramen, model makers, casting companies, etc.
The same thing that happened to all the cobblers, blacksmiths and buggy-whip makers.
Ripple effects... (Score:5, Insightful)
How will Playboy and Penthouse stay in business without the occasional blockbuster sales brought by an issue with candid shots of some current celebrity sunbathing nude, or a washed-up actress or singer willingly getting naked for the camera in an attempt to revive her career? I mean, trading popular bootleg actress AI's could be the next big P2P rage-- who needs an old-fashioned nudie magazine when one can spend a few minutes downloading the actual Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Mira Sorvino* on Kazaa and simply order them to engage in a hot lesbian threesome just the way one likes it, on one's own computer?
*-names of current real actresses used for effect, but I really mean popular CGI actresses of the possible future.
~Philly
Integration and Supplementation, not Replacement (Score:5, Insightful)
Even when computers graphics, sound, and physics get so good that we could design exacting realism via CGI, it would still be painstaking, consuming too much time. Think about all of the things that real-life actors do and real-life scenarios do, which would have to be emulated. All of the little habbits, motions, etc etc -- not to mention voice and emotion. Sorry, but there's no way that one guy is going to be able to sit at his computer and create a complicated movie with several characters, and accurately express emotion in their appearances and voices.
Ultimately, it will still be much cheaper to higher real actors for major parts -- they won't be necessary for background parts, like crowds, armies, etc; but for the main parts, completely necessary.
CGI will, of course, be very useful in many movies (don't count on it being used for Soap Operas, though). It will be used to eliminate flaws, or even to place characters in a virtual or modified world (as was done in Jurassic Park 1/2). CGI will also be useful for things which simply aren't possible in the real world -- like dinosaurs, for example; or space-ships, aliens, etc etc.
But real-world models will also still be used. Though computer CGI is evolving at an exponential rate, so is animatronics. 10, 20 years down the road, it may be possible to do a movie like Jurassic Park using life-sized robotic recreations. What's the advantage to this? Well, in terms of the creature, very little. But in terms of the actors, alot. Its hard for an actor to seriously act terrified when some head on a stick representing a T-rex is chasing them.
Of course, if such is used, CGI will also be used to supplement it. Animatronic models may be able to walk and look like dinosaurs, for example, but don't count on them steaming up a window with their breath, or many other things which real animals would do. So CGI will be used to add that.
CGI will (already has been) very useful. But it does not completely eliminate the need for traditional approaches. I'm sorry, but a person created entirely on a computer will never have the same emotion as a real character.
Susan Dey in "Lookers" ~ 1981 (Score:5, Interesting)
Every five years, this question comes up. In the early 80s, the question was raised in the form of the movie, "Lookers," directed by Michael Crichton.
In Lookers, actors and actresses are being replaced with computer-generated equivalents, to optimize their impact in advertisements. A techno-thriller "ahead of its time."
The renaissance of theatre (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh heavens to gimbles, no! (Score:3, Interesting)
A character in a movie is always composite -- a combination of the character that was envisioned by the person who wrote their lines, blended with the personality and imagination of the actor that ultimately ends up portraying that character. It is because of this blend that you will be hard pressed to find two characters that are alike, even if they have had their lines written by the same person -- In fact, you may even find that different characters in different movies, portrayed by the same actor, have more similarities than any two characters whose lines were written by the same person.
If you replace the characters by CGI, suddenly not only are their lines written by a small group of people (sometimes even only one person), but the characters themselves become a presentation of an equally small group. There are two measures that can minimize this problem -- _really_ good writers and good voice talent. However, these measures cannot take things any further than you can expect from any other well-done cartoon.
So, unless or until the movie-going public is ready to accept cartoons (no matter how well done they are, that is what they would be) as the standard movie form rather than the currently more popular photographic form, we won't see CGI actually replacing actors in a large scale.
Why it probably won't happen... (Score:3, Interesting)
Over the long run, however, I still don't see it happening. The reason being is the entire culture that has been built upon the obsession of movie stars and their lifestyles.
For some reason, one that I can't explain, people seem to enjoy reading about the daily lives of their favorite celebrities. They like reading about the rediculous things these actors do with their money. They like reading about Hollywood divorces. They like obsessing over famous figures, and dream about someday meeting them. They like watching their favorite actors win academy awards.
If you replace actors with computer generated characters, all of this goes away. The allure of
celebrity vanishes because a computer generated character isn't real. They can't win awards in the same way. They can't have a lifestyle that the common person envies because they aren't alive. A common person can't ever hope to meet a celebrity who only exists as a computer program.
I believe a huge part of the film industry relies on the attraction people have to the actors themselves. I believe that replacing actors with CG will affect just about everything but kids films negatively from a money standpoint, because people will lose interest.
Much better TV (Score:5, Insightful)
To a considerable extent, CG is already talent-limited, not tool-limited. There aren't that many people who can really use a 3D animation system artistically. Look at amateur CG. Spaceships, robots, rollercoasters. But very, very few people can do a good model of their cat. Nor is training the problem. Looking at demo reels from art school students shows how few people, even with training, are any good.
Since I've done tools for 3D animation, I'm very aware of this. I've been down to major Hollywood animation shops. I know good animation artists and have watched them work. The good ones have very clear internal pictures of what they want out, and work until they get there. This is a rare skill. And it has nothing to do with the tools. These people do their creative work with a pencil. I can run the same programs they use, but can produce only mediocre art.
Remember that thirties invention, "animation?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, the animators couldn't do it all by themselves. All of the figures in the Disney cartoons that had to look human--such as Snow White--were "rotoscoped," a process that basically allowed animators to trace over film of human actors.
I don't know if you remember the Disney publicity material that implied that actors were hired to spend lots of time "modelling" so that the animators could see and draw how the folds of the clothing moved, etc? That was disinformation--they didn't make drawings of the "models," they rotoscoped the actors who did the actual performances you saw in the film. I mean cartoon.
The modern analog to this is, of course, motion capture.
All the "doing away with live actors" is just another version of the managerial "robots-don't-call-in-sick-or-have-strikes" fantasy. If you're a manager, it seems as if it would be nice to have total control and not have to deal with those difficult human beings all the time... but those pesky machines have problems of their own--to say nothing of the human technicians that operate them, the human field service engineers that repair them, and the human vendors that sell them to you in the first place and want to make money out of them...
Its been going that way for decades. (Score:3, Interesting)
Step 2: Popular sitcoms start using more CGI
Step 3: someone figures out how to do the actors in CGI
Step 4: Actors get fired
Step 5: All the jobs move off to Delhi
What will the MPAA say then? What % of the biggest movies in the last year were made in the US? LotR wasn't. Harry Potter wasn't. Major parts of Star Wars weren't. Sydney is beccomming a hot spot to film major action films.
Bab 5 was using virtaul sets back in its 1st season. Trek has been using computer animated "actors". How long ago did the Simpsons production move off shore? This isn't new.
Missing the point ENTIRELY (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's why: people don't care about CG characters, on or off screen (ok, Lara Croft is a notable exception, but that's mainly for an audience of 13 year old boys).
Answer me this: Could a CG character have played a more interesting Joker than Jack Nicholson in Batman? Would we have cared as much if a CG Gandalf had shown as much intensity as Ian McKellan? Would a CG character have riveted us as much as Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man? The answer is "No," because we find the actors to be just as compelling as the characters they play.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure CG characters are going to grow much more popular over the next decade. But, I predict, that popularity is going to be more faddish than anything.
Collapse of Hollywood due to CGI? Not Likely (Score:3, Insightful)
Actors? It seems to me that the great actors deliver so much in terms of interpitation of their roles that it is going to be impossible to replace them with CGI. I cannot imagine a CGI ever being able to match Alec Guiness as Fagin in Oliver Twist, or Olivier in Henry V, or Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice. They are not merely faces, but creative in their own right. Will a CGI technician be able to contribute at the same level? Would a CGI technician be able to invent a Groucho Marx or Charlie Chaplin? I don't think so.
On the other hand, if I were a Jean Claude van Damme, or similar hack, I would be very worried about CGI.
Animated Characters != Actors; ex: Mickey Mouse (Score:3, Interesting)
But it appears not be the case that Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willy, and all of their spirtual heirs, have failed to cost actual human actors jobs. Shoot, they've actually created jobs for humans: think of all the people who work at Disneyland & Disneyworld wearing overstuffed character costumes and you'll see my point.
And I really doubt we have much to worry about as regards Jar Jar Binks, other than if/when and (hopefully) how soon the hard drives containing his models & animations are formatted for all eternity.
In any event, it would seem that much of the attraction of human actors is that they are, well, people, and also that they provide entertainment value far beyond whatever they convey (or fail to convey) on-screen; in other words, they are celebrities whose personal lives are exposed for our amusement. When they get divorced and remarried for the nth time, we know. When they beat somebody up and go to jail for it, we know. When they make home videos of their lovemaking that end up on the Internet, we of course know.
I think you could argue that the majority of "entertainment value" human actors provide stems from their offscreen antics, and I will respectfully refer you to the nearest supermarket checkout line for evidence of same.
So how are CG characters going to compete with that? Mickey hasn't beat them yet in the seventy odd years he's been bouncing and squeaking around, and he and his kin don't seem to show much promise of being tabloid fare, so I suspect human actors may be around for awhile.
Return of the good movie? (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, real-life actors will still exist in the indie/international tradition. The cost of making a good indie movie is so low it will take years for CGI to be good and cheap enough to replace real actors and a hand-held steadicam.