Filming an Invasion Without Extras

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Kevin Kelly has an interesting blog post on how a World War II D-Day invasion was staged in a few days with four guys and a video camera using batches of smaller crowds replicated computationally to produce very convincing non-repeating huge crowds. Filmmakers first used computer generated crowds about ten years ago and the technique became well known in the Lord of the Rings trilogy but now crowds can be generated from no crowds at all — just a couple of people. 'What's new is that the new camera/apps are steadily becoming like a word processor — both pros and amateurs use the same one,' says Kelly. 'The same gear needed to make a good film is today generally available to amateurs — which was not so even a decade ago. Film making gear is approaching a convergence between professional and amateur, so that what counts in artistry and inventiveness.'"

And only a few years behind audio technology...

It's been a few years now that amateur musicians could produce quality recordings at home with only a few thousand dollars worth of gear -- you only need to go to a traditional studio anymore to get into the real upper echelon of production value. It is nice to see movement in the same direction in cinema. Even if the entire entertainment industry insists on clinging desperately to 50-year-old ideas about copyright, despite the inevitable consequence of that doomed ideology, it's nice to know that we can lose them all and still not lose cinema and music as artistic media.

Re:And only a few years behind audio technology...

Took the words right out of my mouth, although I'd like to add a much broader historical point;

One of the notable characteristics of the twentieth century was the exponential increase in the cost of producing cutting edge media. You went from printing presses to radio transmitters to movie studios within a few short decades. The consequences of this were that the public discourse became dominated by those in society who controlled the resources, be it big business or government. Thus modern propaganda was born.

A reversal of this trend is very much welcome. As it stands, some people (usually the worst people) in society have a megaphone with which to shout down anyone who disagrees with them or their peers, leaving most of us effectively voiceless and apathetic. It can only do our stagnant societies good to make some cheaper megaphones.

Re:And only a few years behind audio technology...

It can only do our stagnant societies good to make some cheaper megaphones.

Try reading slashdot with all comments visible and see if your statement needs any modifications.

Re:And only a few years behind audio technology...

Even if the entire entertainment industry insists on clinging desperately to 50-year-old ideas about copyright, despite the inevitable consequence of that doomed ideology, it's nice to know that we can lose them all and still not lose cinema and music as artistic media.

Yeah, but...

There are two sides to the film business. Production (the business of turning a script and thousands of man hours of work into 2 hours of film) and distribution (the business of copying that 2 hours of film, getting copies to the theaters, DVDs printed, advertisements run, etc. etc.).

When you look at summer theater fare, the cost of distributing the film often costs as much as making the film did. That business is expensive, it's not getting a lot cheaper, and unfortunately, the studios still have a lock on it. While new technology will allow you to make a feature film more cheaply if you're clever, getting it out of the film festival
circuit and into real cinemas where people besides your friends will see it is still largely locked in that bad old world of Hollywood distribution.

Music has been set free not only by cheaper production, but much cheaper distribution. Broadband means I can stream songs from your band's myspace page in real time. I still can't do that with film at any reasonable quality level.

I don't think it's hopeless. The quantity of bandwidth marches upwards year after year, and the cost we pay for it goes down, but I don't think we're there yet.

Re:And only a few years behind audio technology...

When you look at summer theater fare, the cost of distributing the film often costs as much as making the film did. That business is expensive, it's not getting a lot cheaper, and unfortunately, the studios still have a lock on it.

[Looks at youtube video running in browser] Really? [Looks again] You SURE about that?

Chris Mattern

Re:And only a few years behind audio technology...

[Looks at youtube video running in browser] Really? [Looks again] You SURE about that?

[Looks at your bank statement showing the income you've made from sharing your YouTube video with the world] Yep, I'm sure about that.

oh noez!

While that is cool technology, it also means my chance of ever being in a movie just dropped from "extremely slim" to "Nicole Richie". :(

Re:oh noez! - don't worry

It's not all it's cracked up to be.

I was an extra in the Da Vinci Code, apart from 3 breakfasts & 2 lunches every day, everything else was exceptionally boring. Especially where a bunch of us had to do the same thing 30 times, but in different places, to simulate a big crowd.

Re:oh noez!

While that is cool technology, it also means my chance of ever being in a movie just dropped from "extremely slim" to "Nicole Richie". :(

Your chances actually dropped to that level about 15 years ago.

I'm not normally one to drop the "!news" tag, but how do you guys think filmmakers have been creating these gigantic crowds over the past decade? There was a special feature on the Gladiator DVD that showed them doing exactly this - it went through the entire process of it. There were only ever about 40 people in the Colosseum during any given fight; they were digitally duplicated to create the illusion of a huge crowd. (It's pretty comical to watch the scenes as they were filmed, with one tiny little section of ravenous fans and the rest of the place empty.)

That wasn't the first time the technique has been used, it's just an easy one to reference. I would doubt the LotR crowds were created any differently.
 

old adage

Looks like a good time to revisit one of my favorite sayings when it comes to special effects in movies: just because you can doesn't mean you should.

While I can appreciate the ability for those outside of the big Hollywood blockbuster to create decent effects, let's not lose sight of plot and character.

Re:old adage

While I can appreciate the ability for those inside of the big Hollywood blockbuster to create decent effects, let's not lose sight of plot and character.

fixed that for you. Hollywood's plots aren't any better just because they have more money, in fact I suspect that because they have those kind of resources they can and do get away with a weaker plot. Hollywood needs to have competition from amateurs.

apparently the same can't be said for websites

To bad we can' quote

'The same gear needed to make a good website is today generally available to amateurs -- which was not so even a decade ago'

And for the sake of argument, lets define the website as the code, the database, the webserver and the network hooking it all up.

Amateurs:

Indeed technology is reaching the point that amateurs have access to many of the same tools and software (or derivatives of). Not only can this be evidenced by the production technique stated in the article, but also in many Youtube videos. Even though many of the videos were recorded and edited by amateurs, they are beginning to rival what's shown on TV. (with the writer's strike I'd even say that Youtube in some instances is better than what's on TV.)

convergence

Looking at some of the crap Hollywood churns out these days, the convergence between professional and amateur cannot come too soon for me.

I can't believe I just wrote that.

It's not what you think. You're disgusting!

Overly optimistic

'The same gear needed to make a good film is today generally available to amateurs -- which was not so even a decade ago. Film making gear is approaching a convergence between professional and amateur, so that what counts in artistry and inventiveness.'"

I think this is a little too optimistic. Sure, the equipment needed to make (some of) the special effects in wide use today is becoming affordable for amateurs, but the special effects industry is constantly evolving. It won't be long before the big movie studios up the bar using far more expensive equipment and more complicated techniques. It's not like special effects have reached some magical point where it's impossible for them to be any better than they are now.

And now...

...the Townswomen's Guild reenactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbor.

Chris Mattern

Re:

My dream of seeing a movie where every role is played by Bruce Campbell will one day come to fruition!

Not needed!

"The same gear needed to make a good film is today generally available to amateurs -- which was not so even a decade ago."
A "good film" does not necessarily require advanced technology. What ever happened to a good story and good acting?

Too bad...

...they didn't use this technique to generate huge crowds of servers.

soldiers were not CGI

I've read a couple of posts here that have said, in effect, "well, yeah, but CGI characters are never as realistic as filmed actors." Which only shows that they haven't RTFA. The filmmakers shot four guys running over the same stretch of sand multiple times, then digitally composited them together (along with other practical effects) to make a crowd. None of the extras were CGI.

a few more things...

That's great. Now all they need is a few more little things to round things out. Let's see--a well-written script, some decent actors, a good sense of cinematography and creative vision. Nah, screw all that. We've got effects!

Proliferation of fake video evidence?

How long will it be before it's trivially easy for an amature to fake incriminating video footage? Sure, it might be technically possible for an expert to do some kind of analysis that detects it as a forgery, but does anyone really think that the police/DA are going to call up JPL and ask them to process it? They'll almost certainly just shrug and say "Well, it shows person X doing Y, let's arrest him. It will be an easy conviction - it's caught it on tape!" Good luck if you can't afford to hire an expert of your own to analyze the footage.

Wow!

Invasions that involve hardly anyone at all?

Too bad we can't do that in real life.

Gosh! That was deep and out of character for me.

Um, uh, in Soviet Russia... uh... you profit from a beowulf cluster of these... or something.

Blender and Blender People, and other tools

I still do most of my Pro work in Lightwave, but I've been following blender's development the past 10 years and it's an impressive piece of software. Something else I've been following has been Blender People, kind of a poor man's Massive. (Massive is the AI engine used in LoTR's for the battle scenes and is about $20k per seat the last time I checked)

http://www.harkyman.com/bp.html [harkyman.com]

Is it quite as advanced as Massive, no, but I did some test renders a few years ago on a spare BSD box I had and it worked pretty well with a 1000 "Actors". It took a few hours to calculate out the frames and even more to render, but the results are acceptable. I believe the developer has a few demo videos available.

Blender's not perfect, the particle engine is in need of a massive overhaul and volumetric lighting is needed. While model import has gotten better, it's still not perfect. For some strange reason, the earlier 2.41 and 2.3.x versions handled lightwave models a bit better than the latest releases.

I've toyed with Cinelerra before, but I had some issues with capture cards, etc.. Jahshaka is coming along.

I'm not running out and replacing FCP/Shake/Lightwave any time soon. Mainly because I already have those apps and know how to use them. And the folks I do work for are running on the same set-ups (usually minus Shake.)

Even on the low cost side, FXhome's suite has some nice features for the $150 price point of Effects lab pro. Also, their compositing application is far more forgiving than a lot of the higher priced professional tools. So if someone shoots a greenscreen shot without proper lighting, I can go in with Composite lab (or VisionLab Studio) and do the composite a lot quicker than in Shake sometimes. (Especially if it's DV footage).

Even iLife is pretty powerful these days. Probably for 90% of the editing I do, I could get buy with iMovie (things like Weddings), or even Final Cut Express.

Very little to do with the cost of Extras

There have been a couple of comments to the effect of 'Extras don't cost THAT much, do they?'

No, Extras don't cost that much. A non-union extra gets paid about $75 for a day's work, where a day can be half an hour or 14 hours. A union Extra might get $125 and a better sandwich.

The problem is that it takes forever to organize and shoot scenes with a lot of extras, particularly where even a couple of people acting like douchebags can wreck the whole scene. The last film I did any extra work on was 'My Super Ex Girlfriend' and there were about 200 of us in the small park at 72nd and Broadway here in NYC. Our job was to gawk at a building on fire. Sounds pretty simple, right?

Yeah, until you realize that 3/4 of the extras think that being an extra is their ticket to fame. I happened to get 'placed' right near one of the lead actors as he emerged from the subway, and as we shot and re-shot one minute of that scene 5 times (over the course of 7 hours), other extras would elbow me out of the way because they wanted to be 'near the star.' There is a whole sham community around being an extra where you attend a class outside of New York or LA and some local agent in your nearest mid-size city (say, Philadelphia) 'signs' you and just sends you out on a bunch of extra calls. The agent gets a fixed rate for every warm body they send, you spend a day doing very little, and your agent hopes you never realize that real actors don't work that way.

If I were producing that or any other movie with extras, I'd use as few extras as possible. Not to save money. Just to save the people I am actually employing full-time a lot of aggravation.