In the Future Movie Stars May Be Performing Even After They're Dead | Hacker News Reader

In the Future Movie Stars May Be Performing Even After They're Dead

npr.org

More like they'll create faces and bodies that are more attractive and sell more tickets than people they'd need to pay.

And they'll create algorithms to animate emotions more accurately and creatively so they won't need living actors on which to paste the simulations.

Or maybe each viewer can choose which face and body they see, at least on home viewing, and software can put on the likeness you want each time.

Why would they depend on people if they can simulate more attractive and expressive?

So you are saying Anime.

You have no idea the level of digital makeup already employed in film. The big abusers of digital makeup? Men! Why? Men easily look haggard when not taking care of themselves, and many male actors (even the athletes) party hard and it shows on their faces. Speaking from experience, the VFX of making handsome male actors "look how they are supposed to look" is a huge job in Hollywood.

Perhaps that is as it should be. Perhaps it will help even out celebrities' contribution to the asymmetric distribution of power and influence we're experiencing in the world today.

This is an interesting comment. I don't disagree with the statement that there is 'asymmetric distribution of power and influence... in the world today' but am interested to hear more about why you think celebrities contribute to this.

My own world-view doesn't account for much celebrity contribution, apparently.

Obviously my personal opinion, but since you asked:

1. Celebrities receive preferential treatment within the legal and bureaucratic system

2. Celebrities often have both public appeal and wealth -- two important ingredients for wielding political influence

3. Less importantly, celebrities absorb a high proportion of media attention compared to issues of importance

I mean, the current President of the United States was clearly elected in part because of his celebrity status.

Not saying anything for or against this, but if your worldview doesn't account for something this big and important, I suggest updating it.

I can recommend the movie "The Congress" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film) - it deals with an actress who sells off the right to her digital likeness.

Well, some of it does. Then the rest is a trippy psychodelic dream about....something.

But, at least in theory, it's based on a book by Stanislaw Lem under the same title - and I can certainly recommend that one(I can recommend all of his books, to be honest).

That "something" is the pharmaceutical companies and Hollywood studios colluding with the government to create a synthetic reality where everyone can "be a star" as long as they stay on the free government drugs.

In the future we may see likenesses of actors perform again after they're dead.

That's such an important distinction. It's true that an actor's appearance is one of their most memorable traits, but its not the sum of their accomplishments. Acting is a skill.

I'm not and never have been an actor, but I was impressed with Wil Wheaton, when he detailed on his blog how he prepared for auditions, the choices he would make about how to approach a particular scene. That level of thought, and experience will be lost forever when an actor dies.

With technology, we may see the likeness of a particular actor again, but we'll never again see their particular like.

>That level of thought, and experience will be lost forever when an actor dies.

That's probably been said about a lot of things, but automation inevitably consumes every inefficient human endeavor. The first phase was physical automation, the second is mental and intellectual automation, and the final will be creative. It's only a matter of time until the style of an actor will be modeled and replicated along with their appearance.

Well it's also about characters which are portrayed by the actors, sometimes just replacing an actor is kind of invasive and almost an injustice to the fans despite circumstances. I do agree with you, some actors you truly cannot replace.

Spartacus is a TV show that did it respectfully and sucessfully IMO. Do you have an example of a show or movie where it was a complete disaster?

Not off the top of my head, I'm just thinking of some of the crazy fan bases I see where they freak out when a character is killed off, I can't imagine if an actor / actress is replaced. Maybe indirectly Doctor Who is a sort of example? Some people don't like some Doctors while they like other Doctors, or they only liked x Doctor.

More to the point, contracts need to be written so that the likeness of an actor remains in their control -- or else movie stars will be "performing" while still alive, and not being compensated.

This is akin to a book contract not defining "out of print". First we'll need contracts, then maybe we'll get laws.

Surely there must already exist some legal protections? I seem to recall certain professional (football? basketball?) players successfully suing EA Games over unauthorized use of their likeness.

>Surely there must already exist some legal protections?

Almost certainly, I think there are companies whose entire business is to handle the image of dead celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, but should there be?

An actor or athlete's performance is a creative act, and could reasonably be considered intellectual property, but their appearance is an act of nature. Why should that have any special legal protection?

It was NCAA athletes that sued EA games. (https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/ea...)

The distinction is it was NCAA as a whole, acting as a single legal entity. The individual athletes were/are powerless against the wealth EA can throw at their legal team.

>Essentially each player who has appeared in the football and basketball games marketed by EA in the last decade -- approximately 125,000 men -- are eligible for settlement money. (https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/ea-sports-se...)

In this case, it was clearly not the NCAA as a whole. The NCAA was against the case because it would mean athletes being paid.

See Ken McLeod's Fall Revolution series for some really thought provoking angles on the ultimate end of this.

More generally, the "likeness" of someone should remain in their control.

I don't thing anybody wants their image used by someone else without their consent. There are already provisions for that in laws for photography in some countries.

I'm thinking specifically about the laws in France where you can't take a picture of someone without their consent. A picture is "of someone" when that someone is clearly a subject on the picture and not background.

Most actor contracts require talent to sell that right if that want to "work on the big franchises".

It could reasonable be limited to the likeness of the actor for the purpose of making this movie, and simultaneous production of documentary, commentary, and publicity, marketing and advertising directly relating to this movie.

If they want your likeness on action figures and other toys, demand extra.

The article is a fluff piece, as it does not even describe the fact that Hollywood contracts already reflect controls of how an actor's likeness is used, and not just visually, but any distinct aspect of that actor is typically managed with contracts. It has been like this for well over 15 years, ever since quality face replacement became common.

I do know significant aspects about this, as I am the author of a global patent on Automated Actor Replacement in Filmed Media. Awarded in 2008. Went bankrupt in 2013 trying to deploy a Personalized Advertising company, and end up selling the patent to stay alive.

Cool. One of the sci-fi things I really want to see is NEal Sephenson's Ractives, from The Diamond Age:

A term (short for "interactive") used by Neal Stephenson to describe a form of elite interactive entertainment, in which a live human performer (a "'ractor") working from a computer-provided script, improvises in real-time with paying customers, over a virtual reality network. This imaginary genre, a cross between improvisational theatre, interactive fiction, and mass-entertainment such as TV, features prominently in Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. [0]

[0]: http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Ractive

I personally am trying to build the primer. :-)

Interestingly, although the title talks about "performing after they're dead," it opens with the example of Sean Young, who is still alive. That's the other aspect of this technology, continuing roles as actor's age. Arnold Shwarzenegger could continue to crank out Terminator films, looking no different than the first film. Harrison Ford could continue to play Indiana Jones. Why not let the studios use your likeness as you get too old to play the part or play all of the scenes>

I'd be worried about greedy estates, too; licensing the actor's likeness.

It's already started, Arnie's recent Terminator appearance(s?) was pure CGI.

In both cases “Arnie” was quickly blown off the endoskeleton revealing the robot underneath.

“Peter Cushing” had a substantial role in a recent Star Wars film. I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

The technique behind deepfakes will rapidly improve the quality of CGI actor re-skins. One of the early (safe-for-work) demonstrations was a recreation of young Princess Leia's scenes in Rogue One, which was arguably higher quality than the film studio's best efforts despite being the work of a lone hobbyist.

Completely fabricating an actor in CGI will still look weird, but using a stunt double / character actor and transferring a big-name actor's appearance onto them is rapidly becoming faster and cheaper.

There is no doubt about this becoming a reality, it's already a reality as others have pointed out.

What is interesting is that people don't really grok how close to a reality crash we as humans are. What I mean by this is our ability to sense the real world accurately is becoming more and more degraded as our ability to augment reality grows.

I heard this as an analogy somewhere: imagine a rudimentary self driving car approaching the brow of a hill when it crashes with a semi truck. Investigators try to figure out why. From the data the car logged they find that the car's sensors did not see the truck trailer because it was the same colour as the sky, so it just kept going.

Humans are persistently working on fooling our senses to the point where we can't distinguish what is traditional physical consensus reality and what is generated relative/personal reality. We are striving toward the goal where our imagined worlds are indistinguishable from the outside world, and when we achieve this we will be dealing with a profound reality collision.

Not knowing, and not being able to know, if you are interacting with a real human, or what it really means to be a 'real' human is going to be something I don't think anyone is ready to deal with. Forget the post-truth nature of today's society conjured up by data-overload and attention deficit, tomorrow's world will be post-reality. Crazy times ahead of us.

I'd love to see a captain Kirk, Spock or McCoy again digitally tacked on actors who really know how to act at the character. While not the same I really liked the cross-overs like Generations, Relics or Unification. Perhaps they can or will make an appearance in Star Trek Discovery. As William Shatner is still living, he could act the same way as the actress who acted Rachel in the new Bladerunner. Who is the better Kirk, the Kirk alternate Chris Pine or the digitally recreated Kirk played by Shatner?

Like Philip Seymour Hoffman in the last part of Hunger Games?

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/nov/17/philip-seymour-...

Yeah, I think I knew this 30 years ago...

Something more interesting to think about is how anyone could become a movie star.

http://h4labs.org/in-the-future-anyone-can-become-a-movie-st...

Things were a lot simpler back in the day.

When Bela Lugosi died during filming of 'Plan 9 from outer space', Ed Wood simply had some other actor step in for him, even though there's no likeness whatsoever. (Then again, who looked like Bela Lugosi except Bela Lugosi...)

Did other directors at the time also do this? I wouldn't consider what Wood did to be a good indicator of the industry in general.

I would be surprised if they did; this just seemed like an excellent opportunity to share a fun anecdote. :-)

Not "at the time", but Terry Gilliam did this in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus after Heath Ledger's death.

The movie Simone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_(2002_film)is about a producer that invented a digital actress.

Or the future is more like in Japan, where Hatsune Miku, "Future Sound", a Vocaloid-based anime hologram is selling out concerts, and has more followers than "regular humans". The fans like lack of drama as well.

I suspect these models will actually be used for extremely mundane "acting" gigs like commercials hocking falafel in Memphis TN or being a smartphone personal assistant, rather than the aspired A-list movies.

Well, as the article says it's not the future at all, it's already there... It's neither surprising nor is it a problem. Movies are about making images, it's all fake anyways...

I find it strange how the headline says “in the future” and “may,” when this is already happening and the article thoroughly discusses that.

Why movie stars?

The stars themselves are the product of scarcity.

You could just remix anything with anything. Just like Wikipedia.

There was the whole Tupac ghost concert thing. Kinda creepy.

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