Hacker News Reader

Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

Last gasps of a dying industry, even if they don't know it yet.

Future movies will be filmed in mocap + multisensor photogrammetry and scaled up with AI techniques. (My startup does this.) Cost and time savings of not doing location scouting, set dec, lighting, and blocking are huge. Plus you can edit way more than a static grid of photons in post.

Consumer smart phones use computational photography and sensor arrays to work magic.

$100,000 glass optics are dying. They'll maybe find future use in industry and research, but the entertainment field will move on.

View on HN

Do you have any background in movie production? There is more to that industry than VFX tech. Yes, virtual production etc are ascendent, and growing fast -- but most of the production spending is still using fancy optics and traditional production. (And even for virtual production, the actors are still people.) I think this is a typical straight-line projection of the change in the industry that fails to account for the actual underlying dynamics.

But I wish your startup well. I hope you've hired filmmakers, directors, producers so someone on your team understands how movies are made today.

(Plus: there's lots of money to be made in downmarket production. More money is being spent on video production today than ten years ago. The industry is not dying.)

> there's lots of money to be made in downmarket production

This is almost certainly what the commenter is targeting. I'd guess that and/or the adult film industry.

I don't think so -- I think it's a reference to Gollum, the apes in "Planet of the Apes," the de-aged Moss Tarkin (sp?)... basically CG people. That work is almost entirely at the high end, because it takes a lot of digital art work to make them look realistic.

This is moving down market, fwiw, but it's not disrupting traditional moviemaking. It's a fast-growing but tiny niche that I believe will saturate before it comes close to replacing the entire industry. (Full disclosure: I work with cameras professionally, so maybe I'm not an unbiased observer of the industry.)

[ edit for clarity ]

> Do you have any background in movie production?

Yes, but that shouldn't matter.

> most of the production spending is still using fancy optics and traditional production.

It used to be shot and physically spliced together celluloid, too.

Optics are punch card technology. The art, and indeed the end goal itself, is storytelling. The technology is just a means to an end. A grid of photons can be crafted and manipulated much easier with new techniques than by trying to put those photons in the correct places by hand. We're going to look back at optics and glass as the dinosaur age.

> And even for virtual production, the actors are still people

For now. Models can generate animated poses. This is moving faster than you're giving it credit.

(Even when robots replace us, people will still want to act - no question. The technology will still afford that. But just like ADR can now be model-based, so can posture correction.)

Your average ten year olds will be making their own Star Wars films by the end of the decade.

You do understand that this is why people don't like contemporary movies, right?

I thought it was because the obnoxious rise of sequels, reboots and overdone cliche series.

People do like contemporary movies though. You might not, but if people didn't like them they'd lose money and studios would go back to what made money.

> You do understand that this is why people don't like contemporary movies, right?

Though I strongly prefer independent films, people "vote with dollars". Take a look at Disney.

The problems with filmmaking are the institutional capital, planning, and complicated logistics required to create a film. There's only so much money to make movies, not everyone gets a shot. This is why generic "for the masses" films get made and get theatrical release placement. This is why we have more Twitch streamers than filmmakers.

It will change.

Yeah, as much I think this guy sounds crazy, this is absolutely a fair point.

Reducing the need for films to spend $10m+ on production would mean all kinds of cool shit could be feasibly created.

Look at the video game space where we have indies producing all kinds of complex, 3D games through tools like Unity.

>Cost and time savings of not doing location scouting, set dec, lighting, and blocking are huge

Yes this worked awesome on the Star Wars prequels. Some of the most natural and real acting I've ever seen. /s

Excuse me sir, you may have missed the memo. We like those movies now.

We hate the sequels (by Disney) now! /s (maybe?)

That sounds like a terrible film experience.

I don't know. I think there's a big space for AI assisted XYZ everywhere in life, but to me that doesn't mean it would replace the more 'genuine'/'analog' stuff like good lenses. Even for entertainment and personal use.

Interesting take that I haven’t heard before, outside of like Diamond Age.

If you were a betting man, what would your timeline be? When does computer generated imagery surpass camera footage when representing reality? When does a drama shooting in Toronto pretending to be New York just render the whole thing? Finally, do you think performances will be noticeably worse and we’ll all just live with it, or is the whole idea of actors having a harder time acting with greenscreens/mocap sets overblown?

Where can I read more? Also, can you point to a movie/scene that used mocap? Would love to watch that.

I guess we’re pushing the point with modern blockbusters (Marvel/Star Wars) where more of the movie is animated then not. And Avatar is inverse Who Framed Roger Rabbit at this point.

Arn't AI poses estimates more likely to become the future rather than the white balls motion cap suits from the 90s ?

Sounds more like a cartoon than a film.

Miyazaki is one of my favorite directors.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com