Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s deep fake company announces $20M investment
deepvoodoo.com
deepvoodoo.com
Same thing they did with South Park (and Team America). It allows for more comedic freedom because you can always fall back on the defense of "this is just some stupid crappy thing, how could you possibly ever take it seriously".
I believe the parent commenter's point is that nobody is going to confuse these caricatures for the actual people. There will be many nefarious uses for this technology, but this is not one of them.
Here's a music video they made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPUkgeiFVY&t=1m40s
I think there's a legal case to be made about a virtual unlicensed use of a celebrity depending on if it's satire or intends to take away their income without their permission. An example would be not paying Fred Astaire's estate for his likeness in virtual productions that recreate him.
EDIT:
I see now from a comment, the face does change. I actually didn't watch it but just skipped through parts of it and didn't notice the transitions because every time I skipped I ended up back on Kendrick, lol.
0:00 - Kendrick Lamar
1:44 - OJ Simpson
1:54 - Kanye West
2:08 - Jussie Smollett
2:44 - Will Smith
4:00 - Kobe Bryant
4:22 - Nipsey Hussle
source comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPUkgeiFVY&lc=UgzjbAGLK8NGZ...
It became increasingly obvious with time, as they started doing a lot of interesting things in later seasons that aren't really suited for non-CGI, like smooth camera angle rotations around the scene, complex special effects, etc. While in the beginning, it was mostly for the sake of making it more efficient and simpler to produce an episode.
Which they needed because of their insane production schedule.
New episodes air on Wednesday on Comedy Central. They have to have the completed episode uploaded to Comedy Central a few hours before that.
There are times when the Friday before they have no idea what the next episode will be about. Parker and Stone figure it out over the weekend, Parker writes a script, and then production can start on Monday morning. That gives them two days plus a few hours to go from freshly finished script to complete episode.
They need to, even on what is for them a leisurely week where they have the script by Thursday, be able to see that something isn't working and needs to be changed hours before air time and have their system be fast enough that they can do it.
Around the turn of the century they actually had a more powerful animation pipeline than the major animation studios like Pixar or DreamWorks or the major CGI places, all because they needed such fast turnaround.
Traditional animated sitcoms like The Simpsons or Family Guy still contend with a 9-12 month production schedule per episode.
But yeah after the early episodes / seasons it's cgi
Thanks for clarifying, good point. I should've been more clear in my original comment, because I meant to say that the pilot used real construction paper only (with no CGI), not that construction paper wasn't used at all after that.
Same for music artists. Why stop there same for our loved ones.
Feels and sounds weird on first pass but this has significant applications.
The funny thing is that th book it’s based on satirizes the falsehood of Soviet communism, the movie satirizes the falsehood of consumer culture as an opioid.
This may have potential for a smaller indie filmmakers. Have any celebrity cameo for cheap in your budget film.
I like that this technology has the potential to lower the value of being a Hollywood mega superstar.
Why would it lower the value of being a Hollywood mega superstar?
If anything wouldn't it increase the value of being one? Because now Megastar Jim Bob Jones or whoever can "appear" in hundreds of movies a year and collect checks from all of them for using their likeness. Instead of those roles going to smaller actors who would presumably get the part today.
Also it makes the value of that mega superstar more valuable because their deepfake won't age nor will it be encumbered by their death. We could start seeing Marilyn Monroe in movies again. And if you're someone like Brad Pitt, it means suddenly you have an entirely new revenue stream from licensing your likeness for years, decade, etc.
Doesn't mean you're wrong about likeness cases, but the Blurred Lines/Gaye ruling is far from canon at this point.
The first would get laughed out of court. The latter would be an obvious ripoff to anyone (perhaps excepting some soverign-citizen-level pedants).
Had they been even slightly reasonable, it never would have gone that far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAPUkgeiFVY
0 - Regarded as one of the greatest rappers of all time, multiple Grammy Awards.
I think it mostly lowers the value of being the next tier down, since the mega stars would no longer be limited by hours in the day.
The movie industry in general stands to benefit the most from deepfakes. Imagine making a movie without paying any cast? Or bringing dead actors back for new roles? There are plenty of legitimate use cases for deepfakes.
At first glance it seems that actors would be the first victims here, and so you wouldn't expect CAA (an agency representing actors) to invest money into a technology that could replace them. But I think it's more complicated than that.
Deepfakes won't "replace" actors - certainly not any time soon - but will complement them and serve as a multiplier for their image. Angelina Jolie can license her likeness, and directors can make a movie with a deepfake Jolie. She gets paid for doing no work.
The A-listers will be fine. The first victims will be the talent that's cast as extras and minor supporting roles. There wont be much of a market for deepfake clones of them, and eventually some A-lister or entirely synthetic deepfakes will crowd them out of their jobs.