Reincarnating Dead Actors in New Films: Predictions?

[jpark]

You're the right group to ask this question:

How close are we to taking film footage of actors - and producing completely novel body movements and scripts that are entirely consistent with the identity of the actor in a new film?  In other words, how close are we to taking every John Wayne film made - and producing a completely new Western movie with the 'Duke" with advances made possible in computers today or the near future?

The prospect of a new "Bruce Lee" film sometime in the near future - is an exciting possibility to me.

Of course, the copyright issues here - and the whole concept of ownership - is a just as complex I would imagine.

[Kail]

How close are we to taking film footage of actors - and producing completely novel body movements and scripts that are entirely consistent with the identity of the actor in a new film?

You mean technically, I assume?  A few points I'd make here:

• There's a difference between generating a CG actor from scratch and patching him in over a body double.  We're still a pretty long way from being able to have a fully realistic movie between two fully computer animated characters, but you can digitally throw Bruce Lee's face on over some stunt actor just fine (takes money, of course, and it would be ludicrously expensive to do a whole movie like that, but possible).
• Presumably, the great actors are those who are actually good at acting.  Asking an animator to make the character act just like Bruce Lee would be like asking a composer to write music that sounds like what Mozart would have written.  You can ape a generic style pretty easily, but it's not an easy matter to rip of someone who's genuinely talented (if you could, they wouldn't be very talented, I suppose).
• The question of why you'd do this seems like an important one to me.  If you like Bruce Lee, that's great.  He was in some good movies.  However, CGing him onto a modern actor won't make the new movie better, just more expensive.  Sticking his face on it will not make it a better movie.  Why not just stay with the original actor and buy yourself a couple of yachts with the money you saved?  That way, at least if the new guy is good he gets credit for it rather than just being some anonymous body double for Bruce Lee, and if he's not good, you don't have to worry about Bruce Lee kicking the shit out of you if there's an afterlife.

[Krakrok]

Here's a video where they clone Tom Hanks face in 3D from a screen capture of Forest Gump. They also run it on the Mona Lisa in the video.

In summary they have 400 different faces they've scanned and it morphs into any face you have a picture of. So basically the actor walks around like a Blue Man group guy and they just replace his head in every frame.

Also see the behind the scenes ILM site for POTC2 where they did exactly that.

[Yegolev]

Only a matter of time before 9 1/2 Weeks is re-released with Ann-Margret instead of Mickey Rourke.

[Trippy]

• There's a difference between generating a CG actor from scratch and patching him in over a body double.  We're still a pretty long way from being able to have a fully realistic movie between two fully computer animated characters, but you can digitally throw Bruce Lee's face on over some stunt actor just fine (takes money, of course, and it would be ludicrously expensive to do a whole movie like that, but possible).

They've done this already in movies like Matrix Reloaded (Burly Brawl) and The Return of the King (Legolas vs Mumaki) with full CG actors, though of course "realistic" is in the eye of the beholder. Closeups do still suffer from the "Uncanny Valley" problem but the technology and techniques continue to get better.

[Big Gulp]

I don't like this actor resurrection shit.  Only our lord Jesus Christ or a level 30 necromancer can resurrect.

[Velorath]

Aside from Star Trek fans getting suckered into another seeing another movie featuring the original crew, who the hell wants to see anything like this?

[Kail]

We're still a pretty long way from being able to have a fully realistic movie between two fully computer animated characters...

They've done this already in movies like Matrix Reloaded (Burly Brawl) and The Return of the King (Legolas vs Mumaki) with full CG actors, though of course "realistic" is in the eye of the beholder. Closeups do still suffer from the "Uncanny Valley" problem but the technology and techniques continue to get better.

Those scenes are highly unrealistic.  The dude flies, for fuck's sake.  You can't do that in real life; I tried it and it doesn't work.

[Big Gulp]

You can't do that in real life; I tried it and it doesn't work.

Drop another tab, then.

[Llava]

Someone made my comparison already, but I'm going to say it myself anyways.

If you had a composer write a new piece of music in the musical style of Mozart, down to mimicking Mozart's handwriting, it still wouldn't really be a new Mozart piece.  Instead, you'd be disrespecting his talent by saying that it can be duplicated with a high enough budget.

Bet we could do some cosmetic effects on those corpses, prop 'em up, get the Jim Henson group to hollow 'em out and add some puppeteering technology, would be just as good and way cheaper I'll bet.

[stray]

Oh boy...

The prospect of a new "Bruce Lee" film sometime in the near future - is an exciting possibility to me.

Bruce Lee is the sole proprietor of Jeet Kune Do. And by that I mean, no one is going to replicate it no matter how much you can make a doll say "Be Like Wata". No one would ever touch him or it in any pure way. He is fluid. He can not be touched.

The best you could do is replicate only those things he displayed on film. But that would still not be Bruce Lee. Replication is missing the entire point of what JKD is. Replication is the EXACT thing he set out to destroy. Nothing he did, would do, or taught was written in stone or systematic in any kind of way. JKD was about personal expression and freestyling. And Bruce Lee's particular expression of it is unknown and unpredictable when it gets right down to it. It's not like you can get a "JKD specialist" to predict his moves for any given situation in the same way you could with a Karate or Wing Chun expert. The art of Bruce Lee is Bruce Lee himself. All we have are glimpses of it. We'll never truly know where he was coming from enough to recreate it.

It's like the difference between a cover song, and all the circumstances, psychology, environmental and social conditions, loves, friends, family, and all the other nuances that made the original songwriter write and perform a particular song to begin with.

One could play Fur Elise, but no matter how good they were at doing it, they'd never reach that secret area within Beethoven's soul that made him write Fur Elise. They could never create like Beethoven. They could only imitate him, or create like themselves. At best, they could do variations on his songs, but never truly create "in the style of".

Same goes for many actors. Sure, you could get away with being superficial with largely singularly minded actors like John Wayne, but you'd never recreate a Montgomery Clift or a Marlon Brando or a James Dean -- Their performaces were coming from places deep within themselves. So called Stanislavky schooled actors are a chaotic mess, tapping into memories and emotions no one really knows about, and just can't be pinned down. They behaved like different people from one film to another. How the hell do you go about in recreating someone you don't really know?

I say just let people create like themselves. Let the world fill with new artists, instead of devoting time, energy, and technology to make soulless counterfeits of artists from the past.

[EDIT] Seems like many are on the same page. That's a comforting thought.

Oh well, I'll keep this post here anyways.

Happy creating. 

[Big Gulp]

Bet we could do some cosmetic effects on those corpses, prop 'em up, get the Jim Henson group to hollow 'em out and add some puppeteering technology, would be just as good and way cheaper I'll bet.

Better yet, we could get the Jim Henson group to do that to Jim Henson.

Oooh.  Meta.

[Merusk]

Of course, the copyright issues here - and the whole concept of ownership - is a just as complex I would imagine.

And most of it is already covered under current law.  I'll probably misstate the general outline, but I'm sure our legal eagles can clarify it, but as I understand it goes like this.  You can parody someone, you can take photos of them in public and use those all you want, but as soon as you make a movie, product or commercial using their image you'd better be paying them AND have their permission (or that of their estate) or they own you.   

As for the ressurection of dead people.  It's already been tried, when Nat sang with his daughter, they redid John for that 'new' Beatles tune and "The Duke" tried to push us beer (Miller, I think) during superbowl '97.  The public never said "oh awesome" to any of them, but rather "hey, that's wrong" or "wow, creepy."

   At worst, anyone who disagrees with it will have it covered in their will. "Thou shalt not use my image to ..."  In fact I'm sure several actors/ sports stars/ public figures already do.

[Llava]

When I'm writing my will, I think I'll speak in a biblical tone, too.

[Big Gulp]

When I'm writing my will, I think I'll speak in a biblical tone, too.

Hell, my post-it notes are in a biblical tone.

Thou shalt pick up eggs, milk, and coffee!

[Merusk]

It keeps things lighthearted, for when you realize "crap, I have a lot of shit to hand out and I'm only 30, this is going to suck when I rewrite it."

[Riggswolfe]

I echo others here when I say I hope this is never done. Unless you make a zombie movie with the zombies all being dead actors. That could be kind of cool. Dawn of the Dead Actors.

Does anyone have George Romero's phone number?

[pxib]

It doesn't matter whether you express the soul of Bruce Lee or Beethoven, though I agree such a thing is impossible. All that matters is that your imitation is close enough to impress the majority of your audience. Other than a few prickly copyright issues this is no different than using an actor who looks, sounds, and performs similarly to the person impersonated. Respectful or not, it will be done to varying degrees of success by anyone who can get the film and image rights.

[eldaec]

You're the right group to ask this question:

How close are we to taking film footage of actors - and producing completely novel body movements and scripts that are entirely consistent with the identity of the actor in a new film?  In other words, how close are we to taking every John Wayne film made - and producing a completely new Western movie with the 'Duke" with advances made possible in computers today or the near future?

The prospect of a new "Bruce Lee" film sometime in the near future - is an exciting possibility to me.

Of course, the copyright issues here - and the whole concept of ownership - is a just as complex I would imagine.

Didn't they already do this with a disembodied face in Superman Returns? (I haven't seen Supe Returns - I'm only going from catching 5 minutes on a 'making of' programme)

I would have thought if you can do a disembodied giant face, then the body is trivial by comparison?

[stray]

That's not the same as expecting an acting performance.

The scenes in question (in Superman) are pretty brief though.

[Samwise]

IIRC the lines that Marlon Brando spoke in Supe Returns had already been filmed while he was alive.  The special effects wizardry lay in converting this into a 3D projection.  Pretty impressive, but worlds away from conjuring the whole thing up from thin air.

[NowhereMan]

I personally can't wait to see a film that has Orson Welles as a hardbitten cop shooting up heroin, smashing perps through windows and fucking Marilyn Monroe. Hard.

Because if you're going to do a thing, why take half measures?

[stray]

Dude, he already Rita Hayworth in real life. He doesn't need to take over fantasy land too. 

[NowhereMan]

How about Christopher Reeves playing the lead in a remake of Rear Window?

[Merusk]

IIRC the lines that Marlon Brando spoke in Supe Returns had already been filmed while he was alive.  The special effects wizardry lay in converting this into a 3D projection.  Pretty impressive, but worlds away from conjuring the whole thing up from thin air.

Actually the vid I saw showed that they used the exact scenes from the original Chis Reeves Superman to do that.

[Bunk]

I generally think most people feel this sort of thing is just creepy, I know that's how everyone I knew reacted to that John Wayne beer commercial. If people are creeped out by it and won't pay to see it, Hollywood isn't going to spend money on it. Uwe Boll might..

On the same vein, I'm wondering how far we are from our first Idoru pop star or actor. ( http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/books/idoru.asp )

[Samwise]

[schild]

Was talking about Max Headroom with the roommates the other day.

He scared the shit out of me when I was little.

[Kail]

IIRC the lines that Marlon Brando spoke in Supe Returns had already been filmed while he was alive.  The special effects wizardry lay in converting this into a 3D projection.  Pretty impressive, but worlds away from conjuring the whole thing up from thin air.

Actually the vid I saw showed that they used the exact scenes from the original Chis Reeves Superman to do that.

As far as I know, they used exact footage from the original Superman for his general head and eye movements, mapped that on to a 3D mesh, but pulled the lip synching from other scenes.  Like so. 

[Merusk]

IIRC the lines that Marlon Brando spoke in Supe Returns had already been filmed while he was alive.  The special effects wizardry lay in converting this into a 3D projection.  Pretty impressive, but worlds away from conjuring the whole thing up from thin air.

Actually the vid I saw showed that they used the exact scenes from the original Chis Reeves Superman to do that.

As far as I know, they used exact footage from the original Superman for his general head and eye movements, mapped that on to a 3D mesh, but pulled the lip synching from other scenes.  Like so. 

Right, exactly.. I was referring to the part where Sam said Brando .."had already been filmed when he was alive."  That implied he'd filmed new scenes for the movie.

[Samwise]

Sam said Brando .."had already been filmed when he was alive."  That implied he'd filmed new scenes for the movie.

Did not.     That'd be a bit silly, since he died before filming for that particular movie began.

[Morgan]

I'm not sure about reincarnating dead actors, but I know that independent studio Highlander Films created a new version of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with dialogue and new actors on the original sets using a green screen. I think some of the original footage of the original actors remains in the remake, but the new actors interact with them as though they weren't dead actors. Highlander Films showed how they accomplished this at Comic-Con 2005. The original film from 1920 is also freely available on their website for download.

[stray]

Let me guess...

Disruptive marketing? ;)

[Morgan]

Let me guess...

Disruptive marketing? ;)

They wish. :)