CGI Actors essay

Luke Leslie Friday 16th April 2007

Imagine: Your watching a film in the cinema, enjoying every moment of it, this film is hilarious. You think to yourself Ian McKellen should get some kind of comedy award for this film. But on top of that, you scratch your head as you look at that teenage Ian McKellen on screen, later he’s middle-aged and finally at the end of the film on his deathbed, it must be lots of very talented actors you think to yourself, but their appearance and performances are so close to Ian’s its frightening. You wait for the credits to roll at the end, waiting to read their names, and all you see is a credit for ILM’s new de-aging Computer Generated Image (CGI) department which has allowed Ian McKellen to play his character at many stages of his life. You then remember this is the near future, Ian McKellen has been dead for 10 years, and this Bio pic was even made without a single real life shot of the man. Your mind is blown so much, you can’t even finish your smoothy.

Today people gladly flock to see animated feature films, they’ve have done so for decades now. Animated features have now nearly fully transitioned from traditional cell animation to 3D, with companies such as Dreamworks or Pixar winning Academy awards annually since Toy Story became the first feature length all Computer Generated movie.

The technology has met with huge success and popularity among cinema goers, coupled with its more efficient workflow leading to animated films being made quicker and cheaper, CGI has virtually brought traditional feature cell animation to a close, with Disney the house hold name of hand animated children's classics opting to close its ‘traditional animation’ department in 2003, marking the end of an Era in Film. However purists and enthusiasts across the world have taken steps to ensure a future for traditional cell animation, with films such as “Belleville Rondez Vous” blending the technologies, and countries like Japan still leading the world with breathtaking cell animated features such as Steamboy.

CGI is used in thousands of Live action features annually, be it subtle or grandiose, it has emerged as a dynamic and powerful tool for use by film makers everywhere. An emerging subsection to the CGI phenomenon is Digital actors, which represent a strange yet tantalizing future for film. Indeed the notion that a live-action film can feature performances from 100% photo realistic actors, yet not contain a single actual human seems quite strange.

We live in an exciting time, as technology moves at a rate faster then our ability to comprehend its implications. Some have noted that with fully CGI films such as Final Fantasy the Spirits within becoming more common place, the borders between traditional live action film and animation are being increasingly blurred. Animated films are becoming increasingly easier to make, they feature more and more breathtaking visuals, and the cost of the tools and availability of animators or specialists is becoming more and more within the reach of even a film students budget.

Does this spell disaster for traditional film making? Will Live action filmmaking follow the same route as traditional cell animation? Will the limitations and cost of shooting a film, finally be outweighed by the infinite possibilities of CGI? The film Simone explored this idea in a black comedy satirizing the worlds obsession with celebrities, and while it did use an unknown actress in the lead, she was painstakingly photoshopped and touched up to give the appearance of a synthetic actress. Despite this films clever exploration of the concept, the idea that live action actors will one day be out of a job seems unlikely.

Relative to traditional film making practices, CGI is still a new technology so its hard to predict its long term influence on film as a whole. Remember when sound first arrived it took decades to realize its potential, now sound is used to fully excentuate and heighten the emerson of the film going experience. Sound is used to create tension and atmosphere, it became not just a means to hear the actors, but yet another way for film makers to suck the audience into the world of their film. If current trends continue, the future of film will be an interesting arena indeed. Even the word film is increasingly becoming an inappropriate term, with the slow transition cinema is currently undergoing from film stocks, to digital cameras and projection.

Every possible iteration of CGI lies before a filmmaker with a budget that matches his imagination. Today a cinemagoer can see films made with 3D characters replacing real actors recent examples would include Lord of the rings or Harry Potter. Alternatively they could feature real actors captured on blue-screen surrounded by digital environments 300 or Sin City being recent hits. 2006 saw a surprising blend, with live action actors being introduced into the feature animation Happyfeet, making a rather interesting parallel to previous mile stones in cinema such as adding animated characters into Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Other interesting possibilities being explored include face replacement. In Starwars Episode III Christopher Lee’s face was digitally pasted onto a stunt double, this allowed the elderly actor to fight and move like a youngman in the lightsabre duels. The technology was also explored by Discovery Channel in creating original hypothetical newsreel footage of Hitler, Churchill and Stalin.

De-aging techniques have also started to be used. In Xmen3, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart were astonishingly de-aged 20 years using breakthrough computer software, though some found the effect unconvincing. Understandable however as this is the first time film makers explored the idea. The possibilities of CGI have lead some to theorize if Digital Actors modeled after real actors could someday be used for flashbacks or indeed entire films, this would allow Sean Connory to once again reprise the role of a young James Bond or see Biography films of historical figures or celebrities featuring indistinguishable performances from look-alike digital actors.

As interesting as the prospects seem, the bottom line is everyone wants a story to be told, and if digital actors helps achieve this then we’ll see the technique being used more and more. That said, currently the majority of films made globally are still made with traditional film making techniques, its the minority that can even afford to consider fully fledged digital actors, which often lead to an intensive post production schedule, huge budget and crew increases, and a slow the filmmaking process due to special considerations being required shot by shot, with the CGI department on set taking measurements for post production. That said, the bottom line is: If a film does not require a technology, it won’t be used, it’s as simple as that.

Other limitations include the realism of the final product. Although animators have pioneered all sorts of groundbreaking techniques to improve the realism and performance of digital actors. A well known technique used today is motion capture which utilizes tiny censors being placed on actors bodies or faces, which are then read by multiple digital cameras transferring the live movement of an actor directly into a computer. This was used in films like King Kong allowing Andy Serkis who played Kong to perform live on set with the other actors. It was also used for all the main characters in the animated feature The Polar express and Zemeckis’s follow up Beowulf with the same technique. Until now it has been common place for actors to be filmed whilst they read their lines for animated films, this is to facilitate keyframe animation. But now with motion capture being used more and more, film makers can record full performances and digitize it all as data in real time. This is yet another innovative step in streamlining the animation process, and adding to the believability to performances.

Despite films taking advantage of the latest technological breakthroughs in 3D animation. Robert Zemekis failed to achieve convincing photo-real people in The Polar Express. The visuals though lush, detailed and exquisite were still artificial, false, and at times jarring. The film rode that unnerving middleground between animation and live action, sucking you in then moments later reminding you of the smoke and mirrors.The film seemed too clean to be real, and although this could be argued to be an aesthetic choice the fact remains that the CGI characters looked somewhat off to the human eye. Science has shown that people have a built in survival instinct that allows us to spot when something is off about a person, and in the case of current digital actors, it reminds us that what we are watching is artificial, which breaks the illusion and mars ones enjoyment. Zemeckis seems to have taken steps to combat this in Beowulf, not only is it taking advantage of newer technology, he’s lighing the film in a more realistic and dramatic way and using a fully fledged cinematographer to plan and realize shots.

Indeed more stylized animated films such as Pixars The Incredibles which do not attempt to accurately recreate photo-real humans actually have actually met with more success, playing to the notion that we are watching is a cartoon - and not the real world. Somequestion the need to fully recreate photo real humans in an animated film anyway? - Why not just use real humans?
The implications of Digital actors within Live Action filmmaking are far more exciting. Already it has become common place to use 3D stunt doubles of leading actors. Allowing for more and more outrageous and visually pleasing stunts. This has for the most part been limited to wide-shots, but as technology has improved it has been used more and more. A great example is the end fight in the film Blade 2 which seamlessly blended Live action with digital stunt doubles, morphing the two in to a seamless blend of kinetic action. This kind of use of digital doubles has become very popular, but results vary, films like Superman Returns and Spiderman often have mediocre, and at times very noticeable digital doubles. Understandable as large CGI departments struggle to finish what increasingly amounts to thousands of 3D shots.

The Matrix Reloaded featured a fight between Neo and hundreds of Agent Smith’s, some people remarked how that scene featured visuals that looked more akin to Playstation Graphics then high end movie special effects. The problem is that increasingly film makers must juggle wowing the audience with something new, keeping the 3D to as high a standard as possible, while always being limited by the constraints of Budget and the ever present Studio inflicted release date.
Another issue is that theoretically CGI actors create a threat to traditional acting practices, and the very livelihood of actors themselves. Who’s to say years from now we’ll no longer see fussy, high paying Hollywood actors in films, and instead be treated to the limitless possibilities of digital actors. This hypothetical situation may seem daft, unlikely, and even far fetched to you.... and you’d be right. Every digital actor today has life breathed into it by a real actor.

There will always be a a yearning from film makers to explore the potential of digital technology, inevitably year by year advances are made, who’s to say in that in the next decade a Feature film will be released that will see the first totally indistinguishable synthetic actor, fooling everyone and blowing even the hardest critics collective minds. But even then, what has been accomplished? Film makers would have mearly recreated something we already had; an actor.

Real actors deliver moving performances every day, they don’t require a team of animators, a team of 3D designers or a director deconstructing and tweaking every subtle nuance of their performance. Real actors keep a film human, they are natural, they are real, and as long as people flock to see films, real actors will remain the cornerstone of telling a dramatic story, and no amount of breakthroughs in CGI or digital artistry will put that in jeopardy.

Song Hye Kyo fully artificial double - created by CGI artist Max Edwin Wahyudi

Deageing techniques used in Xmen 3

Tom Hanks and his somewhat realistic counterpart in 2004's Polar Express

Andy Serkis action translated real-time into animated movement

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