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Moriarty’s One Thing I Love Today! The Future Of Performance-Capture! AVATAR! TINTIN! CHRISTMAS CAROL!
Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.
I feel bad. I tried watching LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA last night. Love the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I really wanted to like the film. But as soon as it started, I found myself disconnecting from it, and it took me a while to figure out why I reacted so quickly and so extremely. Part of it is because of the use of fairly awful old-age make-up on all the actors in the sequence, masking them so completely and inhibiting their ability to perform to such a degree that the entire exposition-heavy first ten minutes is rendered inert.
The reason I bring this up is to lead into something I’ve been thinking about regarding a movement that is about to explode onto the screens of your local multiplex. Well... in some ways, it’s already begun, but what we’re seeing right now are baby-steps compared to what we’re about to see.
And because we’re just seeing the baby steps right now, people complain about these films. Over and over, I read talkbacks or read e-mails from people that offer up some variation on “Why should I care about any of this silly motion capture 3D stuff? It’s all just a gimmick, and I don’t know why you’d do that when you can just do it live-action.”
You’re missing the point. And I don’t mean that in a patronizing “You don’t get it” way, either. I just mean that these filmmakers... James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Peter Jackson... they’re working on the cutting edge of this sort of storytelling because it excites them. Nobody’s forcing them. This isn’t some guaranteed money-in-the-bank sort of commercial home run.
So far, none of the performance-capture CGI films have been gigantic blockbusters. They haven’t been disasters, either, but POLAR EXPRESS and BEOWULF were not blockbusters by any conventional definition. Making a film like this comes at a certain price-tag, about a million dollars a minute according to Robert Zemeckis. For an average feature length film, you’re talking about $100 million.
So why would these filmmakers who have all turned out monster giant hit movies all want to do something that is both experimental and also hugely expensive? What is it that has got all of them running back and forth to each other’s sets, giddy like first year film students turned loose with a camera and a few DV tapes? Why are they so much more excited about all of this than the audience that they’re making these movies for?
I talked to a friend of mine recently who has been around a whole lot of film sets, and he had a chance to spend some time on the set of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, which Robert Zemeckis is directing right now. This guy’s seen the production of a lot of films, both large and small, been involved in some fairly big-scale envelope pushing of his own. And he walked away from his time on the Zemeckis set sort of rocked by it.
“It’s really personal filmmaking,” he said. “I think you can argue that the director really is more of an artist on a film like this. Like a painter working on something intimate. It’s more like theater than film, at least as a process. I’ve never seen anything like it.” I knew a lot of what he told me from my time spent talking with Gil Kenan, director of MONSTER HOUSE, and from talking to actors who went through the process for Zemeckis, and from talking to the guys actually involved in various parts of the performance-capture process. Even so, I asked him about what sequences he saw them working on, or which performers he saw working, and his descriptions really intrigued me.
“When I was there, Jim Carrey was playing the Ghost of Christmas Past. I saw the design they’re using for him, and he sort of looks like a candle... real tall and thin and his entire head’s on fire. And the fire responds to him emotionally... so the more worked up he is, the brighter he blazes. Really cool stuff.”
“What really killed me, though, wasn’t the ghost stuff. It’s the way Jim Carrey is playing Scrooge at every stage of his life, from childhood on. There was a scene I saw where Scrooge is eleven years old, and Carrey gave that performance. And it really works. Same thing with [Gary] Oldman. He’s playing Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. So he gets to do the father and son thing, and credibly play both roles without it being freaky. Tiny Tim really is this little kid, and yet, it’s Oldman’s performance driving it. And same thing with Robin Wright Penn, who plays Belle, Scrooge’s love throughout his life. She gets to play all those various ages as well.”
“The other ghosts Carrey plays are pretty cool. The Ghost of Christmas Present is this big giant redbearded guy... like 12 feet tall... and then you’ve got your fairly classic death figure for the GOCF. Like I said... I watched him playing Christmas Past for a while, and it was really creepy. Carrey and Zemeckis were working together, and pretty much everyone else got tuned out. And Carrey was playing it with this sort of dead-eyed stare, with a deathbed whisper. Really extreme. And we were able to actually see an example onset of what Carrey’s performance translates to. It’s crazy. You’ve got this giant movie star, right? With the hundreds of dots on his face, a couple of stand-ins holding the space where old and young Scrooge are supposed to be as the Ghost shows him some moment of youthful bliss. There’s 250 infrared cameras and a couple of handheld roaming cameras for ‘dailies’. Zemeckis is doing it differently than Spielberg, evidently. I hear Spielberg’s still doing a lot more pre-viz, and he’s framing shots during the takes while he’s with the actors. Zemeckis doesn’t do that. He’s all about getting the performances, without any camerawork in mind. Everything he ‘shoots’ is reference. Some of the people onset wear these helmets that have these six cameras built in just below the chin, these wiiiiiiide angle lenses that record the room around a person.”
“There are also two different sets, which I didn’t realize. One is for the physical staging of scenes and for stuff where it’s more about how someone walks or runs or how people interact in a group. That’s the big room, and evidently, the first few films, they recorded all the data in that room.”
“Now, they’re actually using the first room where they put all the data sensors in place on the actors’ faces, and that’s the ‘close-up’ room, so to speak. They use that space to calibrate the responsiveness of the equipment, so it makes sense you’d record the delicate facial work in that room. It’s a ton of work, but the end result should be much more lifelike.”
The most exciting part of my friend’s time on the “set” of the Zemeckis film was when he witnessed that giddy exchange of ideas I mentioned earlier. The place where the film is being produced is the exact same place where they’re shooting TINTIN right now, and the CHRISTMAS CAROL crew talked about the conversations Zemeckis and Spielberg and Jackson are all having what they’re doing.
I’ve also spoken recently with several people who have seen some of the progress being made on AVATAR, and what’s interesting is the way their expectations for the film seem to be evolving as it comes into focus. One friend went from saying “It’s going to be a really expensive cartoon, albeit a very cool one,” to “It’s nothing like his other films... it’s very cerebral and the world is so immersive... it’s not what I expected, but it’s also not like anything I can reference.” Seeing how the live-action and the performance-capture are being brought together, my friend said he no longer believes in the word unfilmable. “If you can describe it, we can do it on film now. Scale, other worlds, deep space, some impossible location... it’s all within our reach. It’s all about imagination now... how big can these guys dream?”
I’ve heard stories about how actors are starting to really fall in love with the process... not all actors, of course, but some actors. Andy Serkis may have staked an early claim as King Of Mo-Cap, and no doubt he’s going to be seen as one of the pioneer performers in the field, but other people are starting to dive in, and I think we’re going to see some really beautiful, daring work in some of the projects in production or being developed now.
More than anything, when I hear someone dismiss this entire toolbox and say they don’t understand why anyone would tell a story this way, I want to answer right back, “I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to tell a story this way.”
The ability to focus all your on-set attention on your actors, not worrying about lighting or focus or an effect to work or traffic or background noise or anything else... just working on performance in a totally free environment like experimental theater... it’s the same thing Lars Von Trier and his cohorts were after with the Dogma 95 movement... a sort of purity of performance that we don’t often see in giant-budget event pictures. More than any sort of gee-whiz tech-geek wow factor, that’s why these directors are drawn to this way of making a movie. That’s why they’re all making movies this way at the moment. They suspect it might be a very special experience, and they want to try it and see. With filmmakers of this caliber leading the charge, I suspect we’ll see a lot of people get a chance to make more of these films in the future, and more and more individual visions are bound to find their way into the mix. So even if what we’re seeing now are just baby steps, as I suspect, of a whole type of filmmaking that we’re only just seeing the start of right now... even if this is a significant shift in the filmmaking vocabulary and we’re still just in the growing pains stage of things... I still find these films thrilling. I still find the experiment itself to be compelling.
And who knows... maybe someday we'll see all types of stories told this way, and we'll see someone make a version of LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA where the same actors could play the roles from youth to old age and I wouldn't spend the entire time thinking "What the hell did they do to Javier Bardem?!"
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
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This is the sexiest title for a movie EVER!
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more than i live my girlfriend, but...is Performance-Capture really necessary?
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Best version ever. You know, I think this mo-cap stuff is kinda cool and all, and I feel that it's right for certain films, but others, I don't know....I really wish Tintin was live action.
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... think of how often someone adapts something from the illustrated world and all you hear are complaints about "that doesn't look right and that doesn't look right and that person looks totally different." And with TINTIN, what you will see will be the actors playing the EXACT characters you know from the TINTIN books. The drawings come to life. You won't debate how much the LOVE ACTUALLY kid looks like Tintin because you'll be looking at freaking Tintin. Exactly. I think it makes sense for a lifelong fan like Spielberg to finally do it this way.
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...they layer it on top of an existing actor like Davy Jones in Pirates. Come to think of it I'm not sure if there is any motion capture involved there or not...maybe they are just carefully doctoring each frame...I'm talking out of my ass...........Still hated Polar Express and Beowulf though. Cheers to Zemeckis (sp?) for pushing the envelope and I'm sure some future stuff will be cool...tut those flicks are unwatchable...
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I am all for Performance Capture and I am excited about all the films mentioned but I have to say I hope they can get the eyes right. I enjoyed beowulf but on some scenes the eyes still looked lifeless.
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Very nice, Mori. I'm really digging the daily love posts - some of the best stuff I've seen on AICN.
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I hate how a lot of hacks on this site are so against anyone trying out new thigns and moving the medium forward and opening up avenues to work with. "Ohhh Boo hoo, film it live action..." Shut the fuck up! Yeah what we've seen is not perfect yet, it'll take awhile until we get there. If you have no interest stay the fuck away. Mori, if you're interested in this sort of stuff and into games, I recommend checking out a new mo cap technique developed by Mova: http://www.mova.com/ this could be where the industry heads next to further perfect mo-cap. Check out some info on a game called Heavy Rain for PS3 too.However I would stress that mo-cap will never be as good for cartoon characters as actual animation like Pixar does, however for projects that attempt for photorealism and more realistic approaches, it's perfectly fine when done right. I can't wait to check out Avatar and Tintin and all the other great stuff coming out.
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...fucking spell check!...what kind of word it "tut"....King Tut?...make me look like an idiot, spell check is DEAD to me. DEAD TO ME.
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...if they keep it like the original illustrations...don't make it too realistic.
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Mar 31, 2008 8:48:50 AM CDT
From one of the "hacks [that] are so against anyone trying out n
by stollentroll
There are only very few movies that have used CGI to their advantage..."Master and Commander" is a great example of how you can use CGI in a way that it doesn't FEEL like CGI. I believe that movies should really be made this way. Beowulf, 300 and Polar Express all look like shit and have very little in common with real movies.
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Mar 31, 2008 8:50:12 AM CDT
Harry, could you make the subject line a little longer, please?
by stollentroll
Effing subject line.
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Ok I have no idea how much money these mo-cap studios get paid and maybe i'm being naive here, but surely it must be cheaper to have the actors on green screens with ping pong balls on, and then computer guys add backgrounds/visuals etc afterwards, than paying for real live sets to be built? Could anyone explain why it costs so much?
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I expect everything you need to make movies like this in your garage will be the next REVOLUTION in movie making. Here's to iCap being included in iLife 2018.
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Render farms. For one.
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a thing of the past, very soon.
Wiki: http://tinyurl.com/kaffx
The real thing they need to do is go over every bit of "footage" with a fresh set of eyes, watching for those moments when characters start to look like the living dead, or animated corpse puppets (as in a bunch moments during Beowolf) and making the tweaks and adjustments needed to eliminate those feeling in the viewer. Because Beowolf had a good number of those moments when you started to think more about what you were looking at rather than what the "person" in the scene was saying or doing. But then there were moments when I simply forgot, and was completely drawn in.
This seemed to happen more frequently with the female characters, but I have debated with people about whether or not that had to do with the fact that I'm male and perhaps paid more attention to the details of the female characters.
I can't wait to see more films like these. It IS still in it's infancy and I believe we will see leaps in the technology and the captured performances over the next few years. Bring it on. -
I'm excited about all of these 3D porjects, safe for maybe Christmas Carol.
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The new motion capture technology uses phosphorescent makeup. No dots. Fincher uses it in Benjamin Button. The computers capture much more of the real face. Zemeckis will end up with the same stiff dead-eye look as Beowulf, which really isn't appealing.
On the Contour System:
“Instead of grabbing points on a face, you will be able to capture
the entire skin,” Mr. Fincher said. “You’re going to get all of the
enormous detail and the quirks of human expression that you
can’t plan for.”
"Standard motion-capture systems
are generally limited in resolution to several hundred points on a human face, while the Contour system
can recreate facial images at a resolution of 200,000 pixels. The digital video images produced by the
system are startlingly realistic."
http://www.bavts.org/3859701110103842/lib/3859701110103842/Contour_Camera_System.pdf -
This is NOT what Lars Von Trier and his "cohorts" were after in their Dogma 95 movement. This is the exact OPPOSITE. And shame on anyone who tries to use their vision as an excuse for this cash cow. This is for the studios. No one else. This is so everything can be kept on the studio lot. So the studio can control everything. The studios realize that all a person needs to do today is rent a hand-held camera, get some friends, shoot in their hometowns, edit it on their computer, enter it in a film festival, and they'll have a better film than anything that's playing that summer. Which means, no money for the studios, or, not as much. So, what's the answer? IMAX. Digital 3-D. Do you really think its a coincidence that some of the richest and most successful filmakers in Hollywood are the ones spearheading this? Why are THEY so excited to be doing this? Because it lets them do the same stories, characters, and themes over and over again. Because that's what you do with a product; you convince the consumer you're selling them something new when its really just a variation of something they've already had. Which makes it no surprise why film fans are embracing it; fans favor repetition. They want constant reminders of why they're fans in the first place. This new technology gives it to them. The same stories, characters, and themes, only now, in 3-D motion capture! So, its like, DIFFERENT. Have you seen the IMAX 3-D camera? Its ridiculous. Its actually BIGGER and HEAVIER than the old 35mm cameras. Its basically the equivalent of the stero system that goes up to eleven in THIS IS SPINAL TAP. Its the physical embodiment of the Hollywood studio system's contempt for art films; "Try making your little art films with this camera, you fuckers!" In the 70s it was like we finally got some BALLS and went out into America and the world and shot how things really are. Now, it looks like we've LOST our balls and are running back inside the studios to hide IN FRONT OF green screens. Where will be the "magical mistakes" in this? Everything done just-so. Just compare the prequels to the original STAR WARS movies. THAT'S what this is going to bring. This is EXACTLY what Lucas has always wanted; sitting alone in a room putting together a movie all by himself. Just like a mechanic. Well, the shop kids should stay out of the art club! This is NOT art. This is merchandise. This is commerce. This is the studios trying to save their asses. And if you try to use the excuse that this is somehow progress for the auteur filmmaker, think about this; in the past we didn't need the screen to be seven stories high to make the audience member a part of the story. We didn't need 3-D to entertain. We didn't need Yoda to be cgi. And thinking that today's audiences need any of these things, is horseshit. Its a weak cop-out. What today's audience needs is the films to say something new. To not use the same stories, characters, and themes over and over again. THAT is what the Dogma 95 movement was about. THAT is what Cassavetes, Dreyer, May, Leigh, Loden, Kramer, Morrissey, Rappaport, Ozu, DeSica, Rossellini, Noonan, Brunett, Hall, Bujalski, Bresson, Trent, Zahedi, Tarkovsky, Armstrong, Pinter, even author Henry James and playwrights Shakespeare and Chekhov, were, and are, aspiring to. You are free to want this, applaud it. But, don't include these artists. This is your own madness.
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...that it inspired the "100% Genuine Animation" tag at the end of the credits for Ratatouille. The full caption reads: "100% Genuine Animation! No motion capture or any other performance shortcuts were used in the production of this film." I think motion capture (I refuse to call it "performance capture" because it isn't any different in my opinion) has a place in films like Avatar or any other live-action film that requires impossible stunts or impossible characters. What I don't care for are films like Polar Express. If you're going to make an animated film, then animate it. Beowulf was done in the most unnecessary way possible. All that trouble and expense to faithfully re-create live actors digitally when it would've been far more efficient to just shoot the actual actors with a camera. I agree with Pixar. It is a performance shortcut. Motion capture is a cool tool, but because of its technological potential it is an easy tool to abuse.
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I really like the first hour of Beowulf and the dragon fight at the end. The worst parts of that film are NOTHING to do with the mocap aspect. The area that needs to be addressed is the facial expressions and eyes. Maybe with the new room setup they can focus on that more. Carrey has a pretty expressive face so that may help too. Btw, Mori's argument is meaningless because the ONLY character in Beowulf who didn't look like the actor was Beowulf himself, and HE looked like Sean Bean! (is there any truth in the rumour that Bean was originally cast??) I instantly think of Anthony Hopkins as the King character, there's no two ways about it. And Angelina as Grendel's mother. They'll NEVER want to disguise the big-name actors.
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Samantha 38G sent me birthday wishes on my MySpace page. :)
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I couldn't place who Beowulf looked like for the longest time. It's definitely Boromir.
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love your enthusiasm, but since when was the photo realistic recreation of source material the point of film? Surely if you want to see Tintin in its absolute perfection you would read the book - and that's not luddism. If I want a film I don't expecy a recreation of the original format. As technology "conquers" the uncanny valley problem - it reminds me there has to be a reason for going CGI. Do you really have to spend £100m looking for depth when an actor could do it? Maybe it's because these directors are interested in tehnology that it's pursued. I'm reminded of Terry Gilliam calling Attack of the Clones the first motion picture with a background and no foreground.
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That movie "Renaissance" was done with motion capture and the entire movie was black and white... not shades of gray, but completely Black and White. It was awesome in the way it looked, and I think way ahead of it's time.
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It wasn't the stereo system that went to eleven, it was his custom guitar amplifier. (sorry.. could not resist)
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People get so tiresome complaining about motion capture. The level of hatred is not so much because the process is flawed but because high profile people like Zemekis and Cameron have an interest in it. If it was some indie director experimenting with it people might say "interesting" and move on. And it's not like we're losing that many great directors to the medium. Zemekis is past his best and Spielberg seems to release a film a year. And Cameron, well he's always going to follow his expensive whims. And think about this: were the very first films that good? A train pulling into a station? Oh wow! The first colour films? Where are they now? Talkies? The Jazz Singer? ;-p
And to those who think it's a studio conspiracy. Just you wait till the software and technology becomes available to everyone within the next ten years, it'll be as big a revolution for aspiring filmmakers as the digital video one that's currently knocking on our door... -
The problem I have with motion capture is the "uncanny valley" aspect of it. The idea that the more life-like you try to make a human characters using CGI, the more uncomfortable it makes the audience because subtle things like eye movements and lip expressions and such just can't be faithfully reproduced. So the characters end up looking like dead-eyed, rubber faced zombies.
As a director, it's all fine and dandy to be working very intimately with your performers on a sound stage without all the interruptions of camera and light setups, but at the end of the process, if you still can't capture the beautiful little subtleties of the performance that really make it connect with the audience, your efforts are in vain.
If I had some advice for all these directors out there so giddily playing with their new toys, it's this: if you really want to make this process shine, focus on the face. Specifically the eyes. Really work on that shit. Because your whole movie will sink or swim on how well that material is captured and rendered. Dead eyed zombies = disconnection with audience. Simple as that. -
I've been re-reading the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, and thinking about this very thing - the 3 novels take characters from their teens up to their seventies, and significant amounts of time are spent in multiple time frames. I can't wait until the cost of this comes down to a point where its practical to do for projects that aren't blockbuster material.
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Beowulf and Polar Express, and to some extent Monster House, turned me off right from the trailers just because of the soulless look of the characters and how all of this could have been done by real actors for cheaper and it would have looked better. As said above, it's just because it's more cost effective for the studios.
Things like Avatar and things that are prohibitively expensive should be done like this...but TinTin? Another damn Christmas Carol remake? Wastes of time, and hopefully will be ignored by most just like Beowulf and Polar Express. -
What irks me is how stupidly blind people are to the principles of classical animation. Any kind of animation that tries to imitate life will almost certainly look and feel better, when using live action as reference. IN LOTR Gollum looks fantastic, because the animators carefully studied Andy's performance. Read the interviews. Yes they did do motion capture, but then the animators had to go in and massage everything in to place. Combine bits of different performances. Change the direction of body movement. Andy's performance, the "motion captured" was used as an excellent reference to begin some "classical animation."
Experimental Animation is all over the map. A quick and easy example would be how Gumby walks. Gumby doesn't usually walk, he does that cool time and money saving slide thing. Does it imitate life, no, not exactly. DO I love it, yes.
Beowulf was terrible. Polar Express was Terrible, and I'm almost entirely sure the Christmas Carol will be as well, because what you're seeing isn't classical animation, nor is it experimental animation. It's really bad rotoscoping with terrible scripts. Rotoscoping is where you trace over the live action footage with your animation. If you do this wrong, you get clunky lifeless animation that really suits neither live action of animation. If you do it right, you can get some very startling results (some of the better parts of waking life come to mind, or even early Ralph Bakshi).
The films thus far have had laughably bad acting and writing. They neither imitate life, nor even manage a Gumby slide. They are stuck in a zombie world of inbetween.
And if Tin Tin is to be made- then it should be a 2d film- since that was what it was designed for. Needless implementation of 3d is just as bad as needless use of motion capture. Everyone looses something. -
"purity of performance"? Seriously? Are you telling me that Tom Hanks performance in The Polar Express is more pure than his performance in Forrest Gump or any of his other movies? Or Anthony Hopkins, or any other actor? Mo-cap may give the directors more time with the actors, but I don't think we're getting a "purity of performance" from it. Not yet.
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...if the characters look EXACTLY like the actors. Sorry, Mori, but this process leaves me completely cold.
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Mar 31, 2008 11:04:13 AM CDT
Your scientists were so preoccupied with weither they COULD...
by osmosis jones
...that they didn't stop to think if they SHOULD!
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Motion capture and 3D is the future of movies. I don't understand who wouldn't want to see a Star Wars film where you feel like you have to duck a light saber because it almost hit you in the face. Everybody can replicate what a movie theater can do in their own home now. I want the magic put back into going to the movies...even if it means the studios get a few more bucks.
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"...not worrying about lighting or focus or an effect to work or traffic or background noise or anything else" ... all those little problems, when they are solved and come together, are what makes all your favourite movies what they are. History has proved that physical and budgetary compromises force creativity to the fore. It's the difference between the impossible-to-make original Star Wars trilogy, and the possibilities-are-limitless Prequels. Anyway, it all boils down to this for me: is the film any good? Despite all the effort that went in to Beowulf, every single person I know who saw it thinks it's just "alright".
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Beowulf was no great leap forward in the genre in my opinion. I did not feel that I was looking at a man turned into animated form, I just felt like I was looking at a mediocre animated film. (It wasn't helped by the supposed man-god Beowulf sounding like a London taxi driver, and his Austin Powers style game of hide-the-penis in the banquet hall). Now, real actors against CGI backgrounds, I like, if it serves the story, and actors turned into CGI among real actors (such as Davey Jones or King Kong) I like, if the quality is good and it serves the story. But these full film motion captures don't feel like anything more than a gimmick and it bugs me that such great directors are spending so much time on them. (Tintin?)
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...what sort of effects and images hold up over time and why. I started out as a computer animator but eventually moved on because the whole medium seems to have no shelf life. Computer effects and animation are great if they came out yesterday, but not so great if they came out two years ago...and I'm not quite sure why that is. The same is true of video games too...the very first classic arcade games hold up because they are not trying to fool anyone...the characters are just what they are, little symbols and icons flying around the screen (asteroids, donkey kong, pacman etc...). The more realistic games get the less they hold up over time. The effects in the original King Kong are still breathtaking today...TODAY, but Jurassic Park?...not really. Nightmare Before Christmas holds up just fine, but look at any CG extravaganza from that same year and it will look cheap and fake...hell, Terminator looks better than T2 today...not because it was low quality, hell I LOVED it, but something about the effects just doesn't hold up. Snow White looks as good or better today than when it was created in the 40's, but even Toy Story (a very good flick) looks sort of dated. I don't think that it's a question of nostalgia either...something about the medium just doesn't age well. I'm not a hater, I just worry that all of the genuine craft and creativity that goes into the current generation of effects will never even have a chance of becoming timeless or classic because of some mysterious inherent flaw in the medium (I realize this makes me sound like I'm 190 years old). I have been trying to come up with a theory about what exactly is going on but don't think I have quite put my finger on it yet...I think that video games actually come closer to the point of the problem...I see little kids playing Pacman and loving it...but does anyone today still play Myst?(very fun and ground braking in it's day)...not that I know of...
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Honestly, the reluctance to embrace this technology is faulty. These movies will grow larger and larger grosses, as the technology improves. That's right. Technology improves. All those citing Beowulf are forgetting that what was done there wasn't even possible a few years before. And yes, Jurassic Park still looks perfectly fine, Terminator 2 looks fine, and Terminator still looks jerky and cheap at points.
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Or is it all performance-capture? I'm hoping it's a mixture, I've no desire to see a full CG feature from Cameron.
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I really dug the two Zemeckis movies, even POLAR EXPRESS, because of three factors: 1. they're in 3-D 2. I love the way he moves the camera around and 3. the characters look so unnatural and creepy that it's hilarious. BEOWULF is a step forward and I saw it twice, but I don't plan to see it on DVD. I feel like they are more amusement park rides than movies.
Moriarty, it may have been on purpose but I was surprised you never mentioned the problem with these movies, the realism problem mentioned by several talkbackers. I don't get it because I don't see why you would want to make the characters look realistic if you were doing this. I love the camera moves and everything but I'm not convinced BEOWULF could not be made in live action. The difference is that Zemeckis would have to plan in advance. It would probaly be the same people doing all the pain in the ass technical work, but they would just do some of it beforehand instead of after.
I agree that it's an interesting new combination of mediums (it's animation combined with really, really, really expensive puppetry) but as long as they keep trying to be God and recreate the human image in pixels the movies are always gonna be creepy. I mean look at the huge advances they made in BEOWULF, but you still find yourself asking why does his hair look so perfect, is John Malkovich's character supposed to be blind or did they just fuck up, why do the horses look like midgets, what the fuck is up with this crowd scene where everybody is clearly standing in a different place looking at a different thing, etc. The question is, are these bizarre and ridiculous problems really worth the trade off to have Gary Oldman play Tiny Tim? I don't remember watching the Alistair Sim version of Christmas Carol and thinking "jesus, why can't they get an ADULT to play Tiny Tim? These child actors are just not cutting it."
Plus, aren't they gonna get a kid's voice anyway? Like in POLAR EXPRESS they had Tom Hanks playing a kid's body and the kid from SPY KIDS doing the voice. What's the point of that? So I agree that it's interesting and will be used for some cool movies, but it can't be more of a novelty until they start doing it for reasons other than just fucking around like that. I think I read Tim Burton is doing one, I bet that guy will be smart enough to make them animated characters and not Madame Tussaud's wax dummies.
First great use of motion capture: Michael Jackson skeleton dance in his video GHOSTS. There's something that could not be done as well in live action or in animation. Anthony Hopkins making a speech could in fact be done more effectively in live action. I will keep watching the movies but they will not be taken more seriously until there is more thought put into what stories must be told this way and how is the best way to tell them. -
Mar 31, 2008 12:52:51 PM CDT
I'm STILL waiting for the first performance capture porn!
by derlanghaarige
Because this is a project that won't lose any money.
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...I think there is a difference between "realistic" and "convincing"...Jurassic Park is obviously more realistic than say... the original King Kong, but I would argue that King Kong is more convincing as art and spectacle. I really enjoyed Ice Age when it first came out, but I caught some of it the other day and was very surprised at how poorly it has aged. On the other hand, I was recently watching Jim Henson's Storyteller series and was in awe of how great the low budget combination of puppetry, stage effects and illustration stills looks even twenty years later. I'm not against motion capture or anything else...but as an art form it seems to be struggling to find it's place a bit...
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It certainly didn't work there...
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...of motion capture. I once heard an interview with a director who had started out directing porn...he said that if you could SMELL porn while you were watching it...........there would be no porn.
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That is all.
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Pixar never uses motion capture and there films are all the better for it. While Beowulf was bad ass. I still don't want EVERY film to be made in a black room with dots on an actors face. The point of movie making is that you have to MAKE it. LOTR worked because you had a combination of both. Serkis was ON the sets. In order to inhabit a character you need to walk in its shoes. Wardrobe really helps some times. Could you imagine Daniel Plainview as a motion capture performance? Didn't think so. Location becomes a character itself and helps define the performance. John McClane walking barefoot through glass works because its born out of story and the location. You try and do something like that all mo cap and through a computer. "Hey Bruce run across this crushed ice and pretend it's glass." It's hollow. You don't have the fear in the actors eyes. You don't have the response of blood getting stuck to his shirt. Or the real hop in his feet. Mo-Cap would be better for auditions and Pre-viz. A tool an actor can take home and play around with his performance. Then unlearn what he's learned as he is in an actual environment where his surroundings as in life affect him. "I'm a scary ghost." Are you scary if there is a thunderstorm brewing outside and we can't hear you? What happens to you ghost if you stand outside in the thunderstorm? You dissolve? Then the person you scare will leave the house and stand in the rain. No more scary ghost. End scene. All your "method" must be retooled because you must adapt to a new situation. Nature. Much scarier than you. Computers see things in terms of zero and one. Everything is always ordered. But outside a computer is all a mess. Spirals and chaos. Your job is to take that mess and make it make sense and give it structure. Part of the doing of that makes it fun. Look at blooper reals and see how sometimes the most mundane things are difficult in controlling. Indiana Jones problem hat comes off so what does Harrison Ford the actor do? Staple it. Ouch. But still thats a problem that wont happen during Mo-Cap. Your problems are. Noise. Remembering Your Lines. Keeping The Dots On Your Body. Hmmm. Sounds pretty boring.
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Damn spell check when it works
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I didn't know anything about it, rented it because there was nothing else to watch, and was duly impressed. I've just now caught up to just after the failed invasion of the Fire Nation, and I'm still a happy customer. I'm not that familiar with a lot of kid media theses days, I loved the Iron Giant and Incredibles, I like the Harry Potter stories ok, but Avatar is way better. Is it that unique, or is a lot of saturday morning cartoon fare this good these days? It certainly wasn't when I was a kid. I'm interested to see whatever big screen version of the story has to offer, though I'm a little skeptical that it won't be totally changed for the worse. I'm not sold on Mo Cap yet either, I think it's still a little too unsophisticated, not to say that ten years from now it won't be flawless and industry standard, but right now I'm not convinced.
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You were kidding right?
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WHAT it is, no one really knows.
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Its one of the best animated series i've ever seen. They are just going to have to change the title a bit though. Shyamalan or whatever his name is was supposed to be doing something about it?
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But your logic is flawed. If a character actor's like Javier Bardem age makeup was mocapped, you know you'd be looking at cgi. Good old school makeup is no more of a distaction than cgi/mocap. If anything its worse. You know its not physically real. Every mocap movie ive seen does not suspend reality. Some are cool, not never have i believed that its real. It would take me further out of the scene than shoody real makeup.
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There's really two different things being discussed here: one is a certain niche or new genre,which is mo-cap films. The other is the application of mo-cap in live-action films ala Pirates 2/3 and Davey Jones and LOTR Gollum.
Both give filmmakers advantages, but I have yet to watch a GREAT mo-cap film(although Monster House was very close).
For me, I still prefer live-action with CG characters composited into scenes, not full animated mo-cap films. -
I've read some stupid shit in my life, but TopHat's tops it all. Man, Dogma 95 is a farse! It's a stupid idea with the only goal being publicity for bad movies. But, hey!, it's "pure cinema". Wrong: it's not. It's boring inept moviemaking. MoCap, 3d, whatever shit they come up with, it's nothing but new tools - tools that can do wonders in the right hands. That's it. And, man, Cameron, Jackson and Spielberg are way up there with any artist you might point. It's idiotic lowering the whole argument with "it's all studios" and "it's all about the money" when, clearly, these things are still unbelievably expensive. There's no line here, no right and wrong: there's a tool and a way to use it. Pretty simple when we don't mix our own inadequacies on it.
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You basically just admitted this "tool" is exclusively for the filmmakers. It's not for us. The Audience! It all sounds sweet and dandy and idealistic and cutting-edge, but so far not a single one of these movies has been any good. Not even potentially so. Yeah you can do these 18 minute takes where you start on a squirrel's eye and then end up on some battlefield on another continent, but who cares? It hasn't made the films any more interesting. And it's interesting you bring up how it allows these directors to create these "intimate" performances, when none of the performances in any of these films has been at all memorable. This motion-capture stuff is caught in the middle between animation and real-life, both of which have created infinitely more memorable and "intimate" performances. I will wait for Cameron because if there's anyone who can make a new technology work, it's him. But you can keep writing about the potential of this technology all you want - so far 90% of the people that matter (the audience - not the studio people) think it's a disaster.
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I can see this as lazy filmmaking. It is easier to make films this way, like George Lucas does it. They can lock themselves away and edit a cartoon. I like to feel like the film I am watching is possible. And no CGI world or mo-cap does it for me.
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or more to the point, avoiding. it they need to use this technology, and stylize what they create. monster house has been the best so far because it did that, it didnt even attempt realism.
Its weird how so many animators fear mo cap, filmmakers fear mocap, when the truth is its a great tool for both to use. we just havent grasped how to use it well yet. -
..why not make a mocap zombie/horror movie? I mean, what better way to improve the tech in the eyes, by making a horror flick where the dead eye look is actually the point? Thereby forcing the amimators to step up their "lifelike" game for the protagonists? Might be cool to just see a zmbie bite victim go from lifelike to dead-eyed old take in one quick shot. Just an idea,....
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Check out this early demonstration, and it's for a game: tinyurl.com/yp5gxg Plenty of Videogame cutscenes for animated characters look great already when the developers put time into it. Just check out the Metal Gear Solid series. A feature film can easily incorporate it for more stylized characters and inhuman characters. Of course mo-cap isn't just all great in and of itself, it still requires animators to go in and clean up and tweak things by hand. It's an additional tool to go alongside other tools. Check out the new facial mo-cap system from the guys at mova. We're no longer in the age of plastic balls all over ones face, we're actually able to capture the entire face, neck, subtle muscle movements and everything using phosphorent dye! With time and more films we'll see it put to better and more efficient use. The people bitching about it seems to suffer from some fear that live action filmmaking awill be entirely replaced by CG or some shit... These people can't think outside the box for a moment or think about how it can actually help live action films. Plus, yes it makes things easier than having to build sets and cordone off streets and scheduling everything. A lot of CG is used in movies and you probably don't even notice it. Then there are stylized films like 300 or Speed Racer... you want them to build entire roads for that and use real cars and even put stuntmens's lives at risk? Maybe it doesn't conform to your macho non-pussy way of doing things, but I don't give a fuck. So what if it saves the studio money? Good for them. There's enough room for films done the traditional way, for animated 3D films, for mo-capped 3D films, for 2D animation, for entire greens screen live action etc. etc. etc. and even a blend of every damn thing if you so wanted too and that's beautiful. Things will get better. If you travel back in time and watch early films and animation, they look like shit and at best were just good gimmicks.
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Is the fact that the director can really talk too and interact with his actors and sets. there no fear of ruining the scene by talking while it's being filmed they can reedit the dialog in later and so on the director can step into the scene an stand along side the actor if need be while the mocap stuff is being filmed. cause he isn't wearing a suit to be captured.
Also little to no setup to start filming scenes. Steve blocks out his shots Zem just films it and repositions the digital camera later. -
...is that most of it still has to rely on ALOT of key-frame animation to work.
Gollum needed it. Davey needed it. Kong needed it.
They all needed it!
Why?
Because they still can't capture enough data from the stupid suit to give enough detail in the movements without an arm, leg,muscle, etc. getting in the way of a marker. -
Burton is doing a mo-cap film of Alice in Wonderland.
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By infrared 3d camera recording technology.
A conical paths of infrared light are projected onto the actors face and body. The camera detect the deformations made against the light paths and retranslate that 3d data in real time. No need for stupid makeup and thousands of cameras hooked up to a rig. -
Birth Advancements that will see this technology go from creepy too real. You have to make several failures to make a success. Thats the nature of creativity. Let them continue to push the limit's of this tech until it comes home. You are coming across like a hypocrite.
Failure before success. The only way to fail completely is to give up! And I don't want these guys too give up. These are the tuning stages. Soon will come the Rocking Your Ass Off Stages! Rotoscope technology took a long time to get seamless, but in the right hands it is. Took about 70 years or so to get there, but hey nobody gave up on it. Same thing with CGI. It's still a baby -
Because zombie movies are the bottom rung of the movie genres, right next to other slasher fare. Those movies appeal to young single males. Demographics drive all big-budget moviemaking. What good is a $150 million movie if no one is willing to see it?
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Sorry, man, this column does nothing but make me mourn for the time when Zemeckis actually enjoyed surprises and happy accidents. There's such a thing as too much control.
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Because I can just imagine Daniel Day-Lewis begging Paul Thomas Anderson to stick him in a black wetsuit and cover him with white dots.
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Zemeckis films generally look over styilised and fake but Cam's over all are real and convincing, despite the sci fi/fantasy elements. He won't allow CG action to be contrasted unrealistically with any live action. I agree there better be fuckin live action shit blowing up though. (blow up a building, ok then go blow up a building, lol)
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Excellent fuckin work, use it once keep it simple and its believable
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Apr 01, 2008 12:43:22 AM CDT
OK guys, here's what they gotta do to get those faces right.
by oscarsboss
The folks that claim the faces/eyes in most motion capture characters are "dead" are right...but just because Zemeckis' crew hasn't gotten it right yet doesn't mean that motion capture won't ever get it right. Case in point: Gollum. Motion capture genius. The eyes...they were exaggerated....facial expressions....exaggerated. Subtle, schmubtle...go back to the the Gollum character, learn from what was created there. That character conveyed anger, sadness and joy all quite believably.
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Come on, Beowulf was good. Don't be hatin'.
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I'm a huge fan of Zemeckis' work overall. I thought Contact and Castaway were fantastic (as are Roger Rabbit, Back to the...you get the point). I think part of the problem with these new motion capture films is when he's simulating real people. Small, very very small moments look wonderful. Angelina Jolie in Beowulf had some great moments. Especially when her mouth was closed. But any kind of "animation" in expression tends to look lifeless. Especially when these characters talk. To exaggerate an expression on a face that we all recognize would probably look ridiculous....but on a face we don't recognize...that's what I would like to see. And by exaggeration I mean animated apart from motion capture...ie. they don't put those little dots on folks eyeballs and eyelids, do they?
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Subtle, moving....and animated. I don't think this little critter was "motion captured".
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It works exactly like that Phosphorescent paint gimmick- only there is no paint needed, no flashing lights. what they do is simple they mocap the body shit then they infrared record the facial shit later in a booth. Match booth performances up. Even if the animation shit is retranslated to another models who's facial shapes are unlike that of the actor doing that shit. I know what I'm talking about this infrared camera tech will be used as a replacement for video game controllers in the next gen game console war. Zcam and A4vision are working with it. If the government had it's way we would have our 3d facial data imprinted into a the DMV's database that way we could be quickly identified when walking into stores and airports that had these camera systems pointed at us. This isn't that 15 points of facial recognition bullshit. This is the equivalent of a laser scan in real time at 60 frames per second. Atleast when the tech is finalized it will be.
Like I said the actors do the mocap. then they go into a recording booth watch their performances and reenact it once more with the IR camera recording their faces. Instant 3d data coming in at 60 frames per second the way it works is simple the camera rocrds in real time the deformations made against the invisible Infrared light path projected onto the object at 60 frames a second. Same as that Phosphorescent bullshit with out the stupid flashing lights and paint crap. No paint needed! Possible to get even higher resolutions in pixel to control point retranslation than using the Phosphorescent technique. Hope Cameron's using this. -
means total recording of the entire face and body. The rig would be hard too implement on a bluescreen-set because you have to be fairly close to the light source, so thats why I say you do the boothwork after you mocap the body performances. No more balls glued to the face..
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I can't wait!
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... computer generated performance.
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... that's what you're not getting. The happy accidents are back. This allows for MORE room for the actors than live-action did for Zemeckis. He is a control freak... no question. And he was always making actors hit insane technical marks, and the actors he worked best with (Hanks, Fox) were the guys who were total pros about their marks.
The reason he stopped working with Glover wasn't the lawsuit over BTTF2. It was because Glover wasn't much for hitting precise marks. He liked to allow for spontanaity, and that didn't fit with what Zemeckis needed. It was Avary who pointed out to Zemeckis when they were casting Grendel that Glover would be awesome since he no longer would have to worry about camera marks at all. He could just do anything he wanted, and later, after the performance is done, Zemeckis can pick the perfect camera angle without inhibiting Glover's freedom at all. -
i would hate working with a control freak like that
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with some mo cap/ cgi work where you probably cant even tell where reality ends and animation begins. He better, with all the time and money he's spending.
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...except for Jackson, so no doubt some of the works mentioned above will rock (ala B2TF, T2 or Raiders) or be medicore (ala Polar xpress, True Lies or Minority Report)
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What happens when computer generated performance becomes available, like Finlome says. Then writers can get rid of the directors who are messing up their vision of things. Filmmaking is a collaborative process, and a good actor will connect with the audience in a way the director doesn't foresee. Motion capture takes away any connection I feel with the characters. All I see are people told to perform without context. Actors are a hinderance to computer animated movies, there's a reason Pixar movies succeed, and it's not 'cause the director micromanages every step of the process. It's 'cause the animators know their craft and how to exectute it.
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If you look for the flaws in filmmaking, the falseness, you WILL find it, because very little of what you see in a fictional film is actually real. If you recall the discussion of marks, what they're talking about is staging in depth. In most films, actors don't just happen to be in the right place for a pleasing picture. They (or a stand-in, that's what they're for) are given directions as to where to be in the shot, such that they'll look a certain way, in a certain lighting setup, with a certain lens of certain focal length. All that to create an image that is a 2-D illusion based on electronic pixels and/or light sensitive silver crystals. What most of you are looking for here isn't reality, it's the semblance of reality, which is itself often the result of some highly artificial measures. What kind of artificial measures you take to create your illusions is all up to you, as a filmmaker. You can CG animate, performance capture, or tape/film/digitize the whole thing live. Every approach brings with it certain artificialities as a price. Live action is rightly considered the most intuitive, simplest of capture methods. But it comes at the price of versatility. With animated works, you get less of the instant intuitive reality, but more room to be creative. Those who mourn this situation fail to realize that no medium or capture method starts out perfect. It takes practice to make art work, and I think if more artists were to consider these methods in stylistic terms, in terms of potential, they'd be able to fill in the missing artistry they'd desire. You cannot add one whit of artistry to art films by denigrating animation and effects, but you can help new techniques live up to their fullest potential if you look at them as tools for solving artistic problems and creating artistic possibilities.
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