Star Wars Rogue One had an unconvincing Princess Leia. A Deep Fake blended in the look of Carrie Fisher from the original Star Wars.
SOURCES- Youtube, Derpfakes
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
The worst thing was his choice of overall theme for the prequels.
Not because politics is intrinsically incompatible with good film – Tom Clancy films and The West Wing show this to be a fallacy, politics can be great on film (Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and Clear and Present Danger are 3 of my favourite films!).
The problem is that Lucas’s perception of politics in the screenplays was like a rube watching the boring trade related parts of C-SPAN, rather than a nuanced, yet still exciting take on the level of Sorkin or Clancy.
With a decent screenplay from someone not Lucas, a better vetted Anakin actor, and less CG emphasis the prequels could have been far superior to what we got.
Going digital too early didn’t help either – the live action stuff in Episode 2 and 3 looks noticeably worse in my opinion, the cinecam sensors weren’t up to snuff with film back then.
In one of the documentaries, there is a scene where Lucas came out with the draft script for Menace and holds it up like a champion presenting the severed head of an epic opponent, and all the sycophants cheered him. Imagine how little editing it must have gotten.
Who would dare tell the great man his vaunted genius in script-writing was somewhat on a par with the Emperor’s new clothes? Lucas was a mogul, not a director or a writer. Remember that Star Wars came about when he could not get the rights for Flash Gordon (and maybe Buck Rogers) but still decided to do pretty much the same thing.
As for the continuity breaking, we can pretend the Obi-Wan death fight was because most of their conflict was on some Force versus Force level, unseen by us, but yeah, it does look bad by comparison.
If it bothers us too much, we can always recall that almost absolutely every popular movie eventually gets a remake. It requires a lucky throw of the dice to actually be better (and a lot of unfounded optimism) but it could be (for one thing, chances are the fight scenes will be too much over the top). It also (hopefully) won’t be done until the virtual reskinning (or complete elimination) of live actors is fully operational.
Lucas is like the Emperor, except his overconfidence is in his infallible direction and use of CG.
He used CG far too often to drive plot rather than to supplement and enhance it – whole scenes with actors staring at a blank nothing (or green/blue to be exact) is not any way for actors to work, they can only do so much to pretend.
By the way I absolutely do hate Vader in Rogue One, it reads as a continuity breaking fan fiction in that fight scene with the rebels, making his fight with Obi-Wan mere days later look like he had just taken a tranquiliser, whereas before RO it simply looked like an old man and a crippled man fighting each other without any great advantage given their experience.
The earlier scene with him choking the Death Star project guy was fine if a tad cheesy, but that final fight scene just looked like someone didn’t even watch A New Hope, which is ironic considering the last word spoken in the film is a clear reference to it.
Tarkoff’s face always looked like a skull. Having it be a bit waxy and corpse-like seemed rather natural to me.
I’m also glad I got to see the movie when I did, rather than several years from now.
Just as I am glad Lucas didn’t wait until the late 90’s to film Empire and RotJ when the tech would have let him do a better job.
Heh, maybe Tarkoff and Leia should have worn masks in the first series. I don’t know of ANYONE complaining about seeing Vader in action in Rogue One, even though it wasn’t David Prowse.
Then again, if they had made a cartoon, excuse me, animated series, with Leia and Tarkoff, few would see it as an ethical or moral dilemma, even with different voice talents. Actors that lend their faces to characters are compensated for it and know full well there could be action figures, Legos, Happy Meal toys, Halloween costumes, and whatever else, possibly long after they have passed.
It really seems little different than using a live actor cast because of a strong resemblance to the original actor and made up to look even more so.
Save your angst for people colorizing old classic movies that were shot in black and white and intended to be seen that way.
The replicants were supposed to be visually indistinguishable from humans in the first film, which is set 30 years earlier than the sequel.
I would recommend watching both – I wasn’t happy with how the 2nd film ended, but it’s still a good film overall and leagues beyond a lot of the crap sci fi that comes out of the industry these days.
The original is a classic for me, certainly a visual inspiration for all my CG work.
I understand the plot is slow, but I find that much of the faster pacing of modern sci fi is simply to cover the abject lack of plot in the screenplay.
“I actually found a lot of the skin effects of Tarkin to be a bit uncanny. He looked a bit waxy/corpse-like”
This is a problem with CG skin and lighting, you need just the right shader material and texture with just the right lighting or it can look off all too easily.
It’s alot easier to create an awesome looking still for an ArtStation portfolio than it is to recreate a living, breathing rendition of a dead actor like that with traditional CG.
Using a combination of ML techniques and gait analysis as Facebook are looking into may finally defeat the Uncanny effect, though creative camera work can make all the difference in SOD – if you don’t purposefully put the character front and center in the shot and completely in focus, it leaves some room for the mind to fill in the blanks in a way more pleasing to our own imagination .
They should have done all the replicant scenes this way. Looks like a human… almost. It would have fit the story.
Or maybe they did, I couldn’t sit through more than the first 20 minutes or so of that movie. Like the original it was boring and slow.
Apparently the Leia scene from Rogue One was created using motion capture on a different actress, using audio from takes of Carrie Fisher saying ‘hope’ for Episode IV (help me Obi-Wan). Not sure how that failed–could be a bad performance in terms of matching the audio. It would be interesting to see how a deep fake on that original motion capture footage would turn out.
I could see that scene being ‘digitally remastered’ when the technology improves. I actually found a lot of the skin effects of Tarkin to be a bit uncanny. He looked a bit waxy/corpse-like.
I’d also say that if we are going to replicate the face, we might as well go full hog and replicate the voice too.
I’ve seen demonstrations of voice replication using text as input for new speech, I think Adobe did it.
Gait analysis should also be used to make sure the body language reflects the original actor, my univeristy lecturer told me that Rogue One looked weird with Tarkin/Cushing because he had seen a bunch of Cushing films and he held himself a certain way, which the other motion performance actor did not.
“Except of course, that it would be disrespectful and a way to continue exploiting a deceased actor”
Unfortunately didn’t stop them from using Peter Cushing in the same way.
Yep, the problem isn’t really the rendering and looks, but the movements, particular the facial gestures and eyes.
The human brain is really good at spotting abnormalities and subtle differences in them, because interpreting emotions and internal mental states has a strong evolutionary pressure in social creatures like us.
If the model behind the gestures lacks the life and intelligence of the original person, we notice.
A real actress doing the role and then changing her face for Carrie Fisher’s using Deep Fakes would look more natural than animating a CGI version from scratch.
Except of course, that it would be disrespectful and a way to continue exploiting a deceased actor.
I do see an improvement, but it’s still wrong because it’s based on the Rogue One facial animation, the lips linger open and the face basically freezes in an unnatural way before it relaxes, pretty painful to watch for me – though the bit before that looks more natural now.
I’d be interested to see them do this for the Rachel scene in Blade Runner 2049, and all of Clu/Digital Flynn in Tron Legacy.
can’t see much of an improvement