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Saw "Final Fantasy" last night and despite a New Age plot that put me to sleep, I was astounded by the visual quality of the computer graphics, especially the 'actors'. On last week's "Ebert & Roeper", Roger predicted that despite the breakthrough quality in "Final Fantasy", computer graphics will never replace live actors because the physical subtleties of emotional expression will be impossible to fully synthesize. I think the 'actors' in "Final Fantasy" are already better and more expressive than Steven Seagal and Candice Bergen (re: her '60's and early '70's film appearances). Concerning Ms. Bergen, although she stunk in such classics as "The Wind and The Lion" and "The Day The Fish Came Out", she foreshadowed the coming of the computer as actor when she did the voice of SAL 9000 in "2010".Experts said that a computer would never beat a world chess champion and they were wrong.
Experts said that digital would never sound as good as analog. Okay, so far they're still right about this one, but ten years from now?
But actors? Hah, they are right in the crosshairs. Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, your acting days are definitely numbered.
Follow Ups:
I think an important point is our brains capacity to disengage from monitoring imperfect visuals. I have not seen the movie but believe everyone that it is a bad one. The point is that the bad movie never engaged us enough to stop looking at the animation. In a bad movie, we tend to stare at the screen looking for interesting thing and not engage in the plot. Cats & Dogs was like this for me. My kids laughed while I got so bored I can't even tell you what the plot is. I started at the screen looking closely at the animations and spotting for errors on the screen. I could say the animation was bad, but really everything else was bad.Compare FF to Shrek. Shrek is not a great movie but better (I think) than FF. Shrek engaged me enough to stop thinking about the animation and that fact that Shrek was green and not very realistic. He was a character that engaged me. So my brain accepted shrek as a live character because everything else carried me there.
This effect is not limited to animation. Think of the last time you thought 'Hey, there is Sean Connery" in a movie (this happens to me in every Harrison Ford movie after the first SW, I can't seem to force him into any character). If the character is not hiding the player or the plot/script is not shielding the player, you cannot engage in the story or plot. Every mis-queue or bad shot sticks out.
In contrast, think of the last time your spouse asked what your thought of XX, and you said you did not notice he/she was in the movie. Your brain never took them out of character.
I think this FF style of animation has a future and we will be seeing more of it. But it will require support from a script and directors/technicians to convince us the characters are real.
P
...was that while the faces were approaching passable (for computer animation - not real life), the character animation appeared almost a step backward. Hand gestures, walking, arm movements seemed particularly wooden and lacking in fluidity and beleiveability - especially after seeing some of Pixar's work over the years. Maybe all the budget went into the faces?The movie itself? It literally made me mad. The best I can say for it is that it is mind numbingly simplistic new age pseudo-spiritualistic drivel.
joe
is worse than either of the two actors you mentioned.
... I thought he was hired out as part of the set.
a very wooden part of the set!!!!
...and so is Kevin Costner and Charlie Sheen. And I am tempted to go through my video collection to find career acting highlights of Kathy Ireland ("Alien From L.A.", squeaky yikes!).
Au contraire! All the "experts" said digital sounded *far better* than analog. But if "virtual thespians" can chase Alec Baldwin off the screen, I'm there!clark
The analog vs digital debate is entirely within the hi-end audio world; that is, are CDs better sounding than LPs. On a very good record player ($4000 +), some records sound better than some CDs. With XRCD and SACD, the digital competition is making it a very close contest.
Hey Steve...Which computer did the voices ? We're still aways away from creation of realistic speech with emotional inflection. Actors still had a large roll in Final Fantasy. Can't say that I'm upset though at the prospect of SAG actors having diminishing rolls in movie making. I wonder if the CG actors will become stars ? Will the chick from FF be "in demand" ?
Regards
Steve
most real actors or actress cannot act....
Computer generated voices.... holy cow.Could that be the next frontier?
Imagine a "phone sex" line (thousands of lines) that aren't fat old ladies pretending to be hot, but silicon pn junctions pretending to be hot....
I think you'd make a better case by including Tom Green with Seagal and Bergen. Their inevitable existence allows a claim such as this, in the same way some say "This preamp betters than those 15 times its price".Chess is an easy game in the sense that whoever has more mental storage wins the game. Go would be more challenging for computers to beat. Acting involves creativities which I think we don't yet understand enough to make computers do it for themselves. The best we can do is to let computers imitate what's already out there; and we'd see lots of Deniro, Pacino,...animations, and that's all. Not exactly an art or too much fun. However, this is all very interesting because the director will have much more control and freedom. Its also a great thing for home movies, where we can devote more to the stories than having to worry about the actors.
Hi,
finding people that play Go in Maine is not easy to do. We have had 4 Go clubs here, they all went for a year or so, and then died because the usual turnout was 2 or 3. Wish i had someone about my strength around here to play.
i'm not a very good Go player at all, partly because i dont player much; there aren't not too many who i know enjoying Go.
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