Virtual actor

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This article is about the digital creation of virtual human beings. For the software program Virtual Human, see Virtual Woman.


A virtual human or digital clone is the creation or re-creation of a human being in image and voice using computer-generated imagery and sound. The process of creating such a virtual human on film, substituting for an existing actor, is known, after a 1992 book, as Schwarzeneggerization, and in general virtual humans employed in movies are known as synthespians, virtual actors, vactors, cyberstars, or "silicentric" actors. There are several legal ramifications for the digital cloning of human actors, relating to copyright and personality rights. People who have already been digitally cloned as simulations include Bill Clinton, Marylin Monroe, Fred Astaire, Ed Sullivan, Elvis Presley, Anna Marie Goddard, and George Burns. Ironically, data sets of Arnold Schwarzenegger for the creation of a virtual Arnold (head, at least) have already been made.[1][2]

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[edit] Schwarzeneggerization

The name Schwarzeneggerization comes from the 1992 book Et Tu, Babe by Mark Leyner. In one scene, on pages 50–51, a character asks the shop assistant at a video store to have Arnold Schwarzenegger digitally substituted for existing actors into various works, including (amongst others) Rain Man (to replace both Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman), My Fair Lady (to replace Rex Harrison), Amadeus (to replace F. Murray Abraham), The Diary of Anne Frank (as Anne Frank), Gandhi (to replace Ben Kingsley), and It's a Wonderful Life (to replace James Stewart). Schwarzeneggerization is the name that Leyner gives to this process. Only 10 years later, Schwarzeneggerization was close to being reality.[1]

By 2002, Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey, Kate Mulgrew, Michelle Pfeiffer, Denzel Washington, Gillian Anderson, and David Duchovny had all had their heads laser scanned to create digital computer models thereof.[1]

[edit] Early history

Early computer-generated animated faces include the 1985 film Tony de Peltrie and the music video for Mick Jagger's song "Hard Woman" (from She's the Boss). The first actual human beings to be digitally duplicated were Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart in a March 1987 film created by Daniel Thalmann and Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann for the 100th anniversary of the Engineering Society of Canada. The film was created by six people over a year, and had Monroe and Bogart meeting in a café in Montreal. The characters were rendered in three dimensions, and were capable of speaking, showing emotion, and shaking hands.[3]

In 1987, the Kleizer-Walczak Construction Company begain its Synthespian ("synthetic thespian") Project, with the aim of creating "life-like figures based on the digital animation of clay models".[2]

In 1988, Tin Toy was the first entirely computer-generated movie to win an Academy Award (Best Animated Short Film). In the same year, Mike the Talking Head, an animated head whose facial expression and head posture were controlled in real time by a puppeteer using a custom-built controller, was developed by Silicon Graphics, and performed live at SIGGRAPH. In 1989, The Abyss, directed by James Cameron included a computer-generated face placed onto a watery pseudopod.[3][4]

In 1991, Terminator 2, also directed by Cameron, confident in the abilities of computer-generated effects from his experience with The Abyss, included a mixture of synthetic actors with live animation, including computer models of Robert Patrick's face. The Abyss contained just one scene with photo-realistic computer graphics. Terminator 2 contained over forty shots throughout the film.[3][4][5]

In 1997, Industrial Light and Magic worked on creating a virtual actor that was a composite of the bodily parts of several real actors.[2]

[edit] Rise of the machines

By the 21st century, virtual actors had become a reality. The face of Brandon Lee, who had died partway through the shooting of The Crow in 1994, had been digitally superimposed over the top of a body-double in order to complete those parts of the movie that had yet to be filmed. By 2001, three-dimensional computer-generated realistic humans had been used in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and by 2004, a synthetic Laurence Olivier co-starred in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.[6][7]

Critics such as Stuart Klawans in the New York Times expressed worry about the loss of "the very thing that art was supposedly preserving: our point of contact with the irreplaceable, finite person". More problematic, however, are issues of copyright and personality rights. An actor has little legal control over a digital clone of themselves, and must resort to database protection laws in order to exercise what control he/she has. (The proposed U.S. Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act would strengthen such laws.) An actor does not own the copyright on his/her digital clone unless he/she was the actual creator of that clone. Robert Patrick, for example, would have little legal control over the liquid metal cyborg digital clone of himself created for Terminator 2.[6][8]

The use of a digital clone in the performance of the cloned person's primary profession is an economic difficulty, as it may cause the actor to act in fewer roles, or be at a disadvantage in contract negotiations, since the clone could be used by the producers of the movie to substitute for the actor in the role. It is also a career difficulty, since a clone could be used in roles that the actor himself/herself would, conscious of the effect that such roles might have on his/her career, never accept. Bad identifications of an actor's image with a role harm careers, and actors, conscious of this, pick and choose what roles they play. (Bela Lugosi and Margaret Hamilton became typecast with their roles as Count Dracula and the Wicked Witch of the West, whereas Anthony Hopkins and Dustin Hoffman have played a diverse range of parts.) A digital clone could be used to play the parts of (for examples) an axe murderer or a prostitute, which would affect the actor's public image, and in turn affect what future casting opportunities were given to the actor. Both Tom Waits and Bette Midler have won actions for damages against people who employed their images in advertisements that they had refused to take part in themselves.[9]

The use of a digital clone in advertisements, as opposed to the performance of a person's primary profession, is covered by section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, which subjects commercial speech to requirements of accuracy and truthfulness, and which makes deliberate confusion unlawful. The use of a celebrity's image would be an implied endorsement. The New York District Court held that an advertisement employing a Woody Allen impersonator would violate the Act unless it contained a disclaimer stating that Allen did not endorse the product.[9]

Other concerns include posthumous use of digital clones. Barbara Creed states that "Arnold's famous threat, 'I'll be back', may take on a new meaning". Even before Bradon Lee was digitally reanimated, the California Senate drew up the Astaire Bill, in response to lobbying from Fred Astaire's widow and the Screen Actors Guild, who were seeking to restrict the use of digital clones of Astaire. Movie studios opposed the legislation, and as of 2002 it had yet to be finalized and enacted. Several companies, including Virtual Celebrity Productions, have in the meantime purchased the rights to create and use digital clones of various dead celebrities, such as Marlene Dietrich and Vincent Price.[2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Brooks Landon (2002). "Synthespians, Virtual Humans, and Hypermedia", in Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon: Edging Into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation. University of Pennsylvania Press, 57–59. ISBN 0812218043. 
  2. ^ a b c d Barbara Creed (2002). "The Cyberstar", in Graeme Turner: The Film Cultures Reader. Routledge. ISBN 0415252814. 
  3. ^ a b c Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann and Daniel Thalmann (2004). Handbook of Virtual Humans. John Wiley and Sons, 6–7. ISBN 0470023163. 
  4. ^ a b Paul Martin Lester (2005). Visual Communication: Images With Messages. Thomson Wadsworth, 353. ISBN 0534637205. 
  5. ^ Andrew Darley (2000). "The Waning of Narrative", Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. Routledge, 109. ISBN 0415165547. 
  6. ^ a b Ralf Remshardt (2006). "The actor as imtermedialist: remetiation, appropriation, adaptation", in Freda Chapple and Chiel Kattenbelt: Intermediality in Theatre and Performance. Rodopi, 52–53. ISBN 9042016299. 
  7. ^ Simon Danaher (2004). Digital 3D Design. Thomson Course Technology, 38. ISBN 1592003915. 
  8. ^ Laikwan Pang (2006). "Expressions, originality, and fixation", Cultural Control And Globalization in Asia: Copyright, Piracy, and Cinema. Routledge, 20. ISBN 0415352010. 
  9. ^ a b Michael A. Einhorn (2004). "Publicity rights and consumer rights", Media, Technology, and Copyright: Integrating Law and Economics. Edward Elgar Publishing, 121,125. ISBN 1843766574. 

[edit] Further reading

  • Michael D. Scott and James N. Talbott (1997). "Titles and Characters", Scott on Multimedia Law. Aspen Publishers Online. ISBN 1567063330.  — a detailed discussion of the law, as it stood in 1997, relating to virtual humans and the rights held over them by real humans
  • Richard Raysman (2002). "Trademark Law", Emerging Technologies and the Law: Forms and Analysis. Law Journal Press, 6—15. ISBN 1588521079.  — how trademark law affects digital clones of celebrities who have trademarked their personæ

[edit] See also

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