Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Digital Actors

RE:  Blog Entry #5 - Digital Actors  (Mary Ward Communications)

With all the new the new technologies and advances being discovered today, not only do scientists benefit from this, animators and others in the movie industry may benefit from this too! A great example of these technologies' abilities is seen in the movie "Avatar", which has been getting a lot of debate over whether the animated characters should get recognition when it comes to acting awards.

This is a picture of Kevin Flynn from the
latest installment 
of Tron, Tron:  Legacy.
If you couldn't tell, this is not even a 
real
man!  
This character is a CGI (Computer
Generated 
Image) of Jeff Bridges.  With
this 
type of accuracy and technology,
could it actually be possible for 
actors to
become  obsolete?  I would hope not!
Is this acting or animation?
I feel that the movie "Avatar" is a great example of incorporating traditional acting with the new advances in special effects and animation.  I find that calling it one or the other wouldn't be quite fair to neither the actors or the animators because all participants worked very hard to achieve the amazing quality that is in the movie.  Everyone should be recognized for their participation and effort.


Do you think that animated characters should be eligible for acting awards?
Acting awards should be eligible for characters who have actors portraying and acting them out. That being said, I feel that animated characters could be eligible for acting awards.  This all depends on how the animated character was portrayed.  If, unlike "Avatar", the animated character was completely based on computer animations and the actor's voice, without the actor's physical acting, I don't think these characters could be eligible for acting awards.  This is because I feel it takes a lot more than voice acting for one's character to be eligible for an acting award.  For animated characters that are the result of both an actor's physical acting and computer animations, I feel that these characters could be eligible for an acting award.  This is because, not only does this character have the voice acting of an actor, it also has the physical acting of an actor, which (in my opinion) makes the character worthy of an award.


Do you think that human actors will ever become obsolete?  Why or why not?
With all the innovations and technology that we have today, I think there is a possibility that human actors will become obsolete.  Even though all these advances are very high end, cutting edge and therefore expensive, it would probably be much easier to spend the money and development on this technology over the actors and actresses with very similar salaries.  Also, since this technology is now able to mirror human actions and generate familiar or similar faces, it's completely possible for animators to generate a new but virtual celebrity that would appeal to many fans.
Even though I predict this could happen though, I still prefer my human actors and actresses.  This is because some people, like me, prefer to physically see familiar faces, and always generating new ones with computer animations could cause consumers and fans to lose that familiarity - even if the generated face resembles a favourite actor or actress.  And personally, I prefer to see real actors acting in my movies.

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NOTE TO MY TEACHERS:
This entry is based upon on the information taken from the article "Do the 'Avatar' Actor's Deserve Recognition?"
-Jercy

4 comments:

  1. I agree with you when you say acting awards should be eligible for characters who have actors portraying and acting them out. Acting is acting, and if an actors performance was outstanding in a digital character type role, then they deserve an award. Like you said, human actors could be obsolete, but I also prefer human actors.

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  3. I also agree with your statement of, "Acting awards should be eligible for characters who have actors portraying and acting them out." It is because they are not hiding behind the studio, and doing voice-overs for their characters. They are actually expressing their character's personality, and performing different human movements such as running, leaping, etc. The creations of CGI is like what we see in live-theatres. We see play actors wearing costumes and make-up to match their characters, and that's basically what CGI does. I'm sure the director and the actors don't want to spend several hours, and the money for make-up artists and costume designers to do the actors make-up and wear such detailed costumes every time they shoot to create the blue creatures of Avatar. Furthermore, like what you said, human actors could be obsolete as technology enhances and I also prefer human actors on screen anyway. So hopefully, human actors won't become a thing in the past!

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  4. Haii Jercy,

    I totally agree with you on the idea that actors might one day become obsolete. It's sad to think that one day people's talents will be replaced fully by technology and computers and machines. I prefer actresses and actors as well as opposed to fully animated characters.

    Great post :D

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