Today, I found out something even more curious about Benjamin Button than the fact that he's aging backwards, for 52 minutes of the movie...he isn't even there! "What the audience is actually seeing in the first third of the movie is a computer-generated copy of Pitt's head, which the studio aged digitally." (see article)
So they've actually done it: created an almost flawless digital recreation of a human being to play a part in their movie. For 52 minutes, 325 shots, of the movie, Brad Pitt wasn't actually there, it was a digitally created person acting. This is absolutely revolutionary for the movie industry, but is it really progress? I mean, maybe this is just me not liking too much change, but I personally find it more scary then exciting. Is this new leap in technology going to make actors and actresses obsolete in the future? UCLA Acting Professor Judith Moreland says no, "real actors have an ineffable quality that isn't easily re-created...I still think that there is something about actually looking at a human being and seeing something real look back at you ... it's about that human connection." It scares me to think of a future where actors might be a thing of the past, I mean...I doubt that will ever happen, still-I don't doubt that some movies in the future will feature fictional human beings in staring roles. As Laura Sydell said in the article, "Now that they've done what was once considered impossible, it's hard to believe that they aren't going to try and breathe life into an entirely computer generated person."
2 comments:
I think it is pretty weird that we are watching a computer animated person, that isn't a cartoon. If we keep continuing on this path, maybe we won't even need actors anymore, and the film industry can just make all virtual actors to fit the part perfectly... kinda scary.
They found that audiences were a little weirded out by "The Polar Express", that animated movie where the people looked a little too real, and well, it was creepy. So, yeah, I hope they don't go in this direction much further. On a different note, someone once commented how ironic it was that a movie about the fleetingness of life was so painfully long!
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