Synthetic Actors

I originally posted this entry about the new Contour camera system on my personal blog, but Jenna suggested publishing it here as well. It's a lazy Saturday morning for me, so I'm not sure I have any specific questions right now, but would certainly be curious to hear your reactions to the Times discussion of this new camera system.

Via Blank Screen Media, a New York Times article about a new camera system to be unveiled at Siggraph that promises "to create compellingly realistic synthetic actors by capturing the facial movements of real actors in much greater detail than is currently possible." The Contour camera system has already been embraced by David Fincher who plans to use it in his adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's story, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," about a character who ages in reverse. The Contour system, I think, raises some interesting questions for how we define visual entertainment and what we'll expect of it in the future.

According to the Times, the Contour system will allow filmmakers to transform the appearance of actors in the computer, making it possible for viewers to control the point of view, creating what is being called a form of "navigable entertainment." Times reporter John Markoff goes on to write, "the Contour system requires actors to cover their faces and clothes with makeup containing phosphorescent powder that is not visible under normal lighting. In a light-sealed room, the actors face two arrays of inexpensive video cameras that are synchronized to simultaneously record their appearance and shape. Scenes are lit by rapidly flashing fluorescent lights, and the cameras capture light from the glowing powder during intervals of darkness that are too short for humans to perceive."

As Grand Text Auto explains it, filmmakers get "an extremely high resolution digital model, photographed textures and motion capture of the actor’s face." While the phosphorous powder cannot be used on certain body parts (on the eyes, inside the mouth), Contour is working on plastic teeth molds with embedded phosphor powder. Of course such a camera has clear implications for film production, making it possible for directors to digitally control camera angles. But the larger question is whether the technology will allow filmmakers to cross what Masahiro Mori, the Japanese robotics specialist, has called the "uncanny valley," which describes the negative emotional responses people have when encountering robots and animated figures as they begin to very closely resemble humans (as the Times argues, some have attributed the negative responses to Tom Hanks' Polar Express to this principle).

Andrew at GTA argues that the Contour system does nothing to cross the "uncanny valley of AI," but one or two of the commenters have a slightly different reading. I don't yet know enough about the Contour system, but it's difficult for me not to feel some sense of loss whenever I read about a new "advance" in digital video technologies. I'm not terribly attached to recording on film, but as systems such as Contour develop, I have to wonder what kinds of narratives it will enable and what kind of stories will be supplanted by the new medium.