And Now, the Animated News 114
theodp writes "'You have a lot of missing images, in the TV, in the news reporting,' explains billionaire Jimmy Lai. It's a gap that Lai's Next Media intends to fill with its animated news service. Artists lift details from news photos while actors in motion sensor suits re-create action sequences of stories making headlines. Animators graft cartoon avatars to the live-motion action, and the stories hit the Web. When news agencies didn't have footage of scenes from the Tiger Woods car crash, Lai's team raced to put together animation dramatizing the incident that became a YouTube sensation. Thus far, Lai has been denied a television license, but with or without his own station, he thinks his animations are headed for televisions worldwide. His company is currently in talks with media organizations to churn out news animations on demand using Next Media's graphic artists and software tools."
Sequel to Max Headroom? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:interesting, but dangerous? (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't have to be particularly compelling. I could make a static pie chart and "explode" some small minority of the pie chart to make it look bigger, and mention specifically how small a percentage it represents, and I'll have a room full of audience members with a significant percentage who think the number is much bigger than it really is.
If anything, cartoony reconstructions are (for a while) going to be more compelling because they are a novelty. And many people won't believe them at a conscious level, but a few days later when they remember the story it'll be more like what the cartoon showed than what the mouth puppet behind the anchor desk said.
My Ghandi and Greedo mentions were more of a "slippery slope" argument about where this may end up going in the very near future. Once viewers accept cartoons as our data input for news, it'll be that much easier to fabricate it for us.
Not that most anchorpeople are much more than teleprompter interpreters ("reverse close-captioned for the non-hearing-impaired!") anyway.
Re:Just what modern news needs (Score:3, Interesting)
CNN and Fox don't incite their audiences to vandalize Wikipedia as a joke, either.
(Okay, it was a sorta-funny joke.... the first time. maybe.)
Re:Just what modern news needs (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that the FOX News through its commentators ends up creating news.
Glenn Beck, Shaun Hannity go on the the program and says "President Obama, Liberals Etc Etc, Should do X" Then the "NEWS" portion of Fox comes on and says "Some critics suggest that President Obama, Liberals Etc Etc, Should do X."
A news company should REPORT the news and not create it through their commentators.
Re:Prior art (Score:3, Interesting)
This was actually done in 1918 by Winsor McCay (Score:3, Interesting)
After the Cunard ocean liner Lusitania was torpedoed by the German U-Boat U-20 in May, 1915, the great Winsor McCay was asked to animate the disaster. This was not a minor film; McCay was not only the best animator alive, he had invented the medium himself. It was released in 1918 and used as part of the ongoing anti-German propaganda effort.
Curiously, even this 92-year-old pioneering classic demonstrates the dangers of using animation based on incomplete, mistaken or biased reportage and presenting it as fact. The film depicts the liner being hit by two torpedoes, when in fact the second explosion was internal. The Lusitania was described as an innocent passenger liner, but the Germans contend to this day that she was transporting far more munitions than were recorded in her manifest, and was thus a legitimate target. The English have not helped their cause any in the intervening years: they did their best to destroy the wreck with depth charges in the 1950s. More recently, millions of rounds of unrecorded ammunition have been found by divers at the site, lending credence to the German claims.
On a mildly related note, around this time the Hearst papers (and others, but Hearst was notorious for it) routinely used artists and retouched photos to "reenact" extremely lurid depictions of crimes, with helpful arrows and labels presenting their suppositions as fact. This practice was continued for several decades, and Lord knows how many innocent people were sent to prison or executed because of the bias these "reconstructions" introduced into society.
It was bad then. It's bad now. This is a dangerous path to tread.