Filming an Invasion Without Extras 185
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Kevin Kelly has an interesting blog post on how a World War II D-Day invasion was staged in a few days with four guys and a video camera using batches of smaller crowds replicated computationally to produce very convincing non-repeating huge crowds. Filmmakers first used computer generated crowds about ten years ago and the technique became well known in the Lord of the Rings trilogy but now crowds can be generated from no crowds at all — just a couple of people. 'What's new is that the new camera/apps are steadily becoming like a word processor — both pros and amateurs use the same one,' says Kelly. 'The same gear needed to make a good film is today generally available to amateurs — which was not so even a decade ago. Film making gear is approaching a convergence between professional and amateur, so that what counts in artistry and inventiveness.'"
And only a few years behind audio technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And only a few years behind audio technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
Took the words right out of my mouth, although I'd like to add a much broader historical point;
One of the notable characteristics of the twentieth century was the exponential increase in the cost of producing cutting edge media. You went from printing presses to radio transmitters to movie studios within a few short decades. The consequences of this were that the public discourse became dominated by those in society who controlled the resources, be it big business or government. Thus modern propaganda was born.
A reversal of this trend is very much welcome. As it stands, some people (usually the worst people) in society have a megaphone with which to shout down anyone who disagrees with them or their peers, leaving most of us effectively voiceless and apathetic. It can only do our stagnant societies good to make some cheaper megaphones.
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It can only do our stagnant societies good to make some cheaper megaphones.
Unfortunately, just as the megaphones get cheaper, the big guys claim a patent on megaphones, copyright all forms of expression, and sue critics for "trademark dilution."
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Re:And only a few years behind audio technology... (Score:5, Funny)
Try reading slashdot with all comments visible and see if your statement needs any modifications.
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Go to any well-attended footie game in England, even if it's something like Stevenage versus York City (for our American audience, that's like going to a Triple-A game as far as attendance goes).
Just have a few of you start singing something funny, relevant to the match you're watching (making sure there's a snippet of what you want to use for your sound effect). Within twenty minutes, hundreds will be singing it. Make sure you have half a dozen pe
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We can make a rather convincing Omaha Beech video with only 3 actors.
And we can make the LotR battles with only a few hundred.
But we still needed 30K loud cricket fans to create the SOUND of a pitched battle.
Can we do it with 3?
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and then get sued by Rupert Murdoch for taking recording equipment to a game :-)
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Just like the film, same guys over and over... (Score:2)
Let's look at The Simpsons, for example:
Dan Castellaneta: Homer Simpson, Grampa
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Re:And only a few years behind audio technology... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, but...
There are two sides to the film business. Production (the business of turning a script and thousands of man hours of work into 2 hours of film) and distribution (the business of copying that 2 hours of film, getting copies to the theaters, DVDs printed, advertisements run, etc. etc.).
When you look at summer theater fare, the cost of distributing the film often costs as much as making the film did. That business is expensive, it's not getting a lot cheaper, and unfortunately, the studios still have a lock on it. While new technology will allow you to make a feature film more cheaply if you're clever, getting it out of the film festival
circuit and into real cinemas where people besides your friends will see it is still largely locked in that bad old world of Hollywood distribution.
Music has been set free not only by cheaper production, but much cheaper distribution. Broadband means I can stream songs from your band's myspace page in real time. I still can't do that with film at any reasonable quality level.
I don't think it's hopeless. The quantity of bandwidth marches upwards year after year, and the cost we pay for it goes down, but I don't think we're there yet.
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Re:And only a few years behind audio technology... (Score:4, Insightful)
[Looks at youtube video running in browser] Really? [Looks again] You SURE about that?
Chris Mattern
Re:And only a few years behind audio technology... (Score:4, Insightful)
[Looks at youtube video running in browser] Really? [Looks again] You SURE about that?
[Looks at your bank statement showing the income you've made from sharing your YouTube video with the world] Yep, I'm sure about that.
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Internet distribution and cheap large screen TVs seem to be solving that problem. It can be as much fun to have a bunch of friends over for a movie as it is to go out to the movies.
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But I have to ask the question:
Is anyone out there making amateur films that don't take place in the Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Matrix, or other insanely-overdone-fan-universe? Does it always have to be SciFi?! Fer cryin' out loud, is there anyone out there with any originality?!
Ma
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One night in 2002, while playing the Call of Cthulhu RPG, a group of us decided to see how hard it would be to make a movie with existing technology. We figured we'd shoot a movie based on one of our player's unpublished vampire hunter novels. Original characters, original works.
Of course, we had no idea what we were doing. We planned it out over a few weeks, and, after twenty hours of shooting and a couple of months of editing, we had answered our question [google.com].
Was it
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I don't think you understand the situation. This kind of technology doesn't threaten copyrights. Piracy threatens copyrights, and that's what the entertainment industry is "clinging onto". What this is is a more efficient method of producing movies (well, just the crowd scenes), which threatens them in a different, legitimate, competition-i
oh noez! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:oh noez! - don't worry (Score:5, Interesting)
I was an extra in the Da Vinci Code, apart from 3 breakfasts & 2 lunches every day, everything else was exceptionally boring. Especially where a bunch of us had to do the same thing 30 times, but in different places, to simulate a big crowd.
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At least I died facing up so I could watch clouds go by. But my ass was numb when we were done.
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Re:oh noez! (Score:5, Interesting)
Your chances actually dropped to that level about 15 years ago.
I'm not normally one to drop the "!news" tag, but how do you guys think filmmakers have been creating these gigantic crowds over the past decade? There was a special feature on the Gladiator DVD that showed them doing exactly this - it went through the entire process of it. There were only ever about 40 people in the Colosseum during any given fight; they were digitally duplicated to create the illusion of a huge crowd. (It's pretty comical to watch the scenes as they were filmed, with one tiny little section of ravenous fans and the rest of the place empty.)
That wasn't the first time the technique has been used, it's just an easy one to reference. I would doubt the LotR crowds were created any differently.
Very differently (Score:2)
Actually they were created very differently. At the time, there was a big deal made about the crowd scenes being entirely computer-generated using the program "Massive". Several 3D characters were animated and given crowd-behavior AI, then replicated into a large group with each character instance figuring out how to behave in relation to other nearby characters. (One character, an Ura-Kai (sp?) in Battle of Helm's Deep, reportedly stops and takes a
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Want to be in a movie that tens of thousands, perhaps millions of people will actually _see_? Again, no problem, there seems to be a limitless demand for porn out there, just upload your film to a few carefully selected sites and P2P apps and away you go. Of course, no one will know your name or even care much about
Warning! Pendantry Ahead! (Score:2)
Beady eyed pendant? As a pedant with perfectly normal eyes, I take offense!
Also, wasn't the Nicole Richie remark an eating disorder joke? Doesn't she have an eating disorder? If not, she should get one, if only to help make /. less incorrect.
riaHeh (Score:2, Insightful)
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Anyone who's seen 'I Am Legend' knows how far that is from happening.
It was Will Smith vs. a bunch of CGI characters popping around the screen like video game sprites.
When they yelled, their faces distorted beyond physical possibility; When they jumped they went from place A to place B on the screen without much concern for how far apart those places were supposed to be in
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Actors bring more than their physical presence to the movies they appear in. Computer-generated crowds are one thing; if you want to communicate a message to your viewer, you still need someone with the talent to do so.
As for the "expensive" ones, if they movies they appear in bring in large sums of money, the creative people involved in making it deserve significant portion of
I doubt they'd get a significant portion (Score:2)
I'd be really interested to see if it worked out this way. Many popular actors (perhaps not all) aren't demonstrably better at acting than a vast number of other actors who aren't popular. They bring in lots of money because people recognise them, and are more likely to see a movie because they can see that actor. Sometimes people might w
old adage (Score:3, Insightful)
While I can appreciate the ability for those outside of the big Hollywood blockbuster to create decent effects, let's not lose sight of plot and character.
Re:old adage (Score:4, Insightful)
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There hasn't been a original movie out of Hollywood in decades. The Indie film makers on the other hand, they have.
Good god people we are about to see "RAMBO" remade and in the theaters again... It's only a few months away from the announcement that Star wars is going to remake the original 3 films. ET remake, etc.... Hollywood cant do ANYTHING original.
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You mean... like Hollywood?
Projects such as this should serve to make it clear to everyone: making a movie is easy. Telling a story is, and always has been, hard.
apparently the same can't be said for websites (Score:4, Insightful)
'The same gear needed to make a good website is today generally available to amateurs -- which was not so even a decade ago'
And for the sake of argument, lets define the website as the code, the database, the webserver and the network hooking it all up.
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I can use iWeb to make a web site, GarageBand to make a music CD, PageMaker to do a brochure, or Final Cut to make a movie.
But whether or not ANY of them are "good" in any way, shape or form is another matter entirely. Skill, talent, and training still count after all.
In fact, as the tools advance technically to the point where "anyone" can use them, such things are needed even more. Remember Sturgeon's law.
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Sure, just like anyone can write a blog, but if you have nothing interesting to say nobody is going to read it.
All of this tech that is available to average Joe's simply means that the "gatekeepers" in Hollyweird no longer get to decide who gets an audience, or what that audience gets to see. For a fairly modest amount of money, anyone get buy a camera and some editing software and produce a technically acceptable film. If you are inclined to do so, you coul
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I'm a modeler and texture artist. I would never dream of being able to recreate LOTR quality effects on my own - I'd need animators, compositing artists, etc. It's pretty hard for an amateur to put together, and manage a team of highly skilled artists. This is where the studios have the advantage - they can hire and manage specialists in each field.
It can be said, and it's true (Score:2)
The two main issues are the server and the network connection. Even the cheapest PC available from Dell (about $32
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Amateurs: (Score:4, Insightful)
convergence (Score:3, Funny)
I can't believe I just wrote that.
It's not what you think. You're disgusting!
Overly optimistic (Score:3, Insightful)
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Just because I have all the software to make great CGI at home, doesn't mean I'm suddenly a 3D modeler and animation artist. Just because I have High Definition video equipment doesn't mean I can write a good script.
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I think this is a little too optimistic. Sure, the equipment needed to make (some of) the special effects in wide use today is becoming affordable for amateurs, but the special effects industry is constantly evolving. It won't be long before the big movie studios up the bar using far more expensive equipment and more complicated techniques. It's not like special effects have reached some magical point where it's impossible for them to be any better than they are now.
True. Babylon 5 was able to pull off scenes with CGI that would have been impossible for models, scenes that were on a level of complexity similar to Return of the Jedi which was the gold standard for jaw-dropping space action. Granted, the CGI models did not look as good as the ROTJ practical models but this is a mid-budget TV show versus Star Wars! You could not have expected this. And now we have fan films like Star Wreck able to mimic the B5 look quite faithfully, the space shots looking just as good e
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Real things & people look better then CGI characters due to lighting and animation.
And now... (Score:5, Funny)
Chris Mattern
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Spike Milligan got there first. (Score:2)
That's where we're heading (Score:2)
Props to these guys for improving massive battle
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It's quite obvious that cgi can only go to real life quality and not beyond. We're already there and we have the instruments to create a movie that could fool anyone believing it's non-cgi.
i disagree, i still don't think i've seen a CGI depiction of a human that is that close to real life quality. Beowulf 3D was pretty amazing, but not nearly there. movies like the Matrix and Star Wars series had pretty amazing effects, but they're far better at making non-human characters or objects seem real than they are at depicting animated humans. there's just something to the way that humans move that our brain can easily recognize as right or not-right, and they haven't been able to overcome that.
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As for Beowulf, they neve
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You get what you pay for (Score:2)
Not needed! (Score:3, Funny)
A "good film" does not necessarily require advanced technology. What ever happened to a good story and good acting?
Too bad... (Score:5, Funny)
soldiers were not CGI (Score:3, Informative)
Since everybody now can do special effects (Score:2)
Both as positive and negative evidence.
It will be as easy to "prove" that somebody was somewhere else as it is that someone was at the scene of a crime. Or that YOU were part of that riot mob at the football stadium.
Yesterday's movie fiction - today's reality.
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It's clear now that we can manipulate a person into or out of a photo with ease. There's no surprise that we can do it with video. Unless there's some way to independently authenticate the imagery, it should not be used as evidence.
Police will have to rely on the old standbys - confessions, physical evidence, eyewitness accounts and all that.
a few more things... (Score:3, Funny)
Thank you technology! (Score:2)
Video like word processing (Score:2)
Oh man, the porn, the porn!
Seriously, can anyone point to a video production product that is anywhere close to the ease of a word processor? And I am being serious.
Proliferation of fake video evidence? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I had jury duty and that question came up with some drugs found. The whole thing revolves proving a chain of custody. Is the substance collected at the site the same substance presented in the case? Who had it? Who secured it? A hard drive from a hardware time-lapse camera system is more credible
Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Too bad we can't do that in real life.
Gosh! That was deep and out of character for me.
Um, uh, in Soviet Russia... uh... you profit from a beowulf cluster of these... or something.
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I think Switzerland [guardian.co.uk] intended to procure an invasion with hardly anyone at all, reinforced by CGI soldiers, but I hear it didn't turn out so well.
Didn't think it was that impressive (Score:2)
There's so much more going on (Score:3, Interesting)
Bad lighting for example, will make a scene feel cheap and take the viewer out of the story. Good lighting does require a fair bit of money: you need many, many instruments, carefully balanced. "Reality" isn't nearly as convincing: it leaves distracting shadows that you don't notice when you're there because you're immersed in the scene and unconsciously correcting for where the sun is, where the trees and buildings are, etc.
It takes a huge amount of time and effort to set those up properly. It also takes a highly skilled operator to know what's going to work, and that operator has to work in conjunction with the cameras, the set, the makeup artists, the costume designers, etc.
A really professional and polished TV show or movie is an immensely unwieldy beast. And incredibly expensive, because so many of those people are standing around doing nothing so much of the time, but an adjustment by any one of them can involve an effort by all of them.
You probably think you don't need all this stuff, but it's because when it's well done, you don't notice any of it. It looks as if the sun just happened to be in the right place, the camera lens just happened to match what your eye would have done under the circumstance, the sound just happened to capture what you think your eyes are seeing...
Trust me, nothing on a movie or TV stage "just happens". You can produce some nice small films and pass off the cheap feel as "indie", and such films often wonderfully highlight the acting, directing, and writing talent. But even a small professional movie costs millions of dollars, and the effect is vastly more enjoyable to most people. They can't say why because they don't know what they're looking at, and that's all to the good, but it doesn't mean that they don't have preferences.
Glitch in the matrix (Score:2)
didnt Forest Gump do this first? (Score:2)
Blender and Blender People, and other tools (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.harkyman.com/bp.html [harkyman.com]
Is it quite as advanced as Massive, no, but I did some test renders a few years ago on a spare BSD box I had and it worked pretty well with a 1000 "Actors". It took a few hours to calculate out the frames and even more to render, but the results are acceptable. I believe the developer has a few demo videos available.
Blender's not perfect, the particle engine is in need of a massive overhaul and volumetric lighting is needed. While model import has gotten better, it's still not perfect. For some strange reason, the earlier 2.41 and 2.3.x versions handled lightwave models a bit better than the latest releases.
I've toyed with Cinelerra before, but I had some issues with capture cards, etc.. Jahshaka is coming along.
I'm not running out and replacing FCP/Shake/Lightwave any time soon. Mainly because I already have those apps and know how to use them. And the folks I do work for are running on the same set-ups (usually minus Shake.)
Even on the low cost side, FXhome's suite has some nice features for the $150 price point of Effects lab pro. Also, their compositing application is far more forgiving than a lot of the higher priced professional tools. So if someone shoots a greenscreen shot without proper lighting, I can go in with Composite lab (or VisionLab Studio) and do the composite a lot quicker than in Shake sometimes. (Especially if it's DV footage).
Even iLife is pretty powerful these days. Probably for 90% of the editing I do, I could get buy with iMovie (things like Weddings), or even Final Cut Express.
Ten Commandments and Gettysburg (Score:2)
Also, in the 1993 film Gettysburg, for scenes such as Picket's charge, they would film a few companies of re-enactors, and then duplicate them to create Picket's division.
Cheaper - better? (Score:2)
The cheaper it is to make a movie, the easier it is to get the movie made, and made properly.
Say some young hotshot has a great idea for this weird, quirky movie. If it costs a lot of money, the studio will start pushing the guy around. No, don't cast that guy as the lead, cast one of our proven stars. No, take out that sarcastic sub-plot; it might offend someone. The more money is at stake, the less risk they will allow, and t
Video Toaster (Score:2)
The problem with the Video Toaster was that all of the other equipment was so expensive because you still had to do the Analog-to-Digital-to-Analog conversion and what the Video Toaster really succeeded in doing was bringing cheaper equipment to the professionals (The Tonight Show, Seaquest DSV, and Babylon 5 to name a few all used Amiga
Very little to do with the cost of Extras (Score:5, Interesting)
No, Extras don't cost that much. A non-union extra gets paid about $75 for a day's work, where a day can be half an hour or 14 hours. A union Extra might get $125 and a better sandwich.
The problem is that it takes forever to organize and shoot scenes with a lot of extras, particularly where even a couple of people acting like douchebags can wreck the whole scene. The last film I did any extra work on was 'My Super Ex Girlfriend' and there were about 200 of us in the small park at 72nd and Broadway here in NYC. Our job was to gawk at a building on fire. Sounds pretty simple, right?
Yeah, until you realize that 3/4 of the extras think that being an extra is their ticket to fame. I happened to get 'placed' right near one of the lead actors as he emerged from the subway, and as we shot and re-shot one minute of that scene 5 times (over the course of 7 hours), other extras would elbow me out of the way because they wanted to be 'near the star.' There is a whole sham community around being an extra where you attend a class outside of New York or LA and some local agent in your nearest mid-size city (say, Philadelphia) 'signs' you and just sends you out on a bunch of extra calls. The agent gets a fixed rate for every warm body they send, you spend a day doing very little, and your agent hopes you never realize that real actors don't work that way.
If I were producing that or any other movie with extras, I'd use as few extras as possible. Not to save money. Just to save the people I am actually employing full-time a lot of aggravation.
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so when will the scripts improve? (Score:2)
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My thinking is that for the most part, the film industry is allowed to screw around making whatever junk it wants, with many of its workers (from the key grip to the production heads) believing that they really are doing what they can with the philosophies they personally generate. But if the top dogs decide that it is time for society to jump in a specific direction, then there are ways to ensure that the message is effective and powerful and respect
Bullshit false analogy (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah... four days.. (Score:2, Interesting)
digital age (Score:2)
The same technology that makes the product available for free, makes it so cheap to produce that amateurs are able to do it.
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what is the tipping point between post cost and extras cost? It's not like extras make any money really, the big expense is costumes and pyro/explosions anyways... if it takes the expensive post guys months to composite and add fx (compositing with waves crashing on the beach and syncing things is not exactly easy) it might make a lot more financial sense to hire a couple thousand extras and do things the traditional way, not to mention that with real extras it's a lot easier to see what the
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http://www.google.com/search?q=film+extra+union [google.com]
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