[MUD-Dev] Much Respect to JessicaM

[Michael Tresca]

Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com posted on Monday, September 09,
2002 4:56 AM
> From: Michael Tresca [mailto:talien at toast.net]

>> No more traditional movies.
>> No more traditional TV.

> Sure... and tv will kill radio, and video will kill the cinema.

You'll note that I use the words "no more traditional" before each
medium.  Nowhere did I say it would "kill" anything.  Radio and
video and cinema were all significantly altered by the other
mediums.  They weren't killed.  I'm proposing the same.

> I would also take this opportunity to remind you how well received
> Mr Lucas's forays in this direction have gone - JaJa Binks anyone?
> Perhaps Lucas is unique, but the more he has become enabled by
> techonology, the worse his movies have become. Constraints seemed
> to bring out the best in him.

You're right.  That's because the technology isn't ready.  Lucas is
pushing the envelope and from what I've read, it's likely he
actually advanced technology in the field by demanding it be
included in his movies.  But the simple fact of the matter is,
currently CGI is NOT ultra-realistic.

My above premise is based on the belief that at some point, computer
graphics will be utterly indistinguishable from photographs and
film.  Some of this happens already in subtle ways, like changing
the weather in the background or cleaning up an actor's appearance.
The technology is not there yet.  Give it time (ten years, who
knows) and it will be.

> Anyway, I honestly believe that actors do considerably more than
> just stand there reciting lines. However pretty we can get the
> real time graphics, interfacing with a control system that would
> allow proper facial expressiveness for instance, doesn't seem that
> likely anytime soon.  Espcially when you consider all the subtle
> aspects of a performance, the intangibles that separate a poor or
> moderate performance from an amazing one. Translate that to a PC?

I agree that some actors do.  Others don't.  See my previous
comments about creating a franchise.

I see no problem in translating subtle aspects of a performance to a
PC.  It's just a matter of the expressiveness of the medium.

> Final Fantasy the movie was chock-full of state of the art CGI. It
> was roundly criticised for the wooden performance of the 'actors'
> and a plot better suited to a computer game. I feel there are
> parallels that can be drawn between this and what you are
> proposing.

Final Fantasy was akin to what Lucas was doing only even more
ridiculous.  They created an extremely expensive puppet show.  The
technology's not ready.  Somewhere, studio execs decided that they
were.

The parallels aren't accurate because movies like that are just
cartoons.  When a MMORPG gets to the level of utter photo-realism,
where everything is so detailed that it looks like a movie (which is
what gamers are craving for, right?), when the "cut scenes" ARE the
game, only even better -- THEN you can start filming.

I came to this conclusion after watching DKP Effects, Inc. explain
their new Dungeons & Dragons interactive DVDs

  http://www.dkp.com/Flash/noflash/index.html

at Gen Con.  It's all CGI using the "iconic" characters of Dungeons
& Dragons. They explained how technology was such that actors could
now act out entire scenes without storyboarding them.  Since the
sensors exactly mimicked the actors' actions, it was simple to tweak
the CGI bodies.  They even recorded the audio as it happened.  Is
DKP on this list?

It struck me how easily this could be a MMORPG that was taped, with
the director using thousands of hidden cameras and a lot of time in
the editing room.  It's definitely cheaper than hiring an actor.
Once the technology gets so good that you can't distinguish it from
reality, you have...well you have "Wag the Dog"
(http://us.imdb.com/Title?0120885).

> Perhaps with the mud-hammer, everything is looking like a nail?

This has much less to do with MUDs and MMORPGs and a lot more to do
with drawing connections between a million virtual actors and what
an enterprising director would do with them.

Mike "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://www.retromud.org/talien





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