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Saw the still and thought “ah it doesn’t look that bad”.
Saw it “animated”, and yikes.
Just pay your fucking actors.
background is roughly $150/person/day. Surely that’s still cheaper than whatever this is?
Including costumes and hiring?
you’ve already allocated that budget though, it’d be real hard to engage costuming services and then nickle and dime them on a few extras, as costuming has access to warehouses and backstock and likely your wardrobe head would have to advise the AI artists on costuming anyway, so the money would go to consulting.
casting is similar, depending on production either one house will engage all casting including background, or you might split principle and location services, but is the VX team making the AI extras is cheaper than the casting companies who have been doing it for decades?
also, creating bad will by fucking over union staff and industry relationships might cost more in the long run.
edit: also, the added costs of:
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before: actor walks down street past some extras
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after: actor walks down street past several carefully calibrated blue screens and mo cap spikes, past an extra dressed in mo-cap suit, who is then edited out and replaced with a fake extra…
isn’t it just cheaper and easier to just put the mocap guy in a cowboy hat and leather chaps?
Wardrobe rarely interacts with background, I spent over a decade doing background work and I can count the number of times I was given wardrobe on my hands, generally only if it’s a sci-fi or similarly abnormal setting, otherwise they just ask you to come dressed in X or Y style clothes.
I think it was you I just agreed with on a different comment and you’re right here too.
I only dealt with wardrobe once when I worked as an extra… Back in 1996 on a made for TV civil war movie called “Andersonville”… But we were portraying POWs so they wanted to sufficiently dirty us up so it made sense.
Yep it was haha, and yeah I did easily 100-200 shoots and only ever saw wardrobe or makeup a few times, usually my agent would just tell me the general dress code for the shoot like casual, formal, business, whatever.
I actually had this whole thought process and neglected to put it in my reply.
I had meant to start with “when you have to dress extras due to it being a period piece… or have featured extras” and say it’s still (probably) cheaper than AI.
I’m gonna be real with you, you really don’t understand how the industry works, and have made some really wild napkin math to support your argument, referring to some crappy CG models that someone probably made in an afternoon as “AI” definitely doesn’t help in that respect. You keep saying the money is “already allocated” but that isn’t how it works, you pay people by the hour and the wardrobe staff would need to deal with each extra separately which takes time, and have more physical wardrobe to do that with, we are talking about 10x the amount of time and wardrobe or more in the case of a period piece.
Further, they don’t just throw money in a bucket for all casting, with the exception of the leads everyone is being paid by the hour, it doesn’t matter how much money was allocated that’s not how any of this works. This is why cost overruns are so common in movies, except for a small handful of people at the top (Producer, Director, Lead Actors) every single person on the set is being paid by the hour, and every MINUTE that the set is active for costs the production money. The per hour costs for shoots can be absolutely staggering, it adds up very quickly, and you are just casually saying “hey lets get a bunch of background people in costume, it won’t cost much!” but even getting that many people on and off the set takes time, which costs money… LOTS of money.
Also the “bad will” part is bullshit too, most background performers are not union, in fact it can be VERY difficult to get union status as a background performer. The union does not care, and these CG actors are no different than the cardboard, inflatable, or mannequins that are commonly used in crowd scenes.
I guarantee you these CG models were cheaper than the extras they replaced, and I would suggest you stop speaking with authority about things you clearly don’t understand, I say this as someone who has worked both as a background performer and a crew member on literally hundreds of productions over multiple decades. Please quit your bullshit.
I am sorry if that was impolite, but you are stating facts that are entirely wrong, and it helps nobody to spread disinformation like this.
I have also worked as background, supporting and co-star (although mostly in Europe, I’ve only done short films in the US). And I will admit that the majority of my resume is theatre, followed by VO.
When I say “already allocated”, I’m speaking generally and colloquially about how you can’t attribute a PO log for VX to Talent or Wardrobe on the fly (at least not in a professional shop). I mean… I guess you could VOID out something and reattribute, but it probably wouldn’t look good in an audit as you’d get a massive variance; or if it’s as cheap as you say maybe it could come out of the 10% contingency… but again that’s not very professional and in a large scale production the auditors would come knocking.
Usually that’s all locked up in software — your call sheet, PL sheet, PO log are all preferably generated from the same stack so it can all roll back up.
And I will defend that wardrobe budget is preallocated, (with projected variance baked in and petty cash allowances, too as BTL lines) in the topsheet as an above the line expense. Line items including properties, pieces and manhours are then drawn down as POs + fringes.
As you will know from working BGs, your call sheet will have stipulations about what to wear and you will be triaged into the scene based on how well you did it. I know I’ve made a half assed attempt before just so I can lurk at the back one day — these stipulations will have been made with some of the wardrobe department.
Although you “pay people by the hour” you still need to budget how much to pay people + variance + Fringes before you go into production. They don’t “throw money in a bucket” literally but you’re confusing BTL line item hours with ATL topsheet summaries which are (metaphorical) buckets.
Background and main talent are separated in StudioBinder (not sure about Movie Magic) but generating bg paydays as a portion of budget is definitely a common function.
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Probably. And it’ll look better.
Not if you have a library of extras that can be inserted into a video clip in post production. They had a budget and the render quality reflects that. I’m sure it will only get better and cheaper.
well that technically exists without “AI”, it’s just regular VFX. No AI needed.
The AI part is to prevent paying an actor and/or an animator.
Can the AI handle realistic, non distracting fake humans when they might walk behind a tree, or a railing, or its raining…? if not then you need to employ a VX team, you can’t just tell AI to do it.
And then if you need that AI to be drafted, redrafted, changed, edited, tweaked… each iteration costs money. Is that cheaper than having someone just walk down a street?
Where I see AI coming into play is unique faces and such and organic body movement. I don’t think we’re there yet with the second, but I don’t think we’re far off either. But I agree there’s still a lot of traditional VFX.
I still don’t think it’ll be cheaper, quicker or easier than getting a bunch of people who live locally to turn up at 5am for a couple of hundred bucks and free meals for a relatively easy gig.
Gotta put in an Asian but don’t want to hire one
This shit makes the mummy 2 look like a masterpiece.
I’m going to be honest, this is a huge nothingburger. How often do you pause and look at a crowd that’s shown for a few seconds at most? Does this actually affect your viewing experience?
It doesn’t necessarily affect your viewing experience if you aren’t paying attention to it, but I think the bigger problem is when these CGI characters become indistinguishable from humans so much that they start replacing humans in live action.
I thought so, but then I checked out the clip. It’s hilariously bad, the crowd looks like 1st gen Asimo robots just making a hand motion in a loop. It’s a lot worse in motion than in a still pic
Don’t even have to pause it to see how bad it is. The reason this is newsworthy is because this is exactly the type of thing SAG AFTRA is striking against.
Everyone mentions LOTR, but they did those by duplicating the images of the real actors, and done at such distances no discernable detail is visible.
This shit just looks awful. Regardless of what opinions anyone has on AI vs real people, nobody wants it to look ugly. This is ugly AF.
" “Prom Pact,” a B-grade teen movie on the Disney Channel."
I don’t think this is comparable to LotR, this isn’t a blockbuster movie it’s a trashy disposable low budget teen movie.
These CG extras are probably cheaper per unit than the old “stick two rows of humans in front of a dozen rows of cardboard cutouts” trick they’ve been using for decades.
You are not understanding the difference between using AI to create the movement of the crowd, and using AI to digitize entirely new actors. They digitally duplicated the actors, and using a more video game like AI created the motion of those actors in the scene.
They talk in length about this in many commentary tracks of the actual releases of the movies.
No, I understand. You don’t understand how any of the technology works so when you listened to the commentaries you misunderstood.
Here’s one example of Weta showing off Massive used for one of many shots at Helm’s Deep.
Are you being voluntarily obtuse and not recognizing the fact that the general public means “machine learning” when they say “AI”, or are you saying that massive uses machine learning ? Because as far as I know, at least when this movie was being made, massive was just “intelligent agents” (no machine learning involved) + softbody physics. The end result is a crowd that looks realistic enough from afar.
No I am not disputing the use of intelligent agents in Massive. In this discussion I’m the person who namedropped the tool. What I’m disputing is the interpretation of what WETA did to produce the large scale combat. People have misinterpreted that some mid range scenes used judiciously copy pasted actors and props to mean that’s all they used when clearly Massive was used with entirely digital 3D modeled and hand textured actors and props for longer distance shots when they needed to work at scale.
Massive, like its predecessor “a flock of birds” is a very very useful particle control and generation system and it was definitely in use here with hand modelled and textured characters and props.
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Lol I didn’t think it was gunna look that bad.
Definitely looks terrible but things like this aren’t new. Whole crowds of orc and humans were CGI in at least one Lord of the Rings film. They used a lot of actors but still needed fill.
I don’t really see an issue with extras being replaced.
First of all, LOTR didn’t replace all actors in any battle scene. They used their brand new ‘MASSIVE’ software for the tens of thousands of characters too distant to distinguish from the hundreds and thousands real actors used that were visible.
The other difference is that scale - it was literally not possible for LOTR to have enough extras due to complexity, local population, and budget. This is a scene with only a couple dozen people on screen at any moment.
What’s the big deal? They uses to use cardboard cut outs , look at star wars a new hope during the award ceremony
Pure nightmare fuel.
Surely people would line up to be extras in film… why would they resort to GTA NPCs?
Clearly said by someone that hasn’t worked in the industry.
Extra work is often miserable, has 0 job security, and is really only suitable for people with very little or no expenses.
Furthermore crowds are regularly filled with fake extras, even back to the 90s most times you worked as an extra in a crowd scene it was one or two rows of humans standing in front of a dozen rows of cardboard cutouts.
Yep.
I’ve worked as an extra several times.
In large crowd scenes it’s been pretty common to have fake people one way or another for a long time.
One of the movies I was an extra in was “We are Marshall”, which is a football movie.
Most of the faces in the stands in the football game crowd scenes were attached to inflatable torsos.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
While the WGA has since come to an agreement with studios, SAG-AFTRA’s strike is still ongoing — and the use of artificial intelligence in the industry has remained a huge point of contention, with actors calling for protections against studios using AI-generated versions of their voices or likenesses — and for good reason.
The clip, which first made its rounds on social media back in April, shows an audience seated on bleachers watching a high school basketball game.
The clip reignited a heated debate surrounding the use of computer-generated imagery in film, and how the tech could eventually replace human actors, a major talking point during SAG-AFTRA’s ongoing negotiations.
In a press conference immediately following the union’s call for a strike in July, executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland revealed that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers proposed to have background performers scanned, “get paid for one day’s pay, and their company should own that scan their image, their likeness and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity.”
“Disney is insane and just more reason why the AMPTP needs to ditch this plan to replace background actors with AI,” freelance writer Christopher Marc, who recently shared the “Prom Pact” clip, tweeted.
This week, SAG-AFTRA proposed a bill to lawmakers called the NO FAKES Act, “creating new and urgently needed protections for voice and likeness in the age of generative artificial intelligence.”
The original article contains 431 words, the summary contains 237 words. Saved 45%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
[off topic] This is why I love the old movies. When you see something happen on screen you know that it’s an actual person doing the stunt.
James Bond’s ‘Thunderball’ has has a team of Navy SEALs parachuting into the middle of the ocean and then scuba diving to battle SPECTRE agents armed with sea sleds. ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ has an army on camels attackign a city. ‘Waterloo’ recreated the battle with 16,000 Red Army troops trained to fight a Napoleonic battle.
Either that or legitimately a cardboard cutout
Please, point out the cardboard cut outs for me.
I was referring to where you said that that was why you liked old movies, not about that specific movie, tons of old movies, even major ones, used cardboard cutouts to pad the numbers for cheaper than paying extras
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That’s look horrible.
But I personally don’t care about it for background actors and crowds. I mean where do you draw the line. Look at Lord of the Rings Fellowship trilogy. They created tech to fake those huge wide angle battle scenes. Does that get covered by any rules/legislation that puts limits on AI actors? It’s a fine line to walk that’s for sure.
Do tell me in what world would you actually expect any film production to cast and then costume those kind of numbers found in films like LOTR.
Let’s take the Battle of the Pelennor Fields for example: 3,000 Gondorians 500 Guards of the Citadel 3,000ish South Gondorians and outlying provinces 6,000 Rohirrim cavalry soldiers 30 Northern Dunedain Tens of thousands of Orcs, Easterlings, Haradrim,Variags, oliphaunts and trolls.
I don’t see any fine line here at all.
Huh? I never said that I expect them to use only actors. I understand using technology to fill in large battle scenes. But it just has to be done right.
Anybody watch Some More News on this topic?
Why Are Modern Blockbusters So… Not Very Good
Hi. In today’s episode, we look at modern blockbuster filmmaking, excessive CGI, the power producers have over the artistic process, and why studios need all their movies to make $1 billion.
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Oh hey, Colin got that job.
It is pretty funny tho
