Digital VS Human Actors

• Even if a producer wanted to cast a computer-generated actress, it would be impracticable to do so. In the first place, the technology to create a believable virtual human is not here yet - nor is it likely to ever be; in the second place, even if it were here, it would cost much more to create a digital woman than it would to hire the real deal. Digital technology can be used to create background extras for big crowd scenes ("Titanic", "Gladiator") but lead performers do not need to fear losing roles to 3-D people. How many production dollars equal at human? Incalculable!

• The reason that computer-generated actors will not replace human actors can be found in Aristotle's "Poetics." There, he speaks of mimesis, the way we humans copy the behavior of one another. Mimesis is fundamental to drama and all of acting. Actors copy the behavior of their characters, and the audience relates. When we recognize the behavior of a character on stage as similar to our own, we feel psychologically visible. In life, babies learn to wave bye-bye by copying mom. A novice tennis player learns to play better by watching and copying the stance and racket techniques of a pro. Mimesis is fundamental to human life. Regardless of how technically excellent computer art may become, humans will never relate to computer-generated characters in the same way they relate to human actors. There necessarily is an extra mental step involved when you watch animation. It is not so easy to suspend disbelief and give yourself over to the pull of empathy.

• Tom Hanks was quoted in a New York Times article awhile back as being concerned about the increasing number of digital actors in movies. Like in "Final Fantasy", for example. Director Steven Speilberg, on the other hand, considers the whole thing to be a non-issue. Some folks are talking about creating entirely new movies with digitally re-configured images of Humphrey Bogart, Clark Cable and Marilyn Monroe. Directors of major movies nowadays are routinely making full-body digital scans of their lead actors, adding to the anxiety. What are they going to do with those scans? Is it possible that the actors may show up in some future movie, their lips in sync with someone else's voice? All of this is the stuff of science fiction, but I suggest that it is too soon to panic. The livelihood of actors is not going to be threatened by digital actors any time soon.

• Actors are connected to their audience via emotion. We humans empathize with emotion, not thinking. If you are happy, I feel happy, and if you are sad, I feel sad. If I touch your arm, the sensation evokes an emotional response. Mothers empathize with their babies; lovers empathize with one another.

In the legitimate theater, actors and audience are in the same place at the same time for a common purpose, connected via empathy. They breathe the same air, feel each others' presence. This is an essential characteristic of the theatrical experience. When actors perform in front of a camera for eventual exhibition in a movie theater, they are still communicating with the audience via emotions. A person goes to see a movie and knows that the images on screen are photos of real actors.

• The presence of a digital actor on screen, no matter how realistically rendered, demands too much suspension-of-disbelief from the audience. Watching a movie with digital actors is a kind of carnival sideshow, a trip to Imax or Cinerama, a weird experience. It may be fun and kicky, but there is not a possibility that the audience will forget that the images on screen are fake. Indeed, most producers go to such trouble to produce these digital images that they want to use their presence as a sales tool in movie promotion. Instead of encouraging us to forget, they are banging us over the head with it.

• Technology being what it is, we will definitely see increasing use of digital humans on screen in the future, and some of them will be so life-like they will be eerie. Don't worry about it. Digital images will not deliver the same aesthetic as live action movies or, say, an animated feature like "Toy Story" or "Snow White". Cartoons are not trying to fool anybody. They're cartoons. Digital humans are designed to trick the audience's eye.

• Welcome to the future, folks. This technology isn't going away. SAG and AFTRA are going to have to deal with it and find contracts for it. At the end of the day, however, actors are still shamans, and

• they are still talking to the tribe. Anything that moves too far a-field from that basic aesthetic experience is not a threat to actors.