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Well, why are good actors so sought-after? What makes someone an actor whose likeness people seek and what makes a B-tier actor? Part of it is inertia and rand

Well, why are good actors so sought-after? What makes someone an actor whose likeness people seek and what makes a B-tier actor? Part of it is inertia and random celebrity status, having an attractive or interesting face etc., but part of it is also the raw knowledge of when to apply certain microexpressions, how to gesture etc. i.e. how to do the acting itself. To be a convincing, charismatic etc. actor it's not enough to wear a digital mask of a celebrity, the underlying actor still needs to act well. That may not be so important for certain types of shallow movies, but it certainly is for deeper drama films etc. It's similar to today's text generation where you may be able to generate sports game reports, user's manuals or travel brochures etc. but not really those where you need high level decisions, like applying the appropriate expressions to a real-world event, taking into account all the context, like writing a poem about your feelings reflecting on some recent real-world event. I'm not saying humans have a magical power that can't be implemented in silicon. What I'm saying is that deepfakes as they are today are not sufficient to replace actors. You'd need a higher level puppeteering AI that would take the whole storyline and script into account to come up with the right ways to express the appropriate emotions at that moment in the film and could take the director's instructions regarding his vision of how the drama should unfold etc.

ant6n 5y ago
One example where it shows that the actor doesn't just provide a face, but, well,the acting, is back to the Future. Originally they had wanted to cast Michael J Fox, but he wasn't available. So they picked a different actor. And that actor didn't get that the movie was supposed to be fun. They shot several weeks with this actor who was turning the movie into something very serious, being terrified by being transplanted into the past, and finding it tragic to come back to a present where everything is different. Theres a good documentary about this [1], that talks about replacing that actor, and when Fox comes on set and delivers the first line filmed ("You put a time machine... In a DeLorean?!"), it's hilarious, night and day difference. [1] season 2, episode 1 of movies that made us www.netflix.com/us/title/80990849
tshaddox 5y ago
I think all the stuff you describe about charisma is absolutely true in the creative mode of generating value, but there is also an extractive mode of generating value for which I absolutely think deepfakes could be very effective. Once an actor establishes an audience (generally through the creative mode you describe), there is still an opportunity to extract as much value as possible from the remaining good will of the fan base. This already happens with famous actors producing cheap and unpopular movies that seem to only exist to put that actor’s name and face on the poster.

ant6n 5y ago

One example where it shows that the actor doesn't just provide a face, but, well,the acting, is back to the Future. Originally they had wanted to cast Michael J Fox, but he wasn't available. So they picked a different actor. And that actor didn't get that the movie was supposed to be fun. They shot several weeks with this actor who was turning the movie into something very serious, being terrified by being transplanted into the past, and finding it tragic to come back to a present where everything is different. Theres a good documentary about this [1], that talks about replacing that actor, and when Fox comes on set and delivers the first line filmed ("You put a time machine... In a DeLorean?!"), it's hilarious, night and day difference. [1] season 2, episode 1 of movies that made us www.netflix.com/us/title/80990849

tshaddox 5y ago

I think all the stuff you describe about charisma is absolutely true in the creative mode of generating value, but there is also an extractive mode of generating value for which I absolutely think deepfakes could be very effective. Once an actor establishes an audience (generally through the creative mode you describe), there is still an opportunity to extract as much value as possible from the remaining good will of the fan base. This already happens with famous actors producing cheap and unpopular movies that seem to only exist to put that actor’s name and face on the poster.