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Virtual actor 234
Virtual actor
A virtual human or digital clone is the creation or re-creation of a human being in image and voice using
computer-generated imagery and sound. The process of creating such a virtual human on film, substituting for an
existing actor, is known, after a 1992 book, as Schwarzeneggerization, and in general virtual humans employed in
movies are known as synthespians, virtual actors, vactors, cyberstars, or "silicentric" actors. There are several
legal ramifications for the digital cloning of human actors, relating to copyright and personality rights. People who
have already been digitally cloned as simulations include Bill Clinton, Marilyn Monroe, Fred Astaire, Ed Sullivan,
Elvis Presley, Anna Marie Goddard, and George Burns. Ironically, data sets of Arnold Schwarzenegger for the
[1] [2]
creation of a virtual Arnold (head, at least) have already been made.
The name Schwarzeneggerization comes from the 1992 book Et Tu, Babe by Mark Leyner. In one scene, on pages
50–51, a character asks the shop assistant at a video store to have Arnold Schwarzenegger digitally substituted for
existing actors into various works, including (amongst others) Rain Man (to replace both Tom Cruise and Dustin
Hoffman), My Fair Lady (to replace Rex Harrison), Amadeus (to replace F. Murray Abraham), The Diary of Anne
Frank (as Anne Frank), Gandhi (to replace Ben Kingsley), and It's a Wonderful Life (to replace James Stewart).
Schwarzeneggerization is the name that Leyner gives to this process. Only 10 years later, Schwarzeneggerization
was close to being reality. [1]
By 2002, Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey, Kate Mulgrew, Michelle Pfeiffer, Denzel Washington, Gillian Anderson, and
David Duchovny had all had their heads laser scanned to create digital computer models thereof. [1]
Early history
Early computer-generated animated faces include the 1985 film Tony de Peltrie and the music video for Mick
Jagger's song "Hard Woman" (from She's the Boss). The first actual human beings to be digitally duplicated were
Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart in a March 1987 film created by Daniel Thalmann and Nadia
Magnenat-Thalmann for the 100th anniversary of the Engineering Society of Canada. The film was created by six
people over a year, and had Monroe and Bogart meeting in a café in Montreal. The characters were rendered in three
dimensions, and were capable of speaking, showing emotion, and shaking hands. [3]
In 1987, the Kleizer-Walczak Construction Company begain its Synthespian ("synthetic thespian") Project, with the
aim of creating "life-like figures based on the digital animation of clay models". [2]
In 1988, Tin Toy was the first entirely computer-generated movie to win an Academy Award (Best Animated Short
Film). In the same year, Mike the Talking Head, an animated head whose facial expression and head posture were
controlled in real time by a puppeteer using a custom-built controller, was developed by Silicon Graphics, and
performed live at SIGGRAPH. In 1989, The Abyss, directed by James Cameron included a computer-generated face
[3] [4]
placed onto a watery pseudopod.
In 1991, Terminator 2, also directed by Cameron, confident in the abilities of computer-generated effects from his
experience with The Abyss, included a mixture of synthetic actors with live animation, including computer models of
Robert Patrick's face. The Abyss contained just one scene with photo-realistic computer graphics. Terminator 2
[3] [4] [5]
contained over forty shots throughout the film.
In 1997, Industrial Light and Magic worked on creating a virtual actor that was a composite of the bodily parts of
several real actors. [2]
By the 21st century, virtual actors had become a reality. The face of Brandon Lee, who had died partway through the
shooting of The Crow in 1994, had been digitally superimposed over the top of a body-double in order to complete
those parts of the movie that had yet to be filmed. By 2001, three-dimensional computer-generated realistic humans
had been used in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and by 2004, a synthetic Laurence Olivier co-starred in Sky
[6] [7]
Captain and the World of Tomorrow.