Who needs flesh-and-blood actors when filmmaking technology has accelerated to the point that characters can be portrayed by digital renderings so convincing that few moviegoers notice the difference?
"Benjamin Button and Avatar created digital characters that achieved the one thing that hadn't happened before," said Avatar's Oscar-winning visual effects guru Paul Debevec, pictured above, in a phone interview with Wired.com.
"When you look in their faces, look into their eyes, the performance that drove that character comes through in a believable way," he said. "You can get a sense of what the character is thinking."
The eye-tricking tech that drove Avatar's amazingly lifelike sci-fi fabrications will be addressed Tuesday during a South by Southwest panel titled "The Birth of Eye-Def Acting." Debevec, based at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, will be joined by Avatar animator A.J. Briones, Ubisoft's Mathieu Ferland, Wired magazine contributing editor Clive Thompson and Advanced Micro Devices exec Neal Robison.
Debevec's Light Stage technology, yoked with hyperdense video image data, has enabled tiny facial movements to be captured with unprecedented precision. In the case of Avatar, Debevec says, "We scanned Stephen Lang so that in the final battle sequences where he's fighting that AMP suit, he's a totally digital guy moving around in space. And for Sigourney Weaver's final scenes, her face and her performance are completely computer-rendered."
Debevec believes the ability to shoot scenes on green screens devoid of sets, costumes and lighting headaches could liberate digital moviemakers to concentrate on "the key part of the film, which is the director working with actors," he says. "That can now happen in a controlled environment in relatively relaxed conditions."
"The Birth of Eye-Def Acting" panel takes place at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at SXSW.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com
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