Nicolas Cage Urges Young Actors To Protect Themselves From AI (deadline.com) 41
Actor Nicolas Cage warned young performers about the dangers of AI in film production during his speech at the Newport Beach Film Festival on Sunday. Cage urged actors to protect their craft from employment-based digital replica (EBDR) technology, which allows studios to manipulate performances post-filming. "This technology wants to take your instrument," Cage said. He explained that EBDR enables studios to alter actors' faces, voices, and body language after shooting, potentially compromising artistic integrity. Cage cited his cameo in "The Flash" as an example of EBDR use. He advised actors to consider their rights when approached with contracts permitting EBDR, coining the phrase "MVMFMBMI: my voice, my face, my body, my imagination."
His Imagination? (Score:3)
"He advised actors to consider their rights when approached with contracts permitting EBDR, coining the phrase "MVMFMBMI: my voice, my face, my body, my imagination."
But actors are being paid for thttps://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl#heir voice, face, and body. Screen writers and directors are paid for their imagination.
You need to watch better movies (Score:5, Insightful)
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But not as well. Just more cheaply. What the AI is saying is that they don't want actors, they want models.
It's also going to lead to examples of AI modified actors to be the same in more than one performance, forcibly typecasting the actors to having the same recognizable style of intonation or body language. Hard enough to not be typecast as it is, but now they'll be intentionally typecast.
Give it time... (Score:2)
But not as well.
Yet. As the technology improves it is hard to see it not soon getting much better than many actors and when that happens you won't need actors faces either since it's easy for an AI to generate a face already.
Now you're just trolling (Score:2)
Re:You need to watch better movies (Score:4, Interesting)
This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_in_rain_monologue [wikipedia.org] comes to mind.
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A good actor brings a completely different imagination to a role. Go look up John Hurt (the guy with the chest burster in Alien) playing the fool in King Leer. You'd hardly know it was him.
A good actor has range.
I saw Paul Reiser in The Boys recently, never would have guessed he was the corporate weasel in Aliens without looking it up. Whilst we're on the subject of The Boys, Karl Urban (Billy Butcher) also played Doctor McCoy in the new Star Trek films.
Then again, actors that only do one thing (I.E. Adam Sandler, Dwayne Johnson) can also do well for themselves.
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Wait, are you saying Sandler has no range? Maybe you missed Uncut Gems or Punch-Drunk Love?
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Directors who do not actively encourage their actors to bring their own creativity to the role are hacks who produce crap movies. It isn't hard to find accounts of movie scenes, sometimes almost entire movies, that were adlibbed by actors (like Robin Williams, who was famous for having no real idea what the script said). It happens a lot.
Re:His Imagination? (Score:4, Insightful)
Directors who do not actively encourage their actors to bring their own creativity to the role are hacks who produce crap movies.
To be fair, directors are also part of the creative process and are responsible for the work as a whole, not just the individual performer and both parts must work together to produce the final product. Having either the director or actors be too controlling or go off the rails isn't productive.
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Directors who do not actively encourage their actors to bring their own creativity to the role are hacks who produce crap movies.
To be fair, directors are also part of the creative process and are responsible for the work as a whole, not just the individual performer and both parts must work together to produce the final product. Having either the director or actors be too controlling or go off the rails isn't productive.
Entirely true. There are as many movies that suck horribly because prima donna actors ignored directors as because prima donna directors ignoring actors.
But what I replied to claimed that actors have (or should have) no creative input.
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The key part of improv / ad libbing is that you that you need talented actors. When they go off script it can be pure magic like Robin Williams playing the genie in Aladdin or the original Ghostbusters where ~80% of it was improv.
Ad libbing by hack frauds is how you get Ghostbuster 2016. Jokes that just aren't funny.
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Screen writers and directors are paid for their imagination.
Bullshit. Some of the most iconic lines and dialogue in movies has been ad-libbed. Good actors don't just show up and regurgitate lines. They are part of the creative process.
Numbered days (Score:2)
Not anytime soon (Score:3, Insightful)
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And that's a problem, how? Celebrity gossip doesn't depend on the celebrities actually doing something.
Re:Numbered days (Score:5, Insightful)
What film producers don't appreciate is that when you take Nic Cage's gloriously hammy acting out of the equation, their AI-written scripts aren't worth the price of a download.
Maybe I need to touch grass but the only time I paid for a movie ticket in an actual cinema post-COVID was for a European film festival - Hollywood just doesn't market films for Gen-X kids any longer, except a bunch of pointless remakes.
(Red Rock West is still a classic, Cage fans.)
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What Cage doesn't seem to recognize here is that eventually the technology is going to get to the point where we won't need actors in the first place. At that point the producers will just roll their own characters and not bother employing these people for their sometimes absurdly high salaries in the first place.
It's just a matter of time before computers will be able to generate attractive looking AI-models that appeal perfectly to a desired demographic, making them so realistic that it'll be nearly impossible to tell they're fake. The process will go something like this:
Studio does extensive survey of what women want in actors, what they find attractive, in voice, build, mannerisms, etc.
Computers construct a completely unique model that meet all of the surveyed women's desires.
The model is then programed to "perf
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The hardest advantage actors have to overcome will be that algorithms can't sign autographs.
Which is to say, that will take a little longer.
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None of them will ever reach the absolute thespian perfection of Calculon!
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Now I want to rewatch "Sim0ne"
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computers will be able to generate attractive looking AI-models that appeal perfectly to a desired demographic,
During the summer, I read an article about (can't find it now) some avatar already selling ideas and products for years. They had millions of viewers. (May not have been the U.S.?) And another issue they noted: there's literally no hidden skeletons-in-the-closet for a future nasty surprise, the "actor" never complains, goes on strike, or ages, and is always matched up with marketing.
Info nearly 3 years ago. [orfonline.org]
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And if actors can't get jobs, then what chance to the little people have? Humanity resigned to all being merely masseurs for their AI owning overlords. Oh wait, robots can do that...
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And if actors can't get jobs, then what chance to the little people have? Humanity resigned to all being merely masseurs for their AI owning overlords. Oh wait, robots can do that...
We will just subsidise wages so that the cost of labour is low enough to compete with robots/AI. We will call it welfare and lambast the recipients for not working hard enough or having enough positive energy. There will be an ever growing worker class that cannot work their way out of poverty and are only able to survive on full time work plus government handouts, but those of us who are lucky enough to not be competing with robots will just say they need to learn to code or something so nothing will be do
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What Cage also doesn't get, is it will be people like him who benefit (well, their estate anyway) the most from AI actors. My prediction is that our most famous actors (e.g. Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks) will spend the final part of their careers training AI that will then be able to replicate their performances forever. As they grow ever more frail they will start producing more movies of their youth - things like a Forest Gump spinoff series etc. Their agents will then push aggressively to add new demographics t
"Nicholas Cage: good or bad?" (Score:3)
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Sounds more... like William Shatner.
Be choosy in your roles (Score:2)
Strategy different for desirable star and the new (Score:3)
It is an interesting dilemma. What if EBDR based changes make an actor look bad?
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Unless the studio has a contract with SAG-AFTRA and all the members demand the same rights per their contract.
Protect John Connor (Score:1)
That's the most important part.
Can I have fries with that? (Score:2)
"I don't care - I want fries with my TrumpBurger, and extra lard. No, I don't want to read your script, just fill my goddamn order and shut up about how miserable your life is."
It's about characters, not actors (Score:3)
Why would a studio want to keep using samey actors faces when computer graphics is getting extremely close to doing realistic renders? In a decade at most, VFX artists will be employed as standard to design all principal characters faces, voices and other characteristics. The names of the leading actors themselves will become far less relevant compared with the effort needed to bring the characters they're portraying to life. AI won't replace them, they'll still be paid extremely well, but the authenticity argument will seem how live stage performers sounded when motion pictures largely took over. Entertainment is entertainment and it's how our imaginations paper over the cracks which keeps us happily distracted for a few hours while we do nothing but watch and listen.
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Nicolas Cage urges young actors (Score:2)
to avoid knockoff FNAF animatronics.
In an ideal world (Score:4, Funny)
code (Score:2)
Advice to young actors: learn to code.