[learc83]

>I think most of us (unfortunately) are still going to want to watch movies like Transformers 3 at a $200 million budget than a $1million dollar indie flick.

At some point special effects are going to peak and the 1 million dollar indie flick will look exactly like the 200 million dollar one.

There will still be other differences, but technology is going to go a long way towards leveling the playing field.

[inkaudio]

We have tech, cost of tech is going down. But you still need talent to operate the tech, and the best talent are not cheap. The workers have unions and the ones that are not part of union do this full time and want to support at the very least a middle class lifestyle. For a hollywood movie, you don't want to use just any crew. You want the best film crew, the best makeup, wardrobe, casting, post & pre production. All the above cost money, lots of money.

[learc83]

That's all true for now. But eventually you'll be able to throw some actors in front of a green screen and do everything--makeup, wardrobe, special effects in post production, with one guy.

Hell, when computers can generate photo real actors, actors will just be people in mocap suits (except that we won't need mocap suits by then), and they won't even need to be attractive. Eventually one person will be able to create the equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster.

[untog]

That's all true for now. But eventually you'll be able to throw some actors in front of a green screen and do everything--makeup, wardrobe, special effects in post production, with one guy.

There was an interesting interview with Ewan McGregor, where he described working on the Star Wars prequels as a total nightmare. He was in front of a green screen, sat on top of some wooden box (it was supposed to be an animal we was riding). As the box swayed from side to side, George Lucas yelled "Look at the moons!".

To which McGregor said "WHAT MOONS?". As an actor, he was so distanced from the scene that he was unable to perform to the best of his abilities. The output speaks for itself.

TL;DR: focusing solely on technology without thinking of the human factor is a bad idea.

[waterlesscloud]

One guy will never have the talent to do it all at a top level. Even if there's incredible automation, there will still be choices to be made. The choices are of a diverse enough nature that specialization will still trump a jack of all trades.

[learc83]

I'm sure that most of the time it will require a small team instead of one guy.

But, I think you overestimate the quality of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Imagine if you put Steven Spielburg in front of a hypothetical movie machine. A machine that could automate everything down to the actors and voices, so all the director had to do was write the script, place everything, and direct all the action (yes I realize something like this is years away). I'd bet that he could produce a movie at least as good as the average summer blockbuster.

[wahnfrieden]

Indeed, film is not just all direction and writing, handed down from above, and the rest falls into place. Directors often work with the same groups of people on their team, and it's not just because of nepotism or working familiarity -- Christopher Doyle brings as much to each Wong Kar Wai film as the director himself; Bela Tarr leaves the music completely up to Mihaly Vig (an integral part of his movies).

[mooki]

Video games are there today -- computers and mocap rigs all the way down. Still they are approaching hollywood movies in terms of budget. Tangled and Avatar are some of the most expensive movies of all time.

There are no shortcuts to that level of polish. Doesn't matter how advanced your rendering is, you still need an army of 3D artists. Makeup isn't going to be much cheaper just because you do it in Maya.

[learc83]

Avatar and Tangled were both pioneers of new technology of course they were expensive, but there are amateur fan effects better than those from multi-million dollar movies and TV shows 15-20 years ago. And the games of 10-15 years ago can be made a couple of people on a shoestring budget. I expect that trend to continue.

>Makeup isn't going to be much cheaper just because you do it in Maya.

They won't use Maya. Technology progresses, and tools become easier to use. At some point in the future you'll be able to select an actor, click makeup and adjust some sliders.

>you still need an army of 3D artists

For original creations you do need artists (the tools will continue to improve and make each artist more efficient), but there will come a time when all you'll need to do is take a few photos of tree, or a building to make an ultra high quality 3d model of it.

[mooki]

But to take that photo you still need to find the perfect tree or building, then drag some cameras out and take pictures of it. Then once it's uploaded, set up light and do some manual adjusting because that branch is just a few degrees off. And that's just one tree or building, you need thousands for a movie.

Indie movies will upload their back yard or buy stock trees, and it will show. That's what separates big budget from small budget - perfectionism and meticulous attention to the tiniest details. Computers doesn't understand beauty or emotion, so you need fine grained human control every step of the way.

It's the composition that is expensive and not the ability to perfectly reproduce reality.

[jiggy2011]

Entirely agree, if you watch any artist or musician work, the amount of attention paid to detail is astonishing.

It's the same as when a programmer will constantly re-factor their code to provide better abstractions or improve efficiency. Or when a designer spends hours deciding on how to a lay an interface out.

The tools to create generic copy-paste movies and music are already out there in the same way you can build a website by buying something from template monster and copy pasting a bunch of Javascript and PHP that you found on google around.

Of course tools will get better and make efficiency better but all that will do is raise the bar. People want to see movies that will wow them , either with better special effects than they have seen before or with clever/funny dialogue etc.

The people who have the skills to do this best will want to work for the big media companies because these are the ones who will open their wallets and pay them a good salary to do what they love all day with the best tools available.

[learc83]

>Computers doesn't understand beauty or emotion, so you need fine grained human control every step of the way.

That's were your wrong. Computers don't understand beauty, but given enough processing power, and sample data they can recreate it.

There's already a program that can listen to Beethoven and reproduce something that even experts can't tell he didn't write.

A movie example: In your movie creator you set up a scene with 2 people talking in a room. The computer has been trained with thousands of such scenes, so it automatically selects the best camera angles and allows the operator some manual control. That will happen at some point.

[rhizome]

Wasn't "Sky Captain and the World Of Tomorrow" filmed like this? I remember hearing that it was a difficult form of acting. Location shooting, or even sets, have side effects on the actors.

[weekendlogic]

Does voice acting not require talent?

[learc83]

It does, but an actor can come in for a week and bang out an entire script if he's just voice acting.

Also there are computer generated singing voices good enough to fool Japanese audiences.

[ajhit406]

"Peak" in popularity or in terms of return on expenditure?

With cost reduction of special effects, I agree that the playing field will gradually level...

...but to contradict myself a bit, perhaps it won't ever level because new technologies will continue to be introduced to improve the entertainment experience that are proprietary and therefore expensive.