Actors and Algorithms

Feeling remorseful about his deceitful behavior, Taransky tells his ex-wife,

“There’s no Simone. She’s pixels, computer code molded by me from a math-ematical equation I inherited from a madman.” But Simone represents the new reality, according to Niccol. Taransky can’t walk away from her or the success she’s brought him. The ﬁ lm ends as he and Simone tell the media that they have decided to go into politics. The illusion and sleight-of-hand they have been practicing will be very much at home there.

“The creation of realistic digital humans [is] the high watermark in computer animation.”¹ So wrote Remington Scott, who supervised the motion-capture work on The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002). This is an oft-repeated idea (especially by advocates of motion capture), that lifelike digital humans are the Holy Grail of computer animation. Its corollary—why use actors anymore?—elicits the anxieties that S1m0ne addresses. Indeed, Pamela Wojcik writes that we now face “a crisis in the conception of acting, a crisis that is seemingly historically and technologically determined: the issue of acting in the digital age.”² The notion that digital imaging poses crises for our understanding of cinema, however, seems to exaggerate the nature of the changes that have occurred.

In his book on ﬁ lm acting, James Naremore writes that there is “no such thing as an uncontrived face in the movies.”³ Humphrey Bogart wore a full wig throughout Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)because his hair was thin-ning. John Wayne wore a toupee and was rarely photographed without it.

Orson Welles regularly appeared onscreen in false noses. Nicole Kidman did likewise when playing Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002). Charlize Theron dimmed her natural beauty to play a serial killer in Monster (2003), and many stars today require that digital intermediates be used for cosmetic purposes such as erasing skin blemishes and wrinkles. Just as faces are contrived for the camera, so, too, are bodies. Alan Ladd famously stood on boxes to be photo-graphed with his taller co-stars. Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman are carefully framed in movies to hide their short stature from viewers.

Actors provide the human element in cinema, a medium that otherwise is heavily dependent upon machinery for creating light and color and capturing images and sounds. And yet the actor’s presence is paradoxical. A viewer’s impression of wholeness—the actor as a uniﬁ ed being in front of the camera—and of psychological and emotional continuity—the actor-as-character unfolding in narrative time and space—is a manufactured impres-sion that often fails to correlate with what was. The discrepancy between the actor as a real being and the sleight of hand performed with makeup, editing, and camera angles can raise questions about what, precisely, the actor contributes to cinema. (In point of fact, an actor’s ownership of a character’s

through-line is only possible in live performance, not in cinema.)⁴ Where are the boundaries between what an actor creates and what ﬁ lmmakers have crafted? In their study of screen performance, Cynthia Baron and Sharon Marie Carnicke acknowledge this problem, which they call “the still uncertain status of screen performances. Are they instances of authentic acting? Or are they the result of ﬁ lmmakers’ sleight of hand?”⁵ The problem endures. Has cinema’s digital revolution complicated it?

Because ﬁ lms are shot out of continuity, performance and character often must be constructed in the editing. As actor Michael Caine observed, “If the last scene in a picture takes place outside, you can count on the fact that it will get shot ﬁ rst and then you will move to the studio to shoot all the scenes leading up to it. You might shoot the master in the morning, then rush out in the afternoon to shoot another scene because suddenly the sun came out.

Then you have to come back some other time and continue with the morning scene, then perhaps do the medium shot and close-up a week later.”⁶ Profes-sional courtesy mandates that actors who are off-camera in a dialogue scene remain on set to feed lines and reactions to their co-stars. When this fails to occur, the footage will be edited to suggest the missing actor’s presence.

Rod Steiger complained that Marlon Brando didn’t stick around when Steiger fi lmed his close-ups in On the Waterfront’s (1954) famous taxicab scene. “I did the take with him, when the camera was on him, but when it came for the camera to be on me—he went home! I had to speak my lines to an assistant director.”⁷ According to Steiger, he played the scene with an actor who wasn’t there, but a viewer watching the fi lm cannot tell. The screen reality created by the framing and editing, and by Steiger and Brando’s performing, alters the conditions that Steiger said prevailed during fi lming. Is this situation different in kind or degree from one in which an actor plays to a missing digital character that will be composited into the scene at a later time?

Mark J. P. Wolf correctly observes that “performance in fi lm has almost always been more than the straightforward recording of actors.”⁸ Actors perform on set but their work is reconstructed during post-production as picture and sound are edited and as effects shots are composited. Performance in cinema always has been a construction synthesized from discrete elements removed from their original contexts, rearranged, reordered, reshaped. As Wojcik emphasizes, “Discussion of fi lm acting must fi nd a way to account for the role of technology in performance.” She points out that fi lm acting

“is always already mediated” by technology.⁹ This is true in analog as well as digital cinema. Digital tools, though, have given ﬁ lmmakers new powers to manipulate light and color and to composite images; they have augmented the existing practices of completing or creating performances in post-production.

As Wolf writes, “Today with digital effects, we are seeing an unprecedented degree of technological advances that allow the breaking up, recombining, and reconﬁ guring of actors’ abilities as multiple forms of input.”¹⁰

This chapter examines the forms and methods by which digital perfor-mances are commonly created and the creative possibilities and challenges that result. At the outset, it will be very useful to distinguish between “acting”

and “performance” along the lines suggested by David Fincher, whose The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) pursued a novel approach to virtual performing and is examined later in the chapter. Fincher said that “acting and performance are two different things. Acting is what you do; the perfor-mance is the thing that you make from the acting.”¹¹ On stage, performance and acting often are interchangeable. In cinema, acting is a subset of perfor-mance. For our purposes, then, acting is the ostensive behavior that occurs on set to portray characters and story action. Performance is understood as the subsequent manipulation of that behavior by fi lmmakers or by actors and fi lmmakers. This distinction will enable us to recognize the ways that cinema employs technology to mediate the actor’s contribution, via such things as editing, music scoring, lighting, makeup, and compositing. The distinction also enables us to incorporate the tradition of animation that has been so important throughout the history of cinema and that is typi-cally omitted from discussion of fi lm acting. Stop-motion animation, for example, has created very persuasive cinematic performances, from the expressive bugs and foxes in Ladislaw Starewicz’s The Dragonfl y and the Ant (1911) and The Tale of the Fox (1930) to Willis O’Brien’s King Kong (1933), Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Henry Selick’s Coraline (2009), and Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). The animators at Pixar have crafted some of the most affecting performances in modern cinema, in The Incredibles (2004), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), and other fi lms. Performances by digital creatures, fanged, furred, or scaled thespians, are key elements in the success or failure of their respective fi lms. We need, then, to work with an expansive concept of performance in cinema, one that encompasses all these traditions. As Lisa Bode writes, “Rather than

‘splitting’ acting from digital animation or technology, we might instead imagine a screen performance continuum encompassing all the modes of technological mediation and augmentation of performance.”¹²

Acting and Animation

Of particular importance is the tradition of animation. Indeed, all digital performances are to some degree the work of animation. Some

char-acters—WALL-E or the family of superheroes in The Incredibles—are completely realized through animation, whereas others—Gollum, Benjamin Button—incorporate the contributions of a live actor whose movements or facial expressions are photographically captured and then used as the basis for constructing an animated character. Scholarly and popular discussion of performance in cinema tends to limit it to the contribution of a human actor working on set before the cameras during production. Acting in these other contexts is rarely considered, and performance traditions that extend away from the live actor or that build digital bridges from live acting to animation are often regarded suspiciously. A larger bias is at work—a general disregard for animation, which fi lm theory and aesthetics have virtually excluded from consideration. Tom Gunning has rightly identifi ed this marginalization of animation as “one of the great scandals of fi lm theory.”¹³ To the extent that an aesthetic bias exists against digital performance, it may be connected with the marginal status that animation itself occupies in fi lm theory and aesthetics.

This bias precludes us from seeing the manifold ways that acting exists in the digital domain, albeit not as traditionally confi gured with a live actor emoting before cameras that capture a performance subject to modifica-tion afterward. Actors exist in the digital world in three ways. They may be present as the live action component of composited shots (for example, Naomi Watts acting with King Kong). They may give a performance that is motion-captured for use in animating a digital character (for example, Andy Serkis as Gollum). The third condition is the most signifi cant and infl uential and the one that is perhaps the least obvious—the animator is an actor and works with the objectivity that an actor in live theater does not have. (As Patricia Raun notes, “The challenge in live theatre is that the actor is both the artist and the medium and s/he cannot see the effect of the work s/he is creating. S/he has no objective eye.”)¹⁴ The animator who creates a digital character onscreen must give a performance, expressed through the character as it is created, shaped, and given movement in the expression of feeling and attitude. Ray Harryhausen, who brought many classic monsters to life as stop-motion puppets, remarked, “I always tried to give my characters little habits that made them seem more believable. It doesn’t take much, just small habits such as taking a quick look at the ground before they step forward.”¹⁵ Hanging from the roof of a tall building, mortally wounded by gunfi re, the alien monster in 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) glances downward in fear and panic, knowing it cannot sustain its grip and that death from its impending fall awaits. The creature is a miniature puppet brought to life through the illusion of stop-motion photography, and yet its demise is very affecting.

Harryhausen’s animation often made the fates of his fantasy creatures more

deeply moving than the lives of the pallid human characters that populated the ﬁ lms.

Brad Bird, director of The Iron Giant (1999) and The Incredibles, points out that animation typically is regarded as more technique than art, “its practitio-ners little more than technicians with pencils (or clay or pixels or puppets).”

When a character is successful, the voice actor often gets the credit. “What is typically lost in discussions about animation is the fact that when you watch an animated ﬁ lm, the performance you’re seeing is the one the animator is giving to you.”¹⁶ To accomplish this, the animator has to stay “in the moment”

for weeks, comparable in a fashion to the work of an actor in live theater where weeks of rehearsal precede and contribute to the creation of the right moments on stage. Ed Hooks, who has taught acting to animators at Disney and other studios, emphasizes that acting by animators is sustained, analytic work: “A good animator must go through a similar process of motivating his characters on a moment-to-moment basis, but he then must keep re-creating the same moment over and over and over again, sometimes for weeks on end, while he captures it on the cell or computer screen.”¹⁷

In this regard, digital animation continues the traditional practices of hand-drawn and stop-motion animation. Disney animator Mark Davis, who designed the villainous Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmations (1961), said, “To be an animator, you have to have a sense of the dramatic, a feeling for acting;

you have to be a storyteller.” He noted, “Drawing is giving a performance;

an artist is an actor who is not limited by his body, only by his ability and, perhaps, experience.”¹⁸ Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston wrote about this connection: “The actor and the animator share many inter-ests; they both use symbols to build a character in the spectator’s mind. By using the right combination [of gestures and expressions] the actor builds a bond with the people in the audience.” The audience comes to care about the actor and the character and to understand the character’s thoughts and feelings. “These are the animator’s tools as well, but while the actor can rely on his inner feelings to build his portrayal, the animator must be objectively analytical if he is to reach out and touch the audience.”¹⁹

In numerous contexts, animators work as actors. Phil Tippett won an Emmy for his puppet animation in the CBS documentary Dinosaur! (1985).

With his knowledge of animal behavior, he conducted acting classes for the digital animators working on Jurassic Park (1993). “I would physically panto-mime some of the animal behavior to demonstrate it to them. Sometimes you just have to show people.”²⁰ The animatronic velociraptors in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) were animated by puppeteers using a telemetric device to send commands to a computer that, in turn, relayed them to the

character. The puppeteers were professional actors. Stan Winston said, “The operators who animated the dinosaurs were members of the Screen Actors Guild, because the performances entailed real acting. The gestures of the raptors were powerful, quick, natural. In a word, these dinosaurs became the best actors!”²¹ Or, one might say, these actors made the best dinosaurs.

Professional courses and guidebooks enable digital animators to train as actors and understand the craft. A SIGGRAPH course, “Acting and Drawing for Animation,” teaches animators physical exercises and moves, methods of emotional projection and sensory recall, and techniques of emotional staging and drawing. The Disney principles are incorporated throughout, as in a series of “squash and stretch” warm-up exercises. “As a physical warm-up this exercise helps to loosen up the hands, face, and whole body. . . . Imagine balling your face into a ﬁ st. Scrunch it down as tight as it will go. Think about trying to tuck your forehead into your bottom lip. Release!”²² Ed Hooks writes that the quickest way to provoke a room full of animators is to take away their mirrors. “Animators love mirrors! They like to make facial expres-sions in them, and act out scenes in front of them. Little mirrors, big mirrors, hand mirrors, full-length mirrors, animators will usually have one close at hand.” As the authors of a textbook on acting lessons for animators write,

“Your instrument is not the same as an actor who uses his own body, voice, and emotions to create the character. Your instrument is the hardware and software available to you. Nevertheless, your character still has a body, voice, and emotions as with the actor’s character, so understanding and employing the techniques of an actor can only aid in your artistry.”²³

Disney artists honed their craft by taking acting classes and used this knowledge in the practice of character animation: animation that expressed the personalities, thoughts, and emotions of characters through line and form and movement. Convinced that “we cannot do the fantastic things based on the real, unless we ﬁ rst know the real,” Disney began requiring his animators to attend action analysis classes.²⁴ Starting in 1936, they studied live-action motion pictures and analyzed the ways that people, animals, and inanimate objects moved and from this empirical work they evolved the famous twelve principles of character animation. These included “squash and stretch”

methods of deforming objects to suggest weight, mass, and personality. The latter is also conveyed through proper “timing” of actions. Disney’s animators discovered that natural movements are not linear but occur through “arcs”

and also realized that “exaggeration” of action and form could get them quickly to the essence of a story idea or emotion. The ultimate principle was

“appeal,” creating characters that an audience enjoyed experiencing. This included villains—Cruella de Vil and the witch in Snow White (1937) are very

appealing characters. Indeed, here is an important distinction between the live actor on ﬁ lm and the animated character. “Spectators enjoy watching something that is appealing to them, whether an expression, a character, a movement, or a whole story situation. While the live actor has charisma, the animated drawing has appeal.”²⁵

In 1986, Pixar demonstrated the relevance of the Disney principles for 3D computer animation. Pixar’s fi rst production, after Edwin Catmull and John Lasseter formed the company upon leaving Lucasfi lm, was Luxo, Jr. (1986), a short written and directed by Lasseter. The charming two-and-a-half-minute fi lm shows a comic situation enacted by two Anglepoise (extension) desk lamps, one large and one small. The animation endows these with personali-ties and the roles of father and child. A ball rolls onscreen. Dad bats it away with his lamp hood, and Junior chases it enthusiastically, hopping across the screen. Squash-and-stretch, timing, and exaggeration delineate the characters and their emotions. Dad moves slowly, with gravitas, Junior with quicker, chippier actions. Both characters hit the ball with their heads, but, as Lasseter wrote, “Dad, who is larger and older, leans over the ball and uses only his shade to bat it. Jr., however, who is smaller, younger, and full of excited energy, whacks the ball with his shade, putting his whole body into it.”²⁶ Movements were based on physics and the structural characteristics of Luxo lamps but were exaggerated to convey emotion and thought. “In designing the charac-ters, the feeling of a baby lamp and a grown-up lamp was very important.

The effect was achieved using exaggeration in proportion, in the same way a

In document DIGITAL VISUAL EFFECTS IN CINEMA.pdf (Page 112-158)