Simulating realistic digital humans in film and television is known as the ultimate frontier of visual effects. It takes thousands of hours and hundreds of artists to create a virtual human that contains all the physical details of a real-life person.
Among other things, Technicolor India head Biren Ghose spoke about MPC’s experience of creating digital humans. MPC created a digital double in the year 2004 in the movie Fast and Furious 7 when Paul Walker had shuffled off his mortal coil due to a car accident.
He shared, “It became our job at MPC to make sure we could map him, map his images from his previous footage. We had to work with his brother. we had to figure out how to create that.”
MPC’s first digital double experiment was a huge success. Another project in which they had to create a digital double was Terminator Genesis. They had made a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie where the older one was already acting.
He recounted, “When we did this perfect job everybody was happy and the studio tested it and when they tested it the audience didn’t believe this was young Schwarzenegger because they’re used to seeing him and his physiology has changed so from a perfect Schwarzenegger we had to make him a little imperfect so now they could believe this is Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
Photo-real imagery has its own challenges; one of which is uncanny valley.
Many are not aware about the digital double in the movie Jungle. Whilst the boy was real in majority of movie, they had to create a digital double for adventurous sequences. He noted, “for a good percentage of the movie I can’t tell you how much…. maybe less than a quarter the boy is not real because he was jumping off a cliff and onto a buffalo and jumping into the fire etc according to the script. That required us to create a digital double.”
He added, “And many of you would know that the interaction between the real and the CG is not the easiest thing to do. And I think all of us are kind of getting there to make sure that it doesn’t interrupt the beauty of the storytelling.”
MPC has done a brilliant job in the Oscar-winning movie Blade Runner 2049 where they created a body double of the character of Rachel. Speaking about the making of Rachel, he shared, “they couldn’t find a match for casting Rachel, So neck upwards, Rachel is not real. and this really shows you where the state of the art is.
Its true that studios can bring CG actors to life in convincing ways. Latest advancements in artistry and technology has shined the spotlight on digital actors.