Studios are already asking stuntmen and supporting actors to take part in high-tech three-dimensional “body scans” without explaining how or when the images will be used. Advances in AI allow physical resemblances to be used to create detailed and eerily realistic “digital replicas” capable of performing any action or speaking any dialogue their creators desire.
Freddy Bouciegues, stunt coordinator, at Tempest Academy (California).
“There could be a world where they say, ‘No, we don’t want to bring those 10 guys…we’re just going to add them later with effects and AI.’ Now those guys don’t have a job.”
SAG-Aftra warned that studios are looking to create digital replicas of actors to use “for the rest of eternity on whatever project they want,” all for the cost of a day’s work.
At the beginning, Grand Touring used stuntmen driving real vehicles on real tracks, with some added CGI effects for some particularly dangerous scenes.
Blomkamp envisions that, in just six to 12 months, the AI will reach the point where it can generate realistic sequences such as high-speed accidents based solely on the director’s instructions. At that point, “you take all your CG (computer graphics) and VFX (visual effects) computers and throw them out the window, and you get rid of the stunts, and you get the cameras off your back and you don’t go on the tracks.” of racing, he summed up, “It’s that different.
(It may interest you: Hollywood studios charge against Sag-Aftra).
Last month SAG-Aftra warned that studios were trying to create realistic digital replicas of actors to use “for the rest of eternity on whatever project they want”, all for the cost of a day’s work.
“He uses real stuntmen and does real stunts, and you can see it on the screen. To me, I feel like it subconsciously affects the viewer,” Bouciegues explained. Current AI technology still delivers “slightly unpredictable results,” agreed Blomkamp, who began his career in visual effects and directed District 9, Oscar nominee “But it’s coming… It’s going to fundamentally change society, not to mention Hollywood. The world will be different,” she predicted.
“I don’t think this job will just end one day,” Bouciegues said. But “it’s definitely going to get smaller and more precise,” she concluded.
This reality makes risk professionals who are unemployed in front of Hollywood studios think. “All doppelgangers are the alpha male type,” Bouciegues says, explaining that they are used to projecting an unwavering image. “But personally I’ve talked to a lot of people who are scared and nervous.”
