cactus waltz, I was very happy for Christoph Waltz. He’s been winning practically everything in sight since last year’s Cannes, and he’s still gentle and humble and witty and grateful by it all. And he’s a hell of an actor. I need to see him in something else so I don’t always think of him as Hans Landa. It’s not a problem for Europeans, but will be for Americans. We have to wait awhile, but he is a major character in the upcoming Green Hornet movie. That’ll help.
I must have missed something. When did he do that? I don’t much agree that actors and other film workers should be worried about their jobs going anywhere but Canada (rather than in the computer), but it’s a legitimate viewpoint and non-political topic of conversation, though maybe better suited to a different thread.
If he’d said something like “I can’t stand those liberal actors like Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, can’t wait until they’re all replaced by digital characters who keep their mouths shut” I can see, but unless I missed a post or some posts in this long thread, I’m not reading those sentiments into what he’s saying.
I watched his segment on Oprah yesterday. He was impressive. There was something special, unusual about his demeanor – I think it was his eyes. He was very much “there”, for lack of a better word. Humble and thoughtful and genuine. Very likable.
Perhaps I should have expressed the time frame I had in mind in my original comments. I’ve never thought that the changes I described were right around the corner. In my mind it’s still a relatively long way off. The technology needs to become more effective and the costs have to come way down before movies that are virtually all all CGI become the norm. At the time I was writing my first post on the subject I had in mind a timeframe of approximately ten to fifteen years, or maybe even twenty or more before the scenario I described became a reality, and the fear in Hollywood that I talked about was because of the handwritiing on the wall and not because they were in imminent danger of losing their jobs.
And yes, Equipoise is right, my posts on this subject probably belong in another thread. It wasn’t my intent to hijack the thread but just to make a comment about why I thought Avatar was snubbed for Best Picture. Sometimes these sidebar comments take on a life that wasn’t anticipated at the time they were first posted.
While there will always be a place for Avatar 2 and Transformers 3, the industry is also largely propelled by star power. How many of these actors have ever been associated with CG-heavy projects? Less than half. Most of them, even male stars like Clooney & Washington (who also periodically direct & produce), steer clear of those kinds of films. There may be an eventual tipping point where bluescreen filmmaking becomes so fluid and efficient that even something like It’s Complicated will be cheaper shot in a single room than modest sets and locations. But you still need to get the stars on board, and they will still gravitate towards projects they want to be part of. And for those who feel that performance capture and CG-stagecraft are only appropriate for certain types of films, they are going to be advocates for the type of films (and the type of filmmaking) that they want to make. And the money will still follow. After all, The Hangover made more money than Star Trek last year, and I think it’s going to be more than a single generation before artists start accepting this new order that Cameron & co. are trying to kickstart as the norm. While the technology is truly amazing in the leaps & bounds that are occurring (especially in TV, where there are more unforgiving schedules and deadlines), crossing the threshhold from fantasy/adventure into kitchen sink dramas with the application of this technology in an everyday sense is still, I think, a long time coming.
Why does it have to be either/or? Like live theater, when threatened with moving pictures, and then film with TV–sure, some business MAY be lost due to the emphasis on CG etc, but I see it as more of an expanding of the market, not a death blow to the live actor wearing real clothes making a movie world. There is room for types of movies and there will be room (and a market) for the types of film not yet made.
I don’t see Hollywood as being scared of Cameron’s new tech at all. I see members of the Academy lauding the tech achievements, while recognizing that the plot and characterizations in Avatar were average. I have no desire to see the PLOT of Avatar again–I have every desire to enter that world again.
There’s something so troubling about this, though. Obviously acting is both an art and a profession - one at its best rooted, paradoxically, in the experience of both immediate transcendence and numbing tedium, both of which have a lot to do with an actor’s immediate setting. I know the Method canard that a great actor can achieve a brilliant performance under most any circumstances given a deep enough well of experience and inner resources for drawing on that experience, but with this aspiration to a purely digital future approach, something is ruined in the organic experience of filmmaking. I mean, I can’t imagine what someone like Cassavetes would have thought of this, or really most of the directors I love (maybe Hans-Jurgen Syberberg would have been on board with it). There are plenty of great actors whom I imagine caught like frightened rabbits in the middle of this hypothetical green-screen approach, and honestly it makes me sad to think of what it could do to their art.
Starving Artist, I don’t know what you’re setting out to prove here, but you’re taking all of your bizarre speculations and extrapolations far beyond any logical cause and effect straight into scifi nonsequiturland. Is there any chance you’re just taking the piss? A parody of when someone takes some tiny little bit of information and builds exponentially elaborate and teetering towers of cards on it?
First off, the concept of “slippery slope” is almost never valid. It’s just another example of humans’ need to see patterns where there are none. Secondly, none of your chaotic fractals of increasing magnitudes of nonsense take into account some basic facts. Just to name one, there’s a thing called a “union.” Unions are very, very powerful in the movie business. None of your postapocalyptic scenarios would stand up beyond the first or second level of speculation in the world of Hollywood unions.
Third, every single time, throughout recorded history, any shift in technological paradigm brings the sandwich-board prophets out of the woodwork. Radio starts to play wax cylinders, and suddenly there’s no bigger threat to the sanctity of recorded music. The digital age has turned every movie or music executive into Chicken Little.
None of these tech panics has ever proved true.
If live theater can survive the advent of film; if painting can survive the advent of photography; if music can survive sampling; then, trust me, cinema will survive CGI. Ultimately each of these is just another tool in the hands of artists and, yes, businessmen. But the revolution is a revolution of technique, of tools. Nothing more. And as such its novelty will wear off–seen the recent non-CGI animated films, made with old fashioned cels instead of 3D rendering?–and it will find its place in the director’s toolbelt just like every other major technological development of the last, what, 120 years or so.