… for Visual Effects

Tip #1309: Deep Fakes – A Creative Perspective

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Deep fake face swapping is both boon and bane – depending upon how it is used.

This article, Deep Fakes – A Creative Perspective, from VFXVoice, looks at the impact of emerging face-swapping technology on visual effects. This is a summary.

New ‘deep fake’ face-swapping videos seem to go viral on the internet with increasing regularity. Perhaps that’s because artists, and the machine learning algorithms they use for deep fakes, are increasingly getting so much better at them. Many have pondered, therefore, whether deep fakes will soon make their mark – or are already doing so – in traditional filmed entertainment.

The deep fakes you tend to see in online videos, where a speaking person’s face is typically replaced with that of another (often famous) person, rely on deep learning algorithms and training data. This data is usually video footage or photographs of the other person used to craft a convincing model for face swapping.

Some of the most popular deep fakes made by ctrl shift face include actors doing impressions of other actors, with their faces swapped. Those, in particular, have an extra level of appeal since the voice is already part-way there. “I make videos that I want to see and make me laugh,” ctrl shift face advises, in relation to deep fake video project choices. “Some ideas fail because the technology is not there yet, but most often they fail because of YouTube policies and copyrights.”

“As far as using deep fakes in VFX goes, they’re still very much in their infancy, but they do offer creatives an exciting new range of storytelling possibilities,” outlines Framestore Executive Creative Director William Bartlett. “We used it for example on a very small part of our work on Pokémon: Detective Pikachu where the film required Bill Nighy’s character to appear younger in an ‘old’ news reel. It required some fixes, but deep fakes suited this need because of the nature of what would ultimately be presented on screen.”

The full article presents interviews, videos and more details regarding this process.

EXTRA CREDIT

From my perspective, this article reminds me of the adage: “Just because we can, does not mean we should.” The problem is the deep fake genie is out of the bottle – now what do we do with it? These may solve a creative problem, but there still seems a major societal price to pay.

What happens when we can’t trust anything we see?

… for Visual Effects

Tip #1296: The Fairy-Tale Effects in Pinocchio

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Take a deep dive into on-camera visual effects, aided by CGI.

This article, written by Ian Failes, first appeared in VFXVoice.com. This is a summary.

Matteo Garrone’s Pinocchio, an Italian-made re-telling of the classic tale by Carlo Collodi, is a film that draws upon both practical and digital effects to tell its story of the central puppet character wanting to become a real boy.

Behind the majority of the digital visual effects work was One Of Us, based in London, which augmented several scenes that made use of on-set makeup and prosthetics, as well as delivering a number of fully-CG elements that had to stay within the fairy-tale realm of the story.

Here, One Of Us Visual Effects Supervisor Theo Demiris breaks down a number of the studio’s characters and shots from the film.

“Pinocchio as a character was entirely filmed in-camera made possible by some incredible prosthetics developed by Mark Coulier and his team. Our intervention consisted mainly of cleaning up creases and imperfections, usually around the hands and neck area.”

Donkey underwater: “We knew from the very beginning that this was going to be entirely a VFX shot. This moment was all about hitting the emotional beats of the story, and we very quickly realized that this also meant that it had to be a very long shot, 1,000 frames to be exact. The donkey had to lose its breath and then very slowly be enveloped in a shimmering school of fish.

“Once we blocked the Donkey animation, we started working on the environment and the behavior of the fish. The environment had to feel Mediterranean – highly detailed but murky and poetic. The fish had to behave beautifully but also realistically. For that, Matt Noris, one of our Senior FX Artists, put together a crowd simulation that was flexible and easy to art-direct. Once we had all the ingredients out from CG, Guillaume Menard, our Comp Supervisor, put it together himself and introduced a lot of real-life elements in the environment.”

“The most notable of effect in terms of work was the character of the Tuna. Not only was it a big fish, but also had to interact with the surrounding water and performances. For this, the actor was in prosthetics on the face with the rest his body hidden away underwater. We then kept only the very front of his performance and attached a CG body behind him. To do so seamlessly we had to track the head and attach the body while reverse-engineering his head movements and adjusting the animation to make them feel as if they were coming from the body rather than the other way around. It had, after all, to feel as if the body was floating and driving the movements of the head.”

EXTRA CREDIT

There’s a lot more to his discussion, along with images illustrating some of their VFX work in the article linked above.

… for Visual Effects

Tip #1270: Learning DaVinci Resolve 17

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Free tutorials simplify getting started with the latest version of Resolve.

This DaVinci Resolve tutorial website has a host of tutorials on learning the basics of DaVinci Resolve.

These tutorials include both training video and project files.

Titles include:

• Introduction to Editing
• The Art of Color Grading
• DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel
• Fusion VFX
• Fairlight Audio Production
• Managing Media
• Delivering Content

All tutorials are free and can either be viewed online or downloaded to your computer.