In Arthur C Clarke’s July 20, 2019: Life in the 21st Century, his 1986 novel speculating what a day in the 21st century might look like, Clarke envisions a cinema listing of the future.
“Still Gone with the Wind: The sequel picks up several years after where the 80-year-old original left off, with Rhett and Scarlett reuniting in their middle age, in 1880. Features the original cast (Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, and Vivien Leigh) and studio sets resurrected by computer graphic synthesis. Still Gone sets out to prove that they do make ‘em like they used to.”
Clarke’s book was science fiction, but almost 30 years later his predictions have proved prescient. Death, once the finite end to a celebrity career, is now only a marker for the next stage, and digitally resurrected celebrities — be they Paul Walker or Audrey Hepburn — are now posthumously making their way back onto our screens.
Photo: EPA
LEGAL ISSUES
But such digital necromancy is raising concerns. It was announced at the end of last month that plans are in the works to digitally insert Bruce Lee, 42 years after his death, into Ip Man 3, the third film in a series about his former teacher. It’s not the first time computer graphics (CG) technology have been used to bring the martial arts star back to life on screen — his digitally reanimated figure recently starred in an advert for Johnnie Walker Blue whisky. However, the Bruce Lee estate is now seeking legal action to prevent his CG likeness appearing in the film, with their lawyer stating the family are “justifiably shocked” at the idea.
It is perhaps to stop such situations that Robin Williams, it was revealed last week, signed a deed to prevent his image, or any likeness of him, being used at least 25 years after his death. It restricts any posthumous exploitation of the actor, be it through the use of CG to digitally resurrect him in Mrs Doubtfire 2 or as a live hologram performing comedy on stage — something that the advancement of technology has made an increasingly likely occurrence.
Indeed, recent figures have shown that the posthumous earnings made by celebrities from their image or likeness alone now exceeds billions, with some, such as Muhammad Ali, even selling their image rights before death so they can reap the profits while still alive.
REANIMATING THE DEAD
While the practice has mainly been restricted to finishing off performances of actors who died midway through filming — such as Paul Walker in Fast and Furious 7 — it has also been utilized by advertisers, keen to attach famous faces to their brands. Most notable is the recent reanimation of Audrey Hepburn in an advert for Galaxy chocolate.
Mike McGee, the co-founder and creative director of Framestore, the special effects studio who won an Oscar for Gravity, was in the team responsible for the Audrey Hepburn reanimation and said it still required “vast” amounts of work to make them appear alive. However, he predicted the phenomenon of reviving dead celebrities was only just beginning.
It took Framestore four months of work to create the lifelike Audrey Hepburn, for just 60 seconds of advert, and managed it by using a combination of old photographs and a body double to build an accurate CG digital form of everything from her skin to her eyelashes — even going on location to get the lifelike light and shadow.
“We found that we could create a realistic still image of Hepburn quite quickly but as soon as she has to move, turn her head or open her mouth, that’s when things can start to look uncanny, when things don’t look 100 percent real,” he said.
“The human eye can spot it because we’re so used to looking at our own reflection, so we subconsciously know all those tiny details and it’s that final 5 percent of realism that takes the most time to achieve. It’s all about getting the moisture in the eyes to look right, getting the eyelids to flutter correctly when someone blinks, the corner of someone’s lips to turn up a little just before they smile, because it’s those subtle signal and movements that make a great performance by any actor. And to ask an animator to copy that onto a computer model and capture a human performance is really challenging.”
He added: “I do think this will happen more and more. As the technology develops, I see no reason that in the future we wouldn’t see a CG performance by a dead actor up for a Bafta or an Oscar.”
CRYOGENIC IMAGES
McGee also predicted this technology trend would have serious implications in the image and aging obsessed world of Hollywood, with it already increasingly common for actors to have their faces and bodies scanned while they are still young to “cryogenically preserve the digital image of their youth in case they are able to sell or lease it in the future.”
“If you are an aging actress, and you want to take a role where you have to be 20 or 30 years younger, that can now be done digitally,” he said. “It is very possible studios like ours could even become digital make up artists, where on-screen actors have their hands, or nose or anything that gives away signs of aging, replaced with a CG version of their younger self. It’s what the technology now allows, so it’s just a case of seeing whether the film industry and actors will go down that path.”
LIFE AFTER DEATH
But the ethics around film and special effects studios playing God with deceased celebrities can be blurry. Denzer D’Rozario, who has written several academic papers on the post-mortem life of dead celebrities on screen, coined the term ‘Delebs’ to describe the digitally resurrected icons and said the practice still remained a moral minefield.
“I see this as a disconcerting increasing trend, because there are many things about this that are ethically problematic” he said. “A good example is how in 2013 Johnnie Walker Blue label whiskey used a digital recreation of Bruce Lee in an advert, which completely ignored the fact that Bruce Lee never drank in real life. So they are ultimately altering the persona of him after his death and associating him with a product that, in life, he stayed away from. He becomes a completely different Bruce Lee. So a key ethical issues here is honoring the memory and the legacy of the dead celebrity, and so particularly in adverts, there is a risk of cheapening the celebrity and disrespecting the original fans.”
D’Rozario said the appeal in using digitally resurrected legendary stars also lay in the fact that, because they are dead, they had no way of getting into any scandal which could damage their reputation and the reputation of the film or advert.
“Ultimately this trend is being driven by money,” he added. “Up till now, most celebrities when they died did not leave clear instructions to their heirs and estates on what could be done with their image or likeness, so most have a free reign to make a real windfall from allowing the image of the celebrity to be resurrected through technology. And more celebrity estates, and even living celebrities, are getting in on the profits from a posthumous career. Everybody is selling out and I believe people like Robin Williams will remain the exception.”
‘STRANGE TERRITORY’
But Andy Dill, a lead creative at The Mill, the visual effects studio responsible for the Bruce Lee resurrection for the whisky advert, said the labor intensive nature of the process meant he believed it was still a long way off replacing real life performers.
“I think the appeal of resurrecting iconic celebrities comes from the fact that there is something about the familiar we are all drawn to” said Dill. “But it takes a huge amount of time and effort — it took us over eight months to build the realistic model of Bruce Lee for a single commercial. Even though it was a really interesting challenge, it is fair to say it definitely is strange territory and raises some tough ethical questions.”
He added: “I think that, for the foreseeable future at least, most films are going to stick to using performers who are still alive.”
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