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Sci-Fi Entertainment Technology

Your Face On the Big Screen 164

Posted by timothy from the your-name-here dept.
blamanj writes "In another case of SciFi becoming reality, you can now star in an animated film as your FutureCast (tm) face-scan is edited into the picture in real-time. John Brunner, in his Hugo-winning novel, Stand on Zanzibar predicted a similar development in television, lampooning people sitting at home while watching travologues of themselves 'on vacation.' Brunner, in addition to being an excellent writer, had some spot-on predictions of a virus-laden Internet in Shockwave Rider. Fortunately, the predictions of his eco-dystopia The Sheep Look Up have not come to pass. Yet."
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Your Face On the Big Screen More

Your Face On the Big Screen

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  • for the love of...... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28, 2005 @10:07PM (#12072552)
    great...now the only thing bigger than my ego is the ego of the entire world! I CAN'T WORK LIKE THIS!



    I'll be in my trailer!

  • Adult Movies? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mOoZik ( 698544 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @10:07PM (#12072555) Homepage
    Ka ching! I'm sure every nerd...erm, guy, would like to play out his fantasies, at least with his head on some other guy's body. Forgive me if I completely misunderstood the blurb, but someone has to adopt this technology. For me!

    • Won't Joe Twopack be pissed when he sees some other guy doing the girl in his movie?
    • I think that would be creepy.

      but hey, it would be VERY useful for playing on jokes on your pals.

      "hey remember.. last friday when you drank so much you can't remember what you did?? well luckily for you I had a videocamera with me! buy did you do some sick things!!"
    • "Ka ching! I'm sure every nerd...erm, guy, would like to play out his fantasies, at least with his head on some other guy's body. Forgive me if I completely misunderstood the blurb, but someone has to adopt this technology. For me!"

      I just hope this technology stays above the neck! *Shudder*

    • Re:Adult Movies? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jameth ( 664111 )
      I'd think the bigger money is when they can get enough info from just a photo. Then, Q Random Stalker can snap a photo of his lucky lady and put her into the movie he's watching.

    • Re:Adult Movies? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Darby ( 84953 )
      Ka ching! I'm sure every nerd...erm, guy, would like to play out his fantasies, at least with his head on some other guy's body.

      Dude, fuck that.

      My head.
      My body.
      6 totally hot chicks I'll never know doing things that are illegal in half the states.
      Now you're talking.

  • But of course... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fishlet ( 93611 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @10:07PM (#12072556)

    We all know the first pioneer of this new tech is going to be the porn industry...

    • Re:But of course... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @10:12PM (#12072582)
      Woo hoo, I am gonna look sooooo lush with Jenna Jamesons body!

      Note to self, shave before taking face pic.

    • Re:But of course... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by JanneM ( 7445 )
      Of course, we'll have obsessive loners substituting the face of their object of desire onto every porn reel they have, further fueling the obsession. Just what we need.

    • I think the advertising industry is getting much more wet over this one. 90% of the adoption of this technology will be for advertising, once everyone has it. It will have the same sort of worth as a Macromedia Flash browser plugin.

    • The real pionneer was Ned Flanders! (Score:5, Funny)

      by PeteQC ( 680043 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @11:18PM (#12072932)
      Selling personalized videos more than 2 years ago!

      (Lisa's face is pasted on a cowgirl's body.)
      Cowgirl: Howdy, pardners! My name is sheriff...
      Homer voiceover: Lisa Simpson!
      Cowgirl: I sure am hungry for my favorite food...
      Homer voiceover: McNuggets!
      Lisa: I don't like McNuggets! I'm a vegetarian!
      Homer: Still? Well then you're not gonna like your other present!
      (A wrapped turkey)
      (In the film a cowboy rides up)
      Cowgirl: Why it's my best friend...
      Homer voiceover: Maggie!
      Lisa: Huh?
      Bartender: Bad news sheriff...
      Homer voiceover: Lisa Simpson!
      Bartender: Some Indians took all the...
      Homer voiceover: McNuggets! Mmmm McNuggets... haughughalughalugh!
      Cowgirl: I'll get those no good Indians, just as sure as my favorite book is...
      Homer voiceover: Magazines! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
      Bart voiceover: Wake up, Dad!
      Homer voiceover: Wha wha wha wha wha?
    • Sweet, I'm gonna put my face on the guy from http://monstersofcock.com/ [monstersofcock.com].
    • Just make sure you put the head on the right body... My head on her body...
    • Technically, it can be argued that the first to let you put your face on a virtual character's head, and order him/her around, was The Sims. The Deluxe version even shipped standard with a tool allowing you to align and convert one of your photos into a face texture.

      And with the right expansion pack, yeah, you could watch your virtual self go on a vacation, like in the summary.

      Now ok, it's a far cry from starring in an animated feature, but still, you could build a photo-album or story with it.

      Personally

  • Great (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mhaisley ( 410683 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @10:09PM (#12072561)
    This is really great, I can see my self standing in line for hours at an amusment park, and afterwords being able to buy advertising featuring me.

    Besides the really vain, what use is there for this type of technology, it's kind of a "wow thats cool, now what" type thing.

    • Re:Great (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      what use is there for this type of technology...

      framing people.

    • Besides the scientific use of these computer thingies, what use is are they for everyone else?!

    • Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @10:27PM (#12072670) Homepage Journal
      *Besides the really vain, what use is there for this type of technology, it's kind of a "wow thats cool, now what" type thing.*

      semi-virtual actors. the actor doesn't need to be a real person, yet he can be in 20 movies per year easily by using cheap acting students. or imagine terminator 5000: arnolds face returns.
      • And don't forget framing yourself for crimes.

        No wait... bugger...

    • Re:Great (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Reenactment of crime.. it may be possible to use witness descriptions to create an animation of the perp's walk etc.

      People who know him may find it easier to recognize that way.
  • or a plug for the EyeToy addon for the PS2?
    • I seriously though the same thing when I read the blurb: "What is this article about, pushing a new technology to put you in a movie, or a plug for the author?"

      I'm not going to waste my time bashing on how /. needs more editorial review, but whomever submitted this article, please make it seem less like a TV commercial for the author next time.

  • Can my best friend (Score:3, Funny)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @10:17PM (#12072611) Homepage Journal
    be my little sister and my favorite food be chicken nuggets?
  • I can't believe it. The Sheep Look Up (and I use title caps with some trepidation) is the only book I have ever thrown across my room in disgust! I was brought up in a house hold that cherished and respected all forms of the written word, but this book was just too much for me. I only got two chapters in. That was enough.
    • .. but why?

      I haven't read it (nor heard of it until this morning) but if you could expand upon the judgement of "this book sucks" with a bit more detail, I'd be more inclined not to proverbially throw your opinion of it across the room.
      • He's wrong. It's brilliant. Maybe he just has the attention span of a gnat.

        I first read it about 25 years ago, and had _no_ _trouble_ _at_ _all_ finishing it in record time. I've since re-read it a couple of times.

    • Re:The Sheep Look Up AKA A Pile of Stinky Dren (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rco3 ( 198978 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @10:59PM (#12072838) Homepage
      I've tried reading two or three different Brunner novels, and I couldn't ever come close to finishing one. I'm not sure I even got through a single chapter. This, from someone who almost CANNOT put down a novel no matter how crappy it is - I've read some of my father's dreaded 'Mack Bolan' drivel (no, he's not the author - he just reads 'em, can't imagine why), and finished the damned things without giving up. Hell, I read Clive Cussler cover to cover. Ludlum! I made it through two or three of Robert L. Forward's heavy-on-the-S-weak-on-the-F novels - folks, I read Harry
      Harrison's godawful DeathWorld trilogy (tripe-ogy?) in its entirety. But I can't do that with Brunner.

      It's been years and years and years since I tried, and maybe I could do it now. I'm just not interested in trying again.
      • You might find that years of video games, rapid cut scene-shift TV and music videos have trained you up for that style. (Definitely 20 minutes into the future. ;) Those three books (Stand, Sheep, Shock) are not an easy read the first few times.
      • I have no problem stopping a novel I don't enjoy, but I have to rank Stand On Zanzibar as one of the best sf novels ever; I think it truly deserves its reputation. I think in a lot of ways it created what would eventually become cyberpunk (not the technology aspect, but the near-future catastrophism aspect).
        • In "Stand On Zanzibar" Brunner foresaw the sequencing of the human genome, genetic engineering, Road Rage/"Going Postal," MTV and CNN. He didn't foresee the personal computer and the breakup of the Soviet Union, but eh. It's still a bitchen read.

          "The Shockwave Rider" is also pretty kick-ass.
          • The point when Stand on Zanzibar REALLY impressed me was when after reading it I checked the copyright date. I had assumed it had been written in the 80's.

          • A few more interesting bits in *Stand on Zanzibar*: at a party, one of the couples are talking about seeing what they think is a nice new apartment block going up in a convenient place, and are disabused: it was a new prison. In Boston, about 10 years ago, there seemed to be a nice new apartment block going up on Nashua Street (near the Boston Garden and North Station, and not far from Mass General). I heard more than one person make pretty much the same comment, that it might be a good place to check out f

    • I only got two chapters in. That was enough.

      A weak effort, given that the chapters are only a page or two long.

      Maybe you should have given it more of a shot. The Sheep Look Up is, of the three Brunner novels mentioned, by far the best, and that's saying a lot--Stand On Zanzibar is pretty damned impressive as well. Sheep has a few clunkers in the prediction department (e.g. evil microwave ovens), but overall it's terrifyingly prescient. It covers pesticides becoming ineffectual, overuse of antibiotics

    • If you only read the first two chapters then you missed the best bit, the happy ending.

  • what kind of equipment... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    would this need? is this going to be like some 4 frame per second redraw?

    -------
    Even Nerds get married! [shaadi.com]
  • would be Thomas De Zengotita's new book called 'Mediated' - very cool stuff, check out his NPR interview for an intro.

  • Tony Hawk on PS2 (Score:2, Insightful)

    by krakelohm ( 830589 )
    Didnt they do this to a lesser extent with Tony Hawk 4 or somethin on the PS2?

    • Re:Tony Hawk on PS2 (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Corporation [classicgaming.com] (1990) for the Amiga allowed you to put your face on the main character. You had to send a floppy disk and a photograph to Core Design.

  • You TOO can be a Doom 3 Space Marine ! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @10:29PM (#12072681)
    I don't see too much special here (besides it being a funny gimmick), as it's an animated movie.
    Replacing textures of 3d fps game-models have been common ground for ages : Only now with the D3 engine, you can get near the quality seen in the screenshots of the animation.

    Still, a funny idea.

  • Even more uses... (Score:5, Funny)

    by nacturation ( 646836 ) <nacturation AT gmail DOT com> on Monday March 28, 2005 @10:38PM (#12072729) Journal
    Not only can you have your face rendered onto characters, but companies can hook into some global advertising database (eg: combination of Safeway club card, Airmiles, and other reward programs) and poll your shopping preferences. The characters can then sport jackets and shirts with your favorite clothing brand, drink from cans of your favorite soda, and drive your preferred brand of car. Oh, the possibilities are limitless!

    Add in text-to-speech technology and maybe in the future they'll ask you to recite a few paragraphs so that the computer can learn your speech patterns, then the character will talk using your voice. Combine this with speech-to-text, and someone can have a video conference with someone else using your face and voice. They speak, it's converted to text, and then output as speech in your voice on the other end. Hello identity theft!
    • I'll just wait for cognitive impression. Having an AI version of you would be kind of cool, if there was a bunch of security measures. If I was an AI, I'd probably want to do evil stuff. By the way, am I using the term "cognitive impression" correctly? I believe it was used in Halo as the process of making an AI based on someone's mind.
    • The characters can then sport jackets and shirts with your favorite clothing brand, drink from cans of your favorite soda, and drive your preferred brand of car. Oh, the possibilities are limitless!

      I dunno. I always assumed most people tend to watch television to escape their dull, Big-K-cola-drinking, Honda-Civic-Driving, Old-Navy-wearing, TPS-report-filing lives...

    • They speak, it's converted to text, and then output as speech in your voice on the other end. Hello identity theft!

      Just don't get the crew from Andromeda to do it. (At least make sure the transmitter is off before dropping out of character.)

  • So for the next blockbuster, you could get Joe Bloggs off the street use him in filming, and then paste Tom Cruise's face on! That would certainly save on the budget... :D

    So will actors/actresses now have copyrights for their faces?

  • Christ ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by kalidasa ( 577403 ) * on Monday March 28, 2005 @10:44PM (#12072762) Journal
    what an imagination I've got!

    What I say three times is true.

    • have read *Stand on Zanzibar*. The last line of *Stand on Zanzibar* is "Christ, what an imagination I've got!" and it's Slashdot-relevant, as is the pivotal line in the book, a quotation from Lewis Carroll, "What I say three times is true." If you've read the book you'll realize that my posting above, applied to this story, in a way conveys the tone of the book.

  • 'Ractives (Score:1, Interesting)

    by PxM ( 855264 )
    I just read Stephenson's Diamond Age and it had the concept of fully interactive media. Instead of just overlaying a face over a static movie, 'ractives didn't seperate actors and viewers. The idea was that the 'viewer' would buy a ractive and would pay a different amount depending on the type of ractive. They would also be able to have other viewers join them or they could pay professional actors to fill in the spot. The system was flexible enough to adapt to whatever the people did (and probably had a rat
    • They would also be able to have other viewers join them or they could pay professional actors to fill in the spot.

      Great, so in the future, Dinner Murder Mysteries will become popular again?
    • Gibson borrowed/stole the same thing from Brunner in one of his novels (Virtual Light? I don't remember.) The protagonist's employer, Slitscan, tried to blackmail him using this technique, IIRC.

      I'm trying to think if Sterling lifted anything from Brunner. It's been a while since I read Islands in the Net, but I vaguely remember that as being somewhat reminiscent of Stand on Zanzibar. And the mood of Heavy Weather was kind of like Sheep Look Up.

  • 3-D face scanner at Tech Museum in San Jose (Score:5, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @10:50PM (#12072794)
    Several years ago the Tech Museum in San Jose [thetech.org] had a revolving 3-D scanner that would scan people's heads. After you got scanned, it created a 3-D model of your head with a full-color texture map (which looks really strange when flattened on a monitor because you discover that your face is only a very small part of your head). You then were given an URL that would work in other exhibits and let you download your face.

    I wonder if its still there.... I wonder if I still have that file.....
  • God, I had no idea anyone else had read that book. I was actually plugging it (again) right before I read this. Stand on Zanzibar is completely eerie and wonderful.

  • Online games (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Exluddite ( 851324 )
    This could actually be pretty cool for online games. You could be on a team with friends from out of town, and know who you were playing with. On the other hand, it could lead to some creepy deja vu if you see someone at the mall!

  • Brunner is God (Score:4, Interesting)

    by farrellj ( 563 ) * on Monday March 28, 2005 @11:48PM (#12073073) Homepage Journal
    He did an excellent job of predicting huge bits of today's world...but don't forget, he based it all upon the work of Heidi and Alvin Toffler...The Shockwave Rider is named after the Toffler's "Future Shock"...and if Brunner is God, then they are the Mother and Father dieties of God.

    ttyl
    Farrell

    Sorry if that offends you monotheists, I'm a Druid.

  • Not come to pass Yet??? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TechnoGrl ( 322690 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @11:50PM (#12073080)
    From the Amazon page of the book :

    "An enduring classic, this book offers a dramatic and prophetic look at the potential consequences of the escalating destruction of Earth. In this nightmare society, air pollution is so bad that gas masks are commonplace. Infant mortality is up, and everyone seems to suffer from some form of ailment. The water is polluted, and only the poor drink from the tap. The government is ineffectual, and corporate interests scramble to make a profit from water purifiers, gas masks, and organic foods."


    Seems pretty much like now to me ?? !
    • "Seems pretty much like now to me"

      I was just down to the store yesterday for new cartridges for the gasmask...

      No, I wasn't. Infant mortality is down about everywhere, the water is getting cleaner in industrialized countries and the Corps hate organic food. People are living longer and longer with high quality of living through thier lives. So how is it like now?
      • Maybe soon enough. Water is actually a big issue in many places for the immediate future. We might have clean drinking water now in the US, but the current trend is to remove the "E" and the "P" from the EPA.
        • Since we're on the topic of global environmental gloom'n'doom...

          Years ago I got to see MIT Futurist Lester Thoreau speak. He opened his talk with a quote from the "Global 2000" (or some name like that) report done during the Carter administration. "If present trends continue..." and then went on to forecast gloom'n'doom. Thoreau asserted that you could quit reading the paper right after those first words, because present trends never continue, over the long run. Things change.

          If present trends continue...

  • Most people don't have a terribly realistic view of how they look. This is highlighted by their reactions to amateur home videos. "oh! I look terrible in that". Making people look attractive and not awkward in the video medium is extremely difficult.

    So, I'd imagine this technology isn't going to be nearly as important as the technology to make various automatic subtle changes to a person so that their facial features and expressions look attractive, graceful, etc but are still recognisable both to themse

  • Aaaaaah! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 )
    Help! First they made me into a singing purple dinasour, and now I'm Goatse!

  • science fiction (Score:2, Informative)

    by gitana ( 756955 )

    A similar idea is presented by Niel Stephenson in The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Stephenson uses the term ractive to:

    describe a form of elite interactive entertainment, in which a live human performer (a "'ractor") working from a computer-provided script, improvises in real-time with paying customers, over a virtual reality network. This imaginary genre, a cross between improvisational theatre, interactive fiction, and mass-entertainment such as TV

    Quoted from http://www.ifwiki.org/ [ifwiki.org]

  • John Brunner? What about Ray Bradbury? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Audacious ( 611811 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @01:00AM (#12073358) Homepage
    In "Farenheit 451" Ray Bradbury talked about people staring in TV shows way beyond when John Brunner ever wrote about it. According to Amazon.com's scans of the copyright dates:

    Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 [amazon.com]

    and

    John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar [amazon.com]

    Sorry, Bradbury did it first. :-)

    In fact, given the dates, I'd say John read 451 when in school and the idea probably percolated for a while and then popped out later on. This happens all the time to people (song writers, story writers, etc...). It is also IMHO why Congress original set the 14 year coverage of copyrights with a single 14 year extension (if asked for). So that ideas could be discovered, used, and then rolled back into the seething mass of consciousness only to be spit back out later on in another, maybe slightly different, form. Copyrights which remove this plowing of ideas back into the general masses basically destroys everyone's ability to make new ideas or items. Because the one person who owns the original copyright can, presently, charge whatever they want for their copyright thus limiting the availability of ideas.

    Do you think that non-original ideas (like the making of ice cream) can not be copyrighted and halt everyone's ability to do something? Think about the case of the "Happy Birthday" song played by Mozart centuries ago. You don't hear it in restaurants much anymore (oh, they have "Happy Birthday" songs but they are not THE "Happy Birthday" song). The reason? Some guy copyrighted it and the Copyright Office was stupid enough to give him the copyright. Even though the Copyright Office's own rules state that anything that pre-existed before the copyright laws went into effect could not be copyrighted!

    So go figure.

    • Happy Birthday song origins (Score:5, Informative)

      by Old Man Kensey ( 5209 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @02:04AM (#12073631) Homepage
      Audacious wrote:

      Think about the case of the "Happy Birthday" song played by Mozart centuries ago. You don't hear it in restaurants much anymore (oh, they have "Happy Birthday" songs but they are not THE "Happy Birthday" song). The reason? Some guy copyrighted it and the Copyright Office was stupid enough to give him the copyright. Even though the Copyright Office's own rules state that anything that pre-existed before the copyright laws went into effect could not be copyrighted!

      Cecil Adams begs to disagree [straightdope.com] with you. (Well. Cecil doesn't beg. Rather the opposite, usually.)

      • This is correct. I was allowing Hollywood's misuse of history to influence me. Although Mozart may have played some kind of a ditty for a king on the king's birthday - it probably would not have sounded anything like the "Happy Birthday to you" song.
    • You obviously haven't read both. I have. Bradbury imagines a room with four-wall television showing realistic soap operas or maybe reality shows which (combined with medication) serves to monopolize the lives of some people (e.g., Montag's wife). Brunner imagines a television system where many shows and nearly all commercials have a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, whose appearance can be customized either with generic images (same body type, complexion, hair and eye color, etc.) or with your own image (sui

  • This was tried years ago in videogames: (Score:5, Funny)

    by bjbest ( 808259 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @01:03AM (#12073374)
    At least 20 years ago I read in a gaming magazine about an arcade video game developer who recalled inventing a game that had a very advanced feature: the arcade game had a camera to make a digital snapshot of your face when you inserted the coins. Your face would be incorporated into your onscreen playing character in the game. Also if you were a highscorer, then your picture would appear onscreen between plays with the other highscorers. A prototype of the game were placed in an arcade to guage gamer interest.

    All was fine until the top scoring player of the game exposed his genetalia to the camera. The arcade operator complained to the manufacturer that the machine, when not being played, flashed a big picture of a P3N15 along with the top ten scorers.

    It just shows you that there always would be some smart ass who will try to screw up the system by throwing in something completely unexpected.

  • Would Mr. Uh, Clem please report to the hospitality tower in your area.

  • What bozo at Slashdot let Microsoft run a Flash ad on this page that plays an air horn sound?
  • This is just one of many insanely cool (mostly) Japanese technologies being showcased at Expo 2005 Aichi [expo2005.or.jp], which just opened last week. Other highlights include Toyota's robot-laden pavilion, Hitachi's interactive VR safari, the world's first 360-degree fully hemispherical movie projector, driverless buses zipping around the site, etc. See Wikitravel's guide [wikitravel.org] for more.

    And yes, I'm going there next week. :P

    Cheers,
    -j.

  • Voice? (Score:2)

    by Kirth ( 183 )
    Well, now I've got this actor on screen who looks like me, and has the voice of Mickey Mouse?
  • So, if they scan my face, and I license it for use in commercials (selling cars, personal hygene products, lite beer, etc.), do I get paid for each appearance by my intellectual property? Or is it just a one-time fee, and they're allowed to make "archival copies" and use them however they want in the future?

    Chip H.
  • ... does it have to only be my face they replace?
    I mean, maybe with the "scale" and "expand to fit page" options maybe I'd have a better self image.
  • I always knew Matrox was just ahead of their time with this. And you all laughed at my G550! Ha! Who's laughing now, suckers?

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