Lucasfilm Hires Deepfake YouTuber Who Fixed The Mandalorian (cnet.com) 52
Lucasfilm has hired the YouTuber known as Shamook, whose The Mandalorian deepfake, published in December, has earned nearly 2 million views for improving the VFX used to de-age Mark Hamill. CNET reports: "As some of you may already know, I joined ILM/Lucasfilms a few months ago and haven't had the time to work on any new YouTube content," Shamook wrote in the comment section of a recent video. "Now I've settled into my job, uploads should start increasing again. They'll still be slow, but hopefully not months apart." Shamook said in the comments that his job title is, "Senior Facial Capture Artist."
Lucasfilm confirmed the new hire (via IndieWire). "[Industrial Light and Magic is] always on the lookout for talented artists and have in fact hired the artist that goes by the online persona 'Shamook,'" a Lucasfilm representative said in a statement. "Over the past several years ILM has been investing in both machine learning and A.I. as a means to produce compelling visual effects work and it's been terrific to see momentum building in this space as the technology advances." Shamook also "fixed" The Irishman too.
Lucasfilm confirmed the new hire (via IndieWire). "[Industrial Light and Magic is] always on the lookout for talented artists and have in fact hired the artist that goes by the online persona 'Shamook,'" a Lucasfilm representative said in a statement. "Over the past several years ILM has been investing in both machine learning and A.I. as a means to produce compelling visual effects work and it's been terrific to see momentum building in this space as the technology advances." Shamook also "fixed" The Irishman too.
The days of George (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The days of George (Score:4, Insightful)
But, luckily, Shamook shot first.
Re:The days of George (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not so sure about that. There have been Star Wars parodies for years, including the video Troops (cops parody) https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]. This was actually hosted at starwars.com. I don't know that Lucas sued everyone for everything. Although I think they did try to take down the Phantom Edit, a 'better' version of Phantom Menace, though that was kind of the whole film. So I don't know.
I would kind of expect Disney to be more aggressive about stuff like this, but I am glad that they are trying to hire the person.
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Same principle applies for intellectual property. If you don't actively enforce your ownership and control, you effectively lose it.
Sucks, as that legal precedent drives a lot of the pointless takedown activity. But there it is.
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It doesn't make it theirs. In the US, you may earn a prescriptive easement for your fence in most circumstances.
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Fact: if you own property, and your neighbor fixes the fence and accidentally moves the posts such that 4' of property that used to be yours is now in their yard -- and you let it stand -- that property is now your neighbors.
Same principle applies for intellectual property. If you don't actively enforce your ownership and control, you effectively lose it.
It applies to trademarks, not copyright or patents.
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Another great hollywood scam. Put out the word that you hire YouTubers. Get hundreds of people who will work for you for nearly nothing.
Is your motto "Behind every silver lining there's a dark cloud"?
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Why? Lucas-era Lucasarts actively promoted fan works, so long as they were a) not-for-profit, and b) not disgusting.
Hell, they ran the Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards for years.
I feel a great tranquility in the force. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice to see a business caring more about their product than about enforcing legal rights not really worth anything.
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I wish that could fix the sequel trilogy (Score:3)
But that takes more than a facelift.
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Disney could do it if they wanted to. They are making a new final season of Dexter, a do-over to fix the poor ending that it originally had.
All they really need to do is remake Rise of Skywalker according to the leaked original plan for it. Colin Trevorrow's "Duel of Fates" sounds great and built on what was done in the first two movies, rather than trying to ignore them. Would have been a great end to the saga.
Re:I wish that could fix the sequel trilogy (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really, the characters themselves are simply not convincing. RoS was damage control, nothing else. An attempt to salvage what was left after the train wreck that TLJ was.
What JJ simply doesn't get, and I mean, never did, was that when you take over a franchise, your freedoms are limited. If you start a movie from scratch, even if you do a reboot, you have a lot of freedom. You can establish whatever you want and it is "true" because that's what you wrote. There isn't anything to take into account and no explanation is necessary (this is why Palpatine as the Emperor without any explanation worked in ANH while Snoke as supreme leader in TFA doesn't). That window of freedom is MUCH smaller if you're writing a sequel and should stay consistent with the movies that came before.
You can of course just claim it's a complete revamp of the universe and you don't give a fuck about anything that came before, but if you do, you also cannot use the canon of the previous movies. At least if you plan to stay consistent and use them as a springboard.
And let's be honest here, if I buy a franchise for a couple billions, I sure as FUCK want to use them as a springboard!
So your characters have some explaining to do. JJ with his ridiculous mystery boxes can't do that. All he can do is offer tantalizing questions but he doesn't even plan to ever answer them. This does not work. If you promise me a great dinner but don't tell me what's cooking, I start wondering what it could be. But only the first time when you don't deliver. After that, I won't care anymore because I know that you don't deliver.
And now we know JJ does not deliver.
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RoS tried to pander to "fans" and was obviously the product of a lot of late stage changes and re-writes.
TLJ set things up brilliantly. Just like Empire it defied expectations and really opened the ending up to not just be the same two families fighting again, and to really fulfil the prophecy of bringing balance to the force by moving beyond the dichotomy of good/evil and Jedi/Sith.
The original trilogy was about Luke coming of age and becoming a Jedi, leading his rather to some kind of redemption. But when
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I'm not exactly a fan of Star Wars, but I'm a fan of good storytelling. So far, SW delivered that. Sure, the original story was much but not original, it's basically the Hero's Journey [wikipedia.org], the staple of western storytelling, in a Sci-Fi setting. And the trope "Young hero saves princess with the aid of old, disgraced master who redeems himself by teaching the young hero" isn't that new either, that's the staple of Eastern storytelling.
But it was well told. The characters were well designed, complete with motiva
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ROTJ is a mess. The first part with Jabba was written so Harrison Ford could come back, and much of it made very little sense. It also really sucked for Leia, she could have finally had some agency and become a real hero instead of the perpetual damsel, but no they stuck her in a bikini and chains.
The ending was weak too. The Rebels bit wasn't bad, although the Ewoks defeating the crack Empire troops was daft. The Luke/Vader story sucked though, Vader finally turns at the last moment but does nothing to ato
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Yeah, it really sucked how she just sat there and had to be rescued. It would have been really cool if, say, it turned out she was infiltrating the place, and she wound up strangling Jabba to death with her 'chains.'
Yeah, if Vietnam taught us anything, it's that a 'primitive' guerilla force has zero chance to defeat a techn
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Sorry but Leia's attempt to rescue Han was lame. Considering she was damseled in the other two movies as well it would have been nice if she had had a chance to do something in that movie.
The Empire were idiots. They could have just cleared that forest and built a proper fortress, but instead figured that nobody would look to closely as the non-suspicious moon right next to their new superweapon.
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Dude, did you watch the OT? Leia takes over her own rescue, then goes on to oversee the destruction of the Death Star.
In ESB, she takes literally the last transport out of a base, under enemy fire, after working to ensure that as many of her people were evacuated as possible. Sure, she doesn't do much on Cloud City, but neither does Han or Chewie; were they 'damseled' by being rendered helpless, subject to torture, and requiring rescue as well?
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I don't think the slave-girl position was too off, this is a pretty strong position when used correctly. In my opinion at least, the strength of a character comes from the obstacles the character has to overcome to prevail, and the position of a slave is a pretty good start for that, because there are few obstacles worse than this. If she can overcome this, and she did, that makes a pretty powerful statement. The symbolism of her using her chains to kill Jabba is also pretty powerful.
But I think nobody ques
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I guess the slave thing could have worked as a character arc, if it hasn't been a bikini slave with no development and a lot of fan service.
The whole Luke/Vader thing is weird. Seems like they forgot about Empire where Vader offers Luke the chance to be his partner, presumably after jointly murdering the Emperor and taking his place. The real issue though is that Vader's turning on the Emperor just isn't developed enough.
Vader apparently planned to kill the Emperor, and what better opportunity than with Luk
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Vader had certainly planned to use Luke to overthrow the Emperor. I'm pretty sure that was at least part of the reason why he took Luke to the Emperor. Vader and the Emperor very likely had the same idea: Using Luke to get rid of the other one. Vader says it pretty much outright in their duel in ROTE, join me and we'll rule the galaxy together.
Of course, with him as the master and Luke as his apprentice.
Palpatine wanted to replace his "broken" Skywalker with a "working" version.
I read somewhere that the sui
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TLJ was many things, and "brilliant" was not one of them. The movie definitely did defy my expectations, because I expected a good movie, which was definitely not what I got. It was full of plot holes, and plot tangents that really had no point (like the whole gambling planet part).
RoS might have attempted to pander to fans, but I'm not sure how well it succeeded. It was a hot mess that tried to keep the viewer interested by continually moving to new locations and situations
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Complaining about plot holes in a Star Wars movie is kinda ridiculous. The original trilogy were full of them, as well as silliness like sound in space, gravity where there should be none, the old man fight between a current and former Jedi "master", Chewie not getting a medal, and that's just the first one.
The point of the gambling planet on TLJ was to show that the wider galaxy was full of injustice and inequality, and that there was much more to the Rebellion than just fighting the First Order. It was al
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Yes, the old movies had their weak points. The space battles were ... very arcade, to say the least, and physics and astrophysics in particular were not invited to the party. I guess that's an acceptable sacrifice, because "realistic" space battles are just not very interesting to watch.
With SciFi, certain concessions have to be made and realism has to take a back seat sometimes. No later than with the faster-than-light travel question the whole realism bit falls on its face already. But without FTL technol
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I don't see why complaining about plots holes in a movie is ridiculous. Sure, it falls under the category of "first world problems." No one is going to die from a movie being bad. Or even just not great. But at the same time, you are not being intellectually honest if you praise something and then dismiss criticism because it's just a movie.
And sure, the OT had plot holes. And IMHO, the first one (A New Hope) is kind of cheesy. Sound in space is just wrong. I really thought that in Attack of the Clon
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Star Wars has always been full of hand-wavy reasons why things are the way they are, it's just not that sort of sci-fi. My point was only that if you want to shred TLJ for plot issues then the rest of the movies come off no better.
TLJ has more than enough good stuff in it to warrant overlooking the issues, like people do with the other movies. It really set things up for a fantastic finale too.
The Mandalorian is okay, not stellar. The end of season 2 was a real low point, instead of resolving the plot in an
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Surprising plot twists are enjoyable if, and only if, they make sense in-universe. The plot twist of 6th sense was one of the best I could currently think of, because it was suprising and the narrative played into it, despite seeming differently, but it still makes sense if viewed at the angle it was eventually revealed. Had the plot twist been that, say, the ghosts are actually aliens in disguise and they're taking over earth, would it have been surprising? Yes, definitely. Would it have made sense in-univ
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All he can do is offer tantalizing questions but he doesn't even plan to ever answer them.
Just like he did in Lost.
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And he can't even take a hint and learn from his mistakes, considering what glowing reviews that last season of Lost got from its audience.
Technology and art marching arm-in-arm (Score:4, Funny)
With this kind of progress in DeepFakery, I just KNOW my porno with Scarlett Johansson, Emma Stone and an Olympic athlete to be named later is just around the corner.
Of course, if that ever happened in real life, I'd probably be dead in under an hour. On the up side, but it would take a small army of morticians at least a week to pry the grin off my face.
Re: Lemme guess, the Olympic athlete... (Score:2)
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With this kind of progress in DeepFakery, I just KNOW my porno with Scarlett Johansson, Emma Stone and an Olympic athlete to be named later is just around the corner.
I find myself humming Meat Loaf's "Two out of three ain't bad" while reading your comment. Maybe if you named the Olympic athlete we could fix that :-)
His version did not look any better (Score:1)
I saw the altered version and while it was very good, in the end I thought the one from the show was a bit more lifelike even if it lacked features of his rework.
But still he'll probably make an excellent hire, combine his work with other subtle touches the people working on the show had and you might have something that looks really good. Pretty sure we'll see Luke again.
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I feel like his new one is overall better, but it still doesn't look real either. Something about the movement seems overly smoothed / fake. Given he was working on top of the previous work, rather than the original raw footage, there's probably not much he could do about that. If he had access to the raw footage, he may have been able to fix that up too.
Both of them were far better than the Leia and Tarkin puppets in Rogue One. Tarkin totally ruined that movie for me, whenever he was on screen.
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Given he was working on top of the previous work, rather than the original raw footage, there's probably not much he could do about that.
That's an interesting point, maybe with some of the original sources he could do an even better job.
Both of them were far better than the Leia and Tarkin puppets in Rogue One.
Yes, I agree there, Tarken was not too bad I thought but Leia looked a bit artificial and had a bit of a glow.
It does seem like they are pretty close to nailing down the fine details on this technolog
Re: His version did not look any better (Score:3)
I can tell differences between the versions, specifically with sharpness and some lighting, but it still just doesn't look quite right. This has improved over the years but I still don't feel like the natural "twitches" and face jerkiness are quite reproduced correctly. Like when Hamil stops talking his lips just go very still. Of course if I was doing it, it would look mostly like a bad xkcd ripoff, so maybe I'm not the best critic...
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A deepfake, combined with extensive manual colour and sharpness correction, combined with manual manipulation to tweak the deepfake'd animation, and you could probably make it look a lot more realistic. The problem they're trying to solve isn't "how can we do this with less labour", but "how can we do this at all", and it seems to me like applying manual work to deepfakes is probably an area worth investigating... and is probably an area that they're already working on. An outfit like ILM has the kind of cr
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in the end I thought the one from the show was a bit more lifelike
Yeah nothing more lifelike than having eyes that make someone look dead inside :-)
I disagree, but that's personal opinion. The deepfake IMO looks much better.
Fix one more thing real quick... (Score:2)
Fix those stupid "studs" on R2-D2 in the last episode. The SFX or VFX guys fucked up. (Pretty sure it was the prop guys. They were told to use a blue droid and they didn't "correct" it enough to be real R2-D2 in appearance.)
So... another "re-release"? (Score:2)
I mean, if they "fixed" one of the chapters because a crew guy was glimpsed in the background (thus removing the original one), I must think they will do the same to the last one where young Hamil is... won't they?
When I saw "Senior Facial Capture Artist".. (Score:2)
Not my money (Score:2)
Corridor Crew also redid that shot (Score:2)
My opinion (Score:1)