Discovery Channel Virtual History: FAKING "Historical Footage" of past world leaders

[JTD]

Let’s see who is winning:



Expanding human knowledge 0 Potential to be abused 100



I’d say the potential to be abused is winning. My thoughts are that it’s one thing to reenact something but quite another to present it as actual footage.

This won't increase knowledge of the subject because in making the footage you can only use what you already know. However, it can be abused because you can add words, thoughts, ideas, etc., that were never there in the first place.

Just think of all the people you already know that really believe Forrest Gump met with President Kennedy. In my humble opinion this is bad, bad, bad.

[richcz3]

So lomg as it is made clear that these are recreations, I think this is a positive step forward. This is just like what investigative shows do to give the viewer a better perspective of events.

I have seen the same archival footage for of WWII events over the past decade. Many clips are attributed to the wrong theatre of conflict. This is done partly because there is so little archival footage that has been reviewed or restored for the selected topic. Getting the look and feel of the period could easily spill over to feature films which would be beneficial to filmamking and movie releases in general.

That being said, I was surprised recently to find out that there are huge archives of photos and reels that have gone unreviewed since the 40's. There is so many in various national archives but the cost of review, restoration, and catagorizing would be huge.

[RobertoOrtiz]

The special is tonight. How was it?

[DevilHacker]

I am watching it right now, and it is very good, would even go as far as to say photo-realistic.

:thumbsup:

[Hazdaz]

Well if its on Discovery, Its either gonna be real good, or real crap. I don't feal like watching it tonight, but like all their other shows, I know that they will repeat it many of times in the few weeks and months. From the commercials, it looks really good (CGI-wise), but the subject matter itself is more than a little overdone now-a-days. I am just so sick of WW2 games and movies and stuff like that.

I do agree with JTD - this technology can soooo be abused in the not to distant future. I mean before this technology was really only available to directors with major Hollywood-sized budgets - now its come down in price so much that nearly anyone can recreate events to their own bias. And seeing that the average Joe believes what he sees, major abuse is possible.

Anyways from a CGI perspective, its pretty interesting, even if from a society-perspective, its a 'dangerous' thing.

[richcz3]

It was hit and miss. There were times that the 3D overlay was pulled off, especially with Franklin D Rossevelt. The exception being the mouth synching. His mouth appeared to show little movement.

The Churchill scenes tried to capture his animated personality and it worked to some degree, but it seems they had a hard time matching luminosity and shadows.

In scenes with Stalin, it looked like they just used an actor with little resemblance to Stalin. Most of his scenes were done at a greater distance and slightly out of focus.

With Hitler there was a default frowning face with a moving mouth. With little expression changes it came off looking more like a mask.

The attempt to capture the film look and camera handeling worked, but instead of helping to blend the composited CG over the acted scenes, the CG colors had a tendency to stand out. There were plenty of still shots used throughout the program. These were mixed in with real archival shots. Some were bad Photoshop work, but I guess there was less emphasis on that aspect of the show. I'm sure more people tuned in for the animation.

[Ross Forster]

Yeah, we got this mid-october (UK) and for the most part, I thought it was a good concept, but there were things you definatelty could improve on next time round.

...for what it was, I thought MPC did an admirable job.

[xynaria]

Quite surprised it took so long for this to get a mention on here. Its now over a month since this was shown in the uk preceded by no small amount of fanfare.
For me it fell short of 'pulling it off' and although it's hard not to admire and respect the sheer amount of work that went into it, inevitably by its own nature of conception any noticable 'flaws' will break the desired illusion and as others pointed out, the lip sync was noticeably not working in sections.
Away from 'staring at the page with the idea on it', so to speak that actual conception tends to beg the question of......er...is it worth it?
I think if had been affecting then I'd say yes, but for me it wasn't.

I can't help but compare any CG characterisation to Gollum which for me did 'pull it off' and I'd argue that that is because as much if not more consideration appeared to be given to ... 'does it communicate' rather than does it look 'real' or 'convincing'. No matter how 'realistic' the shell you are using appears, the 'life' of its performance is the make or break........just ask Final Fantasy et al.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.