Saturday, December 24, 2005

Synthespians.

It's only a matter of time, i guess less than a year, before some vain, semi-washed up action hero, decides it would be better for his career to get himself digitally captured for synthetic posterity. It will go like this: Stalone (or Steven Segal...) will not like how his body is aging, and want to protract his bankability, so will get himself scanned into a high-rez 3D model. Now the model will not fully replace him--not yet -- but rather will be applied to his body or face like makeup, to allow him to "act" a little younger. For actors starting now, they might have to mine their old films to find enough facial information of youth to keep the Stalone of Rocky still kicking into the next decades. For young good looking actors, they might go through the process willingly today, to keep the model on hand, a digital doppelganger, and charge for the data as required. For a time, as I mentioned, it can be applied like youthful make up... but in years ahead, it's money in the bank.

Clearly, most actors will scoff at this, and explain that their acting skills are improving with age, those lines in the face etc are character-building. But I promise you some will recognize the future value of storing and owning their own 3D likeness of youth -- like storing cord blood stem cells -- for that eventuality of age and death, that every actor expects to supercede.

I'd put money on it.

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