[HN Gopher] Hal Hickel on Creating Tarkin for Rogue One
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Hal Hickel on Creating Tarkin for Rogue One
Author : trauco
Score : 95 points
Date : 2024-08-10 05:00 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fxrant.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fxrant.blogspot.com)
| drunkencoder wrote:
| I wonder how this would have played out using deep fake
| technology
| thih9 wrote:
| Mandalorian Season 2 spoilers below.
|
| This article looks relevant: "How Star Wars Deepfake Seriously
| Improves Luke Skywalker Cameo in The Mandalorian" - the
| youtuber that did that eventually got hired by ILM. There is
| also an example with Tarkin.
|
| https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-wars-deepfake-luke-skywalk...
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| It is definitely better but it still has the problem of the
| original where his face just looks so stiff when he speaks.
| mock-possum wrote:
| It also looks like his face is sort of floating
| superimposed over the front of his head. I feel like I
| notice that a lot with deepfake stuff, it's like the
| generated patch they're compositing overtop doesn't quite
| move at the same rate as the rest of the thing.
| ekianjo wrote:
| It was not very impressive to say the least. It looked fake the
| second it appeared on screen.
| TillE wrote:
| It would've been fine if they kept it to a brief appearance,
| but the movie spends so much time with Tarkin, including
| closeups of the face which simply does not move like a human's.
|
| Really bad call, takes away from an otherwise very good movie.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I enjoyed _Rouge One_ a lot despite of all that. It was my
| favorite of all the recent _Star Wars_ movies.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I enjoyed _Rouge One_ a lot despite of all that. It was my
| favorite of all the recent _Star Wars_ movies.
|
| Not super surprising to me.
|
| I've only seen episode 8. And that was enough for me to be
| completely uninterested in seeing any new Star Wars media.
|
| It's made me strangely nostalgic for the prequel trilogy. At
| the time they came out I was a little sad at how poorly they
| compared to the original trilogy. But at least those movies
| _wanted_ to be in the Starwars universe.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| 8 has a few low points but overall I think it was great tbh.
| Took some risks and tried to get away from the importance of
| "who your parents are"/general "great man" nonsense a lot of
| heroic epics lean on.
|
| 9 on the other hand...oof. Don't watch that.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I watched 9 in 3-d on my Meta Quest 3.
|
| The villain in the last three movies is hard for me to take
| seriously because he seems to have stepped out of an
| episode of _Doctor Who_.
|
| I appreciate the last three movies though for outdoing
| themselves in scale as did early space operas such as
| _Skylark of Space_.
|
| I see _Star Wars_ as a project that suffered because it
| went on for way too long; there were major changes in the
| external culture inside of and between the last two
| trilogies that make them hard to watch together.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| If you mean Snoke technically he wasn't in the 3rd! But
| yes point taken haha
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| 8 was not great. David Mitchell puts it best.
|
| "My enjoyment was predicated on it amounting to something.
| It was an IOU to be redeemed at the point of pleasurable
| revelation, and as there was none, the IOU was never
| redeemed. Therefore, I hadn't enjoyed myself."
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Agrees to disagree I suppose!
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Rogue One is by far the best of the Disney "Star Wars"
| movies, and the only one that fits with the Lucas movies.
| Highly recommend it.
| squarefoot wrote:
| This. Loved every minute of Rogue One, it worked great as a
| self contained story, then the finale blended so gracefully
| with the beginning of Ep IV. That is how a prequel should
| be made.
|
| Newer SW movies aren't that good, but at least they also
| aren't as bad as Ep. I, II and III, while it seems they're
| going on the right direction with most of the series.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| See, I have to disagree,.episodes 1, 2 and 3 were far and
| beyond superior to the Disney episodes.
|
| The characters and story fit in the universe. Disney
| created an alternate reality for their garbage. The Han
| Solo movie having so much potential and it was the worst
| of the bunch, worse then the Holiday Special.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Connecting Rogue One directly to the beginning of A New
| Hope really made the Leia / Darth Vader interactions work
| differently though.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Maybe you imagined the leadup to A New Hope differently,
| but I thought it all fit very well.
| dwighttk wrote:
| It originally seemed like Darth strongly suspected but
| wasn't certain that Leia had the plans. Their interaction
| sounds extremely odd since he knows for certain she has
| the plans and she knows he knows.
|
| And letting the droids go is even more inexcusable.
| vundercind wrote:
| 8 is at least the 4th-best Star Wars movie. Rogue one is
| distantly at 5th. All the rest are quite bad.
|
| [edit] though 8's quality is kinda useless, being in the
| middle of a trilogy. It's hard to recommend.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| No way. The Last Jedi is the second-worst Star Wars movie,
| only outdone (somehow) by its sequel. It was _terrible_.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I liked it better than the force awakens but I think we
| could both agree they're all safely in the "not worth
| watching" bucket so the order we stack them in there
| doesn't matter. (9 definitely is on the bottom though)
| dwighttk wrote:
| And that is including the Holiday Special.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I liked the prequels overall (despite their flaws), but I can
| say you're definitely not alone here. I have seen a lot of
| discourse online where the sequel trilogy made people
| appreciate that at least the prequels had a coherent creative
| vision behind them. Lucas made plenty of mistakes in
| realizing his vision, of course. But he _had_ one. By
| contrast, the sequel trilogy is painful to watch because they
| feel like they were designed by a committee (and the
| difference in creative leads hurts a lot too). Episode 7 in
| particular feels like they consciously tried to make a by-
| the-numbers Star Wars which passed muster with focus groups,
| but it had no soul at all.
| rubyfan wrote:
| Agree, it was by far a much better story line and set of
| characters than The Force Awakens and so on. I generally like a
| lot of the series on Disney+ and get the sense you have a few
| different creative teams pushing this stuff.
| tsujamin wrote:
| I remember leaving Rouge One _shocked_ that it was a self
| contained story, no post credits scenes, no need to commit to
| an entire trilogy or need to understand half a dozen recent
| releases.
|
| Given Marvel and similar franchises at the cinema around the
| same period, it was a breath of fresh air (also a great film)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I was just watching the X-Men films. I only went up to 2014,
| but that appears to be basically contemporary - Rogue One is
| from 2016 and the MCU apparently has a formal division into
| phases of which "phase 2" centers on 2014.
|
| The X-Men films have the property you want, with plots and
| characterization included in the movie instead of relying on
| you to bring them with you in your mind.
|
| (Are the later films _good?_ They 're not great, but if you
| watch one you'll come out with a sense that the movie had a
| plot, the things that happened were related to that plot, and
| the characters had reasons for the things they were doing.
| The films are quite inconsistent with each other, but they're
| very coherent considered individually.)
|
| The MCU films of phase 2 have already lost it. (For context,
| phase 2 starts with _Iron Man 3_ and is mostly garbage with
| the exception of _Winter Soldier_ , concluding with _Ant-
| Man_.)
|
| My conclusion is basically just that someone at the MCU
| decided "we can save on the budget if we stop using writers".
| totoglazer wrote:
| I don't think it's budget, i think it's about the churn.
| They want an assembly line of blockbusters at a predictable
| cadence. If you need a good plot it adds a lot of
| uncertainty into which script, how long it will take to
| write, etc. much easier to just take whatever the best
| thing laying around on the deadline day and keep moving
| forward.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > They want an assembly line of blockbusters at a
| predictable cadence.
|
| This is something that everyone wants.
|
| > If you need a good plot it adds a lot of uncertainty
| into which script, how long it will take to write, etc.
|
| This is true of everything too.
|
| Why would these common factors only lead the MCU to
| abandon the idea of plotting its movies? How come Moana
| had a plot?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It was a prequel to one of the greatest films of all time so
| there is no way they can top that.
| afavour wrote:
| It is very sad that this is the state of moviegoing these
| days. That said I've learned to just lean back and forget
| about it. I've missed more Marvel movies than I've seen
| (haven't seen any of the Avengers movies beyond the first I
| think) and still enjoyed the recent Deadpool movie by just
| switching off my brain and enjoying the silliness. Same with
| the second most recent Thor movie... it's when these movies
| get excessively self serious that it all unravels.
| chaostheory wrote:
| That's because many of the people watching already committed
| to three trilogies. Without the previous world building,
| Rogue One wouldn't be as good.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I loved that rogue one was was self contained. It's a great
| single mission movie expanding on a throw away line in a
| previous movie. Solo on the other hand was either way too
| long for a kid who stole someone's ship and did a joy ride
| and turned it into an outlandish tale or way too short for a
| 3 year career. Should have been either a side plot in a movie
| or a 3 episode arc. Per the movie he's been soloing for like
| 45 minutes or 63 parsecs total.
| omoikane wrote:
| I didn't even notice that Tarkin was a CG rendition until this
| post. I thought they did a wonderful job.
|
| I remember Rogue One as one of the better Star Wars movies,
| especially with how they patched up certain holes in other
| movies while remaining mostly self-contained. If Star Wars were
| software, Rogue One might be more of a "bug fix release" as
| opposed to a "feature update", and bug fix releases are the
| best releases.
| francisofascii wrote:
| I remember when watching in the theater, the audience reacted
| with awe. At the time is was a novel technique. Then it was
| followed up with Carrie Fisher at the end. And the audience loved
| it.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The synthetic Tarkin was well received and looked accurate.
|
| The synthetic Carrie Fisher looked weird and wasn't so well
| received.
| lordfrito wrote:
| A while back someone deepfaked the CGI Leia scene with
| footage of the actual Carrie Fisher as Leia in the original
| Star Wars.
|
| It looked amazing. So amazing I'm surprised the CGI ->
| Deepfake technique isn't used more often in movies.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Corridor did it and it was a great episode on how deepfakes
| were progressing (they're muck better now):
| https://youtu.be/_CXMb_MO3aw?feature=shared
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Rogue One is from 2016. AI-driven deepfake couldn't do that
| back then.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I remember the same. I saw it in a packed opening weekend;
| Tarkin's was more of a cheer and Leia's a wave of appreciative
| murmurs. Overheard only positive remarks exiting the theater.
|
| Sometime after that the imperfection and potential
| inappropriateness of the technique gained more cultural
| traction.
|
| It wasn't until after The Last Jedi was released that Star Wars
| stopped getting the benefit of the doubt during first viewings,
| broadly speaking.
| throwawayk7h wrote:
| I recall discussing it with my family after stepping out of
| the theatres. I hadn't realized there was anything strange,
| most of us didn't, but one of my siblings criticized the "bad
| CGI" at length on the walk home and said they should have
| hired a look-alike instead.
| layer8 wrote:
| I remember a lot of uncanny-valley conversations back then.
| Svip wrote:
| > We had in our possession a life casting of Peter Cushing's
| face. It was made not long after New Hope, so it was very
| accurate in terms of Cushing's age, etc.
|
| Not mentioned is that the cast he is talking about was made for
| the movie Top Secret!, where Peter Cushing plays a bookshop
| proprietor with a distorted face around a magnifying glass.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuYTVl0iOkk
| greggsy wrote:
| That was surprisingly well done
| cancerhacker wrote:
| I recently watched George Millers _Furiosa_ and they used machine
| learning and cgi to manipulate the face of the pre-teen actress
| to more closely resemble the adult actress. With the amount of
| data available constantly being captured of todays actors I'm
| sure this will become more common - and the brief article I read
| about it in this case made a point of saying that they had worked
| with the actors Guilds to establish appropriate Compensation (in
| this case). But it was subtle and I wouldn't have known without
| looking into the trivia.
|
| I saw and enjoyed _The Instigators_ last night and was thinking
| about how strong a physical impression some of the actors made on
| screen - Alfred Molina, Ving Rhames, and Ron Perlman in
| particular.
| throwawayk7h wrote:
| The adult actress, however, doesn't really resemble Charlize
| Theron from _Fury Road_ though. She did a great job, but I
| wonder if they couldn't have picked someone with a greater
| resemblance.
| greggsy wrote:
| I thought the same thing and could only conclude that she was
| only picked for her current popularity
| rickstanley wrote:
| I _enjoyed_ Rogue One, they took a unexplored slice of the story
| after the legends thing and created this self contained, well
| written journey of a group that is only mentioned in the 4th
| episode.
|
| Takin may have felt a bit off (uncanny valley), but I think it
| was a good choice to have him included in the story nonetheless.
| I like the cold, unhinged personality of this character; I've
| grown used to Peter Cushing's acting and facial features.
|
| I feel like, there should be more exploration of Star Wars in the
| aspect of "mundane" life, like it's done in Andor. There's a big
| universe already established. Andor really helped me understand 2
| things of SW universe: the oppression which built up the
| motivation for Cassian to join the Rebels, and, effectiveness of
| the Empire, specifically the ISB. God, the exchange between
| Daedra Meero and Blevin, with an added mediation of the cunning
| Major Partagaz was excellent. Reminded me of the discussion in
| Jurassic Park about ethics.
| rrnechmech wrote:
| > discussion in Jurassic Park about ethics.
|
| Care to elaborate?
| avaldez_ wrote:
| _Your Scientists Were So Preoccupied With Whether Or Not They
| Could, They Didn't Stop To Think If They Should_ (?)
| libria wrote:
| Not sure why this was downvoted, but I also assumed they
| were referring to this scene, the Hammond + Grant + Sadler
| + Malcolm + Gennaro lunch debate in the original.
| rrnechmech wrote:
| Of course. That is legendary. Thanks
| prpl wrote:
| I liked Andor a lot too, because of the mundane, the
| prison/cruelty, the guerilla-like warfare, and betrayal.
|
| The mundane existed in episode 4 as well, at least at the
| beginning.
| avaldez_ wrote:
| >God, the exchange between Daedra Meero and Blevin, with an
| added mediation of the cunning Major Partagaz was excellent.
|
| The writing in that scene is on par with the best in HBO. The
| political maneuvering and intrigue are reminiscent of House of
| Cards, and Partagaz stands out as a truly formidable leader.
|
| https://youtu.be/iKl0F640914?si=Mkgy-BTM1cp8m5rQ
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > I enjoyed Rogue One...
|
| So did I: I love it that it ends just where episode IV start
| and I like it too, spoiler alert, that the likeable protagonist
| do not make it (which we knew from episode IV but still).
| Kon5ole wrote:
| Rogue One and Andor seem to me to be perfectly adjusted SW
| stories for the fans of the originals who are now 40+ years
| older. I hope Andor gets to stretch its legs fully story-wise,
| there is immense potential in the buildup so far!
| cortesoft wrote:
| Andor is one of my favorite shows of all time, it is such an
| amazing and different portrayal of what the Empire meant.
| dmvdoug wrote:
| Yes, Andor is far and away the best SW content produced in
| recent years. What I really want to see is what happens with
| Daedra Meero. She's such an interesting character. She says at
| one point that the Empire's cracking down and sharp
| authoritarianism is only playing into the rebels' hands. But of
| course that is what the Empire is, given that it's run by a
| Sith. So we have a "good" Empire employee who wants to be
| effective at her job. How does she reconcile all those things?
| What does she do after the Death Star destroys Alderaan? Does
| she really buy into the Empire and its ways 100%? I'd love to
| know more about her backstory and frontstory, so to speak, from
| Andor.
| abetusk wrote:
| In my opinion, the failing of Tarkin was one of animation, not so
| much rendering. If you watch some of the deepfake videos where
| they swap the original actors face over the CGI version (e.g.
| [0]), to me, it looks better but the movement is still unnatural.
| The lips curl, the head bobs, etc. all have a "linear
| interpolated" look that makes it seem like it was hand animated
| rather than motion captured by any actor.
|
| It looks like in the article either the system they had in place
| captured facial expressions or an animator tried to recreate
| them, so I'm unclear why the facial movement looks so awful.
| Maybe they captured waypoints and then interpolated and we're
| seeing the aftereffect of the interpolated system? I don't know.
|
| I remember Logan coming out at around the same time and being
| blown away by the younger Hugh Jackman. This was a year later
| than Rogue One and the younger version didn't really speak, so
| maybe it's not a fair comparison but I don't think there was a
| good excuse to have such a bad model.
|
| Certainly later, with Luke Skywalker in the Mandalorian or Carrie
| Fisher in the later Star Wars series, there was no excuse to have
| had it be so bad.
|
| [0] youtube.com/watch?v=_CXMb_MO3aw
| kevingadd wrote:
| If it looks interpolated, that suggests to me that the people
| creating it were in a hurry - and film VFX operations are well
| known for crunch at this point, so it seems possible that they
| simply didn't give it enough attention.
|
| Mocap without lots of hand touchups would normally look very
| noisy/jittery from what I know, so if it looks unnatural and
| "interpolated" it was probably hand animated in a very coarse
| way, like high level 'gaze here, tilt head at this point, clear
| throat' sort of stuff without an artist ever going in and
| fussing over each frame to make it feel really natural.
|
| In 2D animation you have stages like this, there's the initial
| storyboard, then the keyframing, and then the inbetweening. The
| inbetweening can be surprisingly important since it comes down
| to making the motion between those "key" frames feel natural
| instead of just a linear interpolation from A to B. The same
| applies to 3D animation, you want to put anticipation in the
| right places, have momentum build up or dissipate, have objects
| overshoot their destination and then snap back, that sort of
| stuff.
| abetusk wrote:
| It's a question of cost, knowledge and time. Avatar was in
| 2009 and the motion capture there was well beyond what was on
| display in Rogue One.
|
| My take on it is that ILM had their own in house animation
| process and rather than admit that it was costly, slow and
| gave abysmal results, they doubled down and tried to push it
| through.
|
| Again, there might be some excuses that can be made for Rogue
| One, but none for Mandolorian and the later Star Wars movies.
| The Luke Skywalker scene was deepfaked days after the episode
| aired [0] and, again, the DeepFake version is much better but
| still horrible because of the animation.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrHXA2cSpNU
| dwighttk wrote:
| None of these fake faces look that good out of the chute, and
| even the best looking ones look terrible a year later.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I can't wait for a re-release of this particular film with the
| latest deepfake tech integration. It looks quite terrible in the
| original release -- enough to pull me out of the immersion of the
| film -- and the fan edits of those scenes are fantastic.
|
| The movie is certainly one of the highlights of the modern SW
| universe and deserves a bit of additional love to bring it to the
| modern standards for virtual actors.
|
| Not to say it wasn't an achievement at the time, but it's too far
| in the uncanny valley as it stands.
| causality0 wrote:
| To me one of the most interesting things about Rogue One was how
| differently the Tarkin and Leia recreations were received, at
| least in person. Of course we know that online everybody is a
| critic and hates both of them, but that wasn't what it was like
| in the theater. I went with a large group and half of the group
| didn't even realize Tarkin wasn't real, while the entire group
| and and a good chunk of the theater audibly groaned when they saw
| Leia.
| ane wrote:
| They could've used Guy Henry's likeness as-is. He already looks a
| lot like Peter Cushing. And his accent was impeccable
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Enjoyed RO but having the datacenter at the tropical beach planet
| made no sense. Think of all the taxpayer money that could have
| been saved locating it on Hoth. ;-)
| greggsy wrote:
| It would be infinitely easier to attract talent to a tropical
| paradise in the galaxy's equivalent Hawaii than Alaska.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| The facility was quite empty from my memory, largely
| automated.
|
| Oh, reminds me of another issue. There's that one droid, more
| capable than ten men and dozens of stormtroopers. Why didn't
| the empire use those as soldiers? Haha, well only a movie.
|
| Tarkin and Leia looked awkward but was ok for a few seconds
| in the theater. Home video, I'd say no.
| mrandish wrote:
| This is fun to read and also a valuable contribution to
| preserving the historical details of how it was achieved. I
| especially appreciate his tone in approaching what had become a
| somewhat contentious subject:
|
| _> Hi, I was the animation supervisor on Rogue One, and as such
| I was intimately involved with the creation of Tarkin._
|
| _> I've decided to chime in for one purpose only, to clarify the
| process we used. I have no interest in trying to convince anyone
| to like the results more than they do, or to argue with anyone
| about how "real" our work looked in the film._
|
| I'm one of those who enjoyed RO but also immediately noticed the
| CGI Tarkin being "off", despite the fact I'd not heard about it
| and didn't go in looking for it (I had heard something about CGI
| Leia though). It's helpful that the OP mentioned in the intro
| that many people never noticed it. Although CGI Tarkin clearly
| stood out to me, I'm a pretty serious SW fan (having seen the
| original when I was 12 and the entire opening trilogy many times
| since). So I'm unusually familiar with Peter Cushing's appearance
| and mannerisms on-screen in the SW universe.
|
| Perhaps more significantly, I've also had a multi-decade career
| deeply involved in the creation and evolution of digital
| production tools and CGI as well as being a sometime professional
| (and, more often, hobbyist) film-maker. To be fair, once you
| start counting NAB and Siggraph trade shows you've attended by
| the dozen, it's reasonable to assume you probably can't see films
| or CGI the way most people do - and so I concede it's entirely
| possible CGI Tarkin was adequately executed for the majority of
| the intended audience.
|
| However, I think that may miss the more important point that,
| whether CGI Tarkin in RO was "good enough" or not, doesn't much
| matter in the long run. We've always known creating perfectly
| photo-realistic CGI humans is extremely difficult, especially
| substituting CGI for a particular well-known human in a well-
| known live action context. It's pretty much the hardest CGI thing
| there is. Like most things in CGI, I'm pretty sure we'll
| eventually master it but at the time CGI Tarkin was done - it was
| wildly ambitious and, IMHO, very likely to fail. So the fact CGI
| Tarkin didn't abjectly fail and was, at worst, mildly distracting
| to critical eyes, is something the team that did it should be
| proud of and those of us with those critical eyes should, at the
| least, be tolerant of and, preferably, celebrate as a worthy
| historical milestone on the long path toward perfection.
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