What are Synthespian, Vactors and Cyberstar?

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You have probably heard the terms synthespians, vactors and cyberstar being tossed around quite often in the film world, but what are the meanings behind them? These three words are synonyms of each other. Synthespian is a blend of the words: synthetic and thespian. Vactor is short for virtual actor, and cyberstar is a mixture of cyber and star. It is a virtual human, virtual persona, or a digital clone that is a computer-generated three-dimensional character, either in a wholly animated film or in one that is a mixture of live action and computer animation. 

Dan North describes a synthespian as a photorealistic, potentially autonomous human simulacrum, as written in his book Performing Illusions, Cinema, Special Effects and the Virtual Actor, where he examines the world of cinema from the early film’s creative history to the start of the digital age.  

 

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The coming of the virtual actor

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The word Synthespian appeared in the late 1980s, the term has been a trademark for the Kleiser-Walczak Construction Co. Formed by digital animators, Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak, who was dedicated to exploring the creative applications of computer animation to human figure as representation in the entertainment industry. In 1988 their first CGI character, Nestor Sextone, was shown in a short film at a conference. Reactions from the audience raised speculations about the acting capabilities of such a synthetic character, which led them to coin the term ‘synthespian’. Following years Kleiser-Walczaks technology got more advanced, better and more realistic. Synthespians was intended to showcase future possibilities at industry symposias, the revelation, invention was quickly picked up by the mainstream cinema as a possibility to expand the quality of brief shots of dangerous or impossible stuntwork. Moving forward synthespian took on the roles normally occupied by extras or stunt performers and that is how virtual actors were introduced to the digital cinema. (North, 2008, p. 149-150)

In Andrew Niccol’s 2002 film S1m0ne, the career of a disillusioned film director, Victor Taransky (Al Pacino), is endangered when his temperamental lead actress (Winona Ryder) walks off the set. Forced to think fast, the producer replaces her performance in the film by creating a digital synthespian “Simone”– the first believable synthetic actress. Taransky’s move saves the production and his film becomes a huge success, as well as its digital star Simone. A new problem arises for Taransky – maintaining the façade which is Simone’s true identity. The public takes her for a charismatic, flesh-and-blood ingenue, and Taransky struggles to prevent the fraud by manufacturing media appearances by his virtual star. According to Stephen Prince, the film conjures a world in which digital synthespians are undetectable and easily replaced by digital simulations of human beings. What might have been a promising concept of illusion, actually ends up reminding us of how distant a prospect its premise really is.  

 

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Hollywood’s gray area

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In the last 30 years, the usage and creation of vactors have increased. Digital humans, such as synthespians, are becoming the omnipresent in entertainment. Modern blockbuster movies rely on digital humans in some form: from it being used for digital body doubles, fantasy creatures played by a human actor, head replacement etc. The need for digital humans is increasing due to new forms of entertainment that are fully digital, hence the need for digital assets.

As Stephen Prince explains in his book, Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality, today’s digital cinema has given filmmakers new powers to manipulate and composite images at high level of perceptual realism. According to movie producer Jon Landau, the goal for the new digital era was to introduce performance capture to the world, and for it to be the 21st century version of prosthetics.

Before the age of CGI technology and greenscreens, filmmakers had to rely on live-action practical elements like special effects, to make the impossible look possible. In previous years, an approach to portray extreme changes in a character’s age throughout a film is to use traditional special effects, SFX. Example on SFX can be- makeup, prosthetics, wigs, and costumes. No matter how impressive the makeup would be – viewers would still feel like the actors were wearing things on their faces. Eric Barba, a visual effects supervisor, clarified why this approach does not work:

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“The problem with old-age makeup is that it is additive whereas the aging process is reductive. You have thinner skin, less musculature, everything is receding. There is no way to do that 100 percent convincingly by adding prosthetics.”

 

A conventional approach to visualize aging across a span of time, is to have a character played by multiple actors of different ages. However, no matter how much the actors resemble one another or how skillfully executed the performances may be – viewers will still feel the deception and know that they are seeing different actors. (North, 2008, p. 136-137). Today, in the digital age cinema has come a long way, instead of using different actors or heavy makeup, filmmakers use aging, de-aging and head replacement technology such as deepfake. Many speculates around the topic of which synthespians is to be used, as Dan North point out, the technology is still in its infancy, and one is still attempting to predict its future. (North, 2008, p. 154-155). Barbara Creed came with a suggestion from the year 2000, she predicts that –

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“Although a film, animation aside, has not yet been made with a computer-generated or virtual film star in the main role, this appears to be the future.” (Creed, 2000, 80).

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Ontological Anxiety and Fears

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Have visual effects in the digital era gone too far? There are concerns and ontological anxiety connected to the technology of digital imaging. In the digital age, Manovich observes, “Special effects have become the norm of digital filmmaking, - the production becomes just the first stage of post-production” (Manovich, 2016, p. 29). Today, digital images can be manipulated, fabricated, or edited to replicate photorealistic scenes that have never actually been shot. Kathleen Loock points out that –

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 “The fact that digital images no longer have to correspond to real-life referents has caused ontological anxieties and a distrust of the image, of its manipulation and fabrication, and, more generally, of deception and erasure” (Loock, 2021, p. 217).

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Synthespians we encounter today tend to have familiar faces of existing stars we know and love, hence strengthen the already ongoing fears and anxiety. People fear real-live actors may eventually be replaced by vactors, resulting in new risen ethical, legal, and ontological concerns and issues. Could technology soon make professional actors redundant?   Deceased actors have been digitally resurrected - for instance, Peter Cushing (who passed in 1994) made his appearance as Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, more than 20 years after his death, Carrie Fisher (who passed in 2016) appeared as Princess Leia in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. A more recent altered actor is Paul Walker, who suddenly died during production of the seventh installment of the Fast and Furious franchise. Walkers’ death didn’t kill his character, on the contrary, scenes were completed using CGI and his brother(s) as body double. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, VFX supervisor Joe Letteri explained how and why they carried on after Walker’s passing.

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“There really wasn’t room to let anything slip. It was too important to complete the story in respect to Paul’s memory – to make sure that when you watched it, you didn’t think about any of the work that we did. If you were a fan, you were watching Paul’s performance and saying goodbye.”

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Even though the filmmaking crew made the choice of making the movie into a tribute for Walker, there is still other examples where the deceased actor and its family haven’t given their consent. Resurrections like Walker’s raise moral and philosophical questions about the rights of the dead, the usage of their likeness in commercial projects, about legal implications and restrictions, legacies and permission of the heirs, and about how deceased stars should be able to shape their digital afterlives.

 

 

 

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Bibliography

 

​Breznican, A. (2019, December 9). The Irishman, Avengers: Endgame, and the de-aging technology that could change acting forever. Vanity Fair. Retrieved from https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/12/the-de-aging-technology-that-could-change-acting-forever 

 

Creed, B. (2000). The cyberstar: Digital pleasures and the end of the unconscious. Screen, 41, p. 79– 86. 

 

Loock, K. (2020, April 6). “Forever young”: Digital de-aging, memory, and nostalgia. Flow. Retrieved from https://www.flowjournal.org/2020/04/forever-young-digital-deaging/ 

 

Loock, K. (2021) ‘On the realist aesthetics of digital de-aging in contemporary Hollywood cinema’, Orbis Litterarum, 76(4), p. 214-225.

 

Manovich, L. (2016). What is digital cinema? In S. Denson & J. Leyda (Eds.), Post-cinema: Theorizing 21st-century film (pp. 20– 50). REFRAME Books.

 

North, D. (2008). Performing Illusions, Cinema, Special Effects and The Virtual Actor, Wallflower Press. p. 148- 178.

 

Prince, S. (2012). Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press. p. 99-145.

 

Prince, S. (1996). True lies: Perceptual realism, digital images, and film theory. Film Quarterly, 49(3), p. 27– 37.

 

Stadler, J. (2019). Synthetic beings and synthespian ethics: Embodiment technologies in science/fiction. Projections, 13(2), p. 123– 141. 

 

The Irishman | Industrial Light & Magic. Available at: https://www.ilm.com/vfx/the-irishman/. (Accessed: 31 October 2022)