Computers Today, June 1-15, 2000; Tech Trends; Back to the Future

Soon Raj Kapoor and MGR will be brought back to 'life', to take part jointly in a 90-minute feature film. But technology marvel apart, can the Pentamedia project prove to be commercially viable?

Raj Kapoor and M.G. Ramachandran (MGR) could never share the silver screen when they were alive. But they would now, more than a decade after their death. Over 100 animators are working tirelessly to bring to life what might be dubbed as a revolution in the field of animation cinema- digitally reincarnating the deceased stars on the silver screen through motion capture and motion creation technologies.

Dead Stars Come Alive

Raj Kapoor and MGR are not the only ones who have been virtually recreated. Hollywood thespian Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) starred in an episode of the horror series "Tales from the Crypt" much after the death of the actor.

Fred Astair (1899-1987), the renowned Hollywood actor-dancer with trademarks like the top hat, white tie and tails, was recently shown dancing with a vacuum cleaner in controversial Hoover ads.

John Wayne (1907-1979), once described as an extra star on the American flag and voted the most popular hero 17 years after his death, has spent a good deal of his after-life as a beer spokesman.

Back home, Divya Bharati was brought to life digitally four years ago by Pentafour Software and Exports to complete her unfinished film.

The idea germinated in Srini Vasan's mind when the CEO of 3D MaxMedia Inc., on board a flight from New York to Los Angeles, US, saw an old lady reading a book on Marilyn Monroe, rapt and eager. "She was very much interested in knowing about Marilyn Monroe who died long back. That is when I decided that the experiments of virtual actors should be done with dead actors rather than with the live ones," Vasan told CT. He discussed the matter with Pentamedia Graphics Ltd, and the two decided to embark upon the novel journey. Later, Hewlett-Packard also chipped in to provide value-addition with its enterprise computing solutions.

The film, which would have many firsts to its credit, is being made at the Chennai-based animation laboratory of Pentamedia Graphics Ltd, a partner company of 3D MaxMedia. The alliance is riding high on the success of "Sinbad, Beyond the Veil of Mist"-a path-breaking film made with the help of motion capture technology in which subtle human movements are tracked by sensors and computer/electronic interfaces attached to the human body and then these tracked movements are used to breathe life into the animation characters.

This, apart from several other methods, is being used to create the digital animation sequences for the actors. One of them is to study the movements and gestures so that they can be imitated to give input for story boarding and model creation. These imitated actions can be scanned into rendering machines using the motion capture technology. For greater precision, the human body can be laser-scanned and the images then adjusted to the size and shape of the original actor using manipulation software.

"We are currently compiling motion libraries of the actors' movements, and emotional libraries from their earlier films, and then modifying them in real-time to create the animated sequence," says Vasan. Dr Janakiraman, a leading Chennai-based dentist, would be advising on how to recreate a smile exactly along with other aspects of facial gestures. "The voices would be reproduced by mimicry artists," explains V. Chandrasekaran, chairman and managing director, Pentamedia. The animation content thus gathered will be fused with the live action shooting done in digital format through 'digital stapler technology'. The complete digital content will then be transferred to films.

Apart from its usual release in theatre halls, the 90-minute film would be Webcast to further its reach. The Internet version will have the extra features of interactive cinema that gives the watchers the freedom to set their own perspective and create their own ambience. Indeed, whether you want to see MGR in a double role or triple role will be your prerogative. Strike off the Eiffel Tower in the backdrop, and have your favourite India Gate in its place. If you don't want the cathartic tears to flow down your cheeks at the end of the movie, chase the villain away and let the good prevail. For India, however, given the bandwidth available, the whole exercise might not prove so smooth. The poor penetration of PCs in the country, and a correspondingly meagre number of Net subscribers would also limit the Web-viewing of the movie to a minuscule few.

The project has its other basket of worries too. The idea of bringing back the dead stars might be unique, but these are fossilised stars whom a large chunk of the movie-goers won't identify today and their idiosyncrasies might seem too stylised-out of tune with times. There is also the question of a stringent deadline of nine-months, and an investment of $ 2-3 million, a pittance by Hollywood standards. A big question mark on the commercial viability of the venture.

A cross-section of Delhi and Chennai youth, when interviewed, showed keenness on the technology. But the response towards the selection of actors was subdued and, at times, indifferent. "Great, I have the choice of seeing MGR in either a single role or double, in plain clothes or fanciful. But what if I don't want to see him at all?" quips a Delhi movie buff. Blunt it may sound, but can the makers of the movie ignore the sinister warning that lurks behind such proclamations? The risks multiply with the all-new star cast for heroines, which, it's said, is in conformity to the tradition set by the role models.

Vasan was honest enough to accept that the Web media is not being looked at as a major source of revenue. So where's the revenue going to come from? Makers are confident that they will break even. "It's a pioneering effort, and any pioneering effort has its challenges and risks. But we take these as a great opportunity to position ourselves as a market leader in this brand new market," says a confident Vasan.

The choice of India as the site for production has its calculated reasons. The kind of technology and the manpower that's being used could cost anywhere around $100 million in the US. The estimated investment here is about 50 times less. From a businessman's point of view, there couldn't be a better choice.

Digital reincarnation of the dead actors is not a fully uncharted arena. Actors from time to time have been resurrected using technologies like morphing. Remember the scene in Forrest Gump, where Tom Hanks is shown shaking hands with JFK? But in all these cases, the virtual rendition was done for a very small timeframe, say a few minutes. However, the credit for the first full-fledged attempt goes to Pentamedia, when it took up the task of accomplishing the incomplete films of actress Divya Bharati, after she died in a mysterious fall from the balcony of her flat. The project made headlines, but the commercial success of the film is something the people in the company are reluctant to talk about.

The proposed movie, that has been tentatively named "Starway", has also brought to fore issues related to intellectual property rights. "The copyright and IPR laws were written in India in the late 1960s and 1970s, when there were no Internets and virtual actors. We would, however, go to the relatives of Raj Kapoor and MGR to reach an amicable agreement, for we have to seek their good wishes also," says Vasan.

But it's not a matter of seeking wishes alone. The copyright laws of the country have clearly defined guidelines to protect the intellectual property of a person. Says noted copyrights lawyer Pravin Anand, "We have moral rights in the section 57 of the Indian copyrights protection laws that bifurcate into rights of paternity and rights of integrity. Apart from that, we have the character merchandising rights, publicity rights and privacy rights-all protected by well-defined laws. Most of these rights are reserved with the successors of the person concerned."

That makes it mandatory for the film makers to seek the permission of the two banners, and also pay for the licensing of the images that would be used. The legal implications apart, there is an ethical dilemma also that will surface as soon as the idea crosses the realms of fantasy and sees the concrete world of lights, camera and action. "Whose data is it any way" is the question that sooner or later the makers of this movie might have to contend with.