Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/02/deepfaked-deniro-looks-more-co.html
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I think a lot of it comes down to the eyes: not just how much sagging and wrinkles there are around there, but the color and focus of the retina. Also, when you deepfake another actor over a face, the placement of the eyes is what the robot learning most often gets wrong.
Then again, isn’t this really a ‘double fake’, since it’s superimposed on top of the existing cgi alterations?
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Yeah, the fact that it’s the same guy must give the AI a big advantage because under it all it’s the same old skull
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Yeh in the case of Moff Tarkin, they probably had to work hard to make sure the deepfake model didn’t cue from a lot of spurious and easy to “perceive” (by artificial cv systems) features from the cgi generator. Think of it like subtle “artifacts” that are easy for computer vision models to perceive and that aren’t very representative of “real” facial features.
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The original image has texture, the “improved” version looks like it was run through a low pass filter. View at 4K, and look at what de Niro is wearing.
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What really took me out of the Irishman wasn’t so much the facial de-aging… it was De Niro’s physical acting. His posture and movements are that of a 70-something man - very rigid and stilted. Not how a 30-something would perform a scene.
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perhaps the deepfake is better, but the Netflix version telegraphs certain “classic” DeNiro facial expressions in a way that the deepfake does not, even if the rest of the motion feels more natural they are loosing some expressiveness.
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I have no idea why they feel the need to do this, when they could just use a young actor. Do people have problems with DeNiro playing Marlon Brando? There are so many examples of young actors playing older actors and doing a heck of a good job. Why risk the uncanny valley at all?
The Tarkin work had problems with the jaw and mouth movement, too. He never really seemed to open his mouth as if he is enunciating the words. The face was not realistically dynamic. There again, there was no reason that character had to be Tarkin in Rogue One. That was the Empire at its peak. There were probably tons of higher ups we never met.
I see no point in taking the risk on the vast majority of works they try it with.
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I think the reason this technique is not used is a rights issue - those deepfakes are sourced from footage that isn’t owned by Netflix. They’d have to pay every studio involved with the original movies, and that’s not going to happen.
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This! I actually couldn’t even follow the movie because it was so distracting. The scenes of him with a young wife and kids were just jarring.
Thank dog. I thought I was the only one who thought this film just looked hideous.
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It’s because they ran out of ideas back in 1980. Everything since then has made the original ideas and dialogue especially just look worse, IMO.
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Quite so. And if they had to include him they could have just shown him from an angle that didn’t put his face front and center in the screen. Let him be the menacing but mostly unseen evil mastermind, like Blowfeld’s early appearances in the James Bond movies. (Probably lose the cat though.)
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I think the movies are stuck because they have a little bag of things that marketing thinks Star Wars “must have.” It must have Jedi, it must have Sith, it must have The Force, yadda, Yoda, yadda. Then the fanservice aspect of digging up old characters just makes it worse.
The TV work has been great. Clone Wars/Rebels really did a good job. Eventually we will get stories set in that universe that don’t rely on the same tired ideas. I am hoping for a Star Wars underworld show. The Sopranos, with Hutts.
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I’ve heard that about Clone Wars, but just feel so saturated and disappointed at this stage (Starkiller Base… really!?!). Maybe when my youngest gets old enough to watch I’ll give it a shot.
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I really don’t think you will be disappointed. Clone Wars takes a season or so to grow its legs, and honestly there will always be the silly stuff, but, wow. Both Clone Wars and Rebels really turn the black-and-white ideas of the SWU around and work with them brilliantly.
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This is what I liked about The Mandalorian. Star Wars has a vast amount of lore that has never been worked with before because they were too busy focusing on the same five or so ideas, and always on the grandest, largest scale possible. The Mandalorian finally dives into that untapped universe, and on an intimate level, doing a lot with a little. Jawas dismantling a ship for parts becomes an entire plot line, a single AT-ST walker becomes a terrifying threat, a tiny Imperial outpost casts a long shadow over a backwater community, dangerous wildlife that a Jedi could casually behead in a throwaway scene can actually kill or maim characters. We finally see an IG droid doing more than standing around, various aliens that have only been background characters before actually getting dialogue and personalities, Mandalorians that aren’t Boba Fett or his father, and the beginnings of some answers on what the hell Yoda’s species even is and where the rest of them went. It brought back a flavor of Star Wars that I haven’t seen since the old LucasArts games, back when just inhabiting that universe for a while was fun and exciting instead of embarrassing, intelligence-insulting and repetitive.
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Despite all the caveats it still looks incredible to me, the original just looks like his face has melted. I never got past the video gamey look with Tarkin and the Leia CG face on the body double was just jarring. Sam Jackson looked great de-aged in Captain Marvel but again you’re watching a 70 year old man doing action scenes and it shows.
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DeNiro in The Irishman still moved around like an old man, it didn’t matter how young he looked to me.
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OMG SPOILERS!!1!111!!!
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Yeah, but you’re watching a 70-year-old man with a wallet that says “BAD MOTHER FUCKER” doing action scenes. DeNiro’s wallet, on the other hand, is a Rolls Royce full of $100 bills. The difference is palpable.
