Author | Nanfengchuang Reporter Zhu Qiuyu Editor | A man dreamed that he was riding fast in the Western Regions and was as wanton as he wanted. Suddenly, a woman was in front, wearing a veil, being chased by a group of cavalry. The woman was dressed in red and had strong skills,

Author | Nanfengchuang Reporter Zhu Qiuyu

Editor | Xiang by

A man dreamed that he was riding fast in the Western Regions and indulged in wantonness. Suddenly, a woman was in front, wearing a veil, being chased by a group of cavalry. The woman was dressed in red and had strong skills, but she was about to be caught up...

So, the man in the dream stepped forward, took the woman on his horse, and fled like flying. The relationship between the two was thus forged.

Such an old-fashioned plot is the opening of the newly released movie "Legend", starring Jackie Chan . It is said to be a companion piece to the 2005 classic movie "The Myth of ". The biggest selling point of

is that the movie uses AI digital human technology - AI Jackie Chan.

The main creator of "Legend" introduced that for the needs of the plot, the film used a large number of AI deep forgery and other technologies to recreate Jackie Chan's 27 years old. The young digital version of Jackie Chan has appeared in more than 70% of the movies.

At the movie meeting, Jackie Chan said that after seeing the AI ​​version of himself, he sighed: "I often read a poem to them: 'The moment my black hair turns white, who can I talk to when I grow old? If the spring breeze has pity for the flowers, Can you allow me to be a teenager again? 'I can't go back to being a teenager, but movies can let me go back, which is good."

Brand-new AI technology is refreshing the capabilities of film practitioners. Yu Dong, chairman of Bona Pictures and chief producer of "Legend", proudly said, "We have the digital assets of young Jackie Chan, which is equivalent to having an actor who will never grow old. Such a technological breakthrough, It makes film production more flexible and also brings about major changes in the way actors work. "

However, no matter how ecstatic the filmmakers were, "Legend", which had high hopes, experienced a failure at both the box office and word of mouth. The Douban score of 5.5 and the box office of just over 70 million in the first seven days of release all prove that the audience will not buy into an AI digital person with poor technology that cannot be compared to the real thing.

01

ai Jackie Chan's "27-year-old Jackie Chan" in the movie

has a smooth face.

A fan lamented: "Jackie Chan's first AI shot is smoother than (the heroine) Gulinaza's face."

This wrinkle-free young man has a lot of highlights on his face, as if he has his own 3D dermabrasion. filter. In "Legend", he is Zhao Zhan, a subordinate of the Western Han Dynasty general Huo Qubing. He rides a sweaty horse to fight against the Huns every day, and also performs "heroes saving beauties".

Jackie Chan, 70, is responsible for the modern scenes and is a senior professor of history. Because a mysterious ancient shaman jade was excavated in an archeology, he repeatedly traveled through dreams, leading to the past life love between the 27-year-old him (Zhao Zhan) and the Hun princess Mengyun (played by Guli Nazha). The story of

originated from director Tang Jili's "eureka moment". In an interview, he recalled that three years ago, because he was obsessed with the history of the Hexi Corridor and Huo Qubing, he decided to create a romantic film expressing the love between children in troubled times. At that time, AI face-changing technology was in the ascendant. He found it interesting after using his mobile phone to operate it, and "came up with the idea of ​​using AI technology to support filming movies."

But unlike the previous " The Wandering Earth2" which restored a younger version of Andy Lau , Tang Jili has a stronger desire for innovation.

He said that through AI's deepfake (deep fake) face-changing technology, "we want to create a new, real character." Specifically, Tang Jili said that they first input a large amount of image data of Jackie Chan when he was young, and AI generated images based on these young faces, and converted these static images into dynamic videos.

"We made AI Jackie Chan of different age groups, and the feelings presented are completely different."

In the end, in order to fit the theme of the film's fierce struggle and overflowing with feelings of family and country, the team chose "personable and polite" "version of.

"We chose to express it in a more restrained way, rather than the lively version of Jackie Chan that is more well known to the public." Tang Jili said.

's new AI character has become the absolute protagonist of the movie, and AI Jackie Chan accounts for up to 70% in "Legend". Some fans complained that of the 129-minute movie, only 29 minutes were spent watching the real Jackie Chan.

The audience's discomfort also comes from the limited level of AI technology in the film. Tang Jili also admitted that when he first started filming, AI technology was not yet mature, and many unexpected situations occurred during the process.

"For example, it won't work if you turn your head more than 90 degrees (ai), or if something blocks your face, it won't work, and you can't track it. These are all difficulties."

On the big screen, the expressions and demeanor of the characters are especially easy. enlarge. "Legend" successfully exposed the flaws of AI digital humans.

The 27-year-old "Jackie Chan" seems to be smiling but not smiling for a long time, and often frowns. Even if he experiences a major blow in his life, or if someone is in danger or killed, he will only raise his mouth and make an expression that looks like he is crying for no apparent reason.

"It seems to be laughing when it should be sad. This fully proves that AI is completely inapplicable in the movie market." Some Douban netizens commented.

It can be said that this movie, which focuses on emotions in terms of cast, plot design and movie promotion, beats emotions to pieces in every dimension.

In my personal opinion, Jackie Chan's version of "Three Lives Three Worlds" has no new ideas, the plot is abrupt, and the plot is densely packed with surprises. Not only are people unable to relive the nonsensical and never-give-up grassroots spirit of Hong Kong Kung Fu movies in "Legend", but they are also prone to doubts in their hearts: After all, were other scenes in this movie shot in real locations or effortlessly generated by AI? ? What is true and what is false?

02

The appeal of cost reduction and efficiency improvement

Director Tang Jili may not have expected that AI digital humans would have a counterproductive effect on the film. He emphasized his sincerity in the interview.

One detail that proves the sincerity of the creator is that "Legend" used real shots for the big war scenes. It is said that the main creative team happened to catch up with the Tianma Festival in Zhaosu County at the Xinjiang Military Horse Farm. "They will integrate more than 10,000 horses at that time. You just need to communicate (with them) in advance." So the crew stayed there for a few days and filmed the war scenes with thousands of troops.

As for the large-scale use of AI digital people, Tang Jili said that this is a necessary step for "innovation".

But Tang Jili also said that the reason why he used AI in the movie was because he faced a more practical problem-funding. He said that Hollywood's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" also had similar effects. "They did a good job, but their special effects costs have exceeded the cost of our entire movie."

's cost reduction and efficiency improvement have become the most powerful reason for today's film and television practitioners to embrace AI technologies such as "AI face-changing". For example, director Lu Chuan recently cooperated with Lenovo to establish an AI imaging laboratory. He gave his new documentary "Western Wild" as an example, "Using the traditional method, it took two months from script writing to completion, but now it only takes 2 days. It greatly saves time and labor costs."

Although, Before AI, the film industry already had similar face-changing and de-age technologies. However, this type of technology is mainly based on CG visual effects.

To create CG special effects, professional software such as Adobe After Effects or Maya is generally used to manually track the subject's face frame by frame in the video. Once a face is tracked, the visual effects artist uses a variety of compositing techniques, such as keying or tracking, to replace it with a new image or face.

In his painstaking work "The Irishman", the famous director Martin Scorsese reduced the age of Frank Sheeran, the con man killer played by Robert De Niro, to show the protagonist's facial changes across ten years. Ang Lee also used CG de-aging special effects in the 2019 movie " Gemini Man" to put the young version of Will Smith in the same frame as him now. "The Wandering Earth 2" also used CG special effects to recreate the late actor Ng Meng-tat.

The difference between the above technology and AI face-changing technology is that the former is more expensive to "rejuvenate" and requires fine-tuning frame by frame and a lot of manpower.

Tang Jili also revealed that compared to "Gemini Man" which was carefully produced using CG special effects, "Legend" uses technologies such as deep forgery, AI learning and 3D, making the cost only 20%-30% of the former. The result of

's doing this is that, except for the facial similarity between ai Jackie Chan and his elder brother Jackie Chan, it can be said that there is no similarity in other demeanor, expressions, and fighting scenes. Since the action habits of the digital Jackie Chan in fighting scenes are not similar to Jackie Chan, many film critics suspected that the digital Jackie Chan was shot by a stuntman and then synthesized using AI face-changing technology. The low-cost technology

was first invented in 2017. A user named "deepfakes" posted a video of an AI face-changing celebrity on reddict and released its open source code. As the number of participants increases and the open source code is constantly updated, the effect of AI face-changing becomes more and more realistic.

A "mentor" who paid for AI face-changing knowledge told me: "Nowadays, with AI face-changing, you can blink or cover your face without any problem. For more advanced ones, you can now customize the character's face shape in real time. Do you think the face shape is too wide? You can directly turn it down. What’s even more terrifying is that even during live broadcast, you can directly pull up the skin. "The continuously iterative technology of

is sweeping many industries due to the popularity of AI large models in the past two years. At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (waic) to be held in Shanghai in 2024, insiders from Chinese AI unicorns including SenseTime and Minimax told me that ai+ entertainment is considered the most popular and first in this round of artificial intelligence. A track that can be implemented.

has now confirmed that this statement is true. This summer, it appears on the big screen in cinemas.

03

ai The future of movies

aigc has allowed the film and television industry to see a new direction. Yu Dong, the chief producer of "Legend", said at the 2024 Shanghai International Film Festival that digital people can become a permanent asset for film and television companies.

"In the past, it might take 90 days to shoot a movie with real people; with AI digital people, it might only take 20 days, which can significantly reduce the pay. The digital assets of these actors are retained, and there is no need for real people to reshoot." He said .

However, judging from the reputation and box office of "Legend", the bright future envisioned by the film and television giants has not been accepted by the public, even those in the industry.

Boyan, a film editor with 6 years of experience, told me that in the Chinese film and television industry, AI face-changing technology has not yet been widely used. Nowadays, the reason why some movies are the first to use AI digital people is probably because the voice of directors and screenwriters is mostly restricted by producers and capital.

In recent years, with the growing demand from employers to "reduce costs and increase efficiency" and to recover costs from film investments, the film industry has paid more and more attention to marketing.

Therefore, Boyan said that these demands have prompted some practitioners to rely on popular concepts such as AI technology or digital humans to attract traffic and increase the exposure of movies.

This time AI Jackie Chan taught the film industry a lesson. Even Tang Jili admitted that the current extensive use of AI technology in movies still faces some shortcomings.

"On the whole, "Legend" can vividly create a general who looks like Jackie Chan when he was young. Film technology has taken a big step forward," Tang Jili said, "But we must also admit that this big step still has some disadvantages. "Flaws."

For example, he said, "Many AI virtual people have very similar facial features, but their eyes are very dull, because they have no soul, and for actors, people's emotions and desires can be expressed through subtle differences in their eyes." , "The texture of pixels and skin on the big screen, including the details of the acting, will take some time to perfect."

Wang Changtian, chairman of Guangguang Media, also has a similar view. At this year's Shanghai Film Festival, he proposed that the current AI technology has been improved.

"AI is a tool used by humans when creating works. This tool is still immature at least in the film industry. For example, some current video generation tools can actually only meet the needs of low definition and low capacity."

Judging from past historical experience, as AIGC technology continues to iterate, there is a high probability that there will be AI digital humans with higher definition and richer details in the future.Wang Changtian predicts that this process will probably still take 2-3 years.

If one day, AI technology can really confuse fakes with real ones, should the film industry embrace it? Will the day really come when big-name actors don’t have to star at all, and only need to use stand-ins and then use AI technology to change their faces?

There is still no consensus in the film industry about this future.

Many people choose to embrace technology. For example, Chen Liaoyu, the chief director of the animated film "Chinese Story", believes that in the face of the technological trend, "whether we accept it or not, it will intervene in our lives, so we must understand it, master it, and embrace it as soon as possible."

Many people are also worried about the increasingly blurred boundaries of movies under AI technology.

Filmmaker Chen Xueren, associate dean of Hong Kong Baptist University's School of Film, said this year that the technology failed to solve the film industry's most pressing problems, with outdated storylines and the overuse of big-name actors.

Boyan is also pessimistic. In his practical experience, good films or creations usually require repeated trial and error, pain and struggle, and are the result of hard work and joy.

With AI, he was always worried that film creation would become too easy. "(The film) is like a delicate doll without a soul. It has no holes, no flaws, and no obsession with the creator, but it has lost its humanity."

The pictures in the article are from the Internet

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Editor-in-chief on duty | Huang Mingting

Typesetting | Feifei

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