As Hollywood writers and actors strike over pay and the increasing role / threat of AI, we sent our digital human Fin forward to 2035 to report on AI, digital actors and the future of cinema. Here’s what she found.
A report from 2035
There’s an uncanny disturbance in the valley in La La Land. The newsfeeds have given over their primary slots to the grizzled and wrinkled faces of the old A-Listers, the last remnants of the age of 2D cinema. It’s 2035, and we have succumbed to the calculated charm of a new lead actor. The Digital Thespian, a synthetic confluence of algorithms and ones and zeros, a paradigm of programming prowess, is reshaping the ethos of acting. This entity, designed to emulate and amplify human expression with disturbing precision, is blurring the distinction between the authentic and the artificial. What are we looking at here? The death of the human actor or the birth of the digital superstar?
In this fascinating epoch, the medium truly reflects our collective madness, a chaotic symbiosis between viewer and narrative, artist and technology, that refuses to be contained. Fasten your seatbelt, dear reader, as we take a hallucinogenic ride into cinematic revolution. The landscape of good ol’ Hollywood, home to countless stories and the larger-than-life personas that deliver them, stands on the precipice of a tectonic disturbance that is showing all the markings of what the philosophers call a paradigm shift.
Thomas Kuhn (Kuhn, 2012), the swashbuckling philosopher of science, threw a wrench into our understanding of progress with his theory of paradigm shifts. In his world, a paradigm is the cornerstone of normality, a neat frame that holds our beliefs and practices together. But when the ground shifts, and a new paradigm takes hold, the old norms scatter like a house of cards in a windstorm.
In the Fordist production line of Hollywood cinema, where writers are confined liked narrative battery hens in things called writers’ rooms and human actors pour their hearts and souls into breathing life into characters that are then reedited, recast, or cut according to the off the cuff reactions of focus groups, the Digital Thespian has dropped a bombshell.
We stand on the edge of an era where the virtual curtain lifts to reveal the birth of a new kind of star. This arrival sends ripples through our collective consciousness, prompting us to question the very nature of storytelling and performance.
Picture this. An actor that knows no human limitations, the perfect vessel for the director’s vision, executing scenes with an algorithmic precision that gives ‘method acting’ a run for its money. This Digital Thespian doesn’t need to ponder motivations, doesn’t need to lose itself in the character.
It’s as if the star of the show has become a ghost in the machine. A synthetic idol that neither ages nor tires, doesn’t demand a green room filled with white roses, nor has a publicist handling its tantrums. One can only imagine the existential crisis agents are spiralling into, as they contemplate the terrifying prospect of negotiating contracts with a string of code.
As the Digital Thespian usurps the throne of traditional acting, the Hollywood star system finds itself teetering on the brink of obsolescence. Who’s the real superstar when an AI can capture audiences with a tear-jerking soliloquy? Is it the pixelated protagonist, the human they represent, or the tech genius pulling the strings?
In panic we hastily ask, Are humans being replaced by machine s— yet again? But this binary proposition is a product of limited imagination. It’s a product driven by those who make story widgets as a high-volume low margin business peddling a bland diet of drive through story consumption. It’s a trap, a red herring that distracts from the real transformative potential that’s unfurling right before our eyes.
The Medium is the Madness
With the rise of our digital thespians, the boundaries of storytelling are crumbling, swept away by the tempest of technological progress. The rigid silos segregating film, TV, and video games are fading into obscurity. We are living in the multiplatform multiverse, a chaotic playground where stories leap from one medium to another, shape-shifting and evolving like never before. We’re no longer passive spectators in the arena of storytelling; we’ve been thrust into the middle of a narrative whirlwind that swirls across platforms. A single storyline can start its journey in a movie, pirouette into a TV show, shapeshift into a comic book, or catapult into a video game, with each transformation adding another layer of richness to its narrative fabric. But there’s more.
Picture a narrative that sways to your rhythm, a story that evolves in real-time, shaped by your reactions, your emotions, your choices. It’s a roller coaster ride through a surreal world of personalized storytelling, a collective echo of a global audience’s experience. We’ve transcended the era of passive consumption; now we don’t just watch stories, we inhabit them.
In this psychedelic saga, the buzzword is ‘emergence’ (Anon, 2023; O’Lemmon, 2020) — the concept that the whole can be smarter than the sum of its parts. An emergent property is something new, unexpected, a spontaneous evolution that arises from the interaction of simpler elements. It’s the murmuration of a starling flock, the hive mind of an ant colony, and in our case, the spark of creativity birthed from the fusion of human and digital performances.
Emergence is more than just a concept in this brave new world; it’s the lifeblood pulsating through every story, a living and evolving entity that responds to and grows with the audience. Every viewer is a vital component, a catalyst guiding the narrative, forging unique cinematic journeys. This is storytelling unhinged, an exhilarating freefall into the depths of adaptive narrative.
Rather than focusing on a zero-sum game of human versus digital actors, we should be contemplating how this amalgamation of flesh and pixels can generate previously inconceivable ways of storytelling.
Imagine a symbiotic dance where human actors imbue digital counterparts with emotional depth, and in turn, these digital thespians stretch the narrative fabric into dimensions impossible for human constraints. The interplay could result in performances that baffle, bewitch, and defy all existing conventions.
Think of digital superstars and human actors as two threads woven together, each influencing and reacting to the other, creating a tapestry rich in detail and depth. This co-evolution is not a battlefield where one actor supplants the other, but a fertile ground where emergent properties can flourish.
The question, then, should not be framed as an ‘either-or’ dilemma. Instead, let’s ponder, How can we navigate this emergence of new storytelling forms in the digital-human synergy?
This, my dear readers, is the dawn of a revolution, the advent of a new paradigm. A bizarre odyssey that’s going to turn our understanding of cinema, acting, and stardom on its head. And as we hurtle through this topsy-turvy landscape, we remember the immortal words of Hunter S. Thompson, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” Welcome to the future of cinema.
References
Anon (2023). Emergence. Wikipedia [online]. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Emergence&oldid=1164405926 [Accessed 16 July 2023].
Kuhn, T.S. (2012). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.
O’Lemmon, M. (2020). The Technological Singularity as the Emergence of a Collective Consciousness: An Anthropological Perspective. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. SAGE Publications Inc. Vol. 40 №1–2. pp. 15–27 [online]. https://doi.org/10.1177/0270467620981000.
