As both writers and actors are on the picket lines in Hollywood, the stakes couldn’t be higher: Will average entertainment workers be able to eke out a living in an industry awash in cash, or will studio executives use new tech like AI to gobble up all of it?
I think the idea is more about how people in the background aren’t really active members of the shows’ action, so they are very expensive decorations to the studios.
And I guess to play devils advocate, I sorta get it. It costs a lot of money and people-hours to get crowds of people just standing around pretending to be crowds of people. You have to do a lot to keep them fed and happy for very little payoff or return on investment.
If you could somehow get the same effect of a crowd without actually having to just literally pay people to stand around and do nothing in the background, you’d either be able to save a lot of money/time or use that saved money to improve other areas of the production.
They’ve had workarounds to this forever. Marvel movies just use CG background characters. The Matrix 3 used a couple of background actors and then cloned the rest. Star Wars phantom menace used little toothpick people. There is absolutely no reason for these policies other than abject greed.
LOTR did it too with it’s battle scenes, it’s been pretty SOP for awhile now in hollywood. But the difference is in the past those actors who were recreated knew it, it wasn’t like they were unaware of the fact or anyone else on the production line
What hollywood is trying to do now with this technology is just plain theft to get away from paying anyone