Research laboratory the world’s largest entertainment corporations, Disney has provided the public with its next project, which turned out to be software, able to regulate emotions live actors in real time. For the successful operation of this algorithm, the actor needs to record the double in different emotional States, then the Director will be able in real time to adjust the level of feelings in the frame.
The tool is called FaceDirector, and it works, adjusting captured a few takes of each other on such parameters as the time, the audio track and the location of key points of the face of the actor on the screen. The actor can read his monologue to the camera in a state of anger, joy, sadness, fear, and then a smart algorithm can calmly out of the footage unnecessary pauses and inconsistencies and turn it into a whole array of data from which at any time can query any actor’s emotion in real time. The Director will be able to instantly switch between different emotions of the actor by simply dragging sliders on the screen.
Developers from Disney Research have demonstrated an early version of the app, which was collected for experiments. But even at this stage, the results of their work look more than impressive. Ignore the clicking sound. The Disney engineers still have a long and hard work. Now the program quite effectively merges the two emotions into one and easily switch between them on the go. The algorithm does not interfere with any additional pauses that stand the actors, nor the slightly different location of the faces in the frame – the output is quite convincing picture.
Of course, it is too early to speak about commercial use of such software in the filming of the movie. But one thing is clear – computers come to the aid of the Directors, even in such cases, where previously they even could not imagine. Today’s computer effects are considered to be more effective than they are less noticeable on screen by the audience. If before appreciated fantastic creatures, spectacular explosions and alien invaders, that in our days the viewer is impressive restored with the help of computers past era or rejuvenated without the use of makeup by the actors.