With the release of Avatar movies using computer generated effects have had another little flurry of interest in recent weeks; apparently the movie is 60% CGI and 40% live action. I've not seen it, I'll believe the trivia. The trailers certainly suggest the effects are good. But I'm taking you back further in time. Over Christmas I watched The Polar Express for the first time. This was a 2004 release and the CGI blew me away - if you don't know this was very similar to Avatar in that it's actually digital capture (the first to use it for the whole production in fact) which means the actors were filmed and then "skinned" to blend in to the animation. But the animation was virtually flawless; certainly on wide shots I got sucked in far more than anything else has ever manages. The rendering of the train, snow, and streets was incredibly realistic. The characters themselves managed to look unbelievably realistic, the illusion only stuttering when we zoomed in close. And this was 2004!

Now if you go back another 10 years you get to The Crow. A film which was released despite the lead, Brandon Lee, dying in an on-set accident. Back then they used pretty clever editing of pre-shot footage enhanced with a few details added by a computer to finish the production. Impressive, this was 1994. Jurassic Park had only been released the previous year and here we were mixing the tech far more subtly simply to finish production. This was the movie that made me first realise people were the weakest link in a production. CGI was trendy and being used in all kinds of ways, it was advancing at great pace but when we look back much of it is seeming fairly dated now. However my mind was ticking over.

Around that time I read how BT had developed a voice synthesizer which needed something silly like a mere 27 minute speech recording (of a rather specific script I should add) to be able to replicate anyone's voice. Suddenly if your actor died not only could you theoretically use a computer to create various scene visually but if you'd made them record for half an hour before shooting you could replicate bug chunks of the script also. Sure, it wouldn't be as good as the real thing, but would you rather see your $100m movie get written off?

Anyway, I've been watching this stuff out the corner of my eye for years; it's interesting but not especially relevant to me. I've seen actors playing roles that span lifetimes and marvelled at the make-up, and wondered quietly to myself how long before it's possible to computer generate the entire passage of that character. At the moment we can use make-up to take a few years off and add quite a lot on, but if you had a CGI human you could easily have Jack Nicholson playing a character 40 years younger than he really is, a prospect which is both enthralling and slightly terrifying. If nothing else I suspect studios would like this greatly as it reduces your insurances needs significantly. No more worrying about your star actor turning up dead at the foot of the PCH after a night of debauchery, we can still complete. Actors might object, not only because it could be seen as reducing their impact, but also the cynical amongst us may wonder if the stars of today would start having "accidents" to ensure their immortality, look at James Dean or Marilyn Monroe for proof that death has never been a problem in ensuring star status.

But despite my little tangent on actors just then I still think we have a while to go before they'll be truly replaced, but set builders should be worried. Computer generated worlds have truly come along strides. I know a few folks who play LORTO and when it was released they described it as the most amazing virtual world they'd ever seen. That was a few years back so I won't be shocked if it's been surpassed by now. We're truly moving at an incredible speed at rendering objects. And this morning I watched this:

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Now I'd be quite impressed if that was filmed, but rendered? "Wow" doesn't quite cover it. That video proves that there's basically no need to a set or location any more. Why bother? How much time and effort to build a set compared to a computer? That was a one man production. Sets are contrained by physics too. I mean sure, if you're filming something we know and love you're unlikely to want to get that crazy, but if you're building a space station set thousands of years into the future why not take liberties? It's not implausible to assume that one day your coffee table may simply float your drink by your side.

If you want to shoot on location you need to worry about those pesky "goofs" people love spotting like a Land Rover driving through Sherwood Forest as Robin Hood plans to rescue Maid Marian. You don't need to worry about finding the spot, obtaining permission, then putting plastic trees over the No Parking sign you're not allowed to take down. When in doubt, generate it! No worrying about whether that lake is the right size, shape, or colour even; it's whatever you desire it to be. Shoot a story about the Amazon rainforests in your back garden and just put in the correct trees for the area afterwards. Production costs must surely plummet as studios adopt this technology on a grand scale. We've known it was coming, and judging by the stuff I've been seeing lately I realise the revolution isn't waiting on the technology these days, it's waiting for the people.

Just as the camera replaced the paintbrush in popularity, the computer is replacing the camera.