Mid-Century
Screened at Cannes 2010 as a technology demo, Earth Ring was originally intended as a test for a feature length adaptation of the highly popular Software series by Rudy Rucker. Most notably, it was to…
Mid-Century
Screened at Cannes 2010 as a technology demo, Earth Ring was originally intended as a test for a feature length adaptation of the highly popular Software series by Rudy Rucker. Most notably, it was to be the first public test of a virtual character of a famous living actor. Marlon Brando's long-time friend and visual effects pioneer, Scott Billups, scanned the iconic actor into a computer in late 1989 using the same experimental system that would later be used in Terminator, Jurassic Park, The Abyss, and many other mainstream motion pictures. This project was also the first professional use of a game engine (UNITY) as a motion picture pipeline. The project, a joint effort between Marlon Brando, Phoenix Pictures and Scott Billups, features several scenes between Academy Award-winning actress, Fay Dunaway, and the CG Marlon Brando. Following the death of Marlon Brando in 2004, the project was put on hold pending estate clearances. In 2014, at the request of Phoenix Pictures and the Marlon Brando estate, the original CG models of Marlon Brando were recovered from archive and transposed into modern software architecture by Scott Billups and graphics expert Jon Greenhalgh for use in the Showtime movie, Listen to Me Marlon. The original 3D visage of Brando helps narrate the award-winning documentary. The documentary opens with CG Marlon uttering his eerie prediction: "Actors aren't going to be real, they're going to be inside a computer -- you watch, it's going to happen," he argued. "Maybe this is the swan-song for all of us."
Mid-Century
Drama
Film Details
Screened at Cannes 2010 as a technology demo, Earth Ring was originally intended as a test for a feature length adaptation of the highly popular Software series by Rudy Rucker. Most notably, it was to be the first public test of a virtual character of a famous living actor. Marlon Brando's long-time friend and visual effects pioneer, Scott Billups, scanned the iconic actor into a computer in late 1989 using the same experimental system that would later be used in Terminator, Jurassic Park, The Abyss, and many other mainstream motion pictures.
This project was also the first professional use of a game engine (UNITY) as a motion picture pipeline. The project, a joint effort between Marlon Brando, Phoenix Pictures and Scott Billups, features several scenes between Academy Award-winning actress, Fay Dunaway, and the CG Marlon Brando. Following the death of Marlon Brando in 2004, the project was put on hold pending estate clearances.
In 2014, at the request of Phoenix Pictures and the Marlon Brando estate, the original CG models of Marlon Brando were recovered from archive and transposed into modern software architecture by Scott Billups and graphics expert Jon Greenhalgh for use in the Showtime movie, Listen to Me Marlon. The original 3D visage of Brando helps narrate the award-winning documentary. The documentary opens with CG Marlon uttering his eerie prediction: "Actors aren't going to be real, they're going to be inside a computer -- you watch, it's going to happen," he argued.
"Maybe this is the swan-song for all of us.".