By R.T. Watson
Silicon Valley's biggest companies are snapping up the people
and technology behind some of Hollywood's blockbusters in an effort
to improve their augmented- and virtual-reality offerings.
Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. are among
the tech giants that in recent years have been both luring visual
artists away from Hollywood and acquiring technology first used to
create digital effects for blockbusters like "Rogue One: A Star
Wars Story" and "Avatar."
While VR is almost completely immersive, AR superimposes images
onto the real world. Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft Corp. and
others are developing special glasses or headsets for these
applications, also called extended reality.
Silicon Valley's recruitment of artists and engineers who built
some of Hollywood's most memorable digital effects reflects the
view that mass-user adoption of AR and VR platforms depends on
creating lifelike experiences. Populating the platforms with
realistic computer-generated characters and scenery, similar to
what is found in movies or videogames, is central to that
effort.
In recent years, former visual effects professionals have traded
careers working for top Hollywood firms like Industrial Light &
Magic (whose credits include the Star Wars films), Digital Domain
(Marvel) and Weta Digital ("Lord of the Rings," "Jumanji: The Next
Level") in favor of often higher-paying gigs at tech companies
developing AR and VR applications and hardware.
"It's harder to make as much money working in visual effects,"
said Paul Debevec, a veteran of the visual-effects industry who is
now a professor at the University of Southern California. About 4
1/2 years ago Google hired Mr. Debevec, an award-winning pioneer in
the creation of convincing digital humans, to help the company
advance extended reality.
"A lot of the most talented individuals that I've met through
the visual effects industry find their way into the tech industry,"
he said. Three of Mr. Debevec's team joined him at Google.
Working in visual effects in film and TV can mean long,
unpredictable hours, limited compensation, poor job security and
paltry benefits -- many call it the "cool tax" one pays for the
pleasure of working in Hollywood. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley has
been pouring billions of dollars into extended-reality technology.
The disparity between the two industries has created an abundance
of attractive jobs that some fed-up visual effects professionals
find hard to turn down.
"The difference is, in tech, you are broadly treated more like a
human being," said one veteran visual effects artist who, like many
of his peers, recently left Hollywood for a job in technology. He
now works developing AR platforms for one the world's largest tech
companies.
Harvard Business School professor emeritus Shoshana Zuboff calls
the Hollywood to Silicon Valley migration "the latest illustration
of how tech empires are able to corner critical intellectual
labor." She likens the shift to what has happened in the field of
artificial intelligence, as major technology companies persuade
scientists to leave government or university jobs.
Hollywood's visual effects industry has struggled in recent
years. Even as its work has become ubiquitous in film and
television, falling prices have made it increasingly difficult to
turn a profit, and compensation for workers has suffered.
The reverse has been true in AR and VR. Consulting company
Accenture PLC said last year it projects company spending in the
immersive technologies to grow to $121 billion by 2023 from $21
billion in 2020.
"Our smartphone world has become so laden, so rich. We spend so
much time looking down into this screen, there's very little more
we can do with that," says early VR developer Mark Pesce. "The next
[thing] is to turn the world into the screen...that is what AR
offers."
In recent years tech companies have leaned on the expertise of
visual-effects professionals as they seek to create lifelike
digital objects and characters.
"If you put on an AR or VR headset, you're going to look at
stuff," said Mr. Debevec. "One of the most important things you're
going to see are people."
While heading the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, Mr.
Debevec and others designed what many in visual effects consider
the most sophisticated device for capturing digital scans of humans
that can then be animated later.
The Light Stage, as the device is known, is a nine-foot diameter
spherical device with 14,000 lights and more than 40 cameras. It
has played a key role in creating some of cinema's most celebrated
digital facsimiles of actors, such as Brad Pitt in "The Curious
Case of Benjamin Button," Will Smith for "Gemini Man" and even a
deceased Paul Walker for "Furious 7."
In 2017, Google built its own, bigger Light Stage, capable of
capturing not just a person's head, but the entire human form. With
Mr. Debevec's help, the company is using the device, in part, to
try to create thoroughly convincing digital humans for AR and VR
platforms.
Hao Li, another former head of the USC lab -- who got into
visual effects because he wanted to "fool an audience, in a good
way" -- has also had technology he co-developed to improve the
production of digital characters for Hollywood acquired by Silicon
Valley.
Apple bought facial-tracking technology developed by Mr. Li and
colleagues and used it as the basis for its Animoji, which allows
users to meld their own facial expressions with animated creatures.
Some of his collaborators on the project started working at Apple
shortly after the sale.
Write to R.T. Watson at rt.watson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 03, 2020 10:01 ET (15:01 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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