Adam Martin's Blog - Posts Tagged "darth-vader"

Deepstory
Deepstory is what happens when you recreate a cast member in a movie, like Peter Cushing, with CGI (computer generated imagery) as part of the plot, and to your chagrin it actually makes more sense, or deepsense, than trying to convince the audience they’re seeing a live actor onscreen.

If Darth Vader reanimated Grand Moff Tarkin at his Death Star CGI Studio, as part of the plot in Rouge One: A Star Wars Story (2016), it’s actually in keeping with the advanced technology of the Star Wars universe.

Darth Vader knows (or should know according to his mastery of the deepforce ) what we already know in real life: CGI actors, or deepactors, work cheap, or for nothing at all.

They don’t have drug problems, mental health issues, financial debt, needy dependents, gold-digging spouses, accident insurance premiums, opinions about the script, and they always show up and disappear right on time.

It’s as if… they don’t exist, while generating IP (intellectual property) revenue for those who do, in the form of copyrights, privacy rights, publicity rights, trademarks, and merchandising.

In novel form, this kind of malarky is known as ghostwriting, where the author’s name appears on the cover but the text is written by a ghostwriter, or deepauthor who deepwrites like the author so well you can’t tell the difference.

Deepdialogue
Whenever I hear words like deepfake, I’m reminded of old gangster movies where thugs fire their gun and jerk the barrel forward to make the bullets go faster. I guess, that makes the bullet holes deeper.

Once fired from a gun, the average bullet travels at around 2,736 mph, 6 times faster than the fastest car in the world. Words like deepfake provide the clarity that’s missing from our intellect… at around 2,736 mph.

Deepfake is a portmanteau of “deep learning” and “fake” where something deemed authentic is replaced with an imitation and cannot be easily distinguished from the original. It’s also a closed compound word: two or more words that are joined together.

Silence is a compound pause.

Once something is deemed fake, it can’t be any faker than it is. But this doesn’t stop people from trying to re-invent language from scratch every time they speak it. Call it deepeffort.

We like to turn words into the linguistic version of Kentucky Fried Chicken, so we can speak them as if they are deepfried with eleven creative herbs and spices.

Deepstyle
Most people don’t want to imitate Peter Cushing. They want to imitate the CGI imitation of Peter Cushing, playing an imitation villain, in the latest imitation Star Wars movie.

But if you don’t look, sound, or act like Peter Cushing, or the CGI imitation, what’s to be done? Become a deepimposter of yourself!

How can this be done without spending a fortune on acting classes, going to auditions, and plastic surgery?

Simple. You deepfake it, until you deepmake it!

When you use cool words like deepfake, party goers turn their attention to you, the speaker of the cool word of the day. In French that’s mot sympa du jour, and with the aid of Google translate, I’m able to write in deepfrench.

By association the speaker of cool words transforms the speaker into a deepcool person. Before you know it, people attending your new-personality party will interact with you as if they’re hanging out with a new you that’s even better than the original!

Deepconflict
This deepstyle of yours works for awhile, but what good would any story be without conflict? The inevitable deepfoil shows up to your party and uses a word like deepreal.

You wonder if this party-crasher is referring to Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the hyperreal, or is he just blowing smoke from his swim trunks.

The crowd flocks to this, shall we say… imposter… or deepfaker who now becomes the center of deepfawning.

If you want to know how deepstyle can backfire, see the Brady Bunch episode The Personality Kid, where Peter Brady gets a new personality and throws a party to show off his new self.

Not to be outdone by this imposter stealing your deepthunder, you choose to beat this charlatan, this mountebank, this deepfraud, at their own game.

Offering your foe pork chops and “apple shauce” (spoken like Humphrey Bogart) won’t work.

Here’s how to deepskin this cat…

Deeptechnique
Since you look just like you, you’ve got the part before you even audition, and you can bypass the expensive CGI computer process of recreating yourself. Once you start acting like you always do, people will start to notice how you “look so real” in real life.

Soon the audience will be wondering, “Did you see how he put mustard on that hot dog? Wow, he really looks like he’s sipping a beer!”

You’ll also be performing your own stunts, eliciting comments like, “Did you see how he put his foot through the screen door and cracked that priceless vase?”

The great thing about being your own imposter is that your voice is already dubbed to your mouth before you even open it! No more Spaghetti Western voice-out-of-sync issues.

Deepcaution
Remember, if we are six or fewer social connections away from each other (six degrees of separation), the same is true for being your own imposter. You may be imitating someone you know, who is imitating someone else, and the fifth person down the line is imitating you.

If you get that funny feeling that the role your playing is somehow a Xerox copy of someone else’s thoughts or behavior, that they Xeroxed from you, that’s a red flag.

The last thing you want is to become is an imitation, of an imitation, or a deepcopy, of yourself.

If this happens, you run the risk of being exposed as appearing so real that it’s really you! It’s as if Peter Cushing really did appear in Rouge One: A Star Wars Story!

All that new-you surgery down the drain, and we don’t want that…

Deepfigures
Once you perfect your deeptechnique, you can aspire to becoming a deepaction figure, bending yourself into your favorite action poses, adding your favorite costumes, accessories, vehicles, and playsets, to your life-sized toy story.

If you have a significant other, you can mash yourselves together in romantic settings, like you used to do with Ken and Barbie dolls as kids, in the privacy of your own life-sized Barbie Playhouse.

You’ve, now become a twenty-four hour solo tribute band to yourself. You don’t have to write and rehearse the songs, create the costumes, go on tour, or build an audience from scratch. It’s all done for you, as if you just added water!

Deeptheatre
Your new action adventures will unfold on sets that are already built for you, also known as domestic society, or deepdomestic society, or domestic deepsociety.

All your entrances and exits will be predicted by conspicuously absent city engineers, or deepdirectors. Your narratives will unfold inside the footprint of their architectural structures, designed landscapes, and travel networks, telling you where to go and what to do before you go there.

It’s as if all the world is a deepstage.

Deepmovies
By the year 3000 A.D., the feature film technology will be as plug and play as the Atari video game console back in the seventies, allowing everyone to recreate anyone, anywhere, anytime, with any kind of story template, in the privacy of their own homes.

Children of the future will produce movies that will look just like their favorite Star Wars movie, all for the cost of what one paid for an Atari Asteroids game cartridge back in 1981.

Behold, the deepmovie industry!

Deepcuriosity
Perhaps, all this fascination with regurgitated, repurposed, and recycled, deepculture can be summed up as follows:
If the fake is better than the original, people will pay money to see it.
If the original is better than the fake, people will pay money to see it.

Small Talk in the 31st Century
Teenager 1: Hey, did you know I’m playing all the characters in the next Star Wars movie, nationwide?

Teenager 2: Really? So, am I.
When the giant boys are around, Darth Vader has to play nice with the other action figures.

Original article appears on Medium
May the Deepfake be with You on Medium