Uncanny Valley: Encyclopedia II - Uncanny Valley - The Uncanny Valley in film

Uncanny Valley - The Uncanny Valley in film

Although originally resulting from experimental data and applied only to robotics, the principle has been applied to computer animation characters. American film critic Roger Ebert has applied the notion of Uncanny Valley to the use of make-up and costumes of humanoid creatures in movies.

The Uncanny Valley was considered by some to be the reason behind the difficulty in creating computer-animated characters. Critics of computer animated films sometimes invoke the Uncanny Valley when explaining their dislike for a particular film. The principle leads to the conclusion that to generate a positive emotional response in human beings, it is often better to include fewer human characteristics in the entity, lest it fall into the Uncanny Valley. Critics argue, however, that there has been no evidence in animation or filmmaking for the existence of the Uncanny Valley, even though movie effects have gradually developed to the point when humans are digitally rendered realistically and without evoking negative emotions from the viewers. Proponents of this view argue that nowhere between 1970s and 2000s have moviemakers actually faced the challenge of the Valley. One counterpoint to the denial of the existence of the Valley in films is the early Pixar production Tin Toy. There, the baby shown is fully computer generated yet looks less than human and can prove frightening or unpleasant to children. The effect is lessened by the two dimensional nature of the character, but the overly defined wrinkles and (comparatively) primitive rendering of the spittle makes the character appear evil or otherwordly. A similar effect is seen in the doll's head character in the film Toy Story. The character can be again frightening to children because it is in essence a mobile deformed human head. Even if it is not frightening, most children prefer the cute appeal of the aliens or indeed Woody because there is less human resemblence.

In 2001, Square Pictures' photorealistic movie, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within failed at the box-office and is often cited as a possible victim of the Uncanny Valley. The movie was the first major wide-released CGI film to feature photorealistic characters, and in turn brought about quite a bit of attention from movie critics and filmmakers alike. The Uncanny Valley theory is thought to be most prominent in Final Fantasy's character movements. The characters also lack any visible perspiration, as well as eye and lip movements that seem "off" - probably two of the most difficult techniques to accomplish in computer animation.

It has been said the best way to accomplish convincing human movements and to "jump" the Uncanny Valley in computer animation is to combine both motion capture and keyframing techniques. Though the former has become a popular technique, keyframing is still widely used throughout the animation industry. The film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which features the character Gollum, uses this combined technique with stunning results. Note, however, that Gollum's eyes and face were animated using only keyframing. Note also that the Gollum animation also featured advances in modelling (including skin texture, and effects such as saliva around lips) which allow the character's external appearance to reach the other side of the Valley. One obvious caveat with Gollum, however, is that the character is evidently non-human (and indeed intentionally uncanny to start with) and so may not trigger the same response as a human figure would when modelled using the same techniques.

Despite advances in computer animation, some feel the Uncanny Valley affected two CGI films of 2004, The Incredibles and The Polar Express. The close dates of release led to many critics' comparison of the two movies, with some preferring the deliberately stylized appearance of the characters in The Incredibles over the more human-like characters in The Polar Express (which were described by many critics as being "disturbing"). Pixar stated that the reason for stylizing the characters in the "Incredibles" was not due to an inability to make the characters more realisitic, but an attempt to avoid the Uncanny Valley.

The CG animation Final Flight of the Osiris in the Animatrix also suffers from this - although, as this was also made with the same techniques as in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, it was in some ways expected to. Erotic sequences with Uncanny Valley characters, as featured in Final Flight, are particularly disturbing, since they provide conflicting messages of "this is arousing" and "this is non-human".

The Uncanny Valley is also a plot point in some movies about robotics. "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" centers on a future where many people are disturbed at how realistic the new line of androids is. For example, a rowdy crowd that rejoices in watching robot destruction derbies called "Flesh Fairs" falls silent when the next subject about to be ripped apart appears to be an adorable human boy. In "I, Robot (film)," the newest wave of U.S. Robotics robots is far more humanoid in facial expressions and appearance. This disturbs main character Det. Del Spooner, who was already bothered by the boxy metal robots that preceded them. "Why do you give them faces?" he asks one of the robots' programmers as he stares into a sea of identical new robots. He then discharges his firearm into the "face" of a robot at point-blank range, effectively making his point to the movie audience who will gasp at the sight of him "executing" a "person."

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Uncanny Valley in film", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki