International Technological University
A WASC Accredited Graduate School
WHAT’S INSIDE
This year is a transformative one for ITU: A new president, a new campus, and a new curriculum structure for all the programs. All these changes are important to ITU, but I will focus on the new curriculum for this editorial. The new structure adds a capstone course, which provides an assessment of student learning. Offering the best education, helps students to be productive, successful, and involved in society. Our aim is to provide proper knowledge, skills, and experiences, helping students to get jobs that offer social fairness and economic growth. To be prepared for tomorrow’s job, today’s students need new skills, earned by certificates, internships, and real life projects. The curriculum changes are a sign of the changing educational landscape. To compete with other universities, we need to achieve sustainable change that transforms learning. We need to adopt an effective mission statement, the use of research, and the best practice in teaching and student development. Transformation of education is transforming ourselves — inspiring our own growth. This is a continuing process, this is shifting from red to green, and this is moving and improving. As academic leaders, we need to understand the reasons why change in programs is becoming very urgent. Today’s economic realities require changes in education, and today’s professors need to facilitate learning and help students excel. As we discover the reality of change, we reflect on ourselves, and the culture in which we live and work. To truly create positive change we need to ask ourselves where are we on the scale of transformation?
Amal Mougharbel, PhD Business Administration Department Chair ITU Journal Editor in Chief
Editor-in-Chief : Amal Mougharbel, PhD
TEAM
Editorial Board: Patricia Wiggin James Dohnert Daniel Keenan Designers:
ITU Journal cannot be held liable for its content. The views expressed are those of the writers only. The Editorial Board reserves the right to edit submissions.
3 4
Buzzfeed & Native Content: Or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance We take a deep dive into the world of native content in this piece on the wonderful world of Buzzfeed.
5 6
Top 7 Inventions That Did Not Transform The World Discover seven inventions that did not transform the world in this Buzzfeed-inspired listicle.
7 8 9 10
Mad Men Of Steel: Is This Movie About #Sears? Channel your inner Clark Kent with this investigative article on the history of marketing in cinema.
11 12
The Dave Lo-Down on Transformers and Digital Effects ITU Professor Dave Lo talks about his work on Transformers, appreciation for artists, and how digital effects is now driving Hollywood.
13 14 15
Robots! Transformers in Real Life We ask the tough questions like: Why robots are so often designed to look like humans? Is there a future for transforming robots?
Kathia Rubi Tiffany Crader Twesha Khanijow
2
International Technological University is accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
Volume V, Issue II, 2015
By James Dohnert
H
ITU Marketing Professor Duane Brooks, the detective work required to figure out the difference between sponsored and editorial posts is getting tougher.
ave you heard of Buzzfeed? It’s an infotainment site that makes lists of cat pictures. They’re famous for their “listicles”, which are an amalgamation of best of lists and articles. You can find great Buzzfeed listicles on topics like 19 Movies That Would Be Hilarious Backwards, 23 Dogs Who Are Too Adorably Stupid For Their Own Good, and 12 Cat Photos that Prove Santa Claus is Real (Only one of those articles is fake).
“Sometimes it’s a little tricky— native content is typically in the form of an editorial or news-like piece. It may look like a real story or lead in, when in fact it is a sponsored ad. Again, the advertising is dressed-up to look like editorial content in a way and placed on sites such as Yahoo within the news feeds. Native content/advertising is showing up in many places,” said Professor Brooks.
The website generates the entirety of its revenue by writing articles about brands for brands. This ‘native content’ allows businesses to run articles like How to Get Great Buns by Carls Jr and Top 10 Cola Drinks to Have with Breakfast Sponsored by Pepsi (One of those articles is fake). While Buzzfeed isn’t the only website running native content, it is perhaps the most high profile.
Spotting the difference can actually be a big deal for many consumers. Native content exists to sell things, not necessarily to inform the public. Where editorial content can often times be about superfluous topics, it’s written with the intention of giving the reader something they care about. Meanwhile, native content is asked to play the twofold role of selling something and being interesting enough that someone will actual read it.
Earlier this year, a publicly released memo from Buzzfeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith stated that the publisher deleted two posts that openly criticized brands that run native content on the website. In the memo, the editor apologized for his actions and said he “overreacted” following a recent push to reduce the amount of personal opinion found in the site’s articles. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Smith’s memo was not in the form of a Top 10 Reasons I’ve Overreacted listicle.
“With native advertising the content may appear to provide value in some way, but that isn’t the main goal. The main goal is to sell a product or service. In addition, the piece may try to solve some type of problem the consumer may be having and there is a convenient ‘story’ to get people’s attention so they will click on it and read more,” continues Professor Brooks. For the most part, publishers understand that native content and editorial content can’t play on the same playground. That is why editorial writers don’t write native content and native content writers don’t write with editorial. Even Buzzfeed has a semi-standing policy of not letting native content writers
Traditionally, native content articles have a tag or logo that signifies that the content in question is being paid for by a brand. The majority of Buzzfeed’s sponsored content comes in the form of benign listicles and quizzes but some companies offer sponsored content that is harder to spot. According to
3
International Technological University
A WASC Accredited Graduate School
move to editorial. The barrier is supposed to allows writers to write what they want without the burden of appeasing advertisers. However, the intentions of separation aren’t always as helpful. In the likely case that sponsored content continues to expand, the onus seems to be on the consumer to separate editorial from native content. Much like infomercials had to be separated from normal programming, so too will Top 10 lists sponsored by Mane N’ Tail Shampoo.
The Buzzfeed deletion of posts is a good example of what happens when money gets in the way of journalism— or Buzzfeed’s equivalent of journalism. It is a case study for what happens when your only revenue comes from writing ad-copy for a brand. Think about it this way: As a writer if you find out that company X is doing something unethical you should write about it. Companies that do bad things are great and valuable copy. Of course, if the company in metaphorical question is the one paying your publisher, your publisher will probably be more hesitant to actually write negative stuff.
Ignorance might well be a virtue in this case. If you don’t know you’re reading sponsored content then you’ll have no reason to worry. In the grand scheme of things, a sponsored post on best 80s action movies is probably not going to effect you day-today. Marketing is a part of modern life and consumers are savvy enough to know what ads look like.
Native content isn’t inherently bad on its own terms. No one goes to Buzzfeed for his or her breaking world news. They go to Buzzfeed for great listicles like Top 10 Haunted Houses and Top 5 Reasons Horses Are Majestic Animals. The real problem arises when you consider how pervasive native content is becoming. Online native content is a relativity new form of advertising that is here to stay. The way companies advertise needs to change with consumers’ habits. Internet banner ads have proven not to work. Nobody really clicks the giant banner ad at the top of the CNN.com homepage promoting Church’s Chicken. According to a 2011 report from marketing firm Solve Media, you are more likely to win the lottery than click a banner ad. Those types of numbers show that marketing needs to change and, whether you like it or not, native content is going to be a part of that change.
Now on to our next piece on Top 7 Products that Didn’t Transform their Industry [SPONSORED].
“The trend now is more native content. However, marketers will not rely on any one thing to get consumers’ attention. Native advertising has been around for some time in the form of infomercials and the like; we are just seeing a new adaptation,” continues Professor Brooks.
4
Volume V, Issue II, 2015
I
nventions can be a transformative thing. From the telephone to the iPhone, the world is filled with great inventions that have revolutionized the world. However, not all inventions have had a positive effect— or any effect— on our lives. Here is a brief list of seven inventions that failed to light the world on fire.
decided the best way to stop the bleeding was to completely reinvent their most beloved product. Unfortunately for the sugar-water distributor, consumers hated the idea that people were messing with their soda and openly criticized CocoCola for the decision. The backlash was so severe that Coke re-released Coke Classic just three months after New Coke’s launch. History remembers New Coke as a massive marketing blunder in spite of the fact that sales of Coke dramatically increased after the reintroduction of the Coke Classic.
Betamax was Sony’s competitor to the VHS. Launched in 1975, the Betamax was essentially a smaller version of the VHS tape that did the exact same thing. If you never heard of the Betamax, its probably because you were born in the ‘90s. Sony’s home video invention never gained much traction as the VHS was the thing that took the world by storm. Not one to give up easily, Sony would invent the Blu-ray disc years later. Blu-ray would be considered a transformative success if it wasn’t for the success of streaming media that took rise in the late ‘00s.
This is a prescient choice for this list. We looked into our crystal ball and found that in five years people will look back on the Tidal Music Streaming Service negatively. Jay-Z, aka HOVA, aka God MC, aka Shawn Carter, created the musicianowned music streaming service earlier this year. The service, which is not named after the best Fiona Apple album, costs way more than its competitors and has a business model that only makes sense to Jay-Z. Let’s focus on cost first, Tidal’s biggest competitor, Spotify, costs $10 a month which is half what Tidal costs.
o nsf Tra : My rs 6 rme
A business model that will never scale compounds the high price of the service. Tidal’s stakeholders are the musicians that will put music on the service. Musicians like Daft Punk, Alicia Keys, Joey Fatone, and Coldplay all have a three percent stake in the company. For their stake, they have agreed to release exclusive content on Tidal. The problem with this arrangement is the Internet. Just because it’s ‘exclusive’ doesn’t mean someone won’t upload it on the Internet for free. So why would someone pay $20 a month for the occasionally exclusive that they can get online for free very shortly after release? That’s a question for HOVA.
ith
w ner
Din s
imu
Opt
New Coke was like Coke, if everyone hated Coke. In 1985, soft drink dynamo Coca-Cola released a ‘reformulated’ version of their soda called New Coke. The company was losing ground to competitor Pepsi during the late ‘80s and
Another failed attempt to revolutionize the audio entertainment industry! This blunder was courtesy of a guy who made his money building airplanes. Bill Lear, of the
5
International Technological University
A WASC Accredited Graduate School
Lear Jet Corporation, brought together a consortium of companies to build ‘the future of music playing devices’. Unlike other inventions on our list, the 8-Track had some brief success before vanishing into the ether. In the late ‘60s, car manufacturers began putting the device in cars like the Mustang and Thunderbird. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the tapes’ bulky casing began to go the way of the Dodo Bird. By the mid-’70s, the 8-Track was over taken by the cassette player, which was overtaken by the CD player, which was taken over by streaming music on the Internet.
Introduced as a modern convenience in the ‘60s, the plastic shopping bag became a mainstay of the grocery shopping experience. Swedish company Cellopast invented the plastic bag in 1965 as a simple and durable single use bag for carrying goods. The company established the bag as an alternative to the already in use paper bags that littered the grocery shopping landscape. Cellopast’s invention was eventually patented and gave the Swedish firm a monopoly on plastic bags until the ‘80s. After the companies patent was overturned, competitors began to emerge in the plastic bag game. Soon the market was open for competing bag companies to flood the market with plastic.The unforeseen consequence of all this was, as it turns out, plastic is bad for the environment. Durable plastic bags can take centuries to decompose, and have led to flooding and marine life endangerment. By the ‘00s, these environmental issues lead some countries to ban the plastic bag entirely. While it could be argued that plastic shopping bags have transformed the shopping industry, they certainly didn’t do it for the better.
The MiniDisc was the brainchild of Sony. Created in 1992, the audio storage product was created to end the tyrannical reign of the cassette tape. A kind of mix between a cassette and CD, the MiniDisc could hold more audio than a cassette and was more durable than a CD. Like many heavy metal drummers, the MiniDisc was big in Japan but failed to catch on just about everyplace else. Sony blamed its slow uptake on the lack of record labels that put their music on the M-Disc. Primarily used to make mixtapes (mixdiscs?), the product was popular with people who wanted to make a playlist. Like a lot of other products on this list, the Internet eventually killed the MiniDisc. With the popularity of the MP3 player, people did not want to carry around 100 MiniDiscs just so they could hear their favorite Hoobastank album.
The Segway was built for the movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop. In a bid to capitalize on the charisma of American Superstar actor Kevin James, the people mover was made to co-star in perhaps the greatest cinematic achievement of all time. Okay, not really. The Segway was actually made with the best of intentions. Designed to help those with disabilities better navigate the world, the system that the Segway was built on was a wheelchair that could climb stairs. Surprisingly, the Segway never met its end goal and instead became an upright people mover. Over time the Segway has become a bit of a joke. Famed more for being used on guided tours and Paul Blart: Mall Cop, the device never quite met its lofty goals.
6
Volume V, Issue II, 2015
MADMEN OF STEEL: IS THIS MOVIE ABOUT #SEARS? By James Dohnert
7
International Technological University
A WASC Accredited Graduate School
T
“With the convergence of media, consumption habits have changed drastically from what has been happening in the past. Product placement seems to be the only branch for advertisers to get their products out there, and make themselves known,” says Kimball.
ell me if you’ve heard this one…Superman super-fan walks into a comic book shop and asks the clerk if he has that new Superman comic. Clerk goes, “You mean Man of Steel?” Super-fan says, “Yeah, the one about Sears.” Looking bemused, the clerk responds, “Yes, but it’s terrible. It’s not even canonical, issue #271: Superman Goes to the Mall clearly states Clark Kent is an avid Target shopper.” Getting upset, the super-fan acknowledges, “True, but issue #140 of Superman Builds a Deck clearly identified the Man of Steel as an avid admirer of Craftsman® power tools, and if you knew anything about Superman you’d understand that he only shops at Target if he can’t find a Sears!”
For advertisers, product placement makes perfect sense. Why spend $10 million on an ignored commercial when you can spend $20 million on product placement in a movie people are actually watching? A movie theater is one of the few places where staring at your phone is actively frowned upon. So when Walmart pays the big bucks to get its super-saver logo in the next Transformers movie, they do it because they know you’ll be paying attention.
That is obviously not something you would have heard before, mostly because it only exists in my off-off-off-like-inIowa Broadway one man show: Comic on Comics. My one man show notwithstanding, it’s also what I assume Warner Bros. hoped a normal conversation in most comic book stores across America sounded like when they were making the new Superman movie. In case you didn’t notice, the Superman smash-fest, Man of Steel, was chalked full of name brands that have nothing to do with comic books. Like many other movie studios, the Bros. of Warner have made a major push to get integrated marketing into their summer tent poles. The push to make sure multinational companies get in a superhero flick is called ‘product placement’, and it’s taking over the entertainment landscape.
Product placement is also quite profitable for movie studios. It’s rumored that Man of Steel cost something north of $200 million for production costs alone. When you factor in marketing costs that number at least doubles. While it might be counterproductive to release a $400 million movie banking on it to make $800 million, the truth is movies have very little effect on a studio’s bottom line. Most film studios are a subsidiary of giant conglomerates with their fingers in a lot of pies. Major motion picture studios like Warner Bros. are actually owned by multinational media companies like Time Warner. You may know Time Warner from such American mainstays as HBO, Castle Rock Entertainment, and, the now separated, AOL. With so much income channels, a $200 million picture like Man of Steel is just a drop in the bucket for Time Warner. In fact, according to a study by Nomura Equity Research, films only accounted for about 25 percent of its total revenue.
O
ver the past 10 years, marketing has become such a defining force in our everyday lives that movies get funded, in part, by how many products get put in a scene. It is certainly not new, but it’s now much more pervasive. Movies like Man of Steel, aka Reel Steel aka Zod & The Superboy, are chocked fill of product placement moments. In the film, Superman fought an alien in a Sears and blew up a Chevron gas station. While many moviegoers may have thought these destroyed brands were in the film to give it a sense of realism, they were in fact product placement.
With the inconsequential returns of box office dollars, Hollywood has begun to focus on diversifying its revenue streams. The modern studio picture is expected to have at least two sequels, pre-created brand recognition, toys, and, if they’re doing right, a common interconnected movieverse. With that mixture of movie magic, Man of Steel will supplement its box office totals with product placement revenue, merchandise sales, and the inevitable Superman quadrilogy.
As Michael Kimball— an Emmy-award winning Sound Designer and ITU Digital Arts professor— puts it, product placement is a direct result of the modern consumerists media viewing habits. The average cinema lover is no longer willing to actively watch a 30-second Geico Caveman commercial. His or her options are now vast, and the second-screen world of modern consumption has given them a chance to ignore the things they don’t want to watch.
K
nowing that Superman will be drinking RC Cola® for three movies instead of one means companies are more likely to invest big bucks. The movie synergy of product placement is why marketers are devising ways to get their
8
Volume V, Issue II, 2015
only be one percent of people but when you think about all the chainsaw sales it really adds up,” continues Kimball.
brand in a scene before it even begins shooting. Producers now start working with companies in the previsualization stage to get its product placed in a picture. Previsualization, or previz, is the art of creating an entire 3D-animated version of a film before the camera even starts rolling. Using computer programs like AutoDesk’s Maya modelers build entire scenes on a computer to figure out equipment needs, production costs, and where to put that RC Cola® bottle in the act two cantina scene. The magic of previz is that by going in early, moviemakers can place products covertly in a way that’s nonintrusive.
A
ttempts to market to the subconscious mind are nothing new for Hollywood. In 1957, marketing researcher James Vicary reported to conduct a study on subconscious advertising in movie theaters. The experiment focused on editing in a single frame into movies that simply read, ‘Eat Popcorn’. Moviegoers were supposed to subconsciously recognize the frame without having it register on their conscious mind. Vicary found that the experiments led to a 58 percent increase in popcorn sales. Unfortunately, for subconscious advertising truthers, Vicary’s study turned out to be a hoax. The ‘marketing researcher’ never held an experiment and stated on his deathbed that he made up the numbers. Despite Vicary’s work, the idea of subconscious advertising has lived on to this day.
“Engaging in preproduction, and the previsualization process that goes on in production houses nowadays, really helps producers and directors place these products where you see them, and makes it a subliminal thing,” reports Kimball.
P
While Vicary’s work has continued to dog the practice, more recent real studies have shown subconscious advertising might have potential. According to a 2013 study by the University of Colorado at Boulder, consumers who watched TV with product placement were more inclined to think about a sponsoring brand. When researchers showed a clip from a sitcom that featured a famous cereal brand they found that participants were more likely to fondly remember the brand in question. However, when the participants were told that the sitcom they were watching would have product placement, the covert marketing had no effect. The study speaks to the growing belief that the subconscious mind, and Vicary’s ideas, might actually be more powerful than we think.
erhaps the most fascinating part of product placement is how little of a conscious impact it has on consumers. Superman may be rough housing in a Sears, but it’s never explicitly mentioned in the film that he’s in the proud reseller of Craftsman® goods. Studios and advertisers are in a general agreement that product placement straddle a line between recognizable and inconspicuous. Generally, filmmakers do not want in-movie ads to take the attention from a scene. At the same time, marketers want to make sure that brands are clearly recognizable. This give and take arises in things as simple as making sure an actor is holding a Bovril® jar with the label facing towards the camera. These tiny details may seem inconsequential, but they actually can have a major impact on the subconscious mind of a consumer.
Subconscious advertising is a billion dollar industry with Fortune 500 investments. It is also a microcosm of an industry where art and commerce collide on billion dollar projects. Cinema is the type of industry that gets creative types and
“[Zod and Superman] were hitting each other with Craftsmen® tools, and fighting in the hardware isle. So when people see that they subconsciously think: ‘I need a chainsaw.’ It might
9
International Technological University
A WASC Accredited Graduate School
concept that filmmaking is two-parts business and one-part art. Creative members of a film crew now have to share a production with the likes of executives, marketers, and finance people in the revenue hungry entertainment industry. Product placement is indicative of this larger studio system that has to find new ways to maintain profit margins while combating consumer’s new consumption. As moviegoers become more susceptible to watching movies on their iPads, at home, or on their iPhones in their iHome, the industry has had to adapt to a new approach to maintain the profitability of yesteryear.
business minds working together on a singular project. Kimball finds that this marriage usually works because, as the Cabaret song goes, ‘not “Money makes the world go round.” “You get the push back from a lot of the—what we call: ‘pure creative types’. Usually these are people with enough of a reputation that they feel they do not need to do product placement. But the majority of these people are everyday business people that realize they have to pay for their project. They have investors that need to get paid from the project, if they don’t, they will not get investors on the next go-around.” ow, tell me if you heard this one…a writer, director, and a studio executive start discussing a movie idea. The writer goes, “I got an idea for a great movie, it’s going be the next Citizen Kane.” The director goes, “I love it! It has all the elements of a great film, I’m in.” Then the studio executive goes, “Great! Let me run it by our marketing team, do some testing, revise the idea to fit the international market, and then get back to you.”
N
What will this new approach look like in 20 years? It is anyone’s guess. What we do know is that the movie industry is still evolving. Product placement, movie marketing, and content consumption will not always look like it does today, and studio execs will figure out a way to adapt. We are currently suffering through the growing pains of the evolution of the studio system.Whatever happens tomorrow will be different.
You’ve probably never heard that one, unless you’ve seen my other one man show: Comic on Comedy, but it proves a point! ‘Pure creative types’, as Kimball puts it, may be a dying breed in modern day Hollywood. Filmmakers from George Lucas to David Lynch have declared Hollywood as a place too afraid to take risks. These filmmakers are citing the executives that are funding films as being the primary cause of cinemas’ artistic-bankruptcy. Filmmakers believe that films are losing their creative relevancy because the folks that run motion picture studios have become obsessed with appeasing marketers, board directors, and stakeholders.
Or, as Kimball puts it, “Our consumers are getting more and more sophisticated, and are more aware of what we are doing to them. So we will have to start rethinking how we are going about doing things.”
At his 2013 State of the Industry presentation in San Francisco Steven Soderbergh fired a warning shot by saying, “There are fewer and fewer executives who are in the business because they love movies. There are fewer and fewer executives that know movies.” According to the man behind films like Oceans 11, Oceans 12, and Oceans 13, modern execs have laid their claim by funding films that meet specific criteria. He cities the death of the movie middleclass at the feet of ballooning marketing budgets, the need for international cinematic appeal, and the amount of cooks working in the kitchen called ‘filmmaking’. For Soderbergh, the industry has lost its appeal because of the dearth of creatives. His words are emblematic of the general
10
Volume V, Issue II, 2015
By Daniel Keenan
D
Lo was a fan of the franchise long before its mid-2000s ave Lo’s resume is filled with work from the reboot: “From the 1985 cartoon, all the way up to the newest who’s who of the animation and special effects one, I grew up playing with the toys, and made my own industry. Currently serving as a professor of drawings of Transformers. It’s always been an interest of Digital Arts at ITU, his career has spanned companies like mine: Cars, robots, mixed Industrial Light & with a little science fiction. Magic, Disney, Digital So to be able to do a Domain, and Sony In the good old days, dialogue and plot were driving movie was a dream Image Works. Among his credits are some come true.” the story, and now it seems that effects are almost a center of the most renowned point. I’m actually a bigger fan of director driven movies. You “I came in as a character digital spectacles technical director, so I was of the last decade, can have a nice story, and digital effects, like a Christopher responsible for rigging, including Pirates of the Nolan movie, where there’s some really cool scenes, but hair/cloth simulations, Caribbean: At World’s sometimes a little bit of End, Transformers: they’re not as in your face as other directors, where it’s all technical work, sometimes Dark of the Moon, explosions, shiny cars, and beautiful actors. you do some simulations, Superman Returns, like buildings being and 2012. destroyed, or robots falling apart, or being punched.” Transformers is among the most iconic series of effects-heavy movies ever made. As he walks through some of his regular tasks, I can’t help but While Michael Bay has received plenty of criticism for his be struck by the incredible detail that goes into the process. over the top style, and reliance on explosions, one thing cannot be denied: He knows how to put on a show.
“
”
11
International Technological University
A WASC Accredited Graduate School
that my portfolio just started to grow. I went from there to Rhythm and Hues, to work on Superman Returns, Night at the Museum, then that kept growing to eventually working on the Oscar-winning movie, Rango.” The digital effects industry is growing exponentially worldwide. Even small independent movies, usually the domain of coming of age and art-house themed cinema, are utilizing the medium, as can be seen at the end of (spoiler alert) Safety Not Guaranteed. Hollywood has embraced it like nothing else, and with Marvel essentially copyrighting the cinema landscape for the foreseeable future, that will not change soon.
Lo talks about his job as a rigger, who puts articulation of joints into a model. The natural movement of things like Transformers is so often overlooked; yet precise detail has to go into every single one. The process begins to start to sound like an OCD-sufferers dream, as each day starts off with supervisors making comments and corrections on the minutest details of work from the previous day, until everything is perfect. Lo remarks how it gets a little better when you come to the end: “As you get closer to the end of the show or movie, you get a lot more texture. So you get to see it comped [played] in with the live action plate, with your actors in a real environment. So you’re comping in your Transformers to a live action plate, and you might add smoke and water, and other particles.” What happens after that? Back to perfecting everything.
Despite the fact that it means more work for him, Lo is unsure of this creative direction in Hollywood: “In the good old days, dialogue and plot were driving the story, and now it seems that effects are almost a center point. I’m actually a bigger fan of director driven movies. You can have a nice story, and digital effects, like a Christopher Nolan movie, where there’s some really cool scenes, but they’re not as in your face as other directors, where it’s all explosions, shiny cars, and beautiful actors.”
It’s certainly not a job you can take lightly: “You have to be hungry, humble, always eager to learn, because no matter how good you are, there’s always going to be someone with more experience, who’s better than you,” says Lo. “When you see a George Lucas or Dennis Muren, who’s been in the industry longer than you’ve been around, you just have to sit back and absorb it.”
Some would argue that digital effects are more of a driving force in Hollywood than a lot of actors, writers, and directors.
His journey into Hollywood is down the well beaten path, as against the advice of many, he gave up his steady job to pursue a career in the arts: “After I completed my Computer Science degree, I went to Boston to do executive education and be a technical consultant, but realized it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I just decided to take out a loan and go to art school, studied all the latest technology, and really focused on that. I was able to utilize my technical skills along with the art packages, so I came across as a technical artist from Day 1.”
“I do feel a lot of artists aren’t represented in the credits. Sometimes there could be a team of hundreds, but they have to pay per inch of frame, so a lot of people are overlooked. It would be nice if a movie that was heavily reliant on visual effects, that they would get a backend cut of that. Some people might not necessarily be going to see the lead actor, or the director, they’re going to see the effects. “In some instances, digital effects are an invisible art. If you can’t tell it’s there, then we’ve done our job. If you watch a scene and can’t tell the background is fake, that the cars are all fake, then we’ve accomplished our job.”
“I focused on drawing, modeling, and sculpting. My first job out of school was working on Transporter 2 modeling a car. Then I worked on cars, then on characters, and after
As these sorts of effects, and the necessary equipment, become more affordable, we are only going to see more in the coming years. It might only be a matter of time before Woody Allen writes a movie about a neurotic Transformer, just to keep in line with Hollywood trends. Maybe then, we’ll start hearing about the people who create them.
12
Volume V, Issue II, 2015
Transformers In Real Life By Daniel Keenan
I
n his latest movie installment, Chappie director and screenwriter, Neill Blomkamp, outlines a possible future of humanity, containing his usual tropes of crime, overpopulation, poverty and, of course, Johannesburg. This particular movie though, centers on the humanization and personification of a robot. It’s not the first time this has happened in the cinematic world, nor is it unique in reality.
slower than cheetahs, ants are built to be much stronger than us, we can’t fly, and we trip over things. Yet we still persist in imagining robots in our shape. Robotics expert, John Sokol, gives his explanation: “There are really only two reasons to build a robot like a human. One, is aesthetics, the second is to accommodate the human form factor. A robot that drives a car has to be able to enter the car, sit down and drive it. They have to be able to touch the break pedals and the steering wheel, so having a human like shape was important for that.”
There has always been a drive in Hollywood to humanize robots. From Data in Star Trek, to I, Robot, mechanical beings are almost always some variation of the human form. Somewhere along the way in movie culture, we became obsessed with imagining robots in the human form. So why this obsession? Why so many C-3POs, and not so many R2-D2s? The very concept of Transformers are that of metallic beings that can transform into the human shape, but why do Transformers need to take human shape at all? We can pick any form, so why do they need to look like us?
He chuckles as I ask him about the practicalities of reallife Transformers. He is a robotics purist, fascinated by the nitty-gritty aspects of robotics, and is more interested in transformers found between two circuits, than any Michael Bay blockbuster. He has worked across Asia in robotics, at places like RoboTerra, as well as frequenting the Hacker Dojo in Silicon Valley.
Leaving aside what the guy at the gym says about his deltoids, the human form really isn’t the most practical shape. We’re
“Different people get inspired into robotics by different things. In Japan, they’re very into the look of the robot.
13
International Technological University
A WASC Accredited Graduate School
Like Transformers and Power Rangers, these things are completely impractical, but they love the theater, the drama of it, the aesthetics of it all, as opposed to functional devices to accomplish things. Having the look is just an artistic, styling thing, which is valuable, but not technically practical.”
“There are several things happening now that will change things from how they were in the 60s and 70s, where there was a lot of dreaming and passion, but nothing solid coming from out of it,” says Sokol. “We hit this point recently with processing power and video, where we can start making good sense of video images and sensors to be able to navigate buildings and obstacles without colliding. Drones and other robots are just coming into being that can navigate effectively: The self-driving cars are a wonderful example. There are all kinds of numerical, algorithmic techniques now. There’s a lot of artificial intelligence starting to come online with human capabilities. Combine that with digital fabrication, additive, 3D printing, and suddenly we’re starting to make progress very quickly.”
Recently, some smaller tech companies in Asia have had relative success building real-life transformers, which can morph from a car into a functioning robot. The scaling of both the car and the robot leave a little to be desired, but it’s clear that the technology and functionality is growing. But is there really a practicality to robots that can transform into the shape of a human? Apart from the aesthetic, there really isn’t.
How quickly? Scary fast. Literally, it’s terrifying. This year, at Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Toshiba unveiled a robot that looks, and talks, just like a human woman. The reaction from most people was a general discomfort, and even fear of the robot, which also sings and cries. She is a prototype that the company is developing to help create ‘effective communication between humans and non-humans.’
Whether any of us really wanted our cars to morph into people, or were immediately concerned about defense against Decepticon, is debatable. But the truth is that Transformers don’t have any viable practicality. And with the robotics revolution in full swing, practicality is vital. Robotics is going through somewhat of a late renaissance. The high-octane progress in robotics that came along with the moon landing stagnated in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. Sort of like the fashion industry. Robotics didn’t develop as rapidly as personal computers and smartphones in the ‘00s, and is just now starting to experience that sort of growth.
The robot is incredibly lifelike, but with a hint of creepy. It’s hard to explain what makes the robot so eerie: the jerky arms movements are a possibility, and the Chuckie-esque head tilts are disconcerting. It’s a term that the robotics
14
Volume V, Issue II, 2015
industry already has, derived from the Freudian Theory of the Uncanny. “It’s what they call the Uncanny Valley,” explains Sokol. “As you start building things more and more human, it gets to the point where it can fool you to a point, but the movement isn’t right, the breathing isn’t right. There’s minor color variations that happen in your skin from your heart and pulse, that aren’t happening in the electronic equivalent, so these robots end up looking like an animated corpse!”
This accelerated level of robotics growth is best detailed in Ray Kurzweil’s book, The Singularity is Near. Kurzweil describes his law of accelerating returns, which predicts an exponential increase in technologies like computers, genetics, nanotechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence. He says this will lead to a technological singularity in the year 2045, a point where progress is so rapid it outstrips humans’ ability to comprehend it.
Which brings us to the second reason for building anthropomorphic robots: Aesthetics. Robot dogs have been getting a lot of attention recently. There are practical applications for a robot that size, but once again the reasoning for their design is aesthetic-based.
“In 10 years, we’re probably going to have robots who can walk up to your sink and do your dishes, fold clothes, do your laundry. A lot of the menial chores we have to do now. It’s the theory of freeing you up from drudgery.” Wrote Kurzweil. While this is a sentence that will have 10 year olds around the countryjumping for joy, there is a downside. Like the industrial revolution in Britain at the turn of the 19th Century, or modern day Detroit, there are a lot of jobs that may become obsolete. With so much research and development into selfdriving cars, there is a strong possibility that robotic trucks and vehicles could replace all delivery, shipping, and logistics in the near future.
“The only advantage of having an android, or anthropomorphic human robot, is strictly for the aesthetics of interacting with humans. There’s an enormous spectrum of robots that might be considered anthropomorphic like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Challenge Robots, which are anthropomorphic because they need to fit into human spaces, and operate human appliances, like turning valves in radioactive areas.”
While this technology is near, or close to, completion, it may be a little longer until we see it implemented on US roads. Navigating through the legal and legislative system will be a long and complicated process. It will be much easier to implement in less legislative-heavy countries, particularly in Asia. Then it will be a matter of when, not if. After that, we’ll be asking ourselves what job will become obsolete next.
Toshiba’s robot, at least at the moment, serves very little function except to creep people out. Its design is meant to put us at ease, but if the Uncanny Valley Theory is true, then we’re not going to take too kindly to these sorts of robots anytime soon. And some professionals may never take too kindly to this robotics revolution.
There have been many debates about what the future holds due to the recent acceleration of robotics, but most have come to the same conclusion: Uncertainty. These debates have gone as far as the US Congress. There is no doubt that robotics is about to transform the world, but unfortunately Transformers are probably not going to play a part in that.
“In terms of anthropomorphic robots, I’m hearing human level capability by 2035 or 2045,” says Sokol. That is just 2030 years away. So how can this growth progress so rapidly? About 30 years ago, robotics wasn’t hugely different to the current industry, so why will 2045 be so different? The fact is that the infrastructure is now in place, and robotics is now on the fast track.
15
Alumni Call for Stories
We’d love to hear from you. Take our alumni survey today! http://itusurveys.polldaddy.com/s/alumni
ISSN: 2161-8054