When is a video not a video? Some consider Vaslav Nijinsky the greatest ballet dancer ever, but there is no known film footage of Nijinsky, who retired at age 29 in 1919. He would not allow his company to be filmed. However, YouTube has Nijinsky dance videos. How can that be?
Link -via Boing Boing
Because, it turns out, these aren’t films. They are computer-generated artifacts, made by Christian Comte, a French artist who has a studio in Cannes. Reached the other day, Comte acknowledged his authorship. “These films are animations of photographs, achieved thanks to a process that I invented,” he said. “I work as an alchemist in animated cinema.” He uses still photographs and, by employing a computer to alter them—tilt a head, move an arm—fills in the gaps between successive shots. That’s why his “Faun” footage is so much longer than his other footage. He had all those de Meyer stills. This is basically no different from the way Steven Spielberg got the dinosaurs to run around the jungle in “Jurassic Park.”
Link -via Boing Boing
The verdict: creepy and lame.