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Both of these images are groundbreaking.
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And connected.
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On the left, you've got the world through Yul Brynner's eyes in Westworld, the 1973
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movie where he plays a robot cowboy.
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This is not a spoiler.
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I mean, he's a robot on the poster, and if you've seen the HBO series,
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you know that everything is a robot.
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It's this pixelated robot's-eye-view that gave birth to CGI: computer generated imagery.
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But the technique and idea did not come from Hollywood.
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It came from a bit further away.
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This is a picture of Mars.
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The CGI was groundbreaking, so now we're gonna see if we can get our computer graphics
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team to replicate it.
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Oh yeah.
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I'm done.
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It takes, like, two clicks.
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But in the early 1970s, computers this powerful were non-existent, and digital images were
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rare.
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These title swirls in 1958's Vertigo were sort of computer generated imagery — the
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designer repurposed an M5 anti-aircraft gun's mechanical computer — to help draw these
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intricate patterns.
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Other experiments were digital, but they were basically art films.
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After all, non-CGI effects could generate stunning results.
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Still, Westworld creator Michael Crichton wanted to create a robot's point of view.
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Hollywood hadn't done it yet.
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But NASA had.
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“Liftoff.”
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When NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory launched Mariner 4, it was the first flyby of Mars,
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and it transmitted back the first up-close photographs of the planet.
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The method it used to get those images to Earth was important for two reasons: it shaped
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what a “digital picture” was should look like — and it gave technical guidance for
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the Westworld CGI.
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The pictures were sent back as numbers.
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“240,000 bits of binary code, representing the shading of 40,000 dots that will finally
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make up the first picture.”
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“A complex system of computers is required to convert these numbers into pictures.
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Some workers decide to handmake their own picture of Mars by shading the numbers.”
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Yes, our first up close picture of Mars — it was a paint by numbers.
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Ultimately, the computer generated images ended up looking like these.
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In the 1973 cover story of American Cinematographer, Westworld designer John Whitney Jr. wrote
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that “the scanning digitizing methods employed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory on their Mariner
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Mars flybys could be used here.”
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But using the rare computer at the lab would have cost 100 grand.
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They found a private company to basically copy the Jet Propulsion Lab's methods to
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“scan production footage, frame by frame, and convert it to numerical information,”
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which would then be played back on a special machine and re-recorded.
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To make the perfect robot vision, the designers used data that created an image with 3,600
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squares.
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And they had to get creative to make sure the CGI action came through clearly.
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Actors wore clothing to contrast with the background - here's one wearing white clothing
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and makeup.
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They also increased the contrast in post-production.
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And though it took a full minute to scan each frame — or about eight hours for a ten-second
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sequence — the CGI worked.
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Hollywood couldn't have — sorry, can you just...
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Hollywood couldn't have come up with this idea alone.
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It took the R&D from the $550 million Mariner program to inspire something as fanciful as
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CGI, especially when practical effects could have gotten the job done.
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But it was the future.
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Whitney finished that article for American Cinematographer by saying,
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“My work on Westworld suggested many more possibilities than we were able to explore,
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and there are certainly many others yet to be imagined.”
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OK, so this edition of Almanac's all about big changes to the movies that came from outside
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of Hollywood, so if you know of any sciencey type innovations like what you just saw that
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changed movies, let me know in the comments.
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There's a lot out there.
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However, I cannot end this video without letting you know about Futureworld.
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It is the sort of forgotten sequel to Westworld, but the CGI is actually still influential,
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and that's because it's likely the source of the first 3D CGI face.