Celebrities may soon become immortal…well, almost.

As technology continues to advance, some actors are having themselves digitally preserved, meaning they take a 360-degree scan of their face and body using hundreds of custom LED lights arranged in a sphere, in order to create a 3D replica of them. Some of the most recent examples of digital preservation, as well as digital resurrection, can be seen in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which brought back Peter Cushing in the role of Grand Moff Tarkin as well as a de-aged Carrie Fisher as a young princess Leia.

Other notable examples of this technology include Paul Walker in in the Fast & Furious movies, as well as the famous 2012 performance of Tupac Shakur at Coachella.

Today on FilmWeek we’ll discuss the technology behind digital preservation and resurrection with Darren Hendler, director of the Digital Human Group for Digital Domain, the visual effects company behind films like Avengers: Infinity War and Ready Player One. We’ll also examine the potential copyright and intellectual property issues behind using an actors image long after they’re gone.

Guests:

Darren Hendler, director of the Digital Humans Group at Digital Domain, an Academy Award-winning visual effects studio based in Playa Vista that has worked on films including “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Ready Player One” and has digitally scanned numerous actors

Jennifer Rothman, professor of law at Loyola Law School where she teaches right to publicity and intellectual property law and author of “The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World” (Harvard University Press, May 2018); she tweets