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Deepfake technology has come a long way in recent years, and I have seen my share of uncanny attempts to digitally replace one person’s face with that of another.
But I’ve never seen anything as good as this one made by user EZRyderX47 on YouTube which superimposes the faces of actors Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Holland onto the faces of Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) from Back to the Future.
Have a look for yourself:
Still, there is some very unsettling Uncanny Valley territory going here.
But unlike other deep fake videos before this, I don’t think the Uncanny Valley feeling I get from this, is due to the superimposed faces look doll-like or dead-ish.
In fact, they look very much alive. And because you’re familiar with both the original actors and the deep faked alter egos, the uncanny feeling might actually stem from this discrepancy. My mind simply won’t accept it!
What will this mean for the future of filmmaking? What will this mean for the future of actors – alive as well as post-humously?
I guess only time will tell, but the technology is already very good!
Try Deepfake Yourself
If you want to try to make deepfake videos yourself, here’s a link to the deep fake software used for the video.
User EZRyderX47 also used Hitfilm Express, but any modern video editing program will do.
You can find a free version of Hitfilm here as well as other free video editing software: Best Free Video Editing Software (Mac, PC, Linux, Online)
And here’s a couple of video tutorials to get you started:
About the author:
Jan Sørup is a videographer and photographer from Denmark. He owns filmdaft.com and the Danish company Apertura, which produces video content for big companies in Denmark and Scandinavia. Jan has a background in music, has drawn webcomics, and is a former lecturer at the University of Copenhagen.