To create it, MIT used Nixon's likeness and speech from television appearances and fed it into a machine learning system to synthesize the audio and video and produce the uncanny film. A prime example of this is the Emmy Award-winning demonstration video produced by MIT's Center for Advanced Virtuality, 'In Event of Moon Disaster ,' which depicts then-president Nixon reading a prepared statement that the Apollo 11 astronauts had perished in a catastrophe. The machine learning technology used here is very similar (if not identical) to what has been used in the past for deepfakes, making fake video look and sound real. So Disney brought in Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films, to restore the video and the audio. Unlike what was used for Apollo 11, it was not in pristine condition - it was washed out and grainy, and the audio was poor or muted. The documentary film Apollo 11, produced by Todd Douglas Miller, released in 2019, used pristine 70mm prints from NASA and the National Archives that were then scanned into digital, employing over 11,000 hours of recordings to produce the film.īut what makes it all the more significant with Get Back is the condition of the source material, the 60 hours of 16mm film and 150+ hours of NAGRA audio created during 21 days in 1969 at Twickenham Studios in England. It doesn't feel real or current.īefore watching the first hours of 'Get Back,' I only once felt with a film I was thrown back in time and watched events as they happened or recorded yesterday. There is a detachment that you are viewing history, that it feels like the past, that something occurred decades before. In these cases, when you watch content such as this, the viewer feels like they are looking at something that is, in fact, archival.

Even with live performances such as Woodstock, the archival stuff is frequently in suboptimal condition due to the nature of what was used to record it, such as 16mm film - an economical format popular with enthusiasts of the time which doesn't age well.

The audio from the time period can be hissy and often sounds like it was produced using less than professional recording equipment. In many cases, even if the film stock is in pristine condition and requires minimal restoration, it will have muted colors. I've seen many films made from historical footage from the 1960s and even the 19s, and so much of the source material is in poor condition.

I had heard about it and seen some of its footage slowly being released for about a year, but I had no idea just how much technology had been applied to its production. Streaming your favorite shows has never been easier.įor me, such a moment was watching The Beatles: Get Back, which is now airing on Disney+.

Voice deepfake app