Technology marches on.
Getting close to twenty years ago (yikes) Babylon 5 pioneered the use of “virtual sets.” A number of the locations on the show – the bridge of an alien starship, various rooms on the station, the interior of the station itself – physically existed only as a floor and some green screens. B-5’s budget was fairly low, and the technology was new and immature; today the rendering is pretty obvious, but at the time it was pretty astonishing. But it’s crap compared to what’s being done on television today.
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The rise of places like Vancouver as alternatives for shooting in the over-taxed and union-dominated Hollywood caused irritation a decade or more ago. The rise of this sort of virtual technology may make Hollywood almost entirely irrelevant.
Another step is needed, though… the reliable, low-cost and utterly believable ability to replace actors with computer generated characters. Not aliens, not cartoony figures… but humans that you simply cannot tell do not actually exist. Once this happens, the Screen Actors Guild is likely to go ape. No longer will actors be able to demand dozens of millions of dollars to strut their stuff; they can be replaced with anonymous body doubles (Andy Serkis will never go hungry again) and software. No longer will people give a damn what some actor has to say on matters of politics or policy… because without getting their faces out in the public, an actor just another tool.