And Hollywood is – Totally – Freaking – Out.
by Pete Fasciano, Executive Director 11/09/2025
Synthespian? Sounds like a strange other-worldly being from a far away planet. Not so. Synthespians are home-grown – by computers. They’re synthetic thespians; actors, created via artificial intelligence systems. You describe the physical traits, characteristics, mannerisms, behaviors and such that define your synthespian’s looks and personality, crunch that data, and digital voila – out s/he pops – in fulgent, totally ready-to-perform form. Background extras – aka ‘Phillip Space’? Digital extras have roamed the background for years. Now they’re ready for their close-up.
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| Tilly Norwood |
Such is the creation of Tilly Norwood; a synthetic thespian entity – a ‘digital actor’ created by Eline Van der Velden at Particle 6. Tilly made her debut in late September at the Zurich Film Festival. Reactions?
If you’re talent, or any number of other production craft positions from the director of photography to the set painters and production assistants –Tilly Norwood represents Artificial Armaggedon. Hollywood’s hyper-reactive fury is raging like a California wildfire, anticipating a scorched Earth future for the industry.
Many Hollywood creatives have their heads in the sand on this. They wail and moan about genuine human emoting, character development, the humanity that visionary directors and ‘A’ list actors bring to the screen – and so on. However, if you’re a movie studio, what’s not to like? Tilly might well be a studio’s dream ‘talent’. She is infinitely accommodating and always at the ready, absent any off-stage drama, histrionics or guile ( – unless the script calls for that). She is as pure as the driven snow ( – if the script calls for that).
My point? We have seen this movie before. Literally – in 1995. Pixar’s ‘Toy Story’ was the first CGI feature-length animation – 30 years ago.. Then as now, the backbone of every Pixar and Disney animation since Toy Story has been precisely about that – Story. The technology wasn’t the star. The story was, and every story well-told is dripping with humanity, pathos, soul, wit, trauma, redemption, and on.
So, where is all this going? Extract Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Micky, Minnie, et al. Insert Tilly. The modern animation studio has 3 successful decades of refining story, preproduction and so on. The CGI production pipeline is mature and ready. Working with Tilly and other (studio created and owned) digital entities who will surely follow will be just another data at the office. In a mere handful of years the difference between a CGI animations and blockbuster features will be –
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| They call it Tilly Norwood |
Another key point: There are already several AI services that will gladly ‘rent’ their ‘Tilly equivalents’ as directable avatars. Because they have been trained by movies to move and speak like humans do in movies, they have ‘life experience’ and can ‘act’. They say what you want ‘em to say and move how you want ‘em to move. Like the fella sed – they can walk and chew gum at the same time ( – if the script calls for that). They are digital virtual spokespeople – able spokes-folks for hire.
Are we at Franklin.TV interested? Yes. Exploring? Yes. Working with? Not quite yet, but perhaps sooner than later.
And – as always –
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