Earlier this year, Disney released Prom Pact on Disney+ and audiences quickly noticed the inclusion of some very creepy digital extras that look like Sims characters. Flash forward a few months, and SAG-AFTRA has gone on strike, with one of their biggest beefs having to do with studios taking digital scans of actors to use however they see fit until the end of time.
Those creepy digital extras that Disney included in Prom Pact have gone viral once again, with SAG-AFTRA supporters using it as an example of what they’re fighting against.
Digital extras are nothing new as they’ve been used for years to expand crowds, create huge armies, and other things that may be out of the realm of the budget, but Prom Pact placed theirs right in the middle of the frame, sandwiched between rows of flesh and blood actors. They look… terrible, to put it mildly, like some late-90s CGI monstrosity.
“It’s the height of prom season, and high school senior Mandy Yang and her best friend and fellow outsider Ben are surrounded by over-the-top ’80s-themed Promposals,” reads the official Prom Pact synopsis. “However, Mandy keeps her eyes focused on a different goal: her lifelong dream of attending Harvard. When she finds out that she has been put on the waitlist, she is determined to do whatever she can do to get herself accepted, even if that means asking for help from the one person she abhors – popular all-star jock Graham Lansing, whose father is a powerful senator and Harvard alum. Once Mandy becomes Graham’s tutor, she begins to realize there’s more to him than she thought and perhaps something more to life than Harvard.“
SAG-AFTRA had been in new round talks with the AMPTP, but those talks recently broke down, with the union claiming that the studios have been using bully tactics. “[The studios] intentionally misrepresented to the press the cost of the above proposal — overstating it by 60 percent,” reads a statement from SAG-AFTRA to their members. “They have done the same with AI, claiming to protect performer consent, but continuing to demand ‘consent’ on the first day of employment for use of a performer’s digital replica for an entire cinematic universe (or any franchise project).”
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