please stay safe or the rest of today with the severe gales. hello, this is bbc news with martine croxall. the headlines: storm ciara hits the uk. it's causing huge disruption across the country. it's brought gale force winds and torrential rain. travel has been badly affected, with cancelled flights and rail companies warning of disrupted services. yesterday saw gusts of up to 75 mph across wales. there is predicted to be gusts even quicker today, up to 90 mph. a person's being treated at the royal free hospital in london after testing positive for coronavirus, bringing the total in the uk to four. a briton in majorca has also contracted the illness. meanwhile, 200 evacuees from wuhan have been brought back to britain and taken to milton keynes to be quarantined. counting is underway in the irish general election, as an exit poll puts the three main

political parties level pegging. now it's click. it is time for the oscars and we're here to hand out the awards. there is best actor in a box. most surprising actor in a lead role. best performance by a jedi, and best film that has not yet been made. la, la, la, la land.

it is oscars weekend and time for hollywood to give itself a pat on the back and time for the rest of us to be reminded there is a reason why the movie industry chose to live in southern california. and with all of glamorous la to choose from, they put me in a box. in a warehouse. although it is the coolest box i have been in for a while because, spoiler alert, i am not really in the box! i am out here. that is virtual me and it is called portl. the box itself is real, of course and the lights inside provide the illumination for the modified human—sized 4k lcd screen on the front. this can show pre—recorded video or live images of some loon messing about in front of a camera. what's he doing? the same? oh, yeah, of course.

i must say, iam impressed. ifigured out all these reasons why somebody might not want to do a hologram and i eliminated those reasons. that is why we developed portl. while i have had fun with so—called holograms over the years they have all needed a huge set—up with precisely placed projectors and enormous pieces of glass or giant mesh and dark environments to allow the images to stand out. this one, however, is compact, portable and really bright. first things first, these are not holograms. you know what i think about the term hologram. but these are the most realistic not—holograms i think i have ever seen. the key is that this part of the screen is transparent, so if the camera moves left and right you can see the background move behind the character and that really gives you a feeling

that they are there and that this is a sd image. a small piece of reflective floor and the shadow of the actor is also captured and sent to the booth, something that really adds to the realism. it is a thumbs up from me, really. he is not too happy, however. oh, yes, he is. # send in the clowns. with thejoker leading the oscar pack this weekend with 11 nominations, it is not hard to see how the right kind of character inside one of these devices could have a film's marketing department going nuts. i would like to see every cardboard cutout standing in a lobby replaced with a hologram portl. i want to go to a museum and then hologram einstein asks me a question. we could beam the next president of the united states from his or her own campaign office into all 50 states at the same time. with the ability to hear, see and interact with

the audience in real—time. and david has another project on the go which is not live. pretty much the opposite, in fact. one of the most famous things about the hologram industry is bringing back the dead. digital resurrections. tu pac and whitney. these are people who never gave their consent while they were alive but they have all become super famous holograms in death. and what we are doing is we filmed half a dozen of the world's most famous icons while they were alive so they could do the performance that they want to do. they hold the microphone how they want to, they sing the way they want to sing. it is not a body double and a cgi head, it is really them. it is less macabre and easier for the audience to get behind. and when the time comes we can access the content and send them on tour. and, actually, that idea is where we go next. because there is currently a trend

in resurrecting dead celebrities. the technology exists to put convincing cgi versions of actors into film. it raises a lot of issues. you are tearing me apart! did you know that james dean only ever made three movies before his death in a car accident in 1955? did you also know that after his death his image rights have been handled by mark rosler at cmg worldwide. a kid was killed tonight! his memory, his value still resonate with young people around the world, struggling to understand themselves as teenagers and the rebel personality of james dean. so it has always been important for the family that future generations remember who james dean was.

managing the business affairs of dead celebrities may sound unusual but it means that their estates get royalties from any paraphernalia that features their faces. and these days, that does notjust mean mugs. we essentially want to bring james dean back so that he is an option for storytellers and for content creators to use him for traditional film, virtual reality, gaming, music, branded content. and the first james dean project will see a virtual version of this screen icon co—star in a vietnam war film called finding jack. our intention is to put together a 3d virtualjames dean using all the historical data, images and pictures and video that we have had over the course

of the last 64 years. we have watched motion and facial capture technology mature over the last 15 years and it is now completely possible to capture an actor's performance and map their movements and expressions onto a different digital being. it has created monsters. it made robert de niro and will smith young again and it has even allowed a film's production to continue after its star's untimely death. but the james dean project takes this idea to a different level. using a celebrity's likeness not because the story demands it, but because some dead celebrities a bankable. it is not like you are creating a brand—new virtual being from scratch where you have to spend ample amount of capital to create the awareness for him. people know james dean. he is an icon. but this is much more than blending old existing

footage into new scenes. this needs to be a completely flexible 3d photorealistic fully animated believable version of a person that can act in new scenes and deliver new dialogue. and we humans may accept cgi monsters but we are biologically wired to spot any hint of a fake human. they just look wrong. they break the realism and they end up firmly in what is known as the uncanny valley. as i have learned about visual effect, a big part of illusion is how much time you are giving your artist to refine the work. often it is rushed and often it has been asked to do things that technology does not deliver well. previous attempts at cgi actors have been mixed and i wonder whether there is a certain quality threshold that you orjames dean's estate has to insist on?

our expectations are very high. virtual assets that we create will evolve over time. this is not a one—time and it's perfect. it will evolve. so ourjames dean that we will release for this movie may be a little different than the james dean we release a later date. of course there is more to an actor thanjust theirface. that is just one part of the entire performance package. if you are going to take an actor and put them into something new you need to find a reference for them. you need another actor to do it. how much is it then their performance? or can you just take stuff from things they have already done but then it is not original. it is a bit of a minefield. unsurprisingly, some actors have themselves expressed their annoyance. i don't think this is going to be replacing actors that are alive

because they have talent that nobody can achieve unless you are physically alive, to be able to make adjustments on the fly. but i also think that working with a virtual star individual being makes it easier to release and market content in the future. sometimes it is very easy to use a digital asset to promote what you were trying to get viewers to see versus hiring actors to promote content. that costs additional capital. so basically living actors, human actors are a bit of a pain and you would rather work with avatars? to some extent. it is easy to work with deceased celebrities. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that uber received a permit that could allow itself driving cars back onto californian

roads for testing nearly two years after a fatal accident in arizona. the uk government is bringing a ban on petrol, diesel and hybrid car sales forward from 2040 to 2035. and google‘s location data tracking is now under a probe by the european regulator. it says it will establish if google was operating illegally and with clear transparency. an artist in berlin tricked google maps into saying there was a trafficjam by dragging a wagon of smart phones around the street. he searched for directions on the app on 99 secondhand mobiles before hitting the streets. scientists have successfully tested a device that prints bioskin. this artificial skin, first tested on pigs, is now a step closer to use in human burn clinics. scientists in israel have developed a tiny robot that can transform shape to step up and over obstacles. the reconfigurable continuous track robot uses just three motors

to flex its body on a link by link basis to build its own track in the air. and finally, a i25—year—old film of a train has had an ai update. a youtuber used a neural network to scale the famous lumiere brothers short into 4k so crisp it could have been shot on a modern smart phone. oh, jenny, you are so cute! she is said to be the most realistic robotic animal and i can tell you she feels pretty real. that nose almost feels wet and squidgy. and these dementia patients at las vegas‘s senior living facility seem pleased to meet her. you are a good dog. she is awesome. you look real.

look at those teeth. jim henson‘s creature shop is responsible for the lifelike look, feel, movements and behaviour that have been built on top of this sensor—embedded voice—controllable robot. there is a great deal of research on the benefits of live animal therapy for seniors with dementia. it helps soothe behavioural and psychological symptoms and reduces the need for certain medications. the problem is many seniors can no longer safely care for or have a live animal around them. with robotic animals it is important to introduce them early in the disease progression so that they have the cognitive abilities to form that attachment so when they are at a later stage in dementia, the animal is already something that they turn to for comfort. it is a dog. i thought it was a real dog. this is really quite a strange experience because the dog does

almost feel real and sound real. and everybody seems to be feeling that. but is that right? there are people who, despite explaining to them that it is a robot, actually still believe that it is a real dog. we looked at that from an ethical perspective and we are concerned about not tricking them but on the other hand, you know, if it gives them comfort, that is really the goal. they like to suspend disbelief. they like to be able to relate to it as if it is a long—lost pet that they may have known in an earlier time. you are a darling. i would like to have you. and she could be solving a problem here that has already been identified. we started a while back, bringing dogs into the community because we felt like the dogs were a method of helping with loneliness and... what we found is that we have to pay

just as much attention to the dogs as the human. does she ever not like people? she usually likes everybody. it wouldn't be better to design a robot dog that does not like people. of course, not everyone likes dogs though. what we find is that the barking behaviour in a real dog robot triggers that fear response and so, one of the things that we can do in the setup of the robot is turn off the barking behaviours. this rechargeable robotic dog's behaviour is customisable via a smartphone app but there are pros and cons to the whole thing. before we started filming, she had to be rebooted and it was really quite disturbing as she temporarily died. she clearly did bring joy though and i can see the benefits of it being designed to sit on laps or raised surfaces rather than creating a tripping hazard on the floor. other breeds and a cat are in development but i was left with one real issue...

i feel really bad that we have to take her away from them. now, recently, we've seen artificial intelligence start to outperform humans in very specific tasks. but could ai ever predict a film's success better than the people who work here? that is the question that mark asked and this is the answer. "nobody knows anything", so said legendary screenwriter william goldman who was talking about the movie business and how incredibly difficult it is to predict hits. that is why we end up with films like the reimagined robin hood. and godzilla: king of the monsters, both, absolute stinkers.

in the movie game, predicting blockbusters is more art than science. this company thinks it's cracked the cash—breaking cinematic code. it claims its a! can help predict a movie's success at the box office before it goes into production. i think when you say, ai making decisions about films, people get a bit edgy because they start thinking about robot directors or computers making artistic decisions and that is not what is really happening here. it is very much about the business side of the film industry. i caught up with the ceo at the company's hollywood office. up here, we have an example movie, detective pikachu. my god, you can understand me! just enter base information on a project, look at the synopsis. the kind of thing you see on imbd.

what's the project, estimated budget, the rating, the genre, the keywords. all these sectors are very important because they determine how valuable the project is. and from there we build different tools that you can use to evaluate that film. pikachu's voice actor, ryan reynolds, he could also run and compare ryan to potential comedians, comedy actors that might be suitable for that role. he is adorable. you're adorable. using the system, we can play a movie version of fantasy football, changing around elements like the casting. depending on the gradient to be provided with, this system protects the chances of financial success. try somebody who is a big name at the moment who probably would be alright for this film is a dwayne ‘the rock‘ johnson. we will put him in here. press the button. and now the system, otherwise everything stays the same when we calculate.

as you can see, it predicts that there is more revenue. let's recast with damejudi dench. it drops quite a bit. i haven't seen you before have i? all of the data is effectively based on things that are already established. what happens when it comes to the wildcard movies, something that comes completely out of nowhere and that nobody could have predicted and caught everybody by surprise. what happens then? they will still catch everybody by surprise. outliers are outliers and they are called that because they don't happen very often. 5%, 3% of these movies. they actually are part of a group of outliers that everybody keeps talking about but in reality, it's a very slim minority. they are adamant that humans are still in the mix and that its software is an additional assistive tool for movie moguls. this is based on hard numbers, the business side of the industry. what about the scripts? is there anything out there that could tell

you whether a script is good or not? i don't think there is anything out there that can tell you if a script is good, especially not quality good because right now... ai cannot understand whether a script is good. the company's recently penned a deal with warner brothers but the studio insists the machine learning software will be used in the marketing and distribution side of things. as far as hollywood studios are concerned, humans remain in the picture... ..for now. we're going to do this, you and me. really interesting stuff isn't it. that was mark and of course, this weekend is oscar weekend so we will know very soon which films did well this year. we've been looking at some of the best in the vfx category and here is ourfinal nominee. long have i waited.

confront your fear, it is the destiny of a jedi. bringing carrie fisher back was an incredible tiered problem and i thought it was going to be difficult but i actually didn't appreciate how complicated it was going to be. you can't do it for me. what we did was build this enormous matrix of all of the performances of carrie fisher from seven and eight and at that, essentially figured out all the lines she said and thenjj and chris terrio wrote the script around those lines. and the way that we chose to do it was for each of her performances, we cut out her face so that it is carrie playing princess leia and cut out her face and built a digital princess leia around the face. with different costumes. which meant of course, she could have a new hairstyle. she could have a new costume for this movie which would make her feel very unique to this particular project and then i think, the other thing we worked hard on to achieve, was the fact that she was interacting

with elements in the scene or other actors. she walks past... this one moment she walks past rey and says never underestimate a droid. those kind of interactions are key to make the audience believe she was really there at that moment. look at that fleet. there was about 16,000 galaxy ships turn up to save the day. it was notjust a matter of building the ships but you have to design them and you can't design 16,000 ships... well you can, but it would take a very long time. we would still be doing it now. and for the foreseeable future. what we did was, james clyne, who is the art director on the show for us, he and his team designed a whole bunch of ships and then we modelled those and then the guys wrote some computer programmes that basically made up ships from those component parts.

because of the enormous amount of work involved in the detail of what we do, we try and sketch out a simple version of the rebel fleet. so that everybody understands what the general idea of the moment might be and we can do a lot of those beings using more physically based ideas. for example, we know that when an explosion happens, there is a certain amount of force involved and certain things happen and when you see explosions like we're doing now, they're actually based upon real, physical burn rates of materials. how quickly an explosion might expand and what force that would have. a lot of that stuff looks more real because it is actually simulating a real event. the weird thing is that we just want to make our work vanish and for people to be unaware of it and for people to really believe that everything in the movie is actually happening.

may the force will be with you... always. and we wish all of the nominees the very best of luck of course. that is if from us here in hollywood. if you would like to join us, you know where to find us, on facebook, youtube, instagram and twitter at bbc click. we will see you soon. hello. storm ciara is bringing some destructive and dangerous weather conditions across the british isles. we have got an amber weather warning invoice for a severe gales across england and wales. scotland and

northern ireland x seeing exceptionally strong winds for the rest of the day. these are some of the wind gusts we have already recorded. aberdaron in north wales, 87 mph. really widely those gusts of wind 60 to 70 mph. certainly stronger than that around coast and over the hills. storm ciara moving to 70 mph. certainly stronger than that around coast and over the hills. storm ciara moving its way gradually towards the east. as that cold front hits england and wales, some heavy rain. heavy rain already piling into northern ireland, scotland, england and wales. some thunder and lightning and snow over the mountains of scotland. very heavy rainfall causing some flooding. exceptionally strong winds. gusts of 60 miles per. higher than that across scotland and the coastlines. lots of heavy rain moving south. the main band of rain followed by heavy showers with hail and thunder across northern ireland and thunder across northern ireland and scotland. a squeeze in those

winds through the central belt. 80 mph. heavy showers across northern england. heavy and persistent rain lingering across southern england. very strong winds gusting at more than 80 mph are likely through the english channel. it is mild out there. temperatures between nine and 14 there. temperatures between nine and 11! degrees this afternoon. add on the strength of the wind and those heavy downpours, it is not going to feel very pleasant at all. to summarise storm ciara today, we have got those damaging gusts of wind. significant transport as travel disruption. large waves and flooding around the coast as well as inland flooding, and we have had power cuts. they could be more as we head into the rest of the day. this evening and overnight at the main storm centre clears away towards the east. we have got some strong winds. not quite as strong as the winds we will have through sunday. by monday morning, still blustery. some wintry showers over the high ground of scotland, northern ireland and northern ireland. and i ireland. an icy start. shower, hailand northern ireland. and i ireland. an icy start. shower, hail and thunder in the south. strong and gusty winds

once again. 60 to 70 mph on monday. not as strong as today. bye for now.

this. good afternoon. storm ciara is battering the length and breadth of the uk causing widespread travel disruption. winds of up to 90 mph are predicted to hit some areas and there are more than 200 flood warnings in place, meaning immediate action is required, with one severe warning, meaning a danger to life, in place near pately bridge in north yorkshire. the whole of the uk is under either a yellow or amber weather warning for wind, meaning more disruption to travel and power lines is likely.