[Courtesy of EBS]
The program titled "The Dreamers" produced by the Korea Educational Broadcasting System (EBS) looks into future science technologies and shocking crimes from the stage called "tesseract" that transcends time and space.
The production team led by science documentary producer Lee Mi-sol used extended reality (XR) technology to vividly embody a transcendent space that will guide viewers into a virtual world where children can be born only in artificial wombs and raised in virtual space, with humans becoming cyborgs. XR refers to all digital environments created using virtual, augmented, and mixed reality.
"Considering the features of science fiction and crime thrillers, viewers around the world can enjoy together as it deals with stories and topics that can be universally shared," EBS spokesperson Lim Ji-eun told Aju Business Daily. "Visualizing science fiction is not easy technologically and financially," she said, adding that the production team was able to efficiently visualize a future world in a light-emitting diode (LED)-based XR studio.
Virtual humans created with deepfake and motion capture technologies added a sense of reality. Deepfakes literally create moving picture images of a fake person by compositing another real person's facial images and voice recordings.
"The Dreamers" is a follow-up program of a test version released in December 2021 that gained enormous popularity mainly because it was recreated with upgraded technologies. The pilot program received a silver medal in the talk show category of an annual film festival held in Houston.
The new eight-part program will air its first episode at 10:45 p.m. (1345 GMT) on November 10, hosted by Ha Seok-jin, an actor with a mechanical engineering degree known for his intelligence, and Chuu, a member of K-pop girl group Loona, who will constantly hurl questions to find clues with viewers. Ha guides viewers to a fantasy world through exciting storytelling. "I feel like I've walked into the fantasy world," the actor said on the blog of EBS.
Brain scientist Jang Dong-sun and Kim Yoon-hee, a criminal profiler, will offer their insights into handling various social issues including digital sex crimes in the future world. The first episode deals with a shocking serial murder caused by the uploading of a human mind to a computer in 2094 when the artificial body of a young woman with her head completely broken was dumped in a back alley. Other episodes include the story of a prison riot at the peak of terraforming Mars, and a kidnapping case by an organization supporting the liberation of androids.
reporter
Kim Joo-heon
jhkim123@ajunews.com
