The use of performance capture has opened up a whole new world of almost unlimited possibilities, said English actor Andy Serkis at the first ever Cinematic Innovation Summit on Thursday in Dubai.
Serkis, best known as one of the foremost proponent of the art form, where an actor’s movement are captured to animate digital characters, was the keynote speaker at the two-day event, held on the sidelines of the Dubai International Film Festival (Diff).
“Suddenly this whole new world has opened up. With performance capture, you have the ability to embody anything. And I think that’s really significant,” he said.
Credited for bringing to life characters such as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings series, Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Captain Haddock in The Adventures of Tintin, Serkis was also honoured at the event, which will also see some of the leading lights in film production from Hollywood discuss the future of cinema over two days.
In his presentation, “The Future of Cinema”, Serkis took attendees through the evolution of performance capture, and explained how it changed the course of his career and, potentially, could change the course of cinema.
“When my agent called me in 1998 for the role of an animated character in a Peter Jackson film, I told him there must be a dozen other good roles in the film I could do,” the 49-year-old recalled, referring to The Lord of the Rings director as his mentor. “But when I met Peter, it was a real education.
“He really wanted to bring the inner life of character. It wasn’t going to be just left to the visual effects team to bring the character to life. He wanted an actor to drive that role even if in the final product it would be an animated character.”
Serkis’s Gollum became so popular, and the film series so successful, that it started a debate on whether or not actors who play performance captured characters could potentially be nominated for acting honours at awards including the Oscars.
A visual artist student, the actor said he gave it up to become an actor, starting off in theatre, then television and movies, before he met Jackson and become one of the most respected performance capture actors in the world.
“[Playing Gollum] was where it all started for me. Even if nothing else happens for the rest of my life, I’m pretty proud of it,” he said.
Performance capture is often misconstrued as lacking in emotion and only brought to life by special effects, he said.
“You cant just put someone in a suit and it’s not just about recreating movements. It’s about stillness, the close-ups, internalisation and embodying the character psychologically and emotionally,” he said, adding he spend many months in Rwanda studying mountain gorillas before he played Caesar.
To further the explore the possibilities of performance capture in films, Serkis, along with his producer friend Jonathan Cavendish, founded The Imaginarium Studios in 2011.
“We wanted to create an environment where people can come and work and develop digital characters, create workshop spaces for design and push virtual camera technology. We are not a visual effects studio, what we do is more of an authoring role, where people can bring abstract ideas into beings,” he said.
Serkis, who directed a video game called Enslaved in 2010, said the gaming industry is also evolving fast and is assisting in pushing the performance capture agenda in Hollywood.
“The art and craft of making video games is evolving, from where it was a singular activity teenage boys did to where they’ve become really interested in building stories, and taking it out to a wider audience,” he said. “By applying the artistry of filmmaking, it’s becoming a hugely burgeoning storytelling technique where it’s not just about the action, but also the heart and emotionality and how bring that to a sterile environment.”
With his studio, Serkis will next adapt and direct George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm into a motion picture. Filming will begin next year.
“It will be entirely performance captured,” he said.
As more and more A-list actors indulge in performance capture roles for films or video games, Serkis predicts the television industry will soon be in on it too.
“We are all at a place of convergence now. It is real-time technology which is driving that,” he said. “[Performance capture] is all about the next generation storytelling. And to be part of this community is exciting.”
Cinematic Innovation Summit will run until Friday. Diff runs from December 6 to 14. For the full schedule of films, go to Dubaifilmfest.com
