Gadgetory

how have you seen just how technology has helped evolve storytelling from your perspective well you know if we go back to right back to the beginning into Lord of the Rings the essential thing that was discovered on that was that Peter Jackson had this idea that you know up to that point visual effects were imagined they were imagined by other actors you know in real you know shooting on live sets so they had to imagine that there was a dragon there or or you know a threatening beast or whatever it was and Peter Jackson did not want the actors playing Sam and Frodo in Lord of the Rings to have to imagine what Gollum was doing so he wanted to have an actor on set play that character and then the then performance capture or as it was called in those days motion capture it was beginning to kind of emerge as a tool but that was the sort of the main tipping point was was it was this moment where we suddenly went from a visual effect becoming real character and and that was having an act to play the role so so I would go and shoot on set with with my fellow actors on live sets and live locations but I would always have to go back and repeat the the plates the empty plate that we'd shoot both with the actors and then we'd have empty plates shot I'd have to go then back and populate those empty plates using motion capture on my own in the studio the significant changes over the course of the next 17 years was such that when I went back to work on King Kong we started to use facial capture so I had 130 markers stuck to my face but it was still in a controlled environment it was done in a motion capture stage then when then in between those films we started working on Tintin and and at the same time avatar was happening and at that time they freed up the actors to work in the volume wearing head mounted cameras so that you're fully free to move in 360 degrees whilst you are being captured and then the next big shift in technology was taking all of that and then placing on a live action film set so that you didn't have to go ever go back and repeat it that we could capture everything in the moment so acting opposite your live action actors which I'd always done but I had to repeat it this now we could we had the technology to put the performance capture cameras in the same room as real film cameras and lighting and get the whole thing all in one here so that's that was that was the sort of the progression are you still blown away by any of the the evolutions that have happened maybe things there like I didn't realize I didn't think this could happen or is it and it will happen how you thought it would it's it's I mean the the essence of it hasn't changed hugely but what has changed is the artistry that goes with it the software the the engineering that that and the rendering and all of that that makes it feel more photo-real but also the artistry in the sense that I have now been working with that team for for over the course of 17 years so they they fully understand what it is to to honor the actors performance and to try and emulate it exactly and that and through through all the new software that's been encode that's been written to to make it look photo-real then you've got to actually you know because what what the director is working with in the cut is the performance that he's shot on the day so so my face will live in the cut for months and months and months when they come to make Caesar's face work there is this an artistry of bringing you know Caesars face putting it next to mine and going well okay the first pass animation shows you know what Andy's doing is he's being angry but there's some vulnerability there but we were only seen that the anger are there so so there's literally 120 iterations per shot until you've exactly matching that the the authored performance by the actor so that's and when you see those shots start to come through you you you know it those have improved dramatically over the last then you know certainly throughout the course of making these three movies