Page 23 - 3D World - October 2017

Feature
Journey’s end

all hail caesar

Working With human actors to create cg apes

Key to the portrayal of Caesar is the motion themselves in the world so we try to project
capture performance of Andy Serkis. “It’s outwards from the character.”
always great working with Andy because “From our earlier films, like Avatar, we
he is the character, so for us the technical were mostly doing motion capture on a
aspect of it is twofold,” explains Weta Digital dedicated stage,” remarks Weta Digital
Senior Visual Effects Supervisor, Joe Letteri. Visual Effects Supervisor, Dan Lemmon.
“The fidelity of knowing that you’re getting “The big leap was taking that out onto the
as accurate information as possible but live-action environment like we did on Rise
also the robustness because we keep going of the Planet of the Apes. Then from there
into these harsher locations and needing it’s been about what can we do to make it
to capture more characters interacting more robust, reliable, deal with elements
at the same time. Then on the backend, like heavy rain as well as the rigours and
once we get all that information we have abuse that stuntmen put the equipment
to take it and turn that into Caesar. There’s through, and how can we do it in places
an artistic quality to it that we’ve learned that are difficult to get to. There are a few
on how to translate Andy’s performance of other things that we’ve learned. In lowlight
the Caesar character. That goes for all of situations, to be able to see any facial details
the apes as well.” Nuances are incorporated we often put lights on the little camera
into the different apes so as to make them boom that sticks out in front of the actor’s
more distinguishable. “Some of that is face. But that can be distracting for the
performance. Each of them have their own actors so we moved to infrared lights, which
bearing, personality, and way of seeing the camera can see but the actor does not.”

Andy Serkis performs his
signature role of Caesar

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