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Rise of the Apes

When James Franco took to the blogosphere to pledge his awards season support for Rise of the Planet of the Apes co-star Andy Serkis and his performance-captured turn in the film, Serkis was the one person who probably appreciated the gesture most, precisely because it did what he couldn’t do himself: Provide an argument in favor the art of performance capture as a mode of legitimate acting, from an outsider’s perspective. Serkis rang Movieline to chat and expressed appreciation for Franco’s open letter.

“I thought it was extraordinarily bold and honest, and quite frankly I was thrilled that James had written it,” Serkis told Movieline. “It just goes to show that an actor who is in pursuit of creating drama isn’t prejudiced against live-action or performance capture or any method of performing,” Serkis continued. “He sees it as one thing.”

In his open letter, Franco extolled Serkis’s turn as Caesar the chimpanzee as the heart and soul of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. “There is no question that [Serkis’s] character arc is much more dynamic and fascinating…” he wrote, calling for Serkis to get awards recognition “for the innovative artist that he is.”

Franco admitted to being hesitant about what performance capture meant for the future of acting before he realized, acting opposite Serkis in Apes, that the medium is an enhancement tool rather than one that threatens to replace human actors with digital ones. “Performance Capture actually allows actors to work opposite each other in more traditional ways, meaning that the actors get to interact with each other and look into each others’ eyes,” he wrote. Beneath the “digital make-up” provided by WETA’s artists, according to Franco, “the thing that was so compelling about that film came from Andy, and the way he rendered that soul is of equal importance, if not more important than the photo realistic surface of the character.”

Having a non-performance capture actor speak in support of the emerging craft gives the “Serkis for Oscar” campaign a key proponent – one who’s not necessarily invested in the medium, or in a Serkis Oscar nomination, who can speak to the greater benefit of the technology. “We’ve talked about it a lot, and he totally gets it,” said Serkis. “He is one of the first actors who have been bold enough to really state, and in such a humble way, that the weight of the movie lies in Caesar’s hands. I thought it was incredibly articulate.”

Serkis continued: “Sometimes for me it’s very difficult because sometimes it sounds like I’m tub-thumping, like I’m the sort of the spokesperson for performance capture, and to have another actor lend their voice in such an articulate way means a lot — not only to me, but to the acting profession. Because part of the problem in accepting performance capture as acting is borne out of the fear and unknowing of what the process is, and to have that explained by a fellow actor is terrific.”

The actor’s first performance capture role came in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, almost by happenstance, when what was originally intended to be a voice performance for the role of Gollum inspired Jackson to try filming Serkis in the character; the resulting experiment paid off handsomely for both Serkis and the film, and the actor went on to blaze a trail with the quickly advancing technology in films like Jackson’s King Kong, Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin, and the forthcoming The Hobbit.

But Serkis was a traditional live-action actor long before Gollum, and he still takes on live-action roles when he’s not involved in various WETA-aided projects with colleague Peter Jackson and Co. (See: Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy, Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People, and Tom Hooper’s Longford, which earned him BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations.) And to Serkis, nothing about his process as an actor is any different, whether he’s suited up in mo-cap wear or in a character’s tangible costume.

“In the 11 years that I’ve been involved in it, I’ve never drawn any distinction in the acting process between live-action acting and performance capture acting,” Serkis said. “In fact, performance capture acting is merely a misnomer; ‘performance capture’ is more of a technology, it’s a set of cameras that record an actor’s performance in a slightly different way to a 35mm camera or a digital camera recording a live action actor’s performance. But in terms of the actor process — getting into character, working on a scene with the director, engaging with other actors and finding the drama within a scene — on day to day basis on set, it’s exactly the same.”

So how much will a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination matter to Serkis and Co., given that their awards campaigning has, in the least, advanced the conversation and challenged preconceptions that have historically reduced performance capture to the wayside? If Serkis prompts his fellow actors and the Academy members to rethink the medium as legitimate acting, will that be enough?

“I think, unfortunately we live in a world whereby we have to set a precedent,” Serkis admitted, addressing his Apes campaign. “It’s the way people think, and it sets a precedent to say ‘This is acting, and this goes into an acting category’ — then that shows a marked understanding of what it is. It’s not just about awards, no, of course not. For myself what’s most important is that actors begin to engage with it, and with the process of using it, and invest in it… I think it’s hugely important to keep talking about it, but also to have it recognized for what it is — which is, at the end of the day from an acting point of view, it is no more than acting.”

Source: Movieline

Rise of the Apes

By JAMES FRANCO

The new Planet of the Apes film, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, belongs to Andy Serkis. Narratively it was always his film: I play an emotionally stilted scientist who in the process of mistakenly unleashing a lethal virus on the human race, learns to care for others; Serkis gets to play Caesar, essentially Che Guevara in chimp form. There is no question that his character arc is much more dynamic and fascinating, it is the story line that takes the franchise’s central theme of culture/racial/species clash and turns it on it’s head by making the maligned apes the unequivocal heroes. We get to watch the fall of mankind and enjoy it because we root for the underdogs, the apes.

But this narrative structure is only half of the story; there is also an acting revolution that has taken place. Andy Serkis is the undisputed master of the newest kind of acting called “performance capture,” and it is time that Serkis gets credit for the innovative artist that he is.

When Serkis was hired to play the inimitable character, Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy it was initially only for his voice, the character was meant to be entirely animated. But Serkis got so physically involved in the production of the character’s odd voice – Serkis was inspired by his cat coughing up a hairball – that Jackson decided to find a way to capture the performance so that it could be translated into a digitally rendered character. This was the birth of performance capture as we know it, the process that led to the nuanced performance behind King Kong, the blue things in Avatar, and now Caesar. Audiences are used to large scale effects: impossible explosion, space travel, fantastic fairytale worlds, boys in tights swinging around New York, men with Squids for faces, but there is still a disconnection that happens when a character’s outer surface is rendered in a computer like Caesar’s was. We want to forget that there is a human underneath, the effects are so well rendered we either forget that the spark of life in it’s eyes and the life in its limbs is informed by a breathing human or we are so drawn into the ontology of the character we can’t grasp its artistic origins or exactly how it was created. What this means is that we can enjoy such a character – enjoyment testified by the response to such films as Avatar, Return of the King, and Planet of the Apes – but we don’t give artistic credit where it is due.

I, as much as anyone, can get anxious when I think about the future of movies and the possibility of the obsolescence of actors, or at least actors as we know them, but after making Apes I realize that this is backward thinking. Performance Capture is here, like it or not, but it also doesn’t mean that old-fashioned acting will go the way of silent film actors. Performance Capture actually allows actors to work opposite each other in more traditional ways, meaning that the actors get to interact with each other and look into each others eyes. For years computer technology forced actors to act opposite tennis balls if a movie wanted to have CG creatures, but now the process has come full circle so that actors playing CG creatures can perform in practical sets, just like the “human” actors. In acting school I was taught to work off my co-stars, not to act but react and that was how I would achieve unexpected results, not by planning a performance, but by allowing it to arise from the dynamic between actors, and on The Rise of the Planet of the Apes that’s exactly what I was able to do opposite Andy as Caesar. And Andy got to do the same because every gesture, every facial expression, every sound he made was captured, his performance was captured. Then, what the Weta effects team did was to essentially “paint” the look of Caesar over Andy’s performance. This is not animation as much as it’s digital “make-up.” There are plenty of Oscar winning performances that depended on prosthetic make-up to help create the characters: John Hurt’s in The Elephant Man, Nicole Kidman’s in The Hours, Sean Penn’s in Milk. Those actors depended on make-up artists to augment the look of their characters, but the performance underneath came solely from the actors. Well, that’s exactly the same position that Andy is in, his problem is that the digital “make-up” is so convincing that it makes people forget that he provides the soul of Caesar. That soul, the thing that was so compelling about that film, came from Andy, and the way he rendered that soul is of equal importance, if not more important than the photo
realistic surface of the character.

Andy doesn’t need me to tell him he is an innovator, he knows it. What is needed is recognition for him, now. Not later when this kind of acting is de riguer, but now, when he has elevated this fresh mode of acting into an art form. And it is time for actors to give credit to other actors. It is easy to praise the technical achievements of this film, but those achievements would be empty without Andy. Caesar is not a character that is dependent on human forms of expression to deliver the emotion of the character: despite the lack of any human gestures, and maybe two or three words of human speech Caesar is a fully realized character, not human, and not quite ape; this is no Lassie and this is no Roger Rabbit, it is the creation of an actor doing something that I dare say no other actor could have done at this moment.

Source: Deadline

Rise of the Apes

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Rise of the Apes

Rise of the Apes

James Franco is many things: scholar, actor, writer, poet, emcee, artist, director. But diplomat? Not so much.

Ever since his critically panned stint hosting the Academy Awards back in February, Franco has continued to offer up a variety of reasons for his performance. He needed to be the straight man to a “Tasmanian Devil”-esque Anne Hathaway. Longtime Oscars writer Bruce Vilanch didn’t write him enough funny jokes. His latest gripe? He hated being made to dress in drag as Marilyn Monroe, as he told Playboy last month.

Meanwhile, in that same interview with the adult magazine, the 33-year-old also gave a dig to his upcoming film “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” He didn’t “feel the same way” about the film as he did about “127 Hours” or “Milk,” he said.

“It was a ­different kind of acting,” he explained. “I never thought of this movie as an example of my creativity. I was an actor for hire. But people still have it out for me, so they’re going to go after the movie.”

At the premiere of the “Apes” in Hollywood on Thursday, Franco attempted to clarify his negative comments.

“I just mean, there are people that — I don’t know — have it out for me for other things,” he said. “And, like, they see me do this movie and so maybe they will criticize me for this — but really, it’s about something else.”

Source: LA Times