Comments on: An Oscar for Andy?

By: Tama Leaver

Tama Leaver — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:45:37 +0000

Hi Grant, as Jonathan says, I think looking at performance capture as puppetry tends to reduce to sense of what performer actually brings to the role. With puppets, after all, most of the possible range of expression is due to the construction of the puppet, not what an actor brings.

However, rotoscoped animation isn’t far off – certainly in LoTR: The Two Towers this is exactly how some of Gollum was created. At that stage Weta were still using motion capture and hadn’t really used facial capture properly at all (that came along by the time they were doing Kong). Gollum really did use a rotoscoping and even free-hand animation at points, but Serkis was still the model. Now, of course, the rigs are so impressive and the technology so refined that it’s a much more direct translation of the actors performance into the digital costume.

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:41:08 +0000

I disagree. To work with the analogy of puppets, the CGI is the puppeteer, and Andy Serkis is the puppet. Except this puppet is contributing to the performance, inspiring much of it, in a way that no other puppet does.

By: Digital Culture Links: November 17th | Tama Leaver dot Net

Digital Culture Links: November 17th | Tama Leaver dot Net — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 05:07:52 +0000

[…] An Oscar for Andy? by Tama Leaver [Antenna] – My first Antenna post looks at the possibility of a synthespian in the running for an acting Oscar: “On the back of the unexpected success of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the big news isn’t a planned sequel but rather a “a healthy seven-figure deal for Andy Serkis to reprise his role as lead ape Caesar” along with the announcement that 20th Century Fox will be mounting an Oscar campaign aimed at getting Serkis a long overdue nod for Best Supporting Actor. It’s significant, too, because we never see Andy Serkis directly in Rise; rather, Caesar was created by the meshing of Serkis’s visceral, physical acting and the state-of-the-art computer wizardry from Weta Digital. Whether you prefer the term virtual actor, synthespian (‘synthetic thespian’) or just performance capture, an Academy Award for Serkis would demonstrate a widening understanding of what ‘acting’ actually means.” […]

By: Grant Watson

Grant Watson — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 03:36:29 +0000

Surely once the bells and whistles of computer graphics are put aside, performance capture isn’t a new form of performance at all – it’s essentially puppetry, or perhaps a closer analogy would be rotoscoped animation.