Photo Source: 20th Century Fox
The beneficiary of the deal—reportedly in seven-figure territory—and the forthcoming for-your-consideration ads is Andy Serkis. Best known for his work as Gollum in director Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, Serkis was seen by many as the true heart of "Rise," in which he played Caesar, the forefather of the damn, dirty apes who put their stinking paws all over Charlton Heston in the 1968 original. Those '60s primates were played by actors in monkey suits. Serkis' performance as Caesar was achieved through motion capture—or performance capture—a technology that Serkis helped pioneer with Jackson on "Rings" and to which the actor's career has become inextricably linked. The news out of Fox was seen as validation not just of Serkis' work but also, potentially, of the performance-capture process of film acting. So does Serkis think that a performance-capture actor might someday be Oscar nominated?
"I hope so," he says. "It's going back, really, to the nuts and bolts of what we do from an acting perspective. The visual effects, that end of it, they are accoladed, and quite rightly so, for the incredible work that they do. But from the performance end of it, there is no difference between acting in a live-action film as yourself and playing a performance-capture role."
Serkis is speaking with Back Stage from New Zealand, where he is working with Jackson on the much-anticipated "Rings" prequel "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey." The actor has already finished the part where he donned his performance-capture gear and reprised the role of Gollum—the creeping, sneaking creature who appears in "The Hobbit" long enough to lose his Precious, then spends much of "Lord of the Rings" trying to win it back. Now he has moved on to tackling his larger task for the film, serving as Jackson's second unit director.
Wedded to the Ring
The move behind the camera is the latest step for an Englishman who was, by his own admission, "just kind of a regular actor" more than a decade ago when he got a call about "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the King." Serkis' agent told him Jackson was looking for an actor to voice a computer-generated character named Gollum. The work would take about three weeks. Serkis was less than enthused.
"My response was 'Lord of the Rings'?" he says. " 'There must be a dozen decent roles in that movie. Can't you get me up for one of them?' A digital character. I was horrified."
Serkis had read J.R.R. Tolkien's epic novel "The Hobbit," in which Gollum plays a small but pivotal part. He was unfamiliar with the subsequent "Rings" book, in which Gollum's role is far meatier. Serkis' wife, however, knew the whole story and convinced him to put together an audition tape for the part. He worked on developing the character physically while trying to find Gollum's voice, and the tape that went to Jackson included much of the physicality that would later be seen in the film. When actor and director finally met, Jackson explained that he had more in mind for Serkis than just voicing an animated figure. He wanted Serkis to act in scene with the other cast members. With the help of new technologies, the character that appeared onscreen would be the result of a collaboration between Serkis and Jackson's digital effects crew, the performance firmly rooted in the actor's work.
"The whole motion-capture thing was in its very early stages, and no one was really sure whether or not it was going to work," Serkis says. "The initial instinct was for me to play the role on set and then figure out how to do it."
These were the days when Jar Jar Binks was still a fresh wound on the American moviegoing psyche. But Gollum drew praise as an example of digital effects being integrated into a live-action film in a way that didn't suck. In his review of the second "Rings" movie, "The Two Towers," Roger Ebert called the character "one of the most engaging and convincing CGI creatures I've seen," adding, "His body language is a choreography of ingratiation and distortion."
Serkis' transformation as Caesar in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" (20th Century Fox)
Adventures in Captivity
By the time the final "Rings" film, "The Return of the King," was released in 2003, Serkis had become the computer graphic–obscured face of performance-capture acting—an association that would be reinforced two years later when he played the title gorilla in Jackson's "King Kong." This year sees him starring not only in "Rise" but also in what is being billed as the most ambitious performance-capture film yet: "The Adventures of Tintin," a big-screen adaptation of the Belgian artist Hergé's classic adventure comics. The film, in which Serkis plays the gruff Captain Haddock, is produced by Jackson and directed by Steven Spielberg and comes to theaters in December. But it has been a long time in the making.
"Peter Jackson had said to me, 'Look, we're possibly going to be making 'Tintin,' and you should have a look at Captain Haddock,' " Serkis says. He joined Jackson in Marina del Rey, Calif., where the two began working with Spielberg on character tests. "It was an amazing week of meeting Steven, and Peter was there because Peter had kind of brought the performance-capture process to Steven, and they had decided that they would produce the movie together. It was a really exciting time of experimenting with the character, and Steven said, 'I want you to do it.' We've been making this film for three or four years now. It's just evolved."
According to Serkis, that evolution has been shaped by performance capture, through which all of the characters are rendered. The process allows for quick reshoots long after principal photography has finished, so that a character can be continually honed by actors and filmmakers. Serkis also believes it's significant to see performance capture being embraced by directors such as Spielberg and James Cameron, who employed the process in 2009's "Avatar."
"I really do think it's the tip of the iceberg," Serkis says. "It opens up so many possibilities across all the disciplines of filmmaking and also video games. That's such a huge arena, as character and narrative make their way into video games."
Serkis, who has also directed and acted in video games, is repositioning himself in that arena and in the world of filmmaking. In 2010, he co-founded The Imaginarium, a London production studio tailored to motion-capture work for film, television, video games, and even theater. The company's upcoming projects include a feature film that Serkis is slated to direct. The film will be shot in performance capture, hopefully next year.
"There are some job-for-hire kind of motion-capture studios, but where we're coming from is very much from the performance end," he says. "So we're looking at performance capture and the actual process of building characters. It's about realizing and creating digital characters in all different mediums."
Captivating Audiences
So, as he transitions from actor to actor-filmmaker, Serkis, who began his career on the London stage, is essentially doubling down on a technological revolution that he found himself accidentally leading. The association suits him fine.
"It doesn't bother me," he says. "In fact, I'm actually passionate about it, and it's taken me far. For years what's been important to me is to try and convey to people what it actually is, and there's very little mystery to it—it's acting. At the end of the day, performance capture is another way of recording an actor's performance." He compares the work to John Hurt's in the 1980 film "The Elephant Man." "That performance is highly regarded, and quite rightly so, as a brilliant performance. John Hurt was extraordinary as John Merrick, but he was totally unrecognizable for the whole time that he was onscreen, and his look was created by a team of very talented special effects makeup artists, which contributed hugely, obviously, to the performance in how it was received and how it was manifested onscreen."
For now, with plenty of work to do on "The Hobbit," and with Serkis' production house finding its footing, his main contributions to the way that performance capture registers onscreen will come from behind the camera. Then there's that Fox deal, with its promise of another turn as Caesar, ensuring that Serkis' days as an actor aren't done yet. They probably never will be.
"I love acting," he says. "It's been a huge part of my life for over 25 years. But equally I know that there are some films I want to tell more objectively as a storyteller and a filmmaker. I do want to strike a balance, but I'm certainly not cutting out acting. That's very much the core of me."
Gollum Again, for the First Time
When, a few weeks ago, Andy Serkis slipped into his performance-capture suit and stepped in front of Peter Jackson's cameras to reprise the role of Gollum, more than a decade had passed since he first played the character in "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring."
"The truth of the matter is, I don't think he ever really left me," Serkis says. "It was a huge, as you know, part of my life, so coming back to it was weird."
Weird, and not necessarily easy at first. The scene in which Gollum loses the One Ring was the first shot in the current principal photography stage for "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," the first of Peter Jackson's two long-anticipated "Rings" prequels. It was also the first scene for Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, the film's titular hero. Unlike other cast members, such as Serkis and Ian McKellen, Freeman was not involved in the "Rings" trilogy.
"I've known the character, and Martin, who was going to be going through this whole process for the very first time, was able to explore and kind of find Bilbo," Serkis says. The scene was treated "very much like a theater piece," shot from beginning to end a number of times. The repetition helped Freeman find Bilbo—and it helped Serkis rediscover his inner Gollum.
"It was sort of like Gollum had been created all of these years ago, and it was almost like doing some weird sort of impersonation," he says. "It had been owned by the public for so long that reclaiming it was quite strange the first couple of days." Eventually the rust shook off. "Going back, you do have all that prior knowledge, and it comes back pretty quickly."
