Also called motion capture (or mocap), it involves actors wearing formfitting body suits that allow cameras to track their movements from every angle in a stage area called the volume. Those movements are then used to animate a computer-generated character. The technology presents a unique challenge and opportunity for performers.
"You have to imagine your entire world, so as an actor it's sort of the ultimate exercise," says actor Woody Schultz. "You show up and you play." For the theatrically trained Schultz, that was literally true on his first performance-capture film, "The Polar Express."
Casting director Victoria Burrows called him in for a regular audition, or so he thought. The role was a 9-year-old boy. "I didn't quite understand how a 6-foot-2 actor was supposed to play a little boy," Schultz says. "She told me not to do a little boy's voice, but do the scene with all the essence of a little kid. It worked out." Schultz portrayed two boys (and provided their voices) as well as a few elves in the Robert Zemeckis movie.
Raising Awareness
There is a movement in the works to replace the term "motion capture" with "performance capture" in order to "shed a better light on what the actors do and how these films are created," Schultz says. "The technology captures every aspect of the actor's performance."
Some performers fear that the technology will replace actors, but Schultz, who is the national chair of the Screen Actors Guild's Performance Capture Committee, refutes this notion: "It's completely actor-dependent and -driven technology." One benefit of it is that an actor can play numerous characters. Schultz, for instance, portrayed 11 characters in "Beowulf." And "there's an even more intimate relationship between the actor and director, because it's just the two of you," he adds.
Schultz considers himself fortunate to be working in performance capture. "As an actor doing just live-action or theater roles," he says, "I could spend an entire career hoping to work with people like Steven Spielberg, and I've done that in less than a decade, which is amazing."
New Opportunities
"I was sort of James Cameron's go-to girl," says actor Julene Renee in describing her experience on "Avatar," which used performance capture extensively. Before Zoe Saldana began work on the character Neytiri, director Cameron and Renee figured out many of Neytiri's movements. "With real-time playback," she says, referring to the ability to immediately see a digital character move on a screen in response to the actor's motions, "I could see that when I moved catlike, it didn't look like that for [Neytiri]. So I moved exaggeratedly, which on her looked awesome."
Renee first met Cameron when her feet doubled for Kate Winslet's feet in "Titanic." In addition to studying dance, Renee was a competitive gymnast and later took up acting and improv. In the 1990s, she appeared in several sitcoms and did voiceover work for the PBS children's show "Kidsongs." She credits this training with helping her career.
"In 2002, I was asked to audition for 'Polar Express' because of my athletic background, and I could do kids' voices," Renee says. She transitioned easily into performance capture. "As a dancer, I was used to creating big or subtle movements with my body. I've played robots, old people, animals. I have done stuff I never would have been cast for."
Renee has noticed that some actors adapt more quickly to performance capture than others. "Strictly film and television actors don't move very much, so their characters do little. That's frustrating for the computer people," she says. "But when you do television, you're in a medium close-up, so you can't really move."
After she finished working on "Beowulf" in 2006, Renee contemplated attending film school, but then she found out about "Avatar." She treasures her professional and educational experience on the film: "Not only did I attend film school technically, but I also worked with the best director that's 20 years ahead of everybody else. I look at my time on 'Avatar' as the James Cameron Film School."
Real-Life Gamer
A feature film is not the only place to learn how to act for performance capture. Video games have been developing this technology and working with actors for decades. "There are two types of motion capture in video games," says actor Richard "Mocapman" Dorton. "One is in-game, which is all the moves the characters do while someone plays the game, like running or jumping. The other is cinematics or cut scenes, which is when a story is told."
For cinematics, actors rehearse as they would for a film. For in-game work, however, an actor has to perform perhaps 300 moves in a 10-hour day. "It's really taxing on the body, like being a professional athlete. I've been punched in the face, kicked in the head. It can slow down production," Dorton says with a chuckle.
Dorton's background in theater, dance, and stunt coordination has helped keep him healthy and in demand. After moving to Los Angeles a little more than a decade ago, he auditioned to play numerous characters in the video game "Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights." "I was auditioning against a bunch of stuntmen," he recalls. "We had to walk like Shaggy and some monsters. You had to fall down, run, and walk. All the stunt guys wanted to fall, but they didn't want to act." Dorton's ability to act and do stunts landed him the job.
He portrayed Shaggy and roughly 70 villains in the game, an opportunity that led to more work. "The mocap company that I was shooting with saw my versatility," he says, "and they were like, 'This guy can do anything,' which led to me being referred to another game by the studio instead of just an audition.
"I've acted more in video games than in feature films," Dorton adds. "It's really funny how the movie people might say, 'You do games? That's not real acting. We do movies.' It's just a misconception. Acting is acting to me. Whether I'm in a motion-capture suit or in a film, it's still acting."
