In anti-clockwise fashion, that's Gollum from The Lord of the Rings fame, Caeser of Planet of the Apes and the growling giant is of course King Kong of the 2005 Peter Jackson film. So apart from the fact that meeting these creatures in real life is highly unlikely (ignore this statement if you are an adventure-hungry Hobbit), what else is common amongst them? They have the same face behind it all. The genius of Andy Serkis. And this is how he looks... taa daa!
Not bad, eh! Andy Serkis is a film actor and director from England who has made the technique of performance capture to bring such characters to life something of his own. A talented chap, Serkis shot to fame through his heart engaging display as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, that even led to the debate whether a computer created character could be in the running for an Academy Award! To understand it better, Serkis enacts the roles of the characters he plays wearing a special suit with 'markers' that allows the cameras to capture his movements (facial expressions, limb movements, etc etc) which is then morphed over with the character itself. This picture might give some idea to what I'm talking of.
While Serkis never appears as himself in the final shot shown to the audience, his work in bringing the role to life is as integral to any character played on-screen. He needs to get into the skin of the character to understand its movements (which would be more difficult than playing a normal human role, for these characters are not humans after all!), its facial expressions, and finally add voice to complete the whole picture. A master in this trade, Serkis was also the second-unit director of The Hobbit, pushing forth his own dream of directing as well. Gollum is already back with The Hobbit series underway and we would be seeing more of Serkis' work in the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes featuring Caeser. Here's one to the man behind many faces! Serkis.... my preciousssss!
No comments:
Post a Comment