When an audition changed cinema forever.

and the best virtual performance is Gollum Lord of the Rings to Tower hi everybody my name's Andy Circus and I delighted to receive this award on behalf of everybody who brought Gollum to life it is a complete marriage of skills and the S mine I want enough golum piss off S St be fat Ruffles to I'm I'm not as you may already know this is Andy Circus my balls excuse my French are in an iron Vice corporate are twisting and squeezing like a bunch of dominatrixes on steroids and now Lucy is presenting her own redesign without you will you tell me what's going on please and he really knows how to act as anything I offered you peace and you killed my family he can act as an ape no a giant ape a baby ape a Gollum a Gollum impersonating Teresa may and much more I cannot be betrayed with motion capture pathetic child or without motion capture one way out right now and even acting as two characters at the same time I'm on Conan is funny he has created this new kind of performance in a way coming back too okay [Music] and and he fell into it I mean he was cast as gollem just for his voice and then I guess Peter Jackson realized what a great physical performance he was giving and that he should try and capture that some murer and still unlike some of the other actors you probably don't get recognized no one can recognize you as gol does that ever bother you do you ever just want to tell people I'm Gollum So today we're going to understand the genius of a thousand faces [Music] we were basically meeting actors who could do good Voice work because at that point we thought we were just looking for a voice actor so let me put it this way imagine it's 1998 and you're an actor trying to advance your career and suddenly your agent calls to tell you that you got an audition for a Trilogy of major blockbuster movies adapted from a famous book but the only catch is that your face won't appear in it I thought oh God I'd love to play this character just in Prosthetics or you know find a way of doing lose weight as much as I could and and you know but most actors would feel disappointed but here's where it gets interesting to prepare for the audition circus approached it with a seriousness that no one attributed to 3D characters back in that time Andy resented that fact he resented the fact that that people didn't honor the work he was doing while we were shooting it Andy Circus he's playing a strange guy in Tights I remember Sean said to me am I supposed to act with you cuz I remember him looking past me and I was going Sean you know come on let's you know hey I'm here for you buddy you know act act with me here us and back then CGI characters were just window dressing or comic relief and no one thought they could have any real psychological dep my give up my give up but Cirus truly committed himself to studying every aspect of gollum's psychology and how this would be reflected in his mannerisms speech and movements he genuinely grasped gollum's nature as an addict but also as a soul in constant suffering and he crafted his voice from every ordinary input so for me it all came from the physicality from a from a psychological kind of trying to underpin him psychologically before I could really get to to to where I needed to be for the audition so so something about his voice had to be generated involuntarily and I wanted to find something that that made that sound happen pre the cats at home had a big impact on how gollum's voice came about because they get furballs in their throats after they lick and the master that that became um that then became and that's how he arrived at the day of an audition that would Mark the beginning of a change in the history of Cinema take it of us it hurts us don't listen to him for he's trying to trick [Music] us when you watch this casting of this innocent Andy Circus who had no idea what his career would become inevitably the question arises why bother so much with gollum's facial performance if it wasn't going to be seen and it was really in that audition that I came to realize something that never really occurred to me and that the voice and the facial expressions and the energy are related but I think question is misdirected circus doesn't make that facial performance in addition to the voice he does it almost as a side effect he couldn't achieve that perfect gum voice if he didn't fully embody the character and it's thanks to that attitude that Peter Jackson was so enamored with his performance and had the will to capture it no matter what as Andy is performing with Elijah and sha all of his movements that he's making are actually being recorded by a computer back then technology wasn't as advanced so his gestures would be a direct reference for the animators and the motion capture would apply to his body either way circus was inventing a new way of acting this is brilliant this is amazing this is a tool which enables the actor to become anything you want to be you know it's brilliant Andy totally earned his right to be Gollum the hard way because he was coming into a situation where none of us really thought we really we needed Andy and it is an acting method that would continue to evolve for years allowing circus to perfect his performance as Gollum and exploit it 12 years years later in The Hobbit where perhaps the only thing superior to the original trilogy is forever well Gollum for technological reasons such progress however only materialized in 2005 with King Kong if you're wondering who spearheaded this advancement well you know the answer um kind of a big day for us today it's the first day that we're going to have Andy Circus on set playing Kong I was so scared he's so insane as King Kong he is not a human here the significant weap occurred circus now not only utilized motion capture but also performance capture Golem was was filmed on on set and then the animators copied the facial expressions but this time we used a system called facial motion character this time circus's gestures would be directly translated into Kong's animation marking a fundamental step forward in the development of his technique but to talk about gestures and monkeys let's go back to one of my favorite scenes from the new Planet of the Apes Saga do you have any idea what your mercy would do to us you're much stronger than we are you're smart as hell no matter what you say you'd eventually replace us that's the law of nature it's a dialogue between Caesar and the colonel in that sort of ape concentration camp you have no mercy it starts with Caesar confronting the colonel for killing his defenseless family and the colonel justifying himself their medic had a theory by explaining that the virus has become a threat to humanity the virus that every human Survivor still carries and suddenly changed mutated and what I love about this scene is Caesar's reaction not by killing us but by robbing us of those things that make us human our speech our higher thinking first we have a 27 second long shot of the colonel explaining what this virus mutation entails then a shot of Caesar reacting with a surprise that helps us identify with him because we too are surprised you talk about Mercy what would you have done and then after a reverse shot of the colonel we see Caesar's final reaction it was a Moment of clarity for me and this is the shot that fascinates me because the basic usage of performance capture is you see it on the screen you will see the Apes but they Apes which are infused with the heart and soul of an actor's performance you see throughout the movies we've seen the Apes evoke different types of emotions like fear anger Joy pain surprise or disgust what psychologist Paul emman would call primary Expressions these expressions are Universal emotion looks the same whether you're a Suburban housewife or a suicide bomber the truth is written on all our faces and yes he's the guy Li timy is based on he's lying but we're not going too much in that direction the thing is these are the first emotions we start to see in Caesar and not only are they more primitive emotions but they're also easier for an actor to evoke because they're Universal and easier to identify but something different is happening here it was a Moment of clarity for me I realized with a multitude of small gestures that communicate what is going through Caesar's mind if you look closely most of the expression is in the eyes the mouth remains almost the same but with just them circus is able to convey a lot to us his expression is subtly different from his earlier surprise now there is first dismay then sadness resonation and finally his eyes shift slightly as if he is processing me information with deep concern and I don't want to switch to lie to me mode now would you but I don't believe you have to be an expert in non-verbal communication to understand this it was a Moment of clarity for me the most expressive eyes it it blows my mind to see how much he can convey with saying nothing I've never I've never encountered that kind of extremity of just ability to convey things through his eyes because here's the thing with Andy Circus the greatest uh mystery about performance capture is there is no mystery it's the same as act he's a master controlling each of his facial muscles but also at vocal performance a world found upon faith and understanding and he's also a master of body language performance capture isn't about gr sort of doing gross body movements and pantomiming it's it's it's actually where it's at it's most powerful is in its Stillness you know being brave enough to hold a closeup it's a very complex thing in a way that we do to resist the bait because you're not working in a big suit a big furry suit so it's not about the external of it it's it's much much more about the internalization of it the truth is he has paved the way for many actors in This approach to character interpretation and the thing is that at times we perceive technological advancements in Cinema as negative and don't get me wrong in many respects they are the task I have in mind will require a great deal because we know that they can lead creatives to opt for Less ingenious Solutions but I like to think of Andy Circus as the embodiment of the positive aspects of implementing new technologies in cinema as proof that these are tools that when used well can create fsic into magic like a monkey with human emotions or fantasy creature brought to life that's why I have no doubt that Andy Circus may not be the face of many of his characters but he is indeed the face of his greatest Legacy a new way of acting [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Lancelloti

Views: 4,712,327

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Id: DFQ9JvtqTtA

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Sun May 19 2024