The Academy Awards, Golden Globes and BAFTAs don’t nominate performance-capture work for the big awards, but Andy Serkis thinks that will change very soon.
Serkis stopped by FANDOM’s studio to discuss all things War For the Planet of the Apes – including his incredible performance as Caesar – and explained that he thinks the entertainment industry’s attitude towards mo-cap is changing fast.
Serkis on Mo-Cap
“It’s becoming apparent now” he explained. “People are realising that acting is acting. This is just another way of cloaking an actor’s performance if you like. Or costuming an actor’s performance. Not to take anything away from the brilliant work that the visual effects companies do, because of course, they play a hugely important part.
“But I think people are beginning to realise that the process of acting — what we do on set — is exactly the same regardless of whether you go into makeup… or having that done after the fact. The process in between — what we do — when we go on set we work with the director, we work with the other actors, we’re authoring those roles in exactly the same way as you would.
“I think people are definitely beginning to understand that this is not an animation process, where the emotion of the character and what happens in the scenes is created after the fact. That it’s not a committee of animators that are drawing these apes. It’s absolutely the actor’s medium and the actor’s performance that are authoring the role. So that is beginning to be understood, and it’s up to really the actor’s branches to push and educate and to fully understand that to make awards possible.”
Check out his interview in the above video, while War For the Planet of the Apes is out now on Digital, and hits Blu-ray, DVD and 4K Ultra HD on October 24.