{"id":57578,"date":"2017-10-19T15:34:57","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T22:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com\/news\/?p=57578"},"modified":"2019-03-05T16:44:13","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T00:44:13","slug":"war-for-the-planet-of-the-apes-motion-capture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.entertainmentearth.com\/news\/war-for-the-planet-of-the-apes-motion-capture\/","title":{"rendered":"2 Exclusive Clips from War for the Planet of the Apes That Will Amaze You"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This past summer’s\u00a0War for the Planet of the Apes<\/em><\/a>\u00a0brought the trilogy begun in\u00a0Rise\u00a0of the Planet of the Apes\u00a0<\/em>(2011) and continued in\u00a0Dawn of the Planet of the Apes\u00a0<\/em>(2014) to an epic conclusion. While it’s unclear where the venerable\u00a0Apes<\/em>\u00a0franchise will go from here, it\u00a0is\u00a0<\/em>clear the movies have set a new standard for motion capture (or “mo-cap”) performance.<\/p>\n

Over the three films’ course, Andy Serkis brought Caesar<\/a>, the evolved chimpanzee who leads the apes, to thoroughly convincing life. Serkis’ portrayal of\u00a0Gollum\u00a0in\u00a0The Lord of the Rings\u00a0<\/em>movies (2001-2003) had established him as the master of mo-cap acting. Playing Caesar, Serkis could show, even more, taking performance capture to the next level.<\/p>\n

As Serkis has stressed in several recent interviews, mo-cap’s about much more than the admittedly impressive technology. “Acting is acting at the end of the day,” he told\u00a0Den of Geek!, “but playing these kinds of characters, there’s an element of being fearless\u2026 You can’t be vain and do this. You’re in a tight-fitting Lycra suit, and [tracking] dots and all the rest of it – you can’t be worried about what you look like. You get your hands dirty playing these roles\u2026 That’s what’s liberating and exposing. The joy and the combination of those things [are] what makes it thrilling!”<\/p>\n

The impressive prosthetic makeups John Chambers designed for\u00a0Planet of the Apes\u00a0<\/em>in 1968, and for which he received a special honorary Academy Award, took an average of four hours to apply. Serkis and his fellow ape-playing actors don’t spend hours in makeup chairs, but they’re wearing makeup all the same – “digital makeup,” as Serkis told the\u00a0New York Times, supplied by the visual effects artists of Weta Digital. “The visual effects render the character, just like putting on makeup, except here it happens after the fact.”<\/p>\n

Side-by-Side Comparisons<\/strong><\/h3>\n

These two comparison videos, which are included in the movie’s Blu-ray, demonstrate how Weta’s mo-cap magic, so far from concealing cast members’ performances, allow them to truly shine.<\/p>\n

In the first clip, Caesar <\/a>confronts Winter (played by Aleks Paunovic), an albino gorilla who has sided with Colonel McCullough and his troops against the apes. (The humans belittle the apes who join them by calling them “Donkeys,” even tattooing the slur on the apes’ backs.)<\/p>\n