Andy Serkis--The Man Behind the Mask by Justin Lewis

Author:Justin Lewis [Justin Lewis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782190899
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Once the scenes with Naomi Watts were complete, Andy Serkis began the motion-capture sessions, for which he donned a blue Lycra bodysuit, which was dotted with a total of 60 sensors. Then, all the while tightly holding a Barbie doll (representing Ann), he leapt around in front of a blue screen, tumbling and scraping his knuckles across the floor, while being filmed by more than 50 video cameras. With no actual dialogue for Serkis to deliver, the presence of more than 130 markers attached to his face meant that every facial nuance and movement – from internalising a thought to unleashing a full-blown rage – could be archived on Weta Workshop’s software. A team of animators would then magnify and fine-tune the results. ‘I can’t pretend to understand the technicalities,’ apologised Serkis to one reporter after the film eventually premiered. ‘I just had to deliver a readable performance.’

It was relatively straightforward for Serkis to be mocapped as Kong: since human beings and gorillas are both primates, they have similar facial similarities. ‘A lot of the similarities are in the face and the eyes,’ said Christian Rivers, King Kong’s animation director. ‘Gorillas have such a similar-looking set of eyes and brows, you can look at those expressions and transpose your own interpretation onto them.’

Kong’s eyes became very important in conveying the character’s emotions, explained Jackson. ‘Even though his eyes are just a collection of pixels in a computer we wanted them to have depth, we wanted to see emotion in them. And so all of the muscles around the eye – the eyelids and the eyebrows – they are very, very complicated bits of computer modelling, and we can get a huge lot of expression.’ To emphasise Kong as a battered, bruised figure, a sign of defeat and exhaustion was added. It was a drooping eye, which was caused by an encounter with a dinosaur in which Kong came a poor second. Everyone knew that this level of detail over Kong’s face – which needed to be effective in close-ups – would be essential in order for the film to succeed. ‘That was the scariest thing about making the entire movie, because if those shots didn’t work the whole thing didn’t work,’ said Jackson.

Serkis had to be at his strongest and most agile when portraying the 25-foot Kong during the arduous mocap sessions. Weights were attached to both his arms and ankles, and he wore a heavy harness. ‘It was to get the scale of [Kong’s] movements, the inertia and momentum,’ he explained. ‘If he’s swinging his arm, it’s like a big wrecking ball on the end of a chain.’ In order to express himself physically for the mocap process, he had to be in tiptop shape. ‘I was pouring sweat every day. It was the most physically and mentally demanding role…much more demanding than Gollum, and that was pretty tough.’

His schedule meant that, even with Lorraine and their children flying over from London to join him (their third child, Louis,

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