Director Peter Jackson has set the bar tremendously high for behind-the-scenes content made available with films with the nearly endless hours of special features on The Lord of The Rings trilogy. With our expectations set high and eyes hungry for more, we indeed have more from the creative team behind Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: There And Back Again.
Joe Letteri, Senior Visual Effects Supervisor, spoke recently with MovieWeb about how visual effects in creating the character of Gollum as performed by Andy Serkis has evolved between The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and how Rise of the Planet of the Apes influenced their methodology.
“Without getting into what he is going to look like on screen, and everything, because we are saving that…Technically, what has been good about this, is that we did Gollum the first time around, and it was the first time that we were doing performance capture in a film. But we couldn’t record on the stage. Andy was performing with all of the other actors. But then he would have to come out, and do his performance again on a motion capture stage. We would fit the two together. He would mimic his first performance, and we would put it in with the other actors.
When we did Avatar, we created this whole virtual world. It was completely immersive, and everything was in this virtual world. What we did with Rise of the Planet of the Apes was come full circle with it. We took all of the technology we created for Avatar, and we figured out a way to make that on set. How to make it work within exterior sets. That way, Andy could be in the scene with all of the other actors. So you’re not getting a second performance from him, trying to duplicate the first. You are getting the performance that he did with James Franco and Freida Pinto, and everyone else.
It closed the gap for us, to have Andy be right there in the movie, and have that be his performance. That’s the thing we finally got to do with Gollum. Just as a way of nicely closing the circle.”
Andy Serkis is most definitely breaking ground as a new breed of actor working hand in hand with developing technologies and the creative folks that make it happen. It is simply amazing what Letteri and co. have accomplished in just a few short years in forwarding this type of movie-making from fantasy to reality.
Synopsis:
“The Hobbit” follows the journey of title character Bilbo Baggins, who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild. Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers.
Although their goal lies to the East and the wastelands of the Lonely Mountain first they must escape the goblin tunnels, where Bilbo meets the creature that will change his life forever… Gollum.
Here, alone with Gollum, on the shores of an underground lake, the unassuming Bilbo Baggins not only discovers depths of guile and courage that surprise even him, he also gains possession of Gollum’s “precious” ring that holds unexpected and useful qualities… A simple, gold ring that is tied to the fate of all Middle-earth in ways Bilbo cannot begin to know.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is slated to hit theaters on December 14, 2012.
The Hobbit: There and Back Again is slated to hit theaters on December 13, 2013.
The films star Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Richard Armitage, Cate Blanchette, Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving, Sylvester McCoy, Aidan Turner , Graham McTavish, John Callen, Ken Stott, Mikael Persbrandt, Ryan Gage, Jed Brophy, William Kircher, Stephen Hunter, Ian Holm, Stephen Fry, Ryan Gage, Conan Stevens, Orlando Bloom, Luke Evans, Evangeline Lilly, Barry Humphries and Benedict Cumberbatch.
