Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/371911
20 cgw j u ly . a u g u s t 2 0 1 4 D I G I T A L C H A R A C T E R S structure the curves the way he wanted from the jaw up to the lip shapes. The solver gives us a fi ne blocking pass, especially for the body, but there is still a lot of skill required." On set, the actors mimicked ape movement, whether bipedal or on all fours, and all the actors wore arm extensions. "That was probably the trickiest thing," Bar- rett says, "having the confi dence to take your body weight on those arm extensions in a squat. But the actors on the whole did incredibly well. Except for the high-action stuff , what you see is what we got on the day." Konoval had a particularly interesting challenge. The 120-pound woman had to perform as a 300-pound male orangutan. "When I was fi rst cast in Rise, it was a challenge fi nding the physical weight of him with each step," she says. "So we put fi ve-pound weights on my arms, which made the work more diffi cult. By the time we went to Dawn, we no longer needed the weights. I had found Maurice's weight. The challenge for this fi lm was not in dealing with the motion-capture technology. It lies within fi nding the integrity of the character. The thoughts, the voice. Everything. It's the most rewarding and challenging role I've ever taken." Notary, who plays Rocket, helped actors new to the fi lms understand chimp motion. "He's one of the unsung heroes," Barrett says. "He made our lives so much easier." And, Jason Chu, a former dancer and gymnast, helped the Weta crew capture perfor- mances that were too diffi cult for the actors. "On the fi rst fi lm, we assumed we couldn't get that power," Barrett says. "But Jason was so impressive climbing trees and swinging, we added his climbing motion to our library." Scenes with the apes riding horses bareback took a variety of approaches. "We had only one shot in Rise with Caesar on horseback," Lemmon points out. "But, this fi lm is fi lled with that imagery. Anywhere we could, we tried to use real horses, but as most successful strategies go, it was a mixture of real and computer-generated horses." When they could get the performance they wanted from the animals, the crew shot bare- back horses. More o en, they shot riders using racing saddles covered with something that looked like horsehair and with stirrups hinged up. "We made it as easy as we could for the people who had to paint that out later," Lem- mon says. The digital horses were AT TOP: ACTOR ANDY SERKIS, ON THE HORSE IN THE MOTION- CAPTURE SUIT AND FACIAL- CAPTURE HELMET, TALKS WITH ACTOR JASON CLARKE (MALCOLM). AT BOTTOM: THE HORSES WERE SOMETIMES LIVE ACTION, SOMETIMES CG. "THE CHALLENGE FOR THIS FILM WAS NOT IN DEALING WITH THE MOTION-CAPTURE TECHNOLOGY. IT LIES WITHIN FINDING THE INTEGRITY OF THE CHARACTER. THE THOUGHTS, THE VOICE. EVERYTHING."