Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/42006
n n n n Motion Capture To help the actors, Weta Digital set up a capture volume on a separate stage where the actors could rehearse and see themselves puppeteering the CG apes in real time. In addition, the crew gave the actors arm extensions. "It's always interesting when actors start working with performance capture for the first time," Letteri says. "When they see themselves as other characters and inhabit those charac- ters, you can see them play with subtle motion to make the characters look real, especially for the action scenes. Their first thought is to be quick and safe, and then they remember how Previsualizing the Action Previsualization supervisor Duane Floch of Pixel Liberation Front ran herd on previs and postvis efforts for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, joining the effort in summer 2010. "When I came on, there were six companies doing previs," he says. "They had been up and running for six weeks prior. It was get- ting to the point where Kurt Williams, the co-producer, had so much to look at and go through to strain, he asked me to take charge of the first pass. We've worked together on a number of films and think alike." The volume was so huge because every shot with an ape had to be previs'd, and each previs went through multiple iterations. "I could get the previs to a certain point, show it to Kurt, dis- perse notes, and answer questions," Floch says. "Once shooting started, we had to keep ahead of that giant rolling ball that was the shooting schedule." Previs artists worked from story- boards to block in humans, apes, and cameras for approximately 1500 shots. Previs gave the direc- tor a sense of timing, the first look at how the story moved through several cuts with characters performing, as seen through a camera. To do this, the artists needed to animate humans and apes. "We had a Disney animator on board who created a lot of chimp reference materials," Floch says, "idle monkey cycles, apes sitting around scratching, walking, and running. But, we also had a lot of story points that we had to convey with gestures. The characters don't talk. So the rigs had a good amount of facial expression control." For action sequences, though, the crews eliminated the rigs. "Some scenes had 150 apes and more," Floch says. "To handle that amount of data, we transferred the animation onto meshes, the geometry itself, and got rid of rigs altogether, which made the char- acters light. The running apes just ran with pre-animated motion, but if they had rigs, they would have been unworkable." 14 August/September 2011 Previs worked to get the intent of a sequence nailed down and approved, but things always change during filming. "They had Andy Serkis, Terry Notary, and other actors from the motion-capture team dressed in gray suits with cameras on their heads," Floch says. "We referred to them as the grapes, the gray apes. They shot plates with and without the performance-capture actors, so sometimes the cuts selected were blank plates and sometimes they had grapes. Because it's difficult for an editor to work with footage that doesn't have any action, we'd add apes in postvis to inform the cut and the visual effects teams." For the postvis, the artists needed to track cameras, a skill not neces- sary for previs. "We don't have a tracking de- partment with artists who only track cameras," Floch says. "But, every- one on our team knew how to get a good 3D track, so they could fill the plates with animation. We had saved a lot of cycles in our library, but when nothing matched what they wanted, the artists started keyframing from scratch." Floch enjoys both sides of the process—previs and post- vis. "It's great fun helping create the initial pass in previs be- cause it's everyone's first look," he says. "It's collaborative. And then, once you're working in plates, it's fun to put the characters in and to make footage work when it wasn't shot that way." –Barbara Robertson a chimp would move. We made sure they had the space to do a lot of rehearsal." Even so, there were scale challenges on set. When Serkis played Caesar as a toddler, for example, the crew put tape on his chest to give actor James Franco the proper eye line. "It was a challenge for them," Lemmon says. "If the