2. Motion Tracking And Authentic CGI Characters
"You were not so very different from a Hobbit once, were you?" In 1995, Pixar released Toy Story. This was the first film to be created entirely via computer animation. It wasn't the first time characters had been created digitally (heck, even the original Tron had the MCP), but it was an important step in pushing the art forward. Four years later, George Lucas would try to take that one further by introducing a completely virtual character on to a set with live action actors. It went well enough, but was not a huge hit with fans (for a variety of reasons). Then Andy Serkis came along. According to some behind the scenes features, one of the things that drew Peter Jackson to Andy for the part of Gollum was his facial expressions. At the time they were looking simply for a voice actor, but while watching him audition, they noticed how the sounds Serkis made affected his facial expressions. They realized that you can't separate the physical actor from the voice and still maintain an authentic performance. Combine this with huge advances in motion tracking technology and suddenly the stars align and you can create an incredibly realistic digital movie star. Gollum was, far and away, one of the best virtual characters to cross movie screens. This performance laid the framework for a number of different CGI performances, including the stunning Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (coincidentally also played by Andy Serkis), and even Hulk in the most recent Avengers movie. Jar Jar may have been a novel accomplishment from a technical perspective, but it was poor Sméagol who taught us how to give the invisible actor a soul.