Serkis go-to guy for performance-capture

SAN DIEGO — When the filmmakers behind “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” settled on virtual simians rather than people in monkey suits for their lower primates, their first casting task became obvious: get Andy.

British actor Andy Serkis has emerged as a master of the art of creating characters in the digital realm of performance capture. He's been the emotional backbone of the great ape in “King Kong” and Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings,” creatures completed by visual-effects artists layering computer animation over his raw performance.

Serkis, a 20-year veteran of stage and live-action screen roles, has become best-known for his performance-capture characters, which now include a chimpanzee in the “Apes” prequel, opening Friday, along with a key part in this December's “The Adventures of Tintin.” He's playing Gollum again in Jackson's “The Hobbit,” a two-part prequel to “The Lord of the Rings.”

When he first did Gollum, the technology was called motion capture. The performance-capture tag came as the tools evolved and filmmakers sought to emphasize that their actors truly were creating characters, not simply occupying space as place-holders for digital beings painted in later.

Serkis does not see himself when he watches his performance-capture characters completed by Jackson's WETA effects outfit. But he does see what he created on the set, wearing a skintight suit covered with reference dots for digital cameras to record his body language.

“I totally see the intentions, the facial expressions, the timing, the acting choices. You know, the performance,” Serkis, 47, said in an interview at July's Comic-Con fan convention, where he and director Rupert Wyatt showed off footage from the “Apes” prequel.

Past “Planet of the Apes” flicks used actors in costumes. The filmmakers this time needed photo-realistic simians that could evolve into smarter-than-average apes.

Once the filmmakers decided to use performance capture, Serkis was the first person senior visual-effects supervisor Joe Letteri suggested to Wyatt.

“You had this chimp that needed to grow up and have this relationship, this bond, with a human family,” said Letteri, who also worked with Serkis on “The Lord of the Rings,” “King Kong” and “Tintin.” “We needed someone who was going to be in there with James and Freida who's not afraid to interact with them and not afraid to have the personality play out as part of the performance.

Wyatt wanted the best actor possible to play Caesar, and he was quickly convinced that Serkis was the primate he needed.

Letteri had told him that the visual-effects artists were not alchemists who could salvage a performance that lacked real human spirit at the core of the character, Wyatt said.

“So he said, ‘it's all about getting the best performance you can, and then after that, we take over and we echo that,'” Wyatt said.

Though Serkis already has shot his scenes as Gollum for “The Hobbit,” Serkis is not done with that world. Jackson hired him as second-unit director to oversee some action scenes and other sequences for the two-part epic.

That suits Serkis' career path, since he's been developing projects to direct himself and has started his own performance-capture studio to work on films and video games.

“I love working with the medium, and it is a medium that needs to be used appropriately,” Serkis said.