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After 'kong,' My Knuckles Have Never Recovered Because I Had To Wear Very Heavy Weights On My Forearms And Around My Hips And Ankles To Get The Sense Of Size And Scale Of The Movement Of The Character You Are Telling Your Body That You Are These Things And That You're Feeling These Thoughts And That You're Experiencing These Experiences.

-Andy Serkis

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After 'kong,' My Knuckles

Andy Serkis

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After 'kong,' My Knuckles Have Never Recovered Because I Had To Wear Very Heavy Weights On My Forearms And Around My Hips And Ankles To Get The Sense Of Size And Scale Of The Movement Of The Character You Are Telling Your Body That You Are These Things And That You're Feeling These Thoughts And That You're Experiencing These Experiences.

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The Wonderful Thing About 48 Fps Is The Integration Of Live Action And Cg Elements; That Is Something I Learned From 'the Hobbit.' We Are So Used To 24 Fps And The Romance Of Celluloid But At 48 Fps, You Cannot Deny The Existence Of These Cg Creations In The Same Time Frame And Space And Environment As The Live Action.

People Are Mystified By It And So They Kind Of Think, The Acting Community Thinks They're Gonna Be Replaced By Cg Characters And Animators Think They're Gonna Be Replaced By Performance Capture (and) A Lot Of Directors, Particularly European Directors, Who Have No Experience Of It.

More And More Good Actors Are Now Transmigrating Into The Videogame Space And Playing Roles There Because It's Where My Generation Of Kids Get Stories From.

My Agent Told Me They Were Casting For The Voice Of Gollum. I Hadnt Read The Lord Of The Rings, But I Read The Script And Realized What An Amazing Role It Was. I Developed A Voice For The Audition Tape, Then Met Peter Jackson And Fran Walsh At The Auditions And Fell In Love With Them Both.

I've Always Thought Of Acting As A Tool To Change Society. I Watch A Lot Of Actors And I See Panic In Their Eyes Because They Don't Know Why They Act And I Know Why I Act. Whether I'm A Good Or A Bad Actor, I Know Why I Do It.

I Understand Why People Went Nuts For 'the Artist.' We Use Words So Much, It's Nice To Be Able To Explore A Different Way Of Communication, To Be Able To Express Silently What Someone - Or Something - Is Thinking Or Feeling.

When I First Was Offered The Role On Rise [of The Planet Of The Apes], I Always Played Caesar As A Human Being Within Ape Skin.

There Are No Rhymes Or Reason, Actually. Having Said That, You Know, Cause There Are People Who Are Absolutely Single-minded About Their Process And They Can Still Come Up With Great Work. But (what) I Enjoy And It's The Same, I Suppose, As I Became More Of A Family Man, I Enjoy, I Enjoy An Atmosphere Where It, You Know, Doesn't Have To Be About Conflict To Get Good Results.

My Belief About Performance Capture Is That It's A Technology Which Allows Actors To Play Extraordinary Characters. But From An Acting Perspective, I've Never Drawn A Distinction Between Playing A Conventional, Live Action Character And Playing A Role In A Performance Capture Suit. And From A Purely Acting Point-of-view, I Don't Believe There Should Be A Special Oscar Category Because I Think It Sort Of Muddies The Waters In A Way.

Playing A Character In A Video Game Is Different To Other Performances Because Your Character Can't Lead The Audience Of Players In One Direction.

I'm Working From Home A Lot. That's Very Unusual Because I'm Away A Lot, Sometimes Working On The Other Side Of The World For Long Periods Of Time. So, It's Hard To Manage In The Sense That I Want To Be The Best Dad I Can Be But It's Almost Harder When You Have Your Kids Outside The Door.

Basically We're Puppeteers And If You're There And You're In The Character, The Puppet Is Going To Look Good. It's Going To Breath Life And I Think Once They Find Out How To Trust This System, You Just Forget About It And Just Perform, Then It's Just Second Nature, It Just Becomes Easy.

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[greek] Theater Started Off And Used Masks And Kabuki, In The East, They Used Mask-work. And Then, Commedia Dell'arte In Italy And Then, You Know, We're Part Of An Acting Tradition And, And Performance Capture Is No Different.

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My Dad Was Working Abroad, In Iraq, And He Was A Doctor. We Used To Go And Visit Him, In Baghdad, Off And On. For The First Ten Years Of My Life, We Used To Go Backwards And Forwards To Baghdad, So That Was Quite Amazing. I Spent A Lot Of Time Traveling Around The Middle East.

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The End Of The Day

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I've Been Writing And Wanting To Direct For A Long Time.

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I Think There Will Always Be A Particular Generation Of Actors Who Think That They're Going To Be Replaced By Robots. But Certainly The Emerging Actors Understand That That's Part Of The Craft.

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I Am A Bit Evangelical, I Know, But Performance-capture Is Still Misunderstood.

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For Me, I've Never Drawn A Distinction Between Live-action Acting And Performance-capture Acting. It Is Purely A Technology.

I Play Saxophone, I Play Tenor Sax.

When You Start To Do Research Into Gorillas Or Any Kind Of Apes, If You're Going To Play Them, That's One Of The Biggest Misconceptions. And When I Did Kong, You're Not Doing Gorilla Movements, You're Not Doing Ape Movements, You're Looking For A Personality. It's Like Saying Okay I'm Going To Do Human Movements.

I Don't See A Difference Between Playing A Performance Capture Role And A Live Action Role, They're Just Characters To Me At The End Of The Day And I'm An Actor Who Wants To Explore Those Characters In Fantastically Written Scripts. The Only Caveat Is A Good Story Is A Good Character.

The End Of The Day

I Love Playing Real Characters... If They're Not Around Anymore It's Helpful Because You Won't Get Sued! But There's So Much Research Involved And I Love That Part Of The Process.

I Stayed In Baghdad Every Summer Until I Was 14. My Dad's Sister Is Still There, But Many Of My Relatives Have Managed To Get Out. People Forget That There Are Still People There Who Are Not Radicalized In Any Particular Direction, Trying To Live Normal Lives In A Very Difficult Situation.

Difficult Situations

After 'kong,' My Knuckles Have Never Recovered Because I Had To Wear Very Heavy Weights On My Forearms And Around My Hips And Ankles To Get The Sense Of Size And Scale Of The Movement Of The Character You Are Telling Your Body That You Are These Things And That You're Feeling These Thoughts And That You're Experiencing These Experiences.

I Expect At Some Point I'll Probably Want To Go Back On Stage And Do Some Theater, Because I've Not Done Theater In 10 Years.

I Suppose The Biggest Strain Was That Hoodwink Is A High-octane Character And He's Up There Like All The Time. Once He's On His Journey There's No Let Up For The Man, So I Actually Found It A Massively Exhausting Job To Keep That Level Up.

I'd Already Started Directing Short Films When We Were Doing 'lord Of The Rings,' Then Videogame Projects.

(the) Process Of Acting Is No Different To Conventional Screen Acting, In That It's Providing A Perfect Interface Between The Director And The Performer. So There's No Sort Of Long Way Around A Viral Committee Of Animators.

There Is Always That Potential In The Same Way - Roddy Mcdowall Ended Up Playing Cornelius To Caesar [in The Planet Of The Apes]. Two Different Characters. That's The Joy Of The Craft. Bring It On I Say.

No Matter How Extreme Things Get, It Still Has That Ring Of Truth About It That Backs The Characters - Even Though They're Despicable And What They're Doing Isn't Right You Still Care For Their Fate.

The Whole Chameleon Thing About Acting. That's Why I'm Moving Towards Directing - It's A Much More Healthy Occupation.

People Think, 'oh, Well How Can 'the Hobbit,' Which Is One Book, Become Three Films?' But You Can Take One Line From An Appendice And It Turns Into A Whole Sequence.

It's Really Up To The Acting Community To Be Willing To Be Educated About What Performance Capture Is In Order To Fully Appreciate It As Acting. It's Not A Type Of Acting, But Rather The Use Of Technology To Harness An Actor's Performance And Translate It Into An Ape, Another Animal, Or An Avatar Of Some Kind.

Working With People You Adore And Love. There's Just A Sense, All The Way Through All Of The Movies [planet Of Apes], That You're Very Rarely In A Position Where You Have Great Material That You're Passionate About And A Big Audience Who Love It, And The Detail And Nuance, And The Exquisiteness Of The Fantastic Actors And Director With Great Writing.

I've Done A Fair Amount Of That Stuff... When We Did 'lord Of The Rings' The Transformation Sequence From Smeagol To Gollum Was A 19-hour Make-up Job. You Have To Have A Kind Of Zen Button That You Press And Allow The Mind To Be Focused In A Certain Way.

Rather Than Something Like King Kong Where I Really Went After Studying Gorillas In The Wild And Captivity. I Based Caesar [ From The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes] On A Real Chimpanzee And I Worked With Terry [notary] On A Lot Of Chimpanzee Movement.

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