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Yeah, I Mean, Climbing's Always Been A Massive Hobby Of Mine Up Until, Kind Of, Recent Times When I've Had Family, But No, It's Been A Driving Passion In My Life And, Uh, I've Always Wanted To Climb The Matterhorn. It Was The Mountain That, Sort Of, Inspired Me To Climb, As A Youngster. So, It Was Great To Be Able To Get To Do It.

-Andy Serkis

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Yeah, I Mean, Climbing's

Andy Serkis

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Yeah, I Mean, Climbing's Always Been A Massive Hobby Of Mine Up Until, Kind Of, Recent Times When I've Had Family, But No, It's Been A Driving Passion In My Life And, Uh, I've Always Wanted To Climb The Matterhorn. It Was The Mountain That, Sort Of, Inspired Me To Climb, As A Youngster. So, It Was Great To Be Able To Get To Do It.

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For Film And Games, There Is Now A Fantastic Method Of Actors Portraying Characters Which Don't Necessarily Look Like Themselves. And Yet You've Still Got The Heart And Soul Of The Performance.

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

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.

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.

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.

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I Love Acting And Certainly Won't Give It Up, But It's Part Of A Bigger Canvas For Me Now.

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.

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My Take Is That Acting Is Acting. A Performance Is A Performance. With Performance Capture, If You Don't Get The Performance On The Day, You Can't Enhance The Performance.

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That's Why I Ended Up Going To Lancaster University, Because They Had A Visual Arts Course, And In The First Year It Was Like A Broad Visual Arts Course In Sculpture, Painting, Graphics - All Of That.

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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.

When I Played Gollum In 'lord Of The Rings,' If I Was Climbing Up The Side Of A Mountain, Which I Physically Did, You Know, I Was On Every Single Occasion Swimming Through Streams, All Of That, That Wasn't Captured. That Was Filmed On 35 Millimeter, And For Certain Of Those Shots, It Was Rotoscoped And Painted Over.

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The End Of The Day

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Performance Capture Is A Tool That Young Actors Will Need In The Next 10, 20 Years. It's On The Increase, As You Say. It's Not Going Away.

Yeah, I Mean, Climbing's Always Been A Massive Hobby Of Mine Up Until, Kind Of, Recent Times When I've Had Family, But No, It's Been A Driving Passion In My Life And, Uh, I've Always Wanted To Climb The Matterhorn. It Was The Mountain That, Sort Of, Inspired Me To Climb, As A Youngster. So, It Was Great To Be Able To Get To Do It.

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.

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I Play Saxophone, I Play Tenor Sax.

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Performance Capture Is A Genre Of Acting Which Is Not Going To Go Away, It's Going To Proliferate More And More. I'm Passionate About It, And I Love It. It's The Most Liberating Tool An Actor Has, Because You Are Not Limited By Your Own Physicality, Look, Or Color Of Your Eyes.

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Gollum Is Gollum - Though In 'lord Of The Rings' He's 600 Years Old And In 'the Hobbit' He's 540, So He Looks A Little Bit More Handsome.

Working From Home Is So, So Hard Because I Want To Be Present For Them And Yet There's So Much To Do Work-wise. That's The Biggest Challenge For Me.

Not A Day Goes By Where I'm Not Reminded Of Gollum By Some Person In The Street Who Asks Me To Do His Voice Or Wants To Talk To Me About Him. But Because 'the Hobbit' Has Been Talked About As A Project For Many Years, I Knew That At Some Point I'd Have To Reengage With Him.

Be Magnificent. Life’s Short. Get Out There. You Can Do It. Everyone Can Do It. Everyone.

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The Learning Curve Is 'the Hobbit' Is Being Shot In 3d.

But That's Not What An Actor Does. An Actor Finds Things In The Moment With A Director And Other Actors That You Don't Have Time To Hand-draw Or Animate With A Computer.

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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Acting Is A Sort Of Pressure Cooker That Allows The Fizz To Come Out The Top. God Knows What I'd Be Like If I Didn't Have That.

The Difference Between The Big Budget Films I've Done Is The Length Of Time. But In Terms Of The Day-to-day, You're Still Going On To Set, You're Getting Into Character, And You're Going And Doing Your Job, So There's Absolutely No Difference. It's Just The Structure Around It And The Length Of Time. But In Terms Of Budget And Money, It Doesn't Really Manifest Itself.

I Love, First Of All, Reading And Discovering What The Common Perception Is And Then Trying To Figure Out... Well, How Does Your Life Cross Over Into That Character, Or What's An Angle On This That Might Challenge The Status Quo? It's Just A Great Journey As Well As An Education. You're Constantly Being Educated - It's Like I'm Back At School And Making Up For Lost Time.

Performance Capture Is A Technology, Not A Genre; It's Just Another Way Of Recording An Actor's Performance.

I Love The Whole Kind Of Notion Of Transformation For Me Is (what) Excites Me About Not Only Acting, But Storytelling. I Love, I Love That Notion Of A Slightly Larger-than-life Artistic Truth, You Know, Magnifying Real Emotional Truth (or) Finding Something About Human Condition (which), You Wouldn't Necessarily Think You Can Learn From Characters Such As Kong Or Gollum, But Actually They Are, You Know, These Huge Amplifications Of A Human Psyche And I Suppose Those Kind Of Roles Have Always Attracted Me Definitely.

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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.

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

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It's A Weird Thing With Acting And It Happens To A Lot Of Actors, Not Just Myself - It's Like You're Giving Off An I Really Need To Be Loved Today Vibe. My Worst Moment Recently Is I Fell Asleep On The Tube In London On The Victoria Line 8:30 In The Morning And I Woke Up And There Were About Five People With Iphones Taking Pictures.

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.

But The First Time I Had To Stand Up And Sing With Them Was When We Did The Pre-record For The Movie And It Was That Moment Where I Sort Of Said To Myself: "s**t, Now I Actually Have To Do This And I Have To Stand Up And Do My Stars In Your Eyes Moment!" Wake Up And Make Love With Me Was The First Song And I Thought: "here We Are With Chaz And All The Boys..."

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.

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Mountaineering Has Always Been A Huge Hobby Of Mine.

You Don't Go - Oh This Is A Motion Capture Role, I'm Going To Employ This Method Of Acting. We Don't Have Anything To Hide Behind When We're Doing This.

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

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.

Every Age Has Its Storytelling Form, And Video Gaming Is A Huge Part Of Our Culture. You Can Ignore Or Embrace Video Games And Imbue Them With The Best Artistic Quality. People Are Enthralled With Video Games In The Same Way As Other People Love The Cinema Or Theatre.

Gorillas Are Still Wild Creatures. That's Made Very Clear When You Observe Them In Nature. They Charge And Perform Other Displays That Are Terrifying By Design. But They Don't Attack Unless They Feel Threatened.

I'm In The Early Stages Of A Film Called 'freezing Time' About Eadweard Muybridge, The Victorian Photographer Who Was Really The Forefather Of Cinema. Digital Animators Still Treat His Images Like The Bible. He Was A Very Obsessed Man.

35mm Film Isn't Ticking Away So It's Subconscious - Performances Are Allowed To Breathe In A Much More Real Way I Think.

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'd Already Started Directing Short Films When We Were Doing 'lord Of The Rings,' Then Videogame Projects. So Peter's Known That I've Been Heading Towards Directing For A Long Time. But I Always Thought My First Outing Would Be A Couple Of People And A Digital Camera In The Back Streets Of London Somewhere!

As Long As You Have The Acting Chops And The Desire To Get Inside A Character, You Can Play Anything.

When You Come Out Of The Other End Of A Long Process, Working With A Character [you Realize] This Character Has Really Shaped My Ideas.

Animators Do Amazing Working Translating And Interpolating The Characters [in The Planet Of The Apes], The Facial Performances. What We're Creating On Set - If You Don't Get It On The Day, In The Moment, On Set, In Front Of The Camera, With The Director And The Actors. The Emotional Content Of The Scene And The Acting Choices.

The Process Of Acting Is No Different [playing Human Or Ape]. You're Embodying The Character. You're Creating The Psychology And The Physicality. You're Living The Moment.

'the Hobbit' Was One Of The First Biggish Books I Ever Read. I Remember Vividly The 'riddles In The Dark' Passage, And It Meant A Lot To Me To Finally Get To Play It After All These Years.

In The Same Way 'lord Of The Rings' Was An Interpretation Of The Book, 'the Hobbit' Is Being Treated The Same Way. It Will Be Faithfully Represented With A Fresh Interpretation.

I Never Felt Totally, 100%, Patriotically English... I'd Seen A Lot Of The World By An Early Age - Sort Of Spent A Lot Of Time Traveling Around Lebanon And I'd Seen Babylon, And Damascus, And All Sorts Of Places In The Middle East By The Time I Was Ten. Then We'd Return To Ruslip In West London... Done A Fair Bit Of Traveling Really.

[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.

I'd Like To Think That We Strive In Film And Theatre To Tell Great Stories, And I Believe In The Power Of Storytelling In Our Culture.

Hoodwink Is A Product Of His Environment. He Grew Up In Belfast, He Was Part Of The Uda And He Fought For What He Believed In - Or Was Brainwashed Into Believing - Because Of The People That Surrounded Him.

Gorilla Tourism Is Vital To Rwanda's Economy: It's The Third Highest Source Of Income.

There's This Whole Grey Area Seemingly Every Time It's Talked About Animators And Who Takes Ultimate Responsibility For The Characters [of The Planet Of The Apes] But Without Question And I'll Go Down Saying This Year After Year, These Characters Are Authored By What We Do On Set. They Are Not Authored By Animators.

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.

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.

What I'm Saying Is People Like Hoodwink Are Not Kind Of Evil Villains, They're Part Of Humanity. We Can Choose To Disassociate Ourselves From Them And We Can Choose To Pretend They're Not There, But They Are. We're All Together In This.

Acting Is Acting, As Far As I'm Concerned And, You Know, How You Manifest It Is, At The End Of The Day, Not The Point. It's How It Affects The Story & How It Affects The Audience. And If People Are Hungry To Be Told Stories, Using, Using This Form Then There's A Reason For That.

The End Of The Day

Caesar [from The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes] Was Brought Up With Human Beings And Because Of The Drug He Had Pretty Much Grown Up With His Whole Life, He Felt Like An Outsider, He Felt Trapped In An Ape's Body But He Didn't Really Feel Like An Ape And That Was My Way Into The Character. So He's Always Had This Duality Playing Him From An Infant All The Way To Now As A Fifty-five Year Old Ape.

I Just Directed The Jungle Book With Cate Blanchet And Christian Bale.

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.

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.

I Believe That When People Experience An Event As A Community It Can Transcend And Change People's Lives.

It's A Different Rhythm Than Most Movies. For A Lot Of The Actors, You're 12,000 Miles Away From Home. It Becomes A Way Of Life - Getting Up At Five In The Morning, Shooting Every Day, Day In Day Out, For 270 Days. The New Cast Playing The Dwarves Were Carrying Incredibly Heavy Weights In Their Suits, They Sat Through Hours Of Make-up Every Day. So It's Quite Challenging From A Stamina Point Of View.

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.

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