As a huge George Orwell fan, I know that his life’s dream was to one day have one of his stories acted out by guys in spandex suits with ping pong balls hot glued to the flanks and nipples. We first heard about pioneering leotardsonist Andy Serkis’s (the guy who played Gollum and Caesar) plan to direct a motion-capture version of Animal Farm last year.
And now, praise God, it sounds like Serkis is inching ever closer to making Orwell’s dream a reality! (*squeezes into Green Man suit, runs around with sparklers in each hand*)
“We’ve started pre-vis which in the virtual world in many instances means you’ve already started shooting the film,” Serkis, told Screendaily on the fringes of the Cinematic Innovation Summit (CIS) in Dubai on Thursday. “Principal photography will take place in the middle to third quarter of next year.”
“What we’re trying to do is fairly unique. It’s going to be entirely performance captured, so rather than photographing real animals and showing them with talking mouths, it will all be generated by the interaction between the actors playing those roles…the physicality and facial expressions of all the animals will come directly from actors’ performances,” said Serkis. [Screendaily]
Well, directly from actors’ performances as translated by complex computer sensors and brought to life by a team of brilliant illustrators, animators, and modelers, anyway. Thank God for technology! Imagine how much better Bambi, or Bugs Bunny would’ve been if only there’d been some actors around pretending to be deer and rabbits!
Sorry, I’m being harsh. I’m actually not against motion-capture, I would just much rather see the undigitized version, with a bunch of weird dudes in spandex suits hissing and braying and oinking at each other. There’s your perfect political satire right there.
[pic via Getty]