Videocracy Blog

I am listening to a podcast which delves into the topic of “MoCap” which is the art of Motion Capture, this is a hot topic, at least between me and my circle of film buddies, (which is two people).

Motion capture is an interesting technology that was used in such things as Lord of the Rings and King Kong…and now the topic of the podcast is the new motion picture Beowolf…which is used with all motion capture.

Motion capture is basically a process where an actor will act out the motions and movements of the character the are portraying, using sophisticated technology and cameras, to capture the movement made by the person. One of the more interesting things about this, as the podcast states is that you can then make the actor look like themselves or however they want.

The reason this is a hot topic is because with the new film Beowolf, the entire film is shot using motion capture, the advantage here is that the actors can be put into whatever CG world they want to…without having to leave the comforts of a studio, and without having to build elaborate sets. The one thing that intrigues and confuses me then is, they make the actors look like themselves…and to me, if you are going to go through the trouble of doing it that way, then you might as well stick the actors in costume, and put them in front of an elaborate green screen set up (ala Sin City).

The arguments for Motion Capture is that you can make your actor be whatever age you want them to be, put them in any environment seamlessly, give them whatever costume you want. And another interesting argument for this process is, you have unlimited possibilities for camera angles and shot composition because it takes video all around the actor, giving more mobility to cameras.

Now I saw a preview for Beowolf and I was immediately turned off, because to me, the actors looking like themselves but a realistic animated version of themselves made me squirm a bit. The podcast referred to an article where a robot scientist in Japan stated that a robot that is slightly realistic is cute, but one that is completely realistic, perfectly flawless, is repulsive. And to see the characters in Beowolf, you are seeing an animation, but the characters are so real that the audience is turned off by them. Another movie that used this same process was The Polar Express, (same director; Robert Zemeckis)…the difference I think between that movie and this movie, is if you compare the MoCap look to the original book, it looks like an animated version of the book with that soft, saturated color. But the characters were still a bit disorienting.

I also feel there is a new trend with Rotoscoping, this is the process of drawing frame by frame over the characters, a director who uses this process is Richard Linklater, he did A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life. It’s a similar thing to Motion Capture, except the movie is made from start to finish, and then they go through and draw over each thing frame by frame. I’ve always been a bit against this process, mostly because it is disorienting, but furthermore, I am one for practicality…and if you go through the process of making the film once, why go through and make it again by animating what already exists. Yes it is an aesthetic choice by the director, and I got it in Scanner Darkly cause it is based on a graphic novel…but I don’t always feel it’s necessary.

I’ll be curious to see Beowolf, I know it’s a good story…and I want to see if this MoCap process works or not.

Who knows…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Christian at Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.