There is a lot of pressure involved in trying to follow a trilogy that is praised and accomplished as Andy Serkis-led “Apes Planet” Saga, who culminated with 2017’s “War for the Planet of the Apes.” For “Apes Kingdom” Director Wes Ball, actor Owen Teague, animation leader Paul Story and Visual Effects Supervisor Erik Winquist, which made their blockbuster followers involved much of both looking behind and in front of them as they pressed the visual effects of the franchise further.
“The challenge with this movie was that we both had to give people what they expected, but also surprise them,” Ball told Thewrap for a new part of How I did itPresented by the 1900s studios. “We stand on what is done before and raise (it) to a level that was not possible a couple of years ago.”
The starting point for Winquist, which had a best visual effects Oscar nomination this year for “Kingdom”, returned to the work he did on the previous “Apes” trilogy. “One of the first things I did when we started preparing this movie was to collect a collection of pictures from the previous three films that illustrated what we photographed during the day and why we shot things we shot them,” he told me. “It helps everyone understand what we are all about to go in together.”
The process of putting “kingdom” together, as the ball was similar “to make a puzzle piece by bit”, demanded that they take the entire Mo-Cap rig in the Australian wilderness where the production took place so that the film’s production team could shoot Teague and his co-star at location in their performance capture equipment. “The advantage of this is that we can capture our actors in a natural environment and really get the best performances from our role,” Winquist explained.
This filming technology not only required several, versatile cameras to be used on set, but also that at least two versions of each Mo-Cap scene in “Kingdom” would be shot: First with the film’s “Ape” actor in the frame and then again without them . “The goal for us was to try to get what we call a clean album where there are no artists that have to be painted,” Winquist said. It may seem boring on paper, but the freedom it gave ball and his team during the post -production was invaluable and well worth the extra effort.
“One of the amazing things about that process is that we can actually go through and not just Stitch performances together. Now that with the cameras we recreate the backgrounds, we can actually sew these cameras together, ”the story noted. “So that just opened a whole new level of opportunities for Wes and the editors.” This meant that ball and co. Can combine their favorite performance with their favorite environmental pictures.
“The advantage of performance capture is that we can actually take the performance for one character from Take Three and put them with the camera from Take Five,” Winquist revealed.
The prolonged VFX supervisor believes that “Kingdom” and its other modern “Apes” films have proven that performance capture can be used no matter where a movie can be canceled. Filmmakers no longer need to be limited by the requirements of technology.
“I think these films have shown is that it is possible to take this type of prisoner of performance to where a filmmaker wants to make his film,” he revealed. “” The future, I think, is quite bright when it comes to where we can go from here. “
