A few weeks ago, I became Facebook user 250,000,001, so welcome to my wall. You know why I avoided Facebook for all these years? I'm like the fellow that prefers to hold hands and go all the way only with that special somebody. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and soul of Facebook, is selling free love for swingers. No sooner had I created a page and welcomed my first few hundred new Friends than Mr. Zuckerberg expanded and redefined his site to compete with Google as a one-stop-shopping destination. His plan is for you to tell me what book or movie you are enjoying so that I will purchase the same, leaving maybe a small commission for him. And he wants us to be more intimate, to quickly get down to skivvies. We are asked to fill out a timeline graph beginning with birth and coming up to the present, stopping along the way for "first kiss" and "she's pregnant." “We think it’s an important next step to help tell the story of your life,” he explained at the announcement event. Wait a minute, Mark! Hold the phone! I realize I am new here, but what if I do not want your assistance in telling the story of my life which - now,don't take this personally - is the truth of the situation? Facebook is obviously and blatantly an overwhelming and bewildering social force in the world, and I want to get on board. So ... please drop by and write on my wall. Just remember, I only want to date. Nothing below the belt.

 

I chatted about animation things for an hour or so with Josh Ryan, the energetic wunderkind who runs ALTANIMATION. Go here to listen to the interview. Go here if you want to subscribe to ALTANIMATION. I like this guy. He is smart and fun to talk to, at least as good an interviewer as Oprah. Thanks, Josh, for the excellent conversation!

 

This is a good revision, the first since 2003, and I hope you will take a look even if you already have one of the previous editions. Acting theory does not change, of course, but the industry does, and there has been significant evolution since the 2nd edition came out eight years ago. Also, this new edition includes performance analyses of six animated films. I hope you like it and take the opportunity to write on my wall. Click on the image to purchase a copy.

 

October 20th       WBGames, Montreal

November 5th      Indianapolis, Indiana Heartland Truly Moving Pictures

 

MOCAP - LOST IN TRANSLATION

Digital technology was never explained clearly to actors in the first place, which is part of reason we are having a dust-up over whether or not Andy Serkis deserves 100 percent of the credit and a Best Actor Oscar for his mocapped characters. Andy says that the animators for a character like Caesar in The Rise of the Planet of the Apes only "apply digital makeup", and he provides all of the emotional content.

 

I was still a full time actor when I first heard about computer graphics. It was in 1991, and word shot through the halls of Screen Actors Guild that Humphrey Bogart, James Cagny and Louis Armstrong - all long deceased movie stars - were appearing in a new Diet Coke commercial with Elton John. Somebody had found old performances, digitized them and then re-configured the performances in order to sell a soft drink. It was not an insane mental leap to conclude that, if they can create new performances from dead people, it will not be long before all actors everywhere will be expendable. The producers never wanted to pay residuals in the first place, and this kind of digital magic would potentially save them a bundle. SAG went on red alert and began adding language to contracts designed to grab the tail of this tiger. Bruce Willis and other highly-paid stars added clauses to their contracts specifiying what could and could not be done with their digital images after they make their final exit.  

 

Then we actors starting hearing about something called "motion capture". Even the name of it sounded aggressive, like somebody was going to get mugged. There was a lot of coffee shop talk about whether or not we wanted to have our motions captured. Meanwhile, the folks running SAG were not much help because most of them were actors, too. We felt, as a group, sort of like the Navi coming under attack from alien forces. For several years, there was not even a SAG contract for the capturing of motion and, fortunately for us, the video game companies evidently did not realize they needed actors. They were themselves taking turns putting on the rubber suit, or maybe sometimes they would hire a gymnast or dancer to do it.

 

In 1996, I taught acting to my first group of animators and entered a universe I had never seen before. It did not take long before the leading videogame companies began calling, and I saw mocap up close for the first time. Over lunch, I would suggest that maybe actual actors could do a good job moving their motion around and that probably SAG would work to make it happen. "Our lawyers tell us to say totally away from the unions," I was told repeatedly. And so, for a while, the game companies did hire actors, but they were invariably non-union or local amateurs. They got what they were paying for and, one by one, the companies knocked on SAG's door and asked to come in. But still, nobody had sat actors down and calmly explained to them what was happening to the world as they knew it.

 

Then came Gollum and, a couple of years later, Tom Hanks played five different characters in The Polar Express. The Tom Hanks thing came out sort of ugly, with zombie eyes and all, but Gollum was an instant star. Actors started trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Andy Serkis wrote a book relating how he interacted with the digital world, how he learned by doing. Peter Jackson was giving interviews, along with Robert Zemeckis and James Cameron. They were ecstatic about the possibilities of digital acting because it would give the director "total control" of the final performances. Actors shouted in unison, "We are artists, too! We want to have some control over our art!" Zemeckis and Cameron immediately backtracked, explaining that digital was really a good thing for actors because they get to act "just like being in a stage play". Well, in the first place that is not correct and, in the second place, it explained nothing.

 

That is the way things developed, with animators and actors never sitting down to have a beer together, just to talk about things digital. And now we have Andy Serkis demanding sole credit while dissing the animators. Like I said last month, all of this is not helpful. Animators and actors need to communicate better. SAG should maybe start representing animators in addition to actors so they can be under the same umbrella. Regarding the Academy Award debate, the solution is for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to make a new "digital" category. The winners would be actors and animators, both of whom deserve equal credit. 

 

 

Until next month ...

Be safe!