Robert Zemeckis On The Past, Present And Future Of Motion Capture

Celebrities - Tuesday November 3, 2009

The director of A Christmas Carol talks about the film-making technique that's changing the face of Hollywood...

Source: Screenrush

You're working primarily in the field of motion-capture these days, what is it about the process that so interests you?

"What attracts me is that I have more control making a movie than I ever had before with live-action. I'm able to maintain performances by actors, which is where I think the magic comes from, and you get to turn the actors loose without any restrictions. They are completely unencumbered as you don't actually have to photograph them. They can do whatever they want to do and then I can simulate them later with complete control. For me, it's a dream come true."


Did you decide to make A Christmas Carol with mo-cap because it really gave you the chance to authentically recreate Charles Dickens' grotesque characters?

"Usually you'd have to put heavy rubber appliances of actors' faces to get the same effect. If you look at these movies where they have to wear heavy facial prosthesis, the life of the character is taken away. The only thing you can do to a human actor is to put something on top of them and bulk them up. What we were able to do with Scrooge was to give him an incredibly thin neck and bend his body and deform his legs a little bit. We were able to stylise him in a way that Mr Dickens described him in the original book while at the same time as having Jim's [Carrey] performance drive the character."


When did you realise that motion capture would be a viable tool for movie-making?

"Well, motion capture was invented by the medical profession to study the range of human motion and it was then perfected by the golfing industry. It was then adapted by the video-game industry and it's now being used in movies. I realised that, when I was introduced to the process in the lead up to making The Polar Express, that this certainly could be the way to really make the most of digital cinema by working in this digital world."


How do actors generally react to the process?

"At the beginning they're very sceptical because it's very hard to wrap your head around the idea that you're working in this way, there are no cameras, there are no lenses and it's very hard for people to understand. But then after the first 30 minutes of working, they're completely freed up and liberated and every one of them says they love working with the medium because they just get to act all day long."


As shown with A Christmas Carol, there are virtually no limits to what you can do with the technology. Where do you see it going in the future?

"You know, what's really exciting is that I have no idea. What we're doing now is very much in the infancy of this art form and I just know that it's going to become more powerful and it's going to become cheaper and it's going to be boundless. What it's really going to become is a way of writing with images, everything's going to go right back to the core of what storytelling is all about."


A Christmas Carol finds you reuniting with Bob Hoskins, your old mucker from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. With mo-cap technology now so advanced, will you finally be making the long-mooted sequel?

"You know, we have to see if a good screenplay is developed and if it's going to be something faithful to the original, we really don't know until we see where it goes. The technology of motion capture will really allow us to enhance a lot of things but I wouldn't use it to do the animation. I wouldn't dimensionalise Roger or Jessica... Jessica can't be dimensionalised anyway because she doesn't have a nose!"

Glen Ferris

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