The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, the new challenges of CGI and performance capture

What is most surprising about The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apesat the cinema fromMay 8this what is no longer surprising: pardon the pun, but the digital effects of the film, made in performance capture, CGI And taken from lifethey aim precisely at realism and to no longer be noticed. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a huge amount of work behind it and it’s much less automated than you might think: we chatted about it with the WETA in this’interviewand we did it with three Italian visual effects technicians and artistswho has been working in the famous company since time immemorial.

The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, the interview with Emiliano Padovani, Alessandro Saponi and Giuseppe Tagliavini

The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes takes place centuries after the end of the past trilogy with protagonist Caesarthis time focusing on the young monkey Noa and on his attempt to oppose a dictatorial tribe that goes beyond Caesar’s own teachings. It will be the case of trust the few remaining humans, on the planet dominated by primates? We discussed the refined technology that fuels and supports the film, in the company of Emiliano Padovani (Look Dev Supervisor), Alessandro Saponi (CG Supervisor) e Giuseppe Tagliavini (Compositing Supervisor). Three tasks for WETA to create on the screen that puzzle of elements that must give life to theperfect illusion.

We tend to I take these visual effects a bit for granted now, we also got used to it as spectators. But I’m sure they are there new challenges, even when a technology is now proven and you have used it a lot. Were there any new challenges in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes?

At least in the field we work in, anyway every project brings with it a minimum of challenges from a technological point of view. In this case for us it came from one previous trilogyin which we knew how to create characters, but we saw immediately from the beginning of this film that the level of interaction with certain elements, especially water, floods etc. etc., it would have been something that had not been addressed before. That was a considerable challenge for us, if you want to put it that way: the idea of ​​having such a large amount of characters that have to interact with the fluid dynamics of a flood, and being not only coherent but also plausible, was certainly a… source of interest at the beginning. And then there are a whole series of problems that have more to do with the creative or artistic part. The fact that this film belonged to a certain world, but also had to distance itself from it, because it is set a few centuries later… there was a whole series of considerations to make in order to avoid referring too much to previous sagas. Winking at what had come before, but also showing that they are different characters, that there is a different environmental situation and so on.

Speaking of characters, how have you realism calibrated? It is clear that the characters must remember actual monkeys’ movements, in the way they move. But apart from the fact that they speak – and this is clearly an imaginative element – you have made some concessions, some break with realism?

In the actual appearance of the monkeys we nevertheless tried to be truly close to the image we have of the monkeyhowever introducing more human elements. The eyes are not the eyes of a monkey, for example. In reality, in my opinion, you don’t need much. The moment you introduce just one or two elements, which in any case are far from the image you have of a gorilla, for example, that is enough to change the point of view a little. You see that he’s a gorilla, but there’s something that makes him a little different. Let’s say that from a look point of view it’s a bit of a balancing act. But there’s no need to go too far. Why the smallest details are usually the ones that we consciously or unconsciously perceive the most.
Since the first film of the new Planet of Apes franchise the apes were evolving, in the first film perhaps the only word Cesar said was “No”. In the second film they talked, then moved on to sign languagethey began to have a certain vocabulary, but they were still very monkey-like in their movements and little by little there was this evolution. In this film we are considering that there have been several – no one knows how many – generations, a hundred years or more. These monkeys also had their time build their own companyOf build their own language. Also to evolve, I’m not saying become more human, but maybe a little more evolved like monkeys. This here is, if you like, also a narrative device. When we humans watch these apes we are not watching a documentary, we are watching characters who act and involve us. We are involved in characters who have a certain depth, who convey human emotions to us. I happened to recently review a old render that we had made for one of the old films: it was a real monkey, absolutely realistic. But then they told us: what do we do to ourselves, what do we tell ourselves? With this we can make a beautiful documentary, but there is no narration in that specific look. In the first movieat the beginning, when the monkeys are captured in the jungle, the eyes are the real eyes of a monkeyall digital, yes, but they are real monkeys.

In this regard I wanted to ask, regarding the natural settings, and there are so many in the film, how much is true? How much was actually shot on location and how much was recreated in CGI?

We can’t tell you an exact percentage, but there’s a lot of footage and a lot of CG. Many times there is a completely physical environment on the set, but there is only a minimal CG extension, other times there is a very small part of the set and a lot of CGI extensions. And that’s where the difficulty lies. We tried to confuse peopleit’s a little game: What is real and what is fake? In short, we had so many references, so much filmed in settings that weren’t used, but were used as reference for light and materials. So the CG also starts from one totally realistic base.

Do you happen to have a direct relationship with the actors, because it makes me think that in this case the visual effect is really also very connected to the interpretation. We start from one performance capture, no? Whoever acts really has to understand visual effects, perhaps more than in other circumstances. Did you help the cast with the necessary explanations?

This is a work that is mainly done on setthe role of the effects supervisor was important in this case, because most of the actors were shooting on set with performance capture suitsso there it becomes important that not only the director can give input regarding what he wants, but that there is also a specific person. One of our supervisors present there explaining from technical and logistical point of view what should and should NOT be done to make the computer graphics that we will put on it work.

In terms of final compositing, there are some sequences that already give me a headache as a spectator, I imagine those in which monkeys fight with a human. Because at that point the performance capture actually needs to be canceled to insert the monkey into this tangle, into the fight. How do you behave in those cases? I guess it requires a a lot of time.

Oh yes, the answer is yes. And then they say that computers do everything! After many years that we started, with the Lord of the Rings we practically had the character on set and he was removed, we also learned a little about how to shoot these scenes on setwe can also shoot the environment, so this helps us to remove the characters [coprendo i buchi che si creano con l’ambiente vuoto ripreso a parte, ndr]. When they fight with one real personmany times in that case monkeys are bigger than a personwe have an advantage with CG, however removing performance capture is not an easy thing.
There are also cases where the actor he’s not actually the actor [ma un render, ndr].
They are also difficult decisions to make beforehand, because in the end then when you work on the framing you understand what the specific problems are, so like: ah, here I need a render of a hand. To try to integrate everything in the best possible way.

In removing the performance capture part, I imagine that gods are created holes, no? These these holes are covered manually or for example also make use of motion control? [un sistema di ripresa che memorizza i movimenti di macchina eseguiti a mano e li ripete uguali in automatico: utile per creare una ripresa gemella ma vuota dell’ambiente, dopo aver girato la scena con attori o elementi da rimuovere, ndr]

It’s not always done with motion control, there are technologies that can be used for tracking on performance capture. Many times then, since we have to addlet’s do a first testfor example with the animation of the monkey and with the volume of the fur, and we understand that maybe we don’t need to clean everything, we only need to clean a foot, a leg, a bit of the arm where it moves. We are lucky that monkeys are more abundant than a human, sometimes you just cover what overflows. The rest then comes covered by simple compositing, with the monkey on top. I don’t know if there were things done with Motion Control, maybe not.

As a last question I wanted to ask you what it was, if there are no spoilers, the most complicated sequence for you to makein which you said: we’re having a tough time here!

We are from three different departments, each had its own. In the past we had kind of worked on Avatarson the water simulationand in other films we have worked on monkeys and furry creatures simulation. In Avatar we had interaction between water and hair, but here… here we took it to its maximum, we had to put the two things together: simulation of fluids and simulation of furry creatures even with long hair, like orangutans. This hair must interact with the water, to find the best possible realism. And first of all it requires reference material which is not so easy to find or to turn around, We can’t throw the monkey into the water to see what happens! We have to try to imagine it a little, try to simulate it, use other references to find out what happens, combining things that we had done separately on other projects. Here we had to do them all together!