The legendary director of Lord of the Rings sits down for a long chat about the motion capture technology in Tin Tin, working with Stephen Spielberg, the possibility of a sequel, returning to Middle-Earth and recreating the magic of his three film legacy.
The Herald Sun got a hold of Jackson, and they certainly got their moneys worth out of him! From the interview:
You brought all the actors down to New Zealand for a kind of motion-capture bootcamp when you began work on The Adventures of Tintin, which you produced with Steven Spielberg directing. Do you think the actors may have felt like you were putting them through some strange initiation ritual?
Well fortunately we had Andy Serkis on the cast and he’s a motion-capture veteran. So he was very helpful in being able to ease his fellow cast-members into the process. But motion-capture acting is not anything other than performance, you’re doing exactly the same thing you would normally do on a film.If anything, it might be akin to more like an experience of acting on stage. Obviously movies, you’re often on location, out in the rain or the sun, in a real place where the trees and the cars are real. But when you’re on stage, as an actor you’re imagining the environment that you’re in. And the motion-capture stage is not really any different to a lot of theatre experiences that actor’s have.
You’re supposed to be standing in the middle of a desert or a Moroccan market-place or a Belgian town, but where you are is on a stage imagining those things. The actors that we had were very experienced and none of them were particularly fazed by it.
It’s an interesting process in the sense you don’t appear as yourself – that’s probably the thing that was amusing them more than anything. Because when you’re doing motion-capture in the system that we use, when you look at a take played back on a screen you’re seeing the animated characters; you’re not seeing a human being, you’re seeing a render of Tintin or Captain Haddock or the Thompson Twins.
So you’ve got Nick Frost and Simon Pegg who are there performing and they go look at the TV monitor to see a take played back and they’re looking at these two Thompson Twins with their bowler hats and their suits (laughs).
So there’s a mental leap to think, ‘That guy who doesn’t look anything like me is actually taking all my movements and all my performance and it’s now appearing in a completely different physical form’. That’s the part of the process that is most unusual, but it’s kind of fun to see.What do you like about motion-capture that you pushed for Tintin to be filmed in that style as opposed to using regular animation or live action?
Well motion-capture gives you, I think, a blend of the two. Not just in the way it looks but the way that you actually shoot it. If you take a regular animated film, that’s being done by animators on computers, so the filmmaking is a fairly technical process. Article Continues BelowTo direct a genuinely animated film you’re really having meetings and discussing what you want with animators who then go off and produce one shot at a time that you look at and comment on.
That’s the experience of directing an animated film. With motion-capture, the experience is much more similar to a live action film where you’re literally able to watch a performance, do multiple takes, see immediate results, discuss scenes with actors who are in front of you.
Yet it’s not live action either, because you’re able to create characters that don’t look anything like real people. And in the case of Tintin we wanted to be able to capture Herge’s original designs. We didn’t want to put people in prosthetics, people with big rubber noses and large heads.
And if it was live action, Steven and I just didn’t think it would feel like Tintin. The DNA of Tintin includes those designs and the look of that world. If you don’t try to replicate the illustration Herge did, you’re missing out on an important part of the essence of Tintin.
So Spielberg was basically able to direct the film as he would have a live action project?
Steven was able to operate the camera himself, because you’re actually filming it on the motion-capture stage _ except it’s a digital process so the camera you’re holding is a virtual camera, it’s a bit like a PlayStation controller. But it is a camera!You can have a wide-angle lens or a zoom lens and get camera angles. So what you’re seeing in Tintin is a fairly direct connection with the film Steven was imagining in his head.
What was it like having a front row seat to watch the Spielberg imagination at work?
It was fantastic. What I saw was someone who hasn’t lost his excitement about making films. Every day that he walked onto set, he was happy to be there. There was no sense of a guy who has such a huge body of work that filmmaking has become a job he has to do.That enthusiasm spreads to the actors, spreads to the crew, it spread to me – it inspired me. I thought, `Wow, this is how you achieve a great film’. Not only have you got the imagination and the skill to make a great film, but your enthusiasm is infectious. It’s his spirit that ends up in the film – that’s why so many of Steven’s films have that degree of fun and excitement.
Can you see your spirit in the films you’ve made?
I don’t know. It’s much easier to look at it in other people’s films than it is in your own. I never overtly analyse my own movies, I don’t think that’s my job to do that. I just muddle through and do what I think is best for the movie.
The conversation ultimately steered towards The Hobbit and how Peter Jackson ended up helming it in place of Guillermo Del Toro.
You’ve been editing the first Hobbit film, An Unexpected Journey over the Christmas break. You originally were not going to direct the films. When the job came back to you, did any part of you not want to take it because you thought you might be stuck in Lord of the Rings territory forever?
Not really. When Guillermo (Del Toro) was working on it I was producing it and working on the script – I was enjoying it, I wasn’t disliking it.I thought it would be interesting to have a different sensibility directing the movie so you’d have somebody else’s version of a Middle Earth story. But by the time Guillermo left and we were wondering what to do, I just thought, ‘Well, I can imagine the version of The Hobbit that I’d like to see’.
It’s not necessarily the film he was going to make, but being part of the production for so long, at that point I’d sort of admitted to myself into the film to such a degree that it was fine to take over, I was completely OK with it.
We’ve got largely the same crew and quite a few of the same cast, so it was a reunion of sorts, which was kind of fun.
It’s become legend how much the actors bonded on The Lord of the Rings. Have you been able to recreate that vibe?
Yeah. Everybody’s gotten to know each other very, very well and the spirit’s great. I just believe when you’re shooting a movie to have the atmosphere on set be friendly, and focused on the work, but have some fun.It’s a long time to be getting up early in the morning and working ’til late at night – and if you’re not enjoying it, you’re not going to make a good film. There has to be a spirit on set amongst the cast and the crew that will ultimately rub off on the screen. We’re having fun.
After three masterpieces, it’s very hard to argue with Peter Jackson! What do you think? Will The Hobbit capture the magic of Lord of the Rings?
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.