What was the first movie to use motion capture?
If you’ve heard of motion capture, you’ve probably heard of Andy Serkis. The British actor has been synonymous with the technique ever since he played Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. However, the process has been around much longer.
Motion capture involves capturing the physical movement of actors and turning it into a digitised format to create animated characters. For example, Serkis performed the role of Gollum, diving into rivers, speaking the lines, and interacting with the other actors, but once his movements were animated to look like an ancient hobbit from Middle Earth, he himself became invisible.
Serkis is the first motion capture performer to become a household name, at least among cinephiles, and his craft remains a criminally underappreciated form of acting. The actors were dismissed for a while as nothing more than mannequins. Now, however, motion capture performing is more widely viewed as an art form in itself.
The earliest version of motion capture for movies was rotoscoping, in which an actor is filmed and an animator draws over their movement frame by frame. The technique began in the 1910s and was used in movies like 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Now that most animation is created digitally, most rotoscoping is done with a computer rather than by human artists. Richard Linklater used the technique to make the full-length feature films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly in 2001 and 2006, respectively.
The most common type of motion capture, where actors wear tight onesies covered in little dots, has only been around since the 1990s. The video game industry was ahead of Hollywood on this one, but in 1995, special effects artist John Dykstra decided to use it for the film Batman Forever. You won’t see a Gollum-style transformation of an actor into a digital character, though. The technique was only used to make a digital double of Val Kilmer so that Batman’s stunts would look more seamless.
What was the first main character made with motion capture?
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Star Wars franchise. It was a pioneer in special effects from the beginning, but was happy to adopt preexisting techniques sometimes, too. Some of the early films in the series used rotoscoping alongside all the flashy, never-before-seen CGI. But in 1999, it managed to be both an adopter of an older technique and a trailblazer.
The Phantom Menace (or Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace if you want to be pedantic about it) is not a great film, but it was the first feature-length movie to use motion capture for one of its primary cast members. George Lucas was behind James Cameron and Ridley Scott in the use of the technique, but he made up for the delay by presenting us with one of the most annoying characters in the history of cinema. It is a high bar, but Lucas is nothing if not an overachiever.
Jar Jar Binks is a Gungan outcast played by Ahmed Best who becomes a wisecracking sidekick to Liam Neeson’s Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn. Lucas was accused of peddling racist stereotypes with the character, and it pretty much killed any chance that Best had at a film career. But, on the positive side, it was a groundbreaking moment for cinema, so, on balance, some people might think it was worth it. If you’re one of them, you have earned the discomfort of watching this clip.
