Paul Yates went from being an extra on Avatar to a new adventure in faceless behind-the-scenes acting for one of the biggest movie directors in Hollywood.
If you call yourself a film nerd or you’re one of those people who likes to bore others senseless with your knowledge of modern technology, you’ll know that “mocap” stands for motion capture. It’s one of those pointlessly shortened phrases or acronyms that Americans, in particular, prefer to adopt, like saying “asap” as a word because it’s so difficult to say “as soon as possible”.
Mocap is a relatively new film-making tool that if not invented in New Zealand was certainly perfected here by those amazing computer boffins, or compboffs, at Weta Digital. Basically, it involves wearing an embarrassingly tight suit covered with luminous dots. A computer can see these dots and paint a character over the top of the actor that moves as he or she does in real time. It captures actors’ motion, or “mocaps” them.
Just over a year ago, I was among a bunch of local actors asked to don these suits to test some new scenes for The Adventures of Tintin. We were directed by none other than Sir Peter Jackson, the film’s producer. I got to play Captain Haddock, which was a delight because I’d recently been reading the Tintin books to my youngest son. I always read in character, and I’d given Haddock a piratey South of England accent – “Ooo arrrr, billions of blue blistering barnacles!” – but I was fascinated to learn that Andy Serkis was playing him with a deep Scottish accent. “Och aye the noo, Tenten!”
It takes a while to get used to this kind of performing – there are no real sets, just the odd set element if needed, with chairs to sit on and platforms to stand on if you need to be up higher. But on big TV screens all around the motion-capture studio, you can see yourself as the character in a three-dimensional set. As Haddock, I had the beard, the girth, the captain’s hat all rendered in an Xbox game-quality environment. The beauty of this is the fact you can change characters and sets in the blink of an eye. No boringly long set and wardrobe changes like you get on a “real” film.
A few weeks later, I was invited back to help film (record? capture?) these new scenes for real. I arrived, wondering who the director was going to be. By now Jackson was busy filming The Hobbit, so I assumed it would be the animation director. But I noticed a nervousness in the crew. A sound-recordist friend told me today’s director would be a certain chap by the name of Spielberg.
I’m about to take direction from Steven Spielberg! I feel silly. I’m just a naff part-time comedy actor from Lower Hutt. My mate tells me they had a production meeting with Spielberg that morning where he actually said, “Did you get that Paul Yates guy?” Maybe they’d mixed up the names? I won’t tell them.
We also learnt we would be doing scenes with Serkis and the movie’s star, Jamie Bell – Billy Elliot himself. By “we” I mean actors Gavin Rutherford, Craig Hall, Paul Harrap and me. We all went into “makeup”. As well as motion capture for these scenes, we were doing performance capture (perfcap?), which involves putting little dots all over your face, then being fitted with helmets with a camera that points back at your face to pick up your facial performance. We all look like deep-sea divers with a bad case of measles.
Finally, we got to meet Mr Spielberg, who was directing via “superskype” from his office in Hollywood. He looked exactly as you’d expect, right down to the little specs and trademark baseball cap. I’m wearing a microphone and have a camera right in my face, so I resist the urge to say, “Oh my God, that’s Steven Spielberg!” It’s like meeting a movie god, but framed on the big screen, he looks and acts more like a kid in a candy-store window.
As well as evil henchmen, swashbuckling pirates and Middle Eastern traders, Gavin and I got to play the iconic Thompson twins. Not the dodgy pop band from the 80s but the almost identical bowler-hatted detectives from the Tintin books. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost play them in the film, but they were unavailable for the reshoots, so Gavin and I effectively became their stunt doubles for several scenes. Spielberg was right in our ear and looming over us on the screen, directing our every move. The word “surreal” doesn’t even cover it.
At one point we were doing a scene as the twins in which a pickpocket knocks over an old lady behind us. Steven (I can call him Steven now) said, “How ’bout some guy helps up the old lady and as he pats her down, he touches her ass. She’s so incensed she smacks him in the face. That’d be funny, right?”
No one dared disagree. It’s Steven Spielberg. But it is funny. And he said “ass”. At one point he called Gavin and me over and said, “I love the stuff you guys are doing, it’s just great.” Steven Spielberg just said he loves what we’re doing!
There were so many things I’d like to have said in return: how ET was the last movie I ever saw with my father and the first time I ever saw him cry; how I couldn’t even take a bath after seeing Jaws; how Schindler’s List made me weep. But all I can say is … “Thank you, Steven. This is fun.” Hopefully he could tell by my tone that I was implying all those feelings about his movies.
The other actors were similarly dumbstruck. During a take, Spielberg told Hall he wanted to audition him for a role in a big TV series he’s producing. Craig could only say, “Wow. Thank you … this is weird.” Spielberg cracked back, “Yeah, it’s weird for me, too, Craig.” It was weird for all of us.
Working with Bell and Serkis was also a pleasure. Jamie is a fairly jokey young Geordie chap, but when the camera was on, he became the earnest young boy reporter. Andy was a joy to watch, and clearly relished playing Captain Haddock as a drunken Scotsman. I hope his Gollum in The Hobbit doesn’t lapse into Scottish. “Noobodeh takes muh preshusss!”
So, after days of shooting, where grown men in silly suits got to shoot virtual guns, perform car chases and sword fights and generally play silly buggers in an empty room, Spielberg finally called it a wrap.
“Thank you all so much for your work. I’m so happy with what you’ve all done. I’m just off to a breast cancer fund-raising dinner in Hollywood, then I’m going to my holiday home in Martinique for the weekend.” As you do.
I went back to my small house in Lower Hutt and ate fish and chips with my kids.
Check out The Adventures of Tintin if you haven’t already and see for yourself how real this performance capture can look. It’s also a bloody good film, made for the most part in little old Wellington.
Paul Yates is a writer and occasional actor, although he chooses only to work with big-name Hollywood directors.