While this technology is impressive, the debate about whether it’s acting continues. So much enhancement happens beyond what the actor does I’m not sure if it is. However, should the Academy embrace what’s coming next they might have separate categories for such things.
As it stands now, this movie and others like it have just the tech categories to be represented in as they’re never make the leap to the majors, most of the time anyway.
It definitely is acting. Serkis should’ve been more considered for playing Caesar and Gollum, at least in the 2nd LOTR movies. For my money Scarlett Johannson should’ve gotten a nomination for Her, even though that was voiceover and not performance capture.
I’m still just astonished that people don’t think this is acting. It is absolutely, unequivocally, 100% acting. The reason why motion capture exists in the first place is because a computer can’t mimic the subtleties of the human face so you need real actors ACTING
From this, it looks as though they have to do quite a bit of acting. If they put them in an ape costume and they were amazing, then they would be eligible (Or maybe they only count it when you have a prosthetic nose)? Al Pacino was nominated for Dick Tracy and John Hurt for the Elephant Man – he looked like John Hurt as much as Caesar looks like Andy Serkis (I know, I’m stretching a bit – John Hurt was perfection in that movie). But realistically a separate category like you say might be the answer. Include animated voices in that category. Doesn’t BAFTA already do that? I sort of have this memory that they nominated Eddie Murphy for Donkey in Shrek.
This stuff is very cool. I think that would actually be a lot of fun to work in that kind of environment. I wonder though if their faces get tired from all the expressions they have to make?