It's been awhile, but in July of last year motion-capture genius Andy Serkis began to discuss the possibility of using the technique in an adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm. At the time we didn't know much about it, and Serkis' Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt was said to be involved. Now it looks like Serkis will handle the job himself, making it his directorial debut.
Of course it will be motion-capture at its core, working through his London-based studio known as The Imaginarium. Serkis has been cutting his teeth working Second Unit direction on Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy, in which he'll also reprise his role as Gollum. Clearly this is something he's been working towards for a long time, and I'm excited to see where this career path takes him. We don't want him to turn into Robert Zemeckis or anything, do we?
An allegory of Stalin's rise to power, Animal Farm tells the story of a group of farm animals who rise up against their human owners. As for how Serkis plans to use performance capture in recreating the book....
Serkis: “I think we found a rather fresh way of looking at it. It is definitely using performance capture but we are using an amalgamation of filming styles to create the environments. We are in proof of concept stage at the moment, designing characters and experimenting on our stage with the designs. It is quite a wide canvas at the moment as to how much and how far we can take performance capture with quadrupeds and how much we will be using facial [capture]. We are not discounting the use of keyframe animation or puppeteering parts of animals. We are in an experimental phase; it’s terribly exciting.”
The plan is to keep it family-friendly, and not go overboard with the heavy political themes, which I personally find disappointing. Anyway, Serkis plans on directing many of The Imaginarium's future projects, including an adaptation of The Bone Season and a future mystery project. [THR]
