Motion-capture technology is being advanced by an increasing number of studios and directors. A significant non–Weta milestone was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), which used motion capture to meld digitally aged versions of Brad Pitt’s face with other actors’ bodies. Woody Schultz, who played multiple characters in Avatar and formed a committee on performance capture at the Screen Actors Guild, calls the technique a “go-to” for horror and sci-fi flicks. Savvy users are pushing it into new media too: Schultz is pitching a weekly talk show with a live performance-capture host and cites live theater as the next frontier.
According to Serkis, some purists think performance-capture acting isn’t equal to the real thing. He disagrees. “Acting is acting,” Serkis says. “It’s really a matter of how the character is clothed and made up. One is before the fact, and one is after the fact.” Still, a typical costume-and-makeup regimen isn’t nearly as elaborate as the techniques behind the digital characters in The Hobbit. For Tolkien beings like Gollum, motion capture without a talented animator is like a soul without a body. “Everything you take for granted in the real world, we have to think about and create,” Letteri says. Given what the industry has created so far, the tests of motion capture’s limits are likely just beginning.