Movies

Watch WETA's Live Stream Chat About 'Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes' [UPDATED]

By Germain Lussier

UPDATE: The 15 second tease that premiered at the end of this webcast is now embedded after the jump

Earlier this week, 20th Century Fox and WETA Digital revealed a first look at one of the performance-captured apes from Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, scheduled for release August 5. The extremely brief video gave audiences a good idea of what to expect from the work done on the film by the effects house behind Avatar and The Lord of the Rings. There are no actors in ape costumes in this film; all of the apes in this prequel to Planet of the Apes were captured via performance capture on set and will not speak. (All communication is non-verbal.)

How did they go about crafting such an achievement? Will it work? At 2:30 p.m. PST Wednesday WETA hosted a LiveStream event on Facebook where fans were able to ask questions of WETA's Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Joe Letteri and Caesar himself, Andy Serkis. They showed some new footage and provided a whole bunch of tidbits ultimately revealing that the trailer would hit the net on Thursday.

After the jump, we've got the embed of the event for your viewing pleasure as well as some bullet points of information that was revealed.

UPDATE: Here's the tease of the trailer that premieres on Thursday.

Watch the Livestream event on the Apes Will Rise Facebook page, or right here. Below, we've got your bullet-pointed highlights.

apeswillrise on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Here are several bits of information that were revealed during the 30 minute live chat.

  • The chat began with a quick montage of footage from the movie including some huge action scenes, laboratory scenes and concept art.
  • The visual effects in this film are a direct extension of Avatar but this is the first time motion capture was performed in sunlight.
  • The character of Caesar has a huge arc, from completely innocent to revolutionary and to enhance the performance that Andy Serkis gave on set, they referenced a lot of real life chimpanzees.
  • They looped two shots from the movie that were both longer than the 4 second clip revealed earlier this week. One showed Caesar playing with a container then being startled and the other showed him opening some kind of freezer then looking through the window. Each was shown in three layers with the final layer being the final shot. It looks very impressive and realistic.
  • Serkis is still doing ADR for the movie, which is mostly just chimp noises. However, this is very important because he communicates non-verbally so the grunts and screams have to be expressive and specific.
  • Playing Caesar was totally different from playing King Kong, mostly because of the emotional range of the characters.
  • Though it's a huge special effects film, because of the story and real world setting, it won't feel like that, it'll feel more "domestic."
  • The motion capture was captured on a live set, further blurring the line between visual effects films and live action films. A movie like this is one in the same with real actors interacting with motion capture actors on a live set, in real time, even outdoors.
  • Caesar doesn't meet another ape until well into the movie.
  • In addition to Caesar, Serkis did the movements for several of the other minor apes in the movie.

    • Then, to end, host Dan Jolin of Empire showed a three shot tease of the trailer.

    All in all, a pretty interesting event that will be worth a watch if you have the time. Look for more Rise of the Planet of the Apes coverage real soon here on /Film.

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