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  • “Planet of the Apes” Sequel Contains Scenes That Were Directed Over Skype

    Technology

    07.11.2014 | |

    Can lightning strike twice? That’s the hope of 20th Century Fox, as Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is now playing…and hoping for a huge weekend at the box office. It’s the sequel to 2011’s fantastic Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and it’s already garnering fantastic reviews as a worthy successor to the imaginative “Apes” reboot. The New York Daily News has already proclaimed that Andy Serkis, who plays lead ape Caesar in the film — and is best known as “Gollum” from the Lord of the Rings franchise — deserves to be nominated for an Academy Award for his role here. That’s quite flattering when you consider that Serkis plays a motion-capture digital character.

    Speaking of the film’s impressive technology, director Matt Reeves revealed an interesting tid-bit about the movie during an interview with SlashFilm: he actually directed several of the film’s scenes over Skype! This may be a movie first. Here’s how Reeves describes one scene done with Serkis via remote:

    “So we did a thing where Andy was in London and he was at [his performance capture studio] the Imaginarium. And we hooked up via Skype and I looked at a big plasma and I talked him through what was going on in that last sequence as he’s coming down those steps. And we basically did it over Skype.”

    And that wasn’t the only instance in which Skype was used. Reeves says he used it to re-film some previously shot scenes when his actors were in different countries:

    “Jason Clarke was in Rome shooting this Everest movie and he was in a hotel room after a day’s shooting. And we were on the Volume [in Manhattan Beach California] and he was performing the new version of the scene to Andy who was in a fluorescent room and he was on Skype. And they played off of Skype and then a few weeks later I went back and shot, I got Jason here in L.A. and I shot him and Keri Russell against greenscreen. And then I had Andy over Skype and they played to Andy on Skype.”

    Pretty impressive stuff, and more evidence that the entire business of making films is changing every day on a dime.

    While you’re gearing up to head to the cinema this weekend, here’s some more technobabble to consider, courtesy of Forbes:

    With ‘Planet Of The Apes,’ Do We Still Need Actors?


    Matt Fox

    Senior Editor

    Fox has history in broadcasting that spans two decades. From his early days as an FM host and club DJ in the mid-90′s to his later experiences in political talk radio, he has always had a knack for combining topical news with his love for popular culture. Those experiences culminated in his position as executive producer for several radio shows featured in the TALKERS Heavy 100. Originally from New York, Fox has made the great pilgrimage down to sunny south Florida.

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