Topic: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

I DON'T EVEN KNOW MAN.

The more I think about it, though, the more I'm lining up with Ryan. I think.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

^excuse my lazyness, but is this the one where that tv show maker was asking for suggestions to help build up a following for his/her new show - iirc one way was to have people send in pieces of art work to feature in the show <- though maybe I just dreamt that.  hmm

Jason doesn't teleport.

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Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

No, that's in a couple weeks. smile

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

WHATS WRONG ANDY CIRCUS? CANT GET A REAL ACTING JORB? B CUZ U ARE 2 UGLEEEEE LOL  lol

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Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

Serkis has had a few non Mo-Cap roles. Starring roles too-

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1393020/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465430/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1320239/

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Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

Serkis is awesome in 24 Hour Party People.

Eddie Doty

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Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

Exhibit A

Eddie Doty

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Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

Zarban wrote:

teenage girl inside me.

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l256/gswyers/chris_hansen.jpg

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Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

So Leslie Caron was in Gigi, which was set in France and about French people and stuff and won a bunch of awards. Riding on the coat tails of that, she was also in a movie called Lili, which I highly recommend. It's about a girl who joins the circus and befriends a group of puppets after one of them talks her out of committing suicide. I think that's the one Trey was talking about here, and I can see why it might redefine who was in what union, since a big part of the film is just this girl hanging out with puppets.

Edited to add: Except I looked it up, and Lili was 5 years before Gigi, which messes with the whole timeline I had in my head. Still a good movie about puppets though.

Last edited by TimK (2011-12-16 12:59:18)

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Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

What is the rule for puppeteers? Did Jim Henson ever win an Oscar for performing Kermit the Frog? Because that is some bad-ass shit right there. That's live, one-man, mo-cap with animation. You ever see Kermit do that thing with his mouth, scruchin' it all up and shit? THAT'S HILARIOUS!

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11

Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

Listened to this one for a second time, and I settled somewhere in between Ryan (and half Teague) and The Rest. I differentiate between acting performance, animation, and visual effects, but think that all three can be involved in various amounts to produce a character. The involvement of more than one does not negate the eligibility of the others, in my mind, though the extent to which each is involved can effect whether there is enough of another's involvement to be nominated.

I especially differentiate between acting performance and animation, where performance is done in a somewhat real time environment, where animation is not real time and can be revised. I see them as different and distinct arts. I would also argue that on-set puppetry is closer to acting performance than animation, hence inclusion with SAG. CG puppetry goes with animation.

In cases where an actor provided performance, animators changed the performance, and visual effects artists added the 'make up', the question to me is not whether they're each eligible, but whether their work had enough impact on the final product to warrant nomination. I suppose this could lead to bake-off situations for the acting performance categories, but to take Bryan's screenplay vs. ad-lib example, I suspect you have to show that your screenplay effectively made it to the screen. It's not that strange an idea.

While I'm sure there are cases where the resulting character is 50/50 actor performance and animator animation, I can't see the result getting nominated in both categories, as I doubt there would be enough of either to make the Oscars happy (where best usually = most). If the same person did the performance and the animation then they just covered two arts.

Examples!

Caesar - I would say that there was a lot of performance, very little animation, and a lot of visual effects. Serkis is eligible for performance nomination, the animators for animating, and the visual effects people for the visual effects. I'm not saying that any of those groups deserve nomination, just that they could be if they contributed enough to the result. In this case, the animators would probably not be nomiatable due to their comparatively minor contribution. As far as I'm concerned, whether or not Serkis was involved in the post-production of Caesar is irrelevant to his performance, which was complete when the cameras stopped rolling.

Elephant man - Same deal, with actor providing performance and make-up the 'visual effects'. I don't differentiate between post-production or pre-production visual effects/make-up. I could see a future where algorithms are pre-programmed to add the pixels to an actor's performance on the fly, just like make-up. Whether it was done before or after is irrelevant to me.

Teague's hypothetical crappy actor saved by animators - I could see the animators dragging out before and after and saying 'see, we totally did this and we're awesome'. Pixar would often brag that they had no motion capture involved in their animation. The actor could still be 'eligible' as he did do a performance, but nomination would be unlikely just like an actor cut out of a movie in editing.

Rango - Actors still eligible, as long as they can demonstrate that the actors' performance contributed significantly to the resulting characters.

Totally animated character with voice actor - Movies being a largely visual medium, I think you need some visual aspect to the acting performance to qualify as 'enough performance' for likely nomination. I'm not saying that voice acting isn't a performance, just that it might not be enough (best=most).

Awesome puppet performance - Tricky in cases where multiple people contributed to the performance, but hypothetically possible if they could demonstrate that one person really put the soul into the character on set.

Final note: I suspect there isn't an Oscar for 'best animated character' or even 'best animation' (the art, not the movie genre), which somewhat confuses my argument. I would rather see that category than Teague's suggestion of 'best composite character', and I would definitely rather it to the 'best animated movie' category/ghetto that exists now.

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Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

When Avatar came out, I argued strongly that those actors shouldn't have been eligible for Oscars. But the more I think about it, the more I line up with the opposite side. Serkis was right there on set, acting with his costars. It really isn't different from the Elephant Man example. By the way, Franco recently wrote a piece for Entertainment Weekly explaining why Serkis should be eligible, and I could've sworn that he had listened to this episode beforehand, as he made some of the exact same arguments. I think he even referenced The Elephant Man.

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

TimK wrote:

So Leslie Caron was in Gigi, which was set in France and about French people and stuff and won a bunch of awards. Riding on the coat tails of that, she was also in a movie called Lili... I think that's the one Trey was talking about here, and I can see why it might redefine who was in what union, since a big part of the film is just this girl hanging out with puppets.

You are most probably right. 

Clearly this is Leslie Caron's fault for starring in two movies with such similar titles.

Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/awards-camp … f-the-apes

Here's a clip showing a scene with Serkis on set. Despite hearing about it a lot, I was still a bit surprised at how much of a performance he gave.

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Re: Intermission 014 - Mocap Oscars?

Just got out of WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES.

Yeah. Give Andy Serkis a goddamn Best Actor nomination. Don't get me wrong, he was great in the previous two as well, but his performance in this film is on a whole other level. And that is *his face* on Caesar.

I'm pretty sure Fox will be pushing for this to happen, and I wish them success. (Also, we basically have a lock for this year's Best VFX winner. No other film in the next five months is even gonna come close.)

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