Andy Serkis is best known for his motion capture roles, such as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Kong in King Kong and Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Most recently, Serkis has been brought on board Avengers: Age of Ultron to help the cast with motion capture through his studio Imaginarium. Serkis also has a live action role in the film, with speculation suggesting that he is playing the Black Panther villain Ulysses Klaw, but his main responsibility was working with James Spader and Mark Ruffalo on their motion capture work as Ultron and The Hulk.
“We did some work on Ultron,” Serkis tells Empire with regards to Imaginarium’s involvement with Age of Ultron. “On the development of Ultron before James Spader came on board. In terms of movement styles: was he gonna be human-like? was he gonna be robot-like? So we worked with a bunch of different people, from body-popping experts to dancers, to this guy called Neil who’s nearly eight feet tall.”
He then talked about working with Mark Ruffalo for the Hulk: “We gave Mark weights, we had voice projections so he could do his Hulk roar. On screen we could have a virtual representation of the low-res avatar of The Hulk, so he could come out and feel that sense of scale.”
Serkis went on to say how much fun it is working with the actors behind the camera: “It’s a journey I end up going on with the actors. To find out what they want to get out of it, and and what we can do to help them so it’s still them authoring the role. Initially when you’re asking them to put a grey suit on, they’re not very into the idea. But it’s usually within the first hour, when they can see the result of them being in that suit [on screen] in real-time, they settle in. And then they’ve lost themselves in our world. James in particular – he loved every minute of it.”
Avengers: Age of Ultron is set for release in the UK on April 24th 2015 and North America on May 1st 2015, with Joss Whedon directing a cast that includes Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (The Incredible Hulk), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Don Cheadle (War Machine), Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Paul Bettany (JARVIS / The Vision), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Quicksilver), Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch), Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter), Idris Elba (Heimdall), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), James Spader (Ultron), Thomas Kretschmann (Baron Strucker), and Josh Brolin (Thanos).
Source: CBM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszH_jfuJoo8HCG1-lGjvfH2F&v=IpwsJTteaEY&feature=player_embedded
Originally published November 24, 2014. Updated December 15, 2019.
