3

Much Of A Celebrity Motion Capture Role Isn't Actually Being Performed By That Celebrity

Marvel Studios

In motion capture, it's common for all the physical movement to be done by one actor, while all the dialogue is done by another. It's kind of like having a stunt double for walking across the room.

Marvel Studios
Which is why the main set for Iron Man 3 was Robert Downey Jr.'s recliner.

"For the video game Until Dawn, named actors recorded the facial and voice performances in Los Angeles, while I and other actors recorded the body performances in the UK. This has been called the Frankenstein effect."

The practice first started because of those reflective ball markers that make MoCap artists look like the world's saddest Christmas trees. According to Oliver, they used to be so incredibly hard that "I would frequently wake up the next day with purple circles in key places around my rather sore body."

Microsoft
"Are you sure these are safe?"
"Safe ... ish."

Back in the day, cameras couldn't actually pick up the motion of the balls on their faces (heh) from a distance. So, "You had to repeat your entire performance a second time in a chair, close enough for the cameras to see the tiny markers."

2

Motion Capture Used To Be Widely Disrespected

SNL Studios

Back in its early days, motion capture was the street mime of the movie making industry. Maybe it was the anonymity that kept its actors from attaining any kind of basic respect, maybe it was the physical risks they agreed to take, or maybe it was the costumes that made you look like a new category of sex offender that wasn't yet fully understood. Whatever the reason, Oliver encountered many people who hated it.

Oliver Hollis-Leick
"Pfft, get a real job like fluffer."

1

Motion Capture Roles Are Both Physically And Emotionally Exhausting

Reuben Langdon/Facebook

Motion capture is not for the shy. Lycra -- the spandex-like material that the suits are made out of -- leaves less to the imagination than fanfiction.

"Lycra is not the most comfortable material to wear to work. There's nowhere to hide in a skintight suit, a fact that causes many actors to freeze up when they walk into the studio for the first time. Shy people don't do so well in motion capture. Put a timid person in a Lycra suit and push them out in front of a room full of guys and they tend to get very nervous. Motion capture will pick that up in a heartbeat."

Zoran
Better hope they don't capture any fear boners either.

You can't have Iron Man subconsciously trying to shield his crotch from the other Avengers. If anything, he'd be highlighting it with a shiny new codpiece. But this is an exhausting job, with no time for modesty. That's actually one of the biggest differences between MoCap and other types of acting -- the sheer speed at which they work.

"There are no sets to construct or move around, no lights, very basic furniture and equipment, and MoCap shoots in 360 3D all the time which means you only need one good shot for all your camera angles, all of which makes it incredibly easy to jump from one scene to the next. As a result, you get through a lot of lines in a day. You also need to stay focused while working in warehouses all day without sunlight, spouting numerous lines of dialogue and acting your heart out, while wearing a heavy helmet with a camera attached to it."

Kevin Winter/Getty Images
"GIVE ME MY OSCAR NOM!"

A week's worth of Hollywood-set-acting can be crammed into one day of motion capture, and that's a lot of running around playing professional pretend. It's obviously physically exhausting, but the emotional toll is heavy, too:

"I was working on on the AAA game Homefront: The Revolution. The first week of shoots was doing torture scenes. Me and the other actor basically took turns to act out horrific acts of torture on each other for four days, 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The action was to fill out a vast cityscape of activity that could be viewed by the player depending on how they played. We spent the first morning watching a YouTube video about acts of torture reported by citizens from a particular country and that alone was depressing. It got very uncomfortable and very depressing very fast."

GetMotion Studios
"OK, we gotta watch Charlie Bit My Finger before the next one."

But hey, at least now they have crash pads to collapse on when the depression gets overwhelming.

Oliver Hollis-Leick is an actor specialising in performance capture. He is co-founder of The Mocap Vaults, an organisation set up to teach motion capture to all. Cezary Jan Strusiewicz is a Cracked columnist, interviewer, and editor. Contact him at c.j.strusiewicz@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter.

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