Andy Serkis Explains Why ‘Animal Farm’ Ditched Motion-Capture for Animation

“Animal Farm,” George Orwell’s allegory for how the structures of power corrupt revolutionary idealism, is generally understood to satirize the Soviet slide into authoritarianism across the first half of the 20th century. Only director Andy Serkis has come up with an interpretation broad enough (as a barn, perhaps) to include rap songs, fart jokes, and a dogged refusal to allow evil to triumph over good, or to sit with the harm that corruption does to the innocent, regardless of the end outcome. 

The politics of Serkis’ “Animal Farm” may be as hollow-boned as a bird’s. The film, though, does stand as an interesting experiment — a movie that began its life as a motion-capture project, and ended up turning to animation. “Animal Farm” needed to throw off the shackles of photorealism, it turns out, in order to produce the look it desired. 

Serkis described that look to IndieWire as “a cautionary tale that has a whole heap of innocence around it.” There’s arguably no one better placed to collaborate with VFX artists on a motion-capture performance than Serkis, who’s delivered innocence, cunning, cruelty, longing, and kindness in roles that run from Golum to Caesar to King Kong himself. But he realized that the violence done to the creatures in “Animal Farm” couldn’t be rendered as realistically as it would be through photoreal visual effects. 

“The very early designs for the animal characters were much more unforgiving and brutal. When animals looked like they were starving, you could see their rib cages; the pigs were a lot more gluttonous and just looked meaner. There is a version of that film that could exist,” Serkis said. “But we wanted to reach out to a younger audience.” 

The animated designs definitely create more of a safety margin for viewers of all ages to watch what happens when, after they’ve thrown off the rule of Farmer Jones (Serkis), the pig Napoleon (Seth Rogen) begins co-opting the radical equality preached by Snowball (Laverne Cox), bringing the entire farm with him. Serkis still emphasizes a lot of close-ups throughout, and an animated performance style that approximates the world of motion-capture — how naturalistic human acting choices are translated onto more creature-like faces. 

‘Animal Farm’Courtesy Everett Collection

“I wanted the audience to reach out to the characters and to really feel — when the camera’s pushing in on a character’s face — what they’re going through. And not to feel that the animators had to overperform it, as such. That was a really interesting part of the process,” Serkis said. 

Serkis was very familiar with the animation process from his work directing video games and live-action films with robust VFX needs, like “Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle” and “Venom: The Last Dance.” There’s a lot of overlap between animation and the processes for character design, storyboarding, and previz for a live-action film, or the best uses of Unreal Engine in a game. Where Serkis really dove into new skills was in the worldbuilding that animation requires. 

“You build every blade of grass, every piece of farm machinery, the entire world. What had the most amazing set designer, Amos Sussigan, who was from Anaventure, who was just a brilliant, wonderful collaborator. Then working with the layout team and the story team… creating a scratch track, recording the actors, you’re working at a completely different pace.” 

Animation requires a director to hold a scene in their head, in various stages of completeness, for much longer than in live-action. In the latter, you shoot the pages you plan to film during a day, and the next, you’ve at least got a version of the scene. Perhaps a lot more needs to be built on top of it, and the edit will dictate the final timing, but you have a scene.

‘Animal Farm’Courtesy Everett Collection

 “Getting to the end of a scene on an animated movie can take years because it goes through so many different hands and skills,” Serkis said. “So it was wonderful getting to know all the different departments in the animation team and to work with actors who were animators and be able to direct them in an interesting way.” 

Budgetary concerns, too, can kill a scene while it’s still in the animatic stage, or the previz phase, so the director is killing darlings long before the entire film exists on an editing timeline or reaches a mix stage. But for as long as animation takes to come together, though, it offers incredible freedom to voice actors, and Serkis wanted his cast to take full advantage of that. 

“If someone gives me the freedom to find a performance, I’ll try lots of different things. Standing in front of the mic, not having to reset camera, change lenses, do setups, you know, just being able to go into another round? It’s a great way of working, and it’s a very creative way of working for an actor,” Serkis said.

“Animal Farm” is now in theaters from Angel Studios.