‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Gave Us Performance Capture That Even Aaron Sorkin Could Appreciate

Director Wes Ball’s “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” takes place 300 years after the death of Caesar (Andy Serkis) and the previous “Planet of Apes” trilogy, when humanity lost the wars and Apes ruled the world for generations. With the fourth installment, Ball wanted to push visual effects supervisor Erik Winquist and the Wētā FX performance capture team well past their prior achievements.

The Caesar trilogy featured a mix of human and ape characters, with many apes using sign language to communicate. In “Kingdom,” humans take a back seat with 12 new ape leads that walk-and-talk like Aaron Sorkin characters. Ball also envisioned it as a road film with Noa (Owen Teague) crossing an ever-changing landscape to find his abducted clan.

Dating back to “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011), the franchise always pushed performance capture beyond the soundstage but production still centered around carefully prepped principal exterior sets. “Kingdom,” which jumped between multiple locations, required a more nimble, almost indie-like footprint.

“[The] feel of the movie was very raw and sort of gritty, and not super polished,” said Ball on this week’s episode of the Toolkit podcast, which was originally recorded as part of a panel discussion with Winquist and actor Kevin Durand, at IndieWire’s Future of Filmmaking summit. “It was a challenge, but it was a worthy one.”

The “Planet of the Apes” trilogy utilized performance capture tech outdoors, expanding on the breakthroughs of “Avatar” (2009). However, the demands of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” were built of the back of the 10 years of engineering that went into James Cameron’s sequel, “Avatar: The Way of Water.”

Winquist said one of the biggest advances was going from one to two witness cameras to capture the actors’ performance. This supplied greater fidelity and depth at 48 frames a second and captured “all the little tics and nuances that go on, especially around the mouth.” This, combined with a deep learning facial solver tool developed for post-produciton, allowed the vfx team to adjust to the demands of increased dialogue.

“We also had an extra pair of machine vision cameras that we actually strapped to the motion picture rigs, whether it was steadicamera, crane, and that extra perspective — because now we could regenerate a 3D version of the world — gave us a view into what was going on in front of the camera in a way we’ve never had before,” said Winquist. “That allowed us to go into environments in a way… that didn’t have the infrastructure to allow us to set up a full-blown [motion capture] volume outside, enabling it to take that technology and bring it out into even more remote locations with a smaller footprint and less crew.”

Director Wes Ball on the set of ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’Jasin Boland

Ball, who never worked with performance capture prior to “Kingdom,” was surprised by how much the advances allowed for the spontaneity he prefers as a director. Durand, who plays the film’s villain, Proximus Caesar, was also a performance capture first-timer, and equally impressed.

“We initially thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this helmet with the camera and these Lycra suits with all these bulbs, this is going to be a real problem,’” said Durand. “And then within five minutes, you’re just connecting with your fellow actors in these environments.”

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