YES

It’s not easy being blue.

Just ask Zoe Saldana during the 2009-10 Oscar season. Though some called her performance as the warrior Neytiri in Avatar deserving of a nomination, others scoffed at the idea of giving an award to an actress whose real face was hidden behind a layer of computer-generated effects.

There is a school of thought that believes no matter how amazing her performance was, using all that CG gloss is akin to using steroids to enhance athletic ability. These people probably want to put an asterisk next to the box-office gross of films such as Avatar.

There seems to be an unjustified stigma surrounding the merits of performance-capture technology as a legitimate acting medium. It’s understandable, as ethical standards in this area vary from profession to profession. Athletes caught using performance-enhancing drugs are often labeled cheaters and have their achievements questioned.

But here is where that analogy falters: Whereas steroids can turn a skinny baseball player into an muscle-bulging beast, motion-capture cannot turn a bad actor into the next Jack Nicholson or Meryl Streep. All it can do is add an extra dimension to a performance. It breaks boundaries limited by, well, reality.

How else could Saldana convincingly play a blue 10-foot-tall blue-alien cat-woman? Or how else could Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Bill Nighy make Davy Jones — a tentacle-bearded monster — seem believable?

It isn’t like Oscar-nominated actors have never had their performances aided by special effects.  Brad Pitt earned a nod from the Academy for his work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which he plays a backward-aging man, shifting from a bespectacled senior citizen to an infant. But if the aging effects the movie employed had not been up to par, would his overall performance have been as successful? Even if Pitt acted his heart out, his efforts would have been ridiculed if he did not have a little CG polish to complement his talent.

Performance capture still has yet to be perfected. Anyone who saw Polar Express remembers Tom Hanks’ vacant zombie-like stare, a prime example of a phenomenon called the uncanny valley. Hanks’ conductor sounded, looked and acted human, but there was something slightly off about him that made the audience think he was hungry for its brains.

Actors such as Andy Serkis and movies such as the upcoming Steven Spielberg-Peter Jackson collaboration The Adventures of Tintin are trying to solve this problem and put performance-capture acting on the awards map. Serkis is best known for portraying Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong in Jackson’s film of the same name, and hopefully he will receive an Academy Award nomination for his performance as the ape Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Besides, Sharon Stone can say she is an Oscar-nominated actress. Why can’t a giant Smurf-colored woman get to say that, too? — Joshua Axelrod

diversions@umdbk.com

NO

Andy Serkis’ performance as Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes is, perhaps, the unqualified success of the summer. Critics and audiences alike have been bowled over by Caesar’s soulful eyes and endearing chimp laugh.

In fact, the entire cast of motion-captured apes in Rise is impressive, especially relative to previous efforts. But are they worthy of traditional acting nominations? Hardly. The issue at hand is that the performances featured in the film are not representative of the actors’ prowess and ability.

Motion capture is as the name implies: Movements from the actors are captured (by cameras tracking the motion of colored dots) and then interpreted to animate digital objects.

Through the development of movies such as Avatar and A Christmas Carol, motion-capture technology was also able to capture and convert facial movements. These movies spurred the question of awards consideration.

Moviegoers moved by these performances unabashedly shouted, “yes!” and argued motion capture is simply another tool in an actor’s arsenal, like makeup or costuming.

But motion capture is not the same as makeup or costuming. It doesn’t translate an actor’s performance one-to-one onto a digital creation.

Imagine if the apes in Rise were actually animated to move exactly the same way Serkis and cast did on a soundstage. Yeah, not so great.

Instead, motion capture provides data for animators and computer modelers to use to create these believable and charismatic beings.

They have to map these muscle movements to the muscles in the ape model, in the process digitally tweaking the captured performances.

Remember, they’re animators — the same kind of folks responsible for Pixar’s animated films. The data from the motion-capture process is just that, data. The director doesn’t point a gun at their heads and demand one-to-one performance translation.

We have no idea how accurately or faithfully the effects wizards at

Weta Workshop translated Serkis’ work onto Caesar and how much of Caesar’s likability is Weta’s doing.

As far as enjoying a film or, even, evaluating a film, that’s fine. I, as a reviewer of the movie, don’t particularly care whether Caesar’s amazingly emotive eyes were thanks to Serkis or thanks to Weta.

By all means, give Serkis and company a special technical achievement award. But comparing motion-captured performances to the performances entirely rendered by a single actor would be a disservice to traditional actors and to motion-capture effects teams.

The Oscars are not about evaluating or meaningfully talking about films; they’re about recognizing the hard work put forth while making a film.

The Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor recognizes the work of an actor, not the effects team. The Academy Award for Best Visual Effects is too broad, and it doesn’t properly acknowledge the superlative work of the animators, Serkis’ performance and the more lackluster quality of the other effects work.

Caesar, the stunning end product of a complicated digital workflow, is intrinsically tied to both the crew and Serkis, and giving them separate awards for this feat fails to recognize their joining of the hips at birth.

And if you’re still pining for a Serkis nomination, think of it this way: If Serkis winds up walking the stage on Oscar night, we’ll have to sit through the longest thank-you speech ever. — Warren Zhang

diversions@umdbk.com,

chzhang@umdbk.com