William Friedkin Quotes

I have a sneaking suspicion that if there were a way to make movies without actors, George Lucas would do it.

The nature of motion capture is only going to work for certain films. It's not going to put any other type of movies out of business.

I learned a lot doing 'Wolverine,' and I was also very fortunate, in the sense that I got to do a huge number of visual effects shots.

With 'Avatar,' you're beginning to see the need for less and less actors and less of an appreciation for live acting.

Motion capture has become very specialized but also still just a tool of filmmaking.

I read about some movie where they did everything on blue screen, and the actors were not even connecting to each other.

When I first did 'The Lord of the Rings,' I was acting on the set with the other actors, but then I had to go back and repeat the process on my own to do the physical capture on a motion capture stage.

When I played Gollum in 'Lord of the Rings,' if I was climbing up the side of a mountain, which I physically did, you know, I was on every single occasion swimming through streams, all of that, that wasn't captured. That was filmed on 35 millimeter, and for certain of those shots, it was rotoscoped and painted over.

I mean I've seen 3D films so far and I think it's a long way to go before they replace actors. It's a funny thing with 3D, I haven't quite got it yet. Yet.

Performance capture is a tool that young actors will need in the next 10, 20 years. It's on the increase, as you say. It's not going away.

I wouldn't want to do a whole movie with effects.

I think filmmakers in general are, as the tools become more and more advanced, you're able to tell stories in a way that I think is more realistic. The technology just wasn't there up until pretty recently, and it takes a bit of time for the normal artistic way of approaching something to become a mainstream thing.

3D is quite a lot more advanced in animated movies; for live-action movies we're just taking baby steps, we're just in the beginning.

Unless you're making Marvel movies, I think CGI usually suffers, especially in mid-budget-range horror movies where you see CGI.

Every film that comes out that incorporates CGI or performance capture is a little bit ahead of the last film that came out. You're on the cutting edge for a certain amount of time, and then the new technology comes out.

Of course you're nervous, but we're really excited to be able to share what we're going to share. And it's cool, because what we're going to be doing, I think for fans especially, we think is really cool, because part of the process that most people don't ever get to see [is] that before these movies are movies starring photo-real apes, they're movies starring the image of Andy Serkis and the other actors, who are playing apes.

'King Kong,' especially the first two acts of it, is a really good example of the use of miniatures mixed with digital characters and how convincing it was.

All the time that I'm acting with an animated character, I'm looking at a tennis ball or sticky tape or an eyeline or a man in a green suit. There's no real environment, just this electric green that's blaring into your brain.

'Mars Needs Moms' was motion capture, where you walk into a space that's essentially a black box with cameras everywhere. It was so technical. You have these mandibles with cameras on your face and a helmet, and you have to hit certain marks. You couldn't shoot this stuff without the green-screen aspect.

The great thing about computer animation is that all of those environments exist as three-dimensional worlds, so these VR worlds already exist.

We have an amazing team at ILM who can create fantastic effects.

I don't have anything against CGI.

I would love to do some motion capture work just to be able to challenge myself.

When we started on 'Coraline,' there was a whole host of things that we had no idea how we were going to do. Because we were making films in a way that had never really been done before, we were taking this hundred-year-old art form and bringing it into a new era by embracing technology and innovation.

Special effects are becoming more and more affordable and looking more and more like the real thing.