What 7 creature performers looked like behind the scenes of these popular films
A creature performer is an actor who moves like monsters or animals using CGI and/or practical effects.
Some wear suits as a stand-in for digital characters. Other times, green or blue suits are used to augment practical characters.
The process can vary depending on production needs.
Following is a transcript of the video.
Producer: Many popular films today feature animals or otherworldly creatures as a main character. Behind these lifelike performances is a real human actor bringing an authenticity to these creatures that CGI can't replicate. These actors bring a specific physicality to a character and on set, giving a real performance that other actors can react to in real time. That performance then becomes the framework that postproduction builds a fuller character around. These performances are captured using a green-screen suit, a motion-capture suit, or a blend of the two, with practical makeup and costumes.
Here are seven films that use creature performers in creative ways to elevate the story, starting off with "Dumbo."
For Disney's live-action "Dumbo" remake, the beloved baby elephant was made completely in CGI. But to get believable character movements and emotion, creature performer Edd Osmond wore a specialized green suit to capture authentic movements and interactions with fellow actors. He spent hours observing how elephants walk and trained himself to look believable while hunched over on all fours in stilts. He also had to consider that this was a baby elephant, so movements had to be less confident and more sporadic. To play the character, Osmond wore three different suits. First, a performance suit that looks like the character for actors to interact with. Then there's the bare-bones "ant-man" costume used when Dumbo was running or walking around. Since Osmond's head was pointing down, a camera was mounted on top of his head so he could see where he was going. Finally, he wore a waterproof bath suit for when Dumbo was bathing and had to be submerged underwater.
Next is "Rise of the Planet of the Apes." Dozens of creature performers, including Andy Serkis and Terry Notary, wore modified mo-cap suits when performing as apes in the "Planet of the Apes" trilogy. Finding a way to deliver believable ape performances led production to Weta studios. Using new technology at the time, this became the first production to capture a creature's performance in a live-action setting. To do so, they set up over 50 motion-capture cameras throughout the sets, all sending the footage over WiFi to remote servers so there was no wires to hide. The body movement, as well as set and actor interactions, were all done at once. The performers also wore cameras to capture the nuances of their facial expressions to be directly used in the ape's final performance.
Creature performer Terry Notary wore a mo-cap suit to capture his physicality as Buck the dog in "The Call of the Wild." Having Notary on set giving a committed performance was said to help elevate the performances of the actors he shared a screen with. As a creature actor, Notary was more that just a stand-in. He often conferred with the director and other actors, working through shots and scenes with them. To train for the role, Notary filmed the movements of his own dogs and watched the footage in slow motion to understand how they walk. Actor Harrison Ford praised Notary's work, saying it was important to have someone to participate emotionally with on screen.
Moving on is "Solo: A Star Wars Story." In some instances, a more well-known actor will do their own creature performances. Phoebe Waller-Bridge did her own on-set performance as L3-37, wearing a modified robot suit that was part practical and part green screen. As a uniquely funny performer, it needed to be Waller-Bridge on set alongside Donald Glover, who played Lando, to capture the right chemistry between the two characters. Her L3-37 performance was modified in postproduction to look more like a robot, but kept the same physicality Waller-Bridge performed on set.
Speaking of actor chemistry, Dan Stevens, who played the Beast in the Disney live-action remake of "Beauty and the Beast," wore a Beast mo-cap suit to act alongside Emma Watson. The suit was modified to be the right size and shape of the Beast. It included stilts to be the proper height and weighed over 40 pounds. Stevens noted that the suit was particularly difficult to act in during the waltzing scene and said he feels lucky he didn't lose his balance and fall onto Watson. He recorded his facial expressions at a later time. Not all creature performers are used as only a framework for CGI.
In the instance of "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," creature performers Javier Botet, Troy James, and Mark Steger all wore practical costumes that incorporated their specific body types and movements to bring the iconic monsters to life. The unique physicality of character actors was used for the movement of the on-screen monsters they played. The costumes were created with painstaking detail by Spectral Motion specifically to be on camera. Botet's costume even incorporated a slight green-suit element for his character's big toe to be removed in post.
Another instance where the character actor's performance was almost all practical is from Doug Jones in "The Shape of Water." Jones, who's worked with director Guillermo del Toro on several films, including as Faun in "Pan's Labyrinth," played the Amphibian Man in a practical costume with elements of digital retouching added later, like blinking and micro gestures. Even the gills were practical, mechanically operated by puppeteers. The glowing bioluminescent aspects of the suit were also practical, using UV paint. Del Toro decided to have the amphibian character be practical because it was the main character and the story's emotional center. Therefore, Jones had to perform to give it the character's soul.
What are your favorite movies with creature performers? Let us know down in the comments.
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