Would Gollum have been better unanimated? - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Sauron the White · 11-21-2007, 12:07 PM

Bethberry ... yes, I understand what you are saying and saw much the same thing with the Toronto actor who played Gollum. I do think there is a huge difference between a lean actor on stage and a character in a movie who is 40 feet tall. On stage you can get away with a great deal due to make-up and lighting effects and the audience is so much farther away. The actors appear so much "smaller than life". The opposite is true in a film. Because of the size of the screen, actors are many times larger than life. You just cannot take someone who is more or less of normal build and turn them into an 85 pound emaciated concentration camp victim, then ask them to do acrobatic and athletic feats and fool anybody into thinking its real.

What this really comes down to is NOT the idea of a CGI character or a real actor or animation or anything else. It comes down to the question of did Gollum in the film work as presented? For me, and I can only speak for myself, it was a huge success. It worked perfectly and I could not ask for more. The Jackson idea of taking Andy Serkis and filming him as Gollum and then layering the CGI character over that was an ideal combination of the two approaches.

11-21-2007, 12:07 PM	#13
Sauron the White Ghost Prince of Cardolan Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 903	Bethberry ... yes, I understand what you are saying and saw much the same thing with the Toronto actor who played Gollum. I do think there is a huge difference between a lean actor on stage and a character in a movie who is 40 feet tall. On stage you can get away with a great deal due to make-up and lighting effects and the audience is so much farther away. The actors appear so much "smaller than life". The opposite is true in a film. Because of the size of the screen, actors are many times larger than life. You just cannot take someone who is more or less of normal build and turn them into an 85 pound emaciated concentration camp victim, then ask them to do acrobatic and athletic feats and fool anybody into thinking its real. What this really comes down to is NOT the idea of a CGI character or a real actor or animation or anything else. It comes down to the question of did Gollum in the film work as presented? For me, and I can only speak for myself, it was a huge success. It worked perfectly and I could not ask for more. The Jackson idea of taking Andy Serkis and filming him as Gollum and then layering the CGI character over that was an ideal combination of the two approaches.