Visual Effects by WETA in Rise of the Planet of the Apes
The first time that I saw the fully rendered Caesar up on screen, I was completely blown away. I mean, there was my performance. All the emotion, all the eye movements, the gestures, all cloaked in this digital chimpanzee’s skin. And what amazed me really was that all the groundbreaking technology that WETA had build on since Avatar, had enabled all the nuance in the performance to finally make it onto the screen. And that was quite powerful.
We managed to put the soul within this character. And that comes through the actor's performance. But it also comes through the rendering of this ape. And it's doing that in a very real world. It's not a science fictional, fantastical world. It's the world of the here and now. Here's something that certainly hasn't been achieved before. This film could not have existed without the technological advances pioneered by Avatar. I think WETA have done something that's quite extraordinary. We are breaking very new grounds here.
