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From monsters in
Cloverfield
and vampires in
Let Me In
, to the DAWN OFTHE PLANET
OFTHEAPES. Director MATT REEVES’s first big franchise film is still all
about the story and emotions amidst the spectacle.
How challenging was it working on
a big budget franchise film?
I’d never made a movie on this scale,
but the job is exactly the same, which
is you are telling a story and you are
trying to find the emotional reality of the
scenes with the actors. I thought maybe
the technology would be an obstacle to
doing these things and I didn’t really know
what Andy Serkis did. I knew he was an
actor and I also knew he was legendary
for the motion capture work that he had
done. I knew that I had been moved
by his performances, especially by his
performance in
Rise of the Planet of the
Apes
, but I didn’t understand if there was
some technical thing he was doing. And
when we began, I learned very quickly
that there was nothing technical that he
was doing. It was just about him wearing
a device that recorded his performance
and the big secret as to why Caesar is so
powerful is that Andy is a powerful actor.
So I was like, ‘Oh, it is all performance
driven!’ You push the technology to the
back and think about the story because if
you don’t, you’re in trouble. I think a lot of
these tent-pole movies end up being driven
by the spectacle itself and you can lose
your compass as to what the story is, what
the emotions are supposed to be. As a
filmmaker, the only way I know what to
do is by following that compass.
So in a way, you have to push that
stuff into the background.
How does it work with Andy Serkis;
do you direct him?
Of course. He is another actor. There is
such confusion about this – and I had it as
well when I started – whereby somehow,
people think that motion capture is this
really technical thing. There is nothing
technical about it. The technical part
offered to me where I felt like I had the
way in. To me, unless I have an emotional
way into something, I feel like I don’t have
the compass to tell me where to put the
camera or how to talk to the actors, or
what the story is really about. I always
look for the personal. So when they came
to me with this one, it was the first time
that someone had approached me about
a big tent-pole movie where I felt I really
had something personal to say. So it was
exciting to me. I was thrilled.
We had an ape camp
where [the actors] had
to learn to be quadruped,
and learn to let go of their
human movements.
How did you become involved with
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
?
MATT REEVES:
It is a very interesting
thing. I did
Cloverfield
and that brought me
to a lot of people’s attention, but strangely
it was my last film [
Let Me In
] that got
me the most attention in Hollywood. So I
think it was a combination of the fact that
I had done something that was rooted in
special effects with
Cloverfield
and we
did that on a budget, and then my next
film was more performance driven even
though, of course, it also had effects and
was a genre piece. That combination of
someone who cared about the interior life
of the characters but could also do special
effects created a lot of opportunities for
me. I was approached by a lot of studios
with tent-pole movies for the first time,
and I had never done anything on that
scale. I never found any that had been
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DVD&BD FEATURE
NOVEMBER 2014
JB Hi-Fi
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