STACK NZ Nov #57

DVD&BD FEATURE

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

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

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

NOVEMBER 2014 JB Hi-Fi www.jbhifi.co.nz

16