Andy Serkis

Andy Serkis


Andy Serkis is promoting performance capture at the Cannes Film Festival.

The actor is at the prestigious festival to highlight a new UK project called Imaginarium, a performance capture facility.

Speaking to the BBC he said: "It's a project called the Imaginarium and the idea is that it will be the Europe's premiere UK based performance capture facility.

"Part of the idea of the Imaginarium is to allay fears - across lots of different communities, not just the acting community - who have in the past wondered if they are going to be replaced by CG characters or robots or whatever."

Serkis shot to fame using such techniques in The Lord of the Rings franchise, in which he played Gollum. Peter Jackson went on to use similar techniques in his next movie King Long.

And Serkis hope that Imaginarium will make this form of acting more popular amongst filmmakers.

"It aims to be an academy for training and educating young and aspiring filmmakers and independent films that this is an art film that isn't just niche and applicable to the larger budget movies, it's about seeing the creative possibilities of visual effects for the lower budget films.

"It's about creating links and a bigger vision. European's tend to be brilliant at drama, drama which is driven by acting performances but we tend to shy away from the visual effects side of things. The Imaginarium wants to bridge that gap."

And Serkis has been busy of late with The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn and Burke and hare both under his belt.

Later this year he will return to the role of Gollum with The Hobbit, which has been split into two movies.


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