4 A Fully Digitalized King Kong
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 KING KONG
PRODUCTION NOTES
4Casting Kong:
4Filming Kong:
A Fully Digitalized Kong
4Other Stuff:
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 The creation of that icon posed special challenges to Weta Digital. As a leading actor in the story, the great ape's believability would be paramount-a tough call for any performer, let alone an entirely digital invention. Key to that was the creation of a Kong that could nail the performance, non-verbally communicating a full range of emotions and thoughts.
Joe Letteri explains, “The hardest thing about creating Kong's performance was that it had to be recognizable in a human way. We have to be able to read his emotions and understand what he's thinking-especially because he can't speak. Gorillas are so close to humans that it's really easy to imbue them with human characteristics. We had to convey a sense of what Kong was thinking, but not make him human. What we tried to do is find a performance based on a human performance, so we could produce it and understand it, but also have it equally grounded in the gorilla world. We wanted Kong to be a wild creature experiencing everything he experiences in the story.”
Weta Digital went about building the musculature of the body and the face, and then covering the 25-foot creature with fur-new tools were specifically developed to accomplish these crucial tasks. The digital effects team began by scanning the completed maquette of Kong's hand, foot, head and body into the computer.
By shifting the development of their leading ape from the real world to the digital one, they were able to continue to modify the creature in response to direction from Jackson well into the production cycle. The team then tackled the challenge of digitally covering Kong with fur (rendering photorealistic digital hair and fur is one of the most problematic tasks in the art, even with the cutting-edge software developed by Weta).
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As it turns out, Kong was not the only character fashioned by Weta Digital. Advances in the film software technology responsible for digital doubling meant that the cast of King Kong (or any possible stunt doubles) would not be called upon to perform a myriad of super-human feats called for in Walsh, Boyens and Jackson's screenplay. Eventual scenes of characters fighting, falling, leaping, being carried (or eaten) and a litany of other tasks would be completed by fully digitized facsimiles of the actors (who, like the maquettes, were scanned digitally and then photo realistically constructed by Weta team members).
Once principal photography began, Andy Serkis was called to be Kong for his fellow actors, providing on-set reference and functioning as an emotionally present participant in the scenes. During these instances, the actor performed in a custom-made Kong suit-fitted with musculature, arm extensions and a hood that extended the shoulders and created a no-neck look-that allowed Serkis to mimic the physicality of a gorilla, such as walking on all fours.
To supply Kong's roaring, the sound department developed a “Kongalizer,” a system that took Serkis' wordless vocal responses (picked up by a headset mic), ran them through a computer (which dropped the range and increased the size), and then broadcast them through a wall of speakers in real time. For key, intimate moments with Watts, the suited and Kongalized Serkis not only partnered in the scene, but also provided sight lines for the actress, often from the correct vantage point of 25 feet off the ground-accomplished by raising the actor in a cherry picker.
Peter Jackson elaborates, “Andy was able to be on-set every day, and he was able to stand in for Kong. He's obviously not 25 feet tall, but we were able to put him on ladders, up in cherry pickers, do whatever we needed to do to make him the right height. Most critically he was there for Naomi, who would be delivering this incredible performance as Ann relating to Kong… and she had Andy to look at and talk to. She had Andy's eyes to look into when she wanted to make these moments as real as possible. I think it would be virtually impossible for an actor to get that level of performance if they were just acting to a yellow tennis ball on a stick. It just would never happen that way. So it was critical to have somebody there.”Serkis adds, “You know, these were absolutely significant moment-to-moment emotions that were traded between us. And so really, I could have been wearing anything. It was very much through the eyes, but once we locked into each other… that was it. You have to give as truthful a performance as in any other kind of film. I mean, Pete makes fantasy films, but he does it through a dramatic keyhole so that there is a sense of total reality.”
Watts comments, “I had no idea what to expect. I had been told that a good two-thirds of the movie was opposite Kong, so how would that translate into the performance? I thought, `Okay, I'm going to be looking at a mark on a stick and pretending there's a connection…ooh, this is going to be hard.' But with Andy doing it, I had a pair of eyes to look into, a soul to connect with-what a relief! And what a privilege. I could not have done anything without him. I don't know that there's another actor out there who could have done what he did with the amount of preparation and work he put into it. It was mind-blowing on a daily basis.”
In addition to enacting Kong during principal photography, Serkis was called upon to re-create all of his scenes on a motion-capture stage, covered in sensors, during the lengthy post-production phase-in essence, filming his entire performance twice.
Letteri summarizes, “Kong's facial animation has been created by keyframe animation from the Weta Digital animation team and by facial motion capture performed by Andy Serkis. Our animation team have studied gorilla behavior and Andy's gorilla performance and have blended the two to create the unique character of Kong.”
Serkis' valuable motion-capture reference helped to drive the character of Kong and ultimately resulted in the ferocious, physical and amazing creature that rules both the jungles of his home and the manmade ones in New York City (at least, for a time).
4Next Page: New York 1933: A City That No Longer Exists
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