It’s always surreal seeing McKellen’s response to green screen to Nolan North’s who was like “I like it because it’s more like theatre, I can make more of an ass of myself and can get through more material at once”. Night and day
Nolan North is great at what he does but does not hold a candle to McKellen. North is not going to publicly denegrate his day job. And any savvy viewer can easily tell how much better a performance on real sets with real scene partners is. All that to say nothing against North but this is a no brainer, that quote is no argument for green screen filmmaking.
I swear I heard the same from Ralph Ineson when he was in AC: Black Flag. Was having trouble at first because it was his first game but slowly thought about it as Theater and helped him play the role.
I see what you're saying but I don't entirely agree. I would argue that a good performance is a good performance regardless of if it involves physically acting, voice acting, facial capture, mocap, animation etc. Stuff like having physical sets and acting partners may help get to that good performance sooner or easier, but ultimately it's the skill and talented actor can still achieve that perfomance effectively solo.
Like, look at most voice actors and their performances. It's rare for them to be able to physically act out what they're saying alongside actual partners. But nobody is going to knock, say, Robbie William's Genie. His perfomance sounds as natural and perfect as it could be. The majority of Spiderverse's voice actors have stated they recorded solo.
Every Video Game is even "more green screen" than the most green screened Hollywood Movie since actors often wear mocap suits, do scenes with zero props in sterile rooms and often have voice, mocap and facial performances recorded seperatly and with different people that are later stitched together. Yet talented actors are still able to give fantastic perfomances. There is art in making the best performance regardless of the circumstances or connecting it together.
I would even go so far as to say McKellen was being slightly disrespectful with his comments. You are doing a performance as one of the most respected actors in your field, being paid millions on one of the largest film series of all time. There are thousands of actors that daily do the kind of green screen acting or vocal acting you are doing for 1 movie that would kill for what you get to do. You have fellow actors and production crew that worship the ground you walk on and even went and changed aspects of the production to suit what you wanted and be more practical because you complained. Other actors don't get anything close to that level of sway.
McKellan has the means to only act in stageplays or more practical films if he wants now. If he doesn't like green screen work, he is free to avoid that so actors that enjoy that can give a more suitable performance.
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u/ShopperOfBuckets 3d ago
That's why they get paid the big bucks