The Art & Craft of ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’ with Andy Serkis and Joe Letteri

Join SFFILM and the great minds behind one of the major visual effects accomplishments of the year for this special onstage conversation with actor Andy Serkis and VFX wizard Joe Letteri as they reveal the secrets behind the groundbreaking Planet of the Apes films. Delving deeply into the acting and the innovative technology involved in cutting-edge contemporary performance capture techniques, Serkis and Letteri will illuminate what it actually takes to bring characters like Gollum, King Kong, and Caesar to life.

Tickets to this special program provide access to a triple feature of the latest Planet of the Apes films: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017). The onstage conversation will precede the third film.

Schedule
12:00 pm – Rise of the Planet of the Apes (105 min)
2:00 pm – Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (130 min)
6:00 pm – Onstage conversation with Andy Serkis and Joe Letteri
7:00 pm – War for the Planet of the Apes (140 min)

Andy Serkis is an award-winning actor who has earned acclaim from both critics and audiences for his work in a range of memorable roles. He gained legions of fans around the globe for his performance as Gollum in the Academy Award®–winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy, directed by Peter Jackson. Reuniting with Jackson, he played two roles in the director’s epic retelling of King Kong, taking performance capture to another level as the title character of Kong, and also appearing as Lumpy, the ship’s cook. His performance as Caesar in 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes earned him a Critics Choice Award nomination for “Best Supporting Actor” from the Broadcast Film Critics Association. He reprised the role in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes for which he won an Empire Award as “Best Actor.” Most recently, Serkis appeared as Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, a role he will reprise in the next installment of the saga in Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi. Serkis recently completed his directorial debut Breathe, starring Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy, which had its world premiere at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.

Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Joe Letteri’s pioneering work in visual effects has earned him four BAFTA awards and four Academy Awards® for Best Visual Effects—for Avatar, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and King Kong. Letteri has a long-standing interest in creating compelling, realistic creatures—from Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs to Gollum, the Na’vi in Avatar and Caesar from the Planet of the Apes franchise. He has developed many techniques that have become industry standards for creating photorealistic digital effects. This includes co-developing the subsurface scattering technique that brought Gollum to life—winning an Academy® Technical Achievement Award in 2004—and pushing the development of large-scale virtual production. Under Letteri’s leadership, Weta Digital has continued to expand and improve these techniques through films like War for the Planet of the Apes and Luc Besson’s sci-fi epic Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Joe was nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA Award for both Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.