And the Award for Best Digital Face Acting Goes to…

Back in July of 2007, I was whining about whether or not the Academy would ever recognize a motion capture performance. At the time there was (unfounded, as it turns out) buzz about Anthony Hopkins getting a nod for Beowulf. But I was hankering for recognition for the likes of Andy Serkis in King Kong or Lord of the Rings. As it turns out, technically speaking, the Academy has recognized a motion-capture performance already.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button casts Best Actor nominee Brad Pitt as a man who ages backwards. This means that, for many scenes, his face has to appear on a body that doesn’t fit. The good people at Digital Domain found a very clever way to achieve this. They basically slapped his face onto other actors. (Awesome interactive how’d-they-do-that here.)

For all intents and purposes, this part of the performance was a motion capture performance. Actually a face capture performance, as the rest of the body performance was someone else.

Which brings up the question, who exactly gets credit for this performance? Obviously Pitt did his part, but did his choices inform where Robert Towers put his arms in that mirror scene? And how much credit do the folks at Digital Domain get for their contribution?

Ultimately, this is just an extension, albeit a novel one, of a convention that’s been in place since the Awards began. The idea that any one person is responsible for how well any one aspect of a film comes across is a convention of convenience. You could argue that an editor deserves a piece of every acting Oscar because if he picked a different take, you might not think that performance was so hot. Or if the cinematographer had chosen a different angle for the light. How much did makeup contribute to Charlize Theron’s Oscar for Monster?

By the same token, all the makeup (or FX) in the world can’t sell a lousy performance.

Of course, all those contributions (well, except for the body acting) have their own awards, but I have to wonder if The Two Towers came out next year instead of 2002 if Andy Serkis might get a nod.