Slashdot discusses a recent New York Times article talking about how the Academy Awards should address the the proliferation of digital and animated technology in movie-making, specifically citing the example of Andy Serkis. Serkis “played” the part of Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, wearing a motion capture suit that was transformed into the motions of the fully computer-generated character of Gollum, as well as providing his voice. The Academy apparently decided that Serkis would have been eligible for supporting-actor consideration, but in the end he was not nominated. Now that a new category for “animated” films has been created, it begs the question of whether other films should be considered “animated” or not. Although some films like Shrek and A Bug’s Life were “animated” features created from scratch digitally, other films like The Two Towers are live-action with a large amount of digitally-created characters and special effects. For now, I think it’s usually somewhat obvious whether a film was intended to just be a “conventional” film with digital special effects versus a stylized “animated” film, but even looking at it that way a point could be made for films like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, in which the digital characters were extremely lifelike and definitely not your typical animated cartoon. It certainly calls for some consideration, because the technology is rapidly progressing and shows no signs of fading away.
