Voice-Overs, Motion Capture, and the Oscars

Many "Lord of the Rings" fans have long championed the notion that Andy Serkis, the actor who provides the motion capture performance and voice of Gollum, should have been seriously considered for Academy Awards and other honors for his work on the Tolkein trilogy. However, the Academy has traditionally avoided recognizing anything short of a full onscreen performance by an actor, though plenty of other smaller awards have. The Emmy Awards and the Annies, the animation industry's own awards, have categories recognizing voice-over performances. However, the only time I've heard of a voice-only performance being seriously considered for honors alongside a traditional one was the time Eddie Murphy was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA Award for playing Donkey in the first "Shrek" movie. BAFTA is the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

This year the controversy has arisen again, thanks to the well-received performance of Scarlett Johansson in Spike Jonze's "Her," where she voices a Siri-like computer operating system that they film's hapless hero falls in love with. Johnasson never appears on screen, but her character is fully formed, entirely through her vocal performance. The Academy hasn't said anything definitive one way or another about whether Johansson is eligible for a nomination, but the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who put on the Golden Globes, have ruled that she's out of contention. The "Her" team has appealed the decision on her behalf, still pending at the time of writing. However, her prospects don't look very good. Even if she did secure nominations, she would surely be at a disadvantage with only a vocal performance being measured up against traditional performances from the other actresses.

My stance is that voice-only performances should be eligible, even if it's highly unlikely that they'd ever be able to be truly competitive. Others awards commentators have pointed out that nobody has any problems recognizing performances from silent films, or mute performances, or performances in different languages. A vocal performance is undeniably a performance that requires skill and talent, and should be recognized as such. A separate category for voice-only performances would be ideal, but it's not feasible for the bigger award shows, so they should be covered by the existing performance categories. Out of all the different types of specialized performances and artistry people have argued ought to get their own Oscar categories - motion capture, stunt work, performances by animals and children, animators, and puppeteers - voice-over work is one of the easiest to parse.

It's not so easy, for instance, to figure out how best to recognize Andy Serkis for his work as Gollum. Scarlett Johansson was entirely responsible for her own performance in "Her," but Gollum was the product not just of Serkis, but of hundreds of unseen animators and VFX artists and technicians behind the scenes who helped to turn that motion-capture performance into the digital character who appeared onscreen. Motion-capture technology hasn't developed to the point where an actor can simply put on the ping-pong ball sensors, and a fully finished, movie-ready performance is generated. These performances have to be "tweaked" and "plussed" endlessly. In some cases, the motion capture is really just a guide for animators who have to deviate considerably from the actor's performance to get something that looks right.

So do we credit the people who worked behind the scenes alongside the motion capture performer? Do we try to somehow separate out the performance from all the effects work that enhanced it? If so, how do you compare that to a traditional performance by a non-enhanced actor? And is it really fair to single out the actor when he was part of a team of people who all contributed to the performance? These kinds of basic categorization issues are probably why recognizing motion capture performances is so hard, and mostly hasn't caught on. Notably the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award has a Best Digital Acting Performance, and the MTV Movie Awards have Best Virtual Performance, both of which Serkis has won, but others seem content putting Serkis's performances in the usual acting categories.

It's also important to remember that the Academy does go out of its way at times to recognize individuals that it feels are deserving of kudos, but don't fit into its rigid categories. Special Oscars and Honorary Oscars have gone to all kinds of different artists, including puppeteers, stunt men, choreographers, animators, makeup artists (before their category was instituted), historian Kevin Brownlow, and scholckmeister Roger Corman. I'm willing to bet that if Andy Serkis keeps up the good work and remains popular, the Academy isn't going to let him go unrecognized in the long run, especially if motion capture performances become more important and prominent in the years to come.

As for Scarlett Johansson, I don't think this is her year, but she'll have plenty of chances at a statuette in the future, and those chances will undeniably be better if she appears onscreen.
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