How Robert Zemeckis is making Beowulf

Over at Ain't It Cool News, Eric Vespe has a genuinely cool behind-the-scenes report on the making of Beowulf, the forthcoming big-budget film adaptation directed by Robert Zemeckis from a script by Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman. Zemeckis is apparently taking his "performance capture" virtual cinema system (motion-capture based CG-animation) to the next level, applying lessons learned (and criticisms heard) from The Polar Express.

As in Express, he's basically recording performances (by Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, Crispin Glover, Brandan Gleeson, Alison Lohman, John Malkovich and Robin Wright Penn) digitally, which allows him to virtually "shoot" any take from any angle, in a completely CG-animated environment - even compositing different takes from different actors in the same scene. But to address the "dead eye syndrome" many faulted Express for (including myself), he's devised a process called OEG (electro-oculography) to map the actor's eye movements - and, two years later, is also now able to achieve more photoreal animation than he could previously.

Fascinating stuff, and well worth a read (not to mention perhaps the best report Eric's ever done on AICN).