Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts

Thursday 4 May 2017

MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU: TARKIN : SPEAKING OUT


#THROWBACKTHURSDAY: It really doesn't seem like a whole year, since last we celebrated #MAYTHEFOURTH #STARWARSDAY! But, here it is! Since last year, the biggest news for us here in our Cushing Star Wars Universe, has been the release of 'ROGUE ONE: A Star Wars Story', with inclusion of a CGI Grand Moff Tarkin in the cast, and the unprecedented interest in all things Peter Cushing! And what a mixed bucket of Ewoks, that has been. For over a year, we covered first the rumor, the clues, the hoaxes and finally, the reveal.



OUR BEST BET was always that actor Guy Henry, was in someway connected with the role and that CGI was also involved. The first story that appeared in the press, spun stories about CGI staff at Disney and Lucas film, digging around in the dusty film archives, looking for 'footage' of Peter Cushing legs and feet... which we also always suspected to be a step too far. Either way, what was archived was well worth the wait, and ROGUE ONE did indeed, come up the goods, as a more than worthy addition to the Star Wars sage. Now we wait, for 'The Last Jedi' and if whispers are to be believed, it too will be a smash! HAPPY STAR WARS DAY!


BEFORE "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," 56-year-old English actor Guy Henry was best known for his work on the BBC and in classical theater (he was also Pius Thicknesse in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"). But now he has played one of the "Star Wars" saga's best-known characters, even though his face was not in a single frame of the movie.Henry is the man and voice behind the most talked-about character in "Rogue One": Grand Moff Tarkin, who was brought to the screen through the magic of motion-capture computer graphics after being played by Peter Cushing in 1977's "Star Wars: A New Hope." Cushing died in 1994.


THE EVENTS in "Rogue One" happen just before what we see in "A New Hope," and to connect the dots, "Rogue One" director Gareth Edwards wanted to prominently feature Tarkin because of the character's role in the main plot point of both movies: the Death Star. But to do that, he and the team at Industrial Light & Magic decided to do something unprecedented: use a living actor to basically be the skeleton of their Tarkin and then replace the actor's face with a digital version of Cushing's.

ON MAY 5TH 2015, "Rogue One" casting director Jina Jay contacted Henry's agent and asked whether the actor could meet up for lunch in London with Edwards. "They chose a very secret lunch in one of the most public media places in town, the Dean Street Townhouse, which I thought was very clever of them," Henry recently told Business Insider of getting the role. "So we talked very quietly." In fact, Henry remembers that a table beside them recognized him from a show he does on the BBC and the diners came over to say hi. But this was one of the rare moments when visibility wouldn't help an actor land a role, since it was Edwards’ job at the lunch to persuade Henry to play the CGI Tarkin. "It was a very strange thing to get your head around," Henry said about the offer. "Normally as an actor you're presented to be another character, but there's another added complication here — it's me pretending to be Peter Cushing pretending to be Grand Moff Tarkin." Before Henry agreed to the role, he suggested that Edwards do a screen test of him, just to confirm the director's hunch that he would be right for the role. Henry acted out a Tarkin scene from "A New Hope," doing his best Cushing voice with his hair slicked back and makeup to make him look older.



EDWARDS WAS CONVINCED by what he saw, as were others at Disney and Lucasfilm. But Henry, who says he was always told he sounded more like his idol Peter O'Toole than Peter Cushing, was still very nervous when he agreed to take the job. "I wasn't comfortable throughout the whole process," said Henry, who spent a month of prep constantly watching Cushing's Tarkin in "A New Hope." "I was constantly plagued by the thought that I was going to be the tall idiot from London who let the whole thing down. When they look you in the eye and say, 'This has never been done before in the history of film, but we think we can do it,' you really don't want to muck it up. For them but also Peter Cushing, who was an actor that I always admired genuinely. I didn't want to go through this slightly weird process and let him down." Henry's Tarkin scenes were shot during principal photography in the summer of 2015. During his three-week schedule, a car picked him up at 4:30 a.m. every day for the hour-long drive to London's Pinewood Studios ("Rogue One" production was under the code name "Los Alamos"). 


AFTER PUTTING on the gray Imperial officer's uniform, Henry would then go to the makeup room where he would get his hair slicked back and a transparent mask with small holes all over it on his face. Then with a black eyeliner stick, the makeup artist would mark dots through the holes onto Henry's face. A person from ILM would then put the motion-capture dots over the marks on his face. Then right before a scene was about to start, a head cam would be placed on him, which would capture every facial movement Henry made.


BEFORE EVERY TAKE, Henry would repeat a Tarkin line from "A New Hope": "You would prefer another target? A military target? Then name the system." "It would just get me into the flow of the Cushing voice," Henry said of repeating the line. Henry would then perform the Tarkin scenes on the set with the other actors. Henry said he didn't always do the Cushing voice — sometimes Edwards would ask him to do takes "as Guy." "I did as much of a Peter Cushing [voice] with the rolling Rs as I could, which was f---ing difficult," Henry said. "I'm pleased that people don't find it a jarring voice and it seems to have worked, but I'm not a mimic. I did every take every day, including reshoots, and all along I just tried to do my best."


HENRY SAID THAT he actually told Edwards and the "Rogue One" producers numerous times that he would not be offended if they wanted to bring in a voice actor who could do a better Cushing voice. Henry even insisted on doing an ADR session during post-production so he could have another pass at the dialogue. "I can't pretend that it wasn't really frightening," he said. "When I offered the option of having someone else do the voice, they said, 'We don't want that, we want your performance, we chose you because of who you are, and we want you to inhabit the performance.' For better or worse, it's my performance." Henry wrapped on his three weeks, but that turned out to just be the start of his time on "Rogue One." With constant rewrites of the film's plot during production, along with reshoots, Henry said he was called back every other month or so up until November 2016. "I would always think, 'Back to the dots, back to the fear,'" Henry said.


ONE OF HENRY'S FAVOURITE moments was when Tarkin had to be his typical authoritative self and get under the skin of Krennic. "He gets into the mood and has got all guns blazing," Henry said of Mendelsohn's process. "So there was one scene where I play Tarkin particularly imperialist behind the camera to get him worked up, which I succeeded at beyond my wildest dreams. Ben thought I was looking at a monitor behind him, but in fact I was just being dismissive and he suddenly shouted, 'Don't look into the fucking monitor, Guy!' But honestly, we got along famously." Other than a brief look at a rough assembly of a Tarkin scene while the movie was in post-production (which eased his anxiety about what the filmmakers were trying to achieve), Henry didn't see the finished CGI Tarkin until he went to the film's London premiere a few weeks ago. Having to keep his involvement in the movie a secret to everyone he knew for over a year, he finally saw the fruits of his efforts. "I didn't eat all day," Henry said of the premiere. "I went in full of white wine and my heart in my mouth, but after the first Tarkin scene, I enjoyed it. I mean, I didn't get the whole script, so I was working in the dark. I was watching a film that I knew little about. I'm proud and relieved that it has been positive."

LUCASFILM received permission from the Cushing estate to show his likeness in the movie, and Henry said he had heard that Cushing's longtime secretary had seen "Rogue One" and enjoyed the Tarkin scenes. "If it had been done as a joke or a gimmick, that would have been stupid," Henry said when asked about the ethics issue. "But in this case it was an honorable attempt to tell a story with one of the most famous characters from the 'Star Wars' saga. I thought it was worth doing. If it doesn't impinge on the real living or dead person's sensibilities, I think it's another tool in the box. But I'm not in a hurry to repeat the process — I'll tell you that."


DESPITE THE anxiety around the role, Henry has no regrets and says the experience is unlike anything else he's done in his career. He looks forward to seeing the movie again — with less white wine in his system. 'I think it was an honorable tribute to Peter Cushing, and I'm very happy for that," he said.
(January 2017)
Interview Credit: HERE



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Saturday 2 January 2016

TWO PERSPECTIVES ON ACTING: TEETH, TOOTHBRUSHES, TYPECASTING, LEADING MEN AND WEARING THE BLACK HAT!


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