Gollum and the Year Performance Capture Grew Up

One actor, one face, two characters arguing, and neither of them human. Why The Two Towers is the year performance capture grew up, and why it happened in a scene, not a lab. A craft essay on Gollum in The Two Towers (2002, dir. Peter Jackson, Weta Digital): the three-week voice job that became an on-set performance, scenes shot twice, rotoanimation and four hours a frame, the taming on Emyn Muil, the Dead Marshes, the Smeagol and Gollum argument written by Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, the Forbidden Pool, and the lineage from Gollum to Kong, Davy Jones and Caesar. Every quoted line is from the film. Chapters 0:00 Two Characters, One Actor 0:40 The Film 2:25 The Taming 3:40 The Dead Marshes 4:10 The Argument 5:49 The Forbidden Pool 6:59 What It Carries 7:34 The Lineage 8:53 Sign Off