The difference is subtle but important: performance capture vs. motion capture.
Both are used and talked about in cutting-edge cinema and digital effects. But one of the names suggests it captures only motion, while the other gets specific, capturing a whole performance. You know, the kind an actor gives.
Andy Serkis is careful to call the art performance capture. Every single time.
He has become the go-to guy in Hollywood to help created layered characters that appear digitally on film.
He pioneered the idea in Gollum, achieving technical awards for the almost-human hermit but going all but ignored for the acting work that went into the "Lord of the Rings" films.
He renewed the relationship with special effects company Weta Digital to play the title character in "King Kong" and will appear in Steven Spielberg's Tintin film at the close of the year as the humorous Captain Haddock.
He also plays Caesar in the new "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," carrying the show with his nonverbal performance. He outshines the rest of the cast that actually is allowed to show their real faces on screen while Serkis acts through digital makeup.
So you will have to forgive Serkis for being a little evangelical about the art of performance capture in a recent conversation at Comic-Con with the Deseret News.
"I don't seek them (performance-capture roles) out, but when they present themselves, if they are a great role, like Caesar is, clearly it was a no-brainer. It was just a brilliant part."
Serkis has a background in stage and film, but he has mastered the ability to move and behave like creatures as well, a lot like Lon Chaney did in the classic silent monster movies such as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." But other actors and the film industry don't quite get it yet.
"It's a long, long road. A long, hard lonely road," he said. "People really still think there is a kind of a mystery attached to it, but in actual fact, as technology improves, it only serves to prove that acting is acting and all it is is another way of recording an actor's performance."
He wasn't afraid to take on Caesar, even after being known for his work as cinema's biggest and most famous ape.
"Kong was a completely different beast in a completely different universe. He was a very lonely, psychotic hobo past his prime who is just living every day trying to survive. He has never had any kind of connective moment with any other being," he said.
"Caesar, in actual fact, starts off life being loved. He is rescued from the lab where he has inherited this super intelligence, and he is nurtured and loved and attended to by this James Franco character who is like a surrogate father to him.
"He begins to display this intelligence, which for him is very natural. It is like a gifted child. He has his moment of self-awareness, and he realizes he isn't one of these species, he is an outsider, he is a freak, he is Frankenstein's monster."
Serkis goes to great lengths to project through the mask of special effects in order to show intelligence without speaking.
"Caesar, he is caught in this netherworld, and the challenge for us was trying to reflect his intelligence without trying to over anthropomorphize him. For instance, his hands, when he is thinking, its like when humans think, they often have a displacement activity, for instance, so we thought about things like that with Caesar."
Beyond Caesar, Serkis is opening a capture studio that will service games and film (including his own projects) with an academy to arm actors with the skills to embrace digital makeup. He is continuing his personal talent arsenal by taking on the challenge of second unit director on Peter Jackson's pair of movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit"
The shoot for the two "Hobbit" films was even arranged to put all of Serkis' acting work on the front of the shoot, leaving him free to run the second unit without shifting back and forth.
"It's a huge leap, a massive challenge and 3-D and working on a huge film and crew, but Peter Jackson is incredibly supportive. He has known I have wanted to direct for a long time, so its wonderful that he has given me the opportunity to do so."