Evolution of the specie s

The three eras of POTA’s groundbreaking effects…

Prosthetic make-up 1968-1973 Make-up designer John Chambers, an ex-army medic who specialised in creating prosthetics for wounded soldiers, oversaw all five of the original

Planet Of The Apes movies, masterminding the rubber appliances that would form the apes’ expressive faces. The pioneering make-up led to odd on-set dining behaviour (lunch was liquefied and drunk through straws) and pranks aplenty.

Modern make-up 2001

For his post-millennium reboot, Tim Burton stuck with prosthetics (despite 20th Century Fox pushing for CGI), handing the job of crafting his monkey cast to life-long POTA fan and effects supremo Rick Baker. Each ape spent almost five hours in the make-up chair, with Burton commenting: “It’s like going to the dentist at two in the morning and having people poke at you for hours. Then you wear an ape costume until nine at night.”

Motion capture 2011-present

By Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, CGI had come on enough that director Rupert Wyatt felt confident handing ape duties to Weta Digital. With a fancy new camera that could pick out mo-cap dots in daylight, the Kiwi company broke new ground in mo-cap (with Andy Serkis performing), while the animation hit heady highs with details such as pores, tears and pupil dilation – things that would be refined to near perfection in 2014’s Dawn and this year’s War For The Planet Of The Apes. JW