Colossus is one of the most beloved X-Men in comics but really hasn’t had a proper interpretation on the big screen.
Sure, there’s been minor roles in the first X-Men movie trilogy but the hulking, metallic fighter from Russia has yet to receive his due. With Deadpool releasing in theaters this week, however, fans of Colossus will be delighted to see Piotr as he was always meant to be.
But did you know there are two parts to Colossus in the Deadpool movie?
Stefan Kapicic is the actor who voices and interacts with the cast on film but the facial expressions comes courtesy of veteran facial performer, Greg LaSalle and his team, Digital Domain’s MOVA Facial Performance Capture System.
“It’s a new form of technology that was developed about 10 years ago and it captures the surface of your skin,” LaSalle told iDigitalTimes. “It creates a scan for every frame of film so it’s a real-time capture system.”
LaSalle, whose credits include Marvel’s The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, explained that the typical facial motion-capture system uses about 200 data points and can only tell you when the mouth is open or when some motion is happening. It couldn’t show the nuance of what’s actually going on in the skin, such as wrinkles.
“So there’s this system called MOVA that captures all that and all the subtlety of the performance, all the micro expressions every single thing that’s going on in the face and is captured with 7000 data points,” LaSalle said. “And then two years ago, Digital Domain developed a technology that actually takes that data and transfers it mathematically to the computer generated characters.”
Deadpool director Tim Miller was familiar with LaSalle and Digital Domain’s technology and used MOVA for past projects. The two met at the Director’s Guild and LaSalle presented the team’s performance transferring technology to Miller.
“That’s why we did Colossus because, first, he [Miller] wanted Colossus to be believable and his face was going to be big on the screen,” LaSalle said. “If you want people to believe he’s feeling a certain way that has to come across in the facial performance. And since he knew the technology he was like ‘sorry Greg I’m not going to use your voice I want a guy who is really Russian to do the voice.’ I’m fine with that, I want the character to be the best possible character he can be.”
Kapicic was brought in by Miller to do exactly that, to be the voice behind the X-Man. Because LaSalle didn’t have the voice to be Colossus, the veteran facial performer wondered if it would be difficult to get the right mannerisms to mimic a Russian accent.
“I thought that at first and I thought we would need to get video of Stefan to see how his lips move exactly,” LaSalle said. “And we started doing some of those things and actually making the performance bigger but when the data was transferred to Colossus it didn’t look right, it wasn’t as natural. And it turns out that although there were a couple of instances that I had to make sure that my lips were in a particular position, a lot of that doesn’t happen in the lips it's in the throat, the timing and things like that.”
Miller decided to scale down the performance and that’s when Colossus really started to become believable. LaSalle said this is the first time a hero character was created using this technology so it was uncharted territory for everyone involved.
LaSalle began filming Colossus’ facial expressions in September after the movie was already shot and edited together. Wave files of Kapicic’s performance were sent so LaSalle can practice the timing and when it was time to record. Miller was with him to make sure LaSalle understood how Colossus should be feeling at certain parts in the movie.
Through LaSalle’s own admission, he wasn’t familiar with the Colossus character before he started filming, but Miller helped him get inside the metal skin of the hero because the director was adamant this version of Colossus be a direct translation from the comic books.
“I did a lot of research on who he is because I wanted to understand where he comes from so I can understand why he’s so gentle and why is he doing and saying the things he does,” LaSalle said. “Learning where he grew up, living on a farm with his sister all of it. But if I had any questions, Tim knows his stuff inside and out. He’s an expert at it.”
Recording Colossus only took two days to film with Miller helping LaSalle relay what the X-Man is feeling and doing, which LaSalle prefers to working in spurts for months on-set. But sitting in a chair trying to act certain parts of the movie is much tougher than you can imagine, especially if the script calls for you to act like you’re vomiting.
“It’s a full body sport is what I tell people. What I did...and I didn’t know this would happen, but if you start pretending to throw up and you do it over and over again your body will just start to react that way and that’s what happened,” LaSalle said. “We stopped just before I passed out and threw up on the cameras.”
But LaSalle feels the unconventional scenes and long recording sessions pay off when fans watch the movie.
“The great part is talking to people and seeing how they really like the Colossus character because he’s so unique in terms of superheroes go because he has this real human side of him.”
And will LaSalle get to work with Miller and be the face of Colossus again?
“I sure hope so. This is Tim’s first movie [directing] and we’ve been so wrapped up with working on this that we haven’t had a chance to talk. We’re going to get together in a couple of weeks and see what’s next.”
Deadpool releases nationwide Feb. 12.
