Mocap production begins on Happy Feet 2

Director George Miller announced the beginning of production for Happy Feet 2 in Sydney, adding that NSW and Australia have been ‘lazy’ but that situation is changing, particularly with the state’s production attraction activities and the opening of a new state-of-the-art motion capture facility at CarriageWorks in Sydney.

Miller said that what New Zealand – and Wellington in particular – have achieved should be an inspiration for Australia.

“The Australian film industry has been complacent for about 20 years. There’s been moments of brilliance, but those moments have been unsustained. There’s a fantastic talent and infrastructure, but no productions to really keep it going,” he said.

“In NSW and Australia we were too lazy and we let others steal the march, but now it’s changing, and this is a brilliant time.”

Happy Feet 2 will use technologies similar to those employed by James Cameron in Avatar, allowing Miller to visualise actors as their penguin counterparts in real time, moving in a virtual environment, instead of seeing them with their motion capture suits in front of a green screen.

“The film industry is moving to that intersection of technology and art, that’s where Avatar is showing us the road, that’s where the guys in New Zealand are showing us the way, and there’s no reason why we can’t have that in this country. It’s happening; now we have the most advanced motion capture studio in the world at CarriageWorks, it’s huge.”

The director said he did not foresee any scheduling conflicts between Happy Feet and the upcoming Mad Max sequel Fury Road, and admitted that he has no certainty about repeating the success of the first penguin film – which earned U$384.3m worldwide.

Miller declined to announce more details about the voice cast, other than confirming that US actors Elijah Wood, Robin Williams and Hank Azaria are currently in Sydney. They will be recording their performances at Trackdown, in the Entertainment Quarter, over the next two weeks.

“We have the old cast, and a lot of new cast members too,” he said.

One of the dancers – who also worked on the first Happy Feet – told Encore that the final dancing cast has not been selected yet, and he did not expect motion capture of the dancing portion of the film to take place until at least the second half of 2010.

Happy Feet 2 is expected to create more than 500 jobs over its three-year production period, according to information released by NSW Premier Kristina Keneally.