The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have done a lot of growing up since their live-action trilogy in the Nineties. They are still the adolescent, skateboarding, pizza-eating ninjas they always were, but now the Turtles are CG and their mouths move in time with their speech.
William Fichtner (Prison Break, Crossing Lines), who plays antagonist Shredder’s loyal henchman Eric Sacks, talked to us about working opposite actors in motion capture shells.
“It was actually pretty cool,” he told us. “Instead of looking at those cardboard cutouts of Turtles on the side, when they’re just sitting there staring at you while somebody else reads the lines off-camera, we had real guys out there. Real actors, and really good [ones]. As we all know, there’s a lot of really great actors out there who are doing this motion capture stuff, and they are very talented.
“So, you know, we’re exchanging dialogue and real moments are being created and we let the special effects wizards fill it in later on. That was probably what, I think, contributed to the success of the film, the commitment to how we were going to shoot those real Turtles. I love the way that came out. I thought it was great.”