Forgot how ridiculous it looks to wear a ping-pong ball covered black lycra suit. According to prolific games actor Nolan North - best known for his role as Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series - doing performance capture is far more serious and rewarding than it appears.



He says it's something closer to the world of theatre than television or movies, forcing performers to work together and use their imagination in order to bring an actor's movements, expressions and voice to life in games and visual effects-laden films.



"When I started out doing theatre, you do something like black box theatre, where there's very minimal props and it's all about the interaction. For me, it always seemed a lot like that," Nolan told Digital Spy.

"We are playing around with things that aren't there in the game, that you don't see. Maybe some of the guns will be plastic little fake guns, things like that, but a torch might be something that doesn't register through the cameras.

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"The great thing about it is that's very much - you're relying on your imagination and your interaction with the other actor. It's truly listening and responding and trying to be in those moments that you're - in a make-believe sense."

Nolan got involved in performance capture back in 2007, appearing as an agent in basketball simulator NBA The Life, and has since become a regular face (and voice) in many high profile releases.

He recently returned as Penguin in Batman Arkham Knight, played Desmond Miles in the Assassin's Creed games, and will soon take over from Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage as Destiny's Ghost companion.

Not only that, but he's a regular on screen, too, being well known for his role as Peter Hastings in American drama series Pretty Little Liars.

North explains a big difference with live action for film and television is the length of time it takes to record. Sets need to be built, lighting to be changed and there are multiple angles to record. When it comes to performance capture, much of this can be done after the fact - making for far faster shoots.

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"If you and I are sitting here doing a scene on a couch in a television show, they may have to start with one shot with the two of us - it's the wide shot, the establishing shot - then they'll go over my shoulder, medium, then they may go close up, depending on what you may do - maybe they might go extreme," he said.

"Then they have to turn everything around, bring in this wall and rebuild this part of the set that they had to take off, and it's a lot of time.

"Whereas we can sit here and do a motion capture scene, and those cameras they can digitally put under my chin, they can put it over this shoulder - anywhere they want - just by the technology that that is.

"It's challenging in different ways, and less challenging in others. On camera, the stuff that drives me crazy is that it takes forever. Relighting, changing things, make up, wardrobe - is that right, do we have a mic problem? - you might shoot two or three scenes, it will take an entire day. And most of it is sit over here, sip some coffee, play on your phone and wait for them to, 'Okay, we're ready for you to come back in and do your thing'.

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"Motion capture, it's active, you're part of it, you're right there. The challenges are different because now you don't have a real coffee table, you don't have an environment to look around.



"So if I were referring to that painting there, you just talk to the creative director to say, 'Where is the painting'? Well, it'll be on the wall and it'll be six feet high, right about there - that's your eye line. So I might refer to something there, but I'm not."

While the capture process is incredibly accurate - actors can be as subtle as any other performance, with the technology tracking everything down to facial and eye movements - it can also be tweaked after the fact if something wasn't quite right.

"The crazy thing about it is, if I went, 'That painting there', digitally they could see that I made the mistake of pointing too high, and they can then lower my arm," Nolan explained.



A drawback of performance capture are those outfits. While equipment is becoming smaller and less cumbersome all the time, a captured performance still requires a strong element of make-believe for those participating. This is compared to acting on a stage or on film, which can have the benefit of costumes to help them get into their roles.



"The best way to put it is… I think Alec Guinness once said, he'd like to create his characters from the outside in. Brando, and that whole Strasberg movement was, create your character from the inside out.

"Outside in was if you were playing a king - to feel the crown on your head, to have the weight of a robe, to look down as you're talking to someone - that's a luxury performance capture doesn't have - costume.



"If you're a knight and you're in armour, you're going to move differently in armour, and have that sword. But now, things are different. Sometimes, it'll be nice to be able to incorporate that."



Despite a lack of costumes and sets to draw inspiration from for actors, it's that need for everyone to be "on the same page" that makes performance capture so rewarding for Nolan.

"You're all working towards the same goal, making it the best experience for the player as possible," he said.

"There's a lot of trust involved, a lot of collaboration. Ultimately, that's so much fun. Even if I'm doing a scene on my own, the whole crews around there, in-between we're laughing and we're just trying to, 'Did that look good? What do you think about this?'



"It's truly one of my favourite things to do, because it's so collaborative in spirit, it's so rewarding when it's done right.



He added: "At the end of the day, when you're driving home, you can feel like, 'I did good today'. We all did, as a team. We did something good today. A good day of performance capture is something that is very rewarding and make you feel very proud of what you're accomplished."

Nolan North will return to the role of Nathan Drake in 2016 with Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. Until then, the first three Uncharted games are to be remastered for PS4 this October as part of The Nathan Drake Collection, and you can see him as Penguin in Batman Arkham Knight, out now.

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