Talking with the Warcraft Cast at BlizzCon 2015

This Friday, the new Warcraft trailer was shown to fans at BlizzCon, the convention for Blizzard Entertainment fans (The company created World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and the upcoming Overwatch.) We got a pretty much fifty/fifty split between scenes from the Horde side, which the Orcs belong to, and the Alliance side and the humans, something writer/director and long-time gamer Duncan Jones has been promising since he first spoke about the film. We got a chance to chat with the Warcraft cast at BlizzCon after the trailer premiere and learned all about the film.

Dominic Cooper, who plays King Llane Wrynn of the Alliance, talked about the scale of the film and fighting against huge CGI Orcs. “You had to keep being reminded of the scale of everything. It sometimes felt like, if they’re that big would we really have any chance? At all?” He explained how the production helped them. “There was a very clever method on set, which was that, even on the monitors – you would have seen them on set – we had a basic crossfade effect on the screen of what the things may look like. Not anything to do with how they actually look, but an example of the size of them. Watching it today though, it was just mind-blowing, because for the first time ever, we understood. I mean, they had that in their mind. They just had to keep reiterating it to us. This is what you’re fighting. This is how hard it would be. This is what you’re looking it. This is what you can see. It’s always hard doing that stuff, but actually, in this particular film, as you saw when you were on set, there were proper physical sets and elaborate, brilliant costumes, so you felt much more immersed in in that in a green screen box.”

Toby Kebbell, who plays Durotan, is an old hand at motion capture having played Koba in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. He talked about that side of performance. “It helps to have the physical sets, but if you go into your house, if you like something in your house, you’re going to go, I like that thing and you’re going to pay attention to it,” he said. “But everything else is actually going to be the environment you’re in. What starts to happen, I think, is people go, oh, there is this grand thing. But if’ I’m an Orc, I’ve seen these big caves, so it matters not a jot to me. I’ve walked these thousand miles. I’ve seen a Frostwolf. So when I’m standing next to one of the wolves, I just lay my hand on it. No need to be admiring it. I’m used to it. I’m wearing one. I’m wearing my original wolf. I know them. So those things, that’s what’s beautiful about motion capture. You get to do a very subtle performance. That’s the benefit of Duncan. Sometimes you’d hear, ‘Okay, you walk in and you’re like, wow!’ But you wouldn’t say, ‘wow.’ That’s your existence. It’s subtle and nuanced and that’s where motion capture is so fantastic.”

Paula Patton plays Garona, a half-Orc, half-human who’s loyalty is being shifted between the people she grew up with and the humans she’s come to admire. Patton talked to us about how much the sets helped with creating her character. “For me it was great. For me, I need that. I think it’s really challenging for actors to be in a space where you can’t see any of it. There is something about being in the world that helps you feel like you’re there mentally and emotionally. It was a huge benefit. Duncan Jones, our director, was great because even though the guys had to wear their blue jumpsuits, he’d always keep – I guess it wasn’t ‘lifelike,’ but a sculpture of what the Orcs looked like and what our main characters looked like so you were constantly reminded of that and that really helped you be in the moment.” In terms of her size, she explained that though she’s half-Orc, she’s not taller than the humans. “I’m far more muscular, and my senses are more acute; my hearing, my sense of smell, my intuition and maybe my strength, but size-wise I’m not that different from the humans. It’s far different from the Orcs, which is what makes me such an outsider. And I clearly don’t look human.”

Brown, who plays the Orc War Chief Blackhand talked about the movement and how important “Orc Camp” was. Notary had all the actors playing Orcs work in a movement camp so they had the same feel. “I had a couple of difficult moments because of the task I was supposed to accomplish. It was throwing a horse, I think. There were elements I didn’t have on me, which were costume elements I didn’t have on me and weight elements. I was trying to do it as well as I could. But they solved it. It was a great, granular process with real, practical problems that you can solve instantaneously or that you can spend weeks on. It was a really great process and I loved it. I’d do it again in a second.”

Make sure you check out our set visit report and interviews with the Horde and the Alliance characters. Warcraft will hit theaters on June 10, 2016.