10 Movie Innovations That Happened Earlier Than You Think

10. Performance Capture - Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

Performance capture is an extremely commonplace element in blockbuster filmmaking these days, what with Andy Serkis popularising the technique through his transformative, digitally-assisted performances as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings franchise, King Kong in Peter Jackson's 2005 remake, and of course, Caesar in the new Planet of the Apes trilogy.

That's not to forget the brilliant performance capture work in James Cameron's Avatar nor Josh Brolin's fantastic turn as Thanos in the last two Avengers movies, but long before all this - before even Gollum made it famous - performance capture was employed on another hit tentpole movie.

Though it's no secret that Ahmed Best portrayed Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, a lot of fans assume that Best simply provided the divisive voice work for the character while his movements were traditionally animated.

Hell, when Wired wrote-up a rundown of the history of performance capture a few years ago, Best's name was even nowhere to be seen, prompting him to call the outlet out on social media. In a longer statement he said:

"Jar Jar helped create the workflow, iteration process and litmus test for all CGI characters to this day on some days the code was being written in real time as I was moving. To deny Jar Jar’s place in film history is to deny the hundreds of VFX technicians, animators, code writers and producers their respect...There’s a joke I like to use when talking about this stuff, Jar Jar walked so Gollum could run. Gollum ran so the Na’vi could fly."

And Best isn't wrong - love or hate Jar Jar, but his expressiveness, as built on top of Best's on-set, motion-captured performance, was the early precursor to the more sophisticated and convincing performance capture work we see today.