My name is Darryl Purdy.
I am the Cinematics and Animation Director on Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy.
We could not be a more unfit group of people.
Sun-Lord, right?
For the cinematics script alone,
it was around 680 pages.
It clocks in right now roughly about 5 hours 45 minutes.
Just for the cinematics.
It was a lot of days in this room... that's for sure. [Laughs]
With performance capture, we capture the voice at the same time
as the actors are in here, acting off each other.
What you get is that organic feel of one performance.
The face, the body and the voice all perfectly synced in one.
But you also get that natural feeling that film and TV have,
where you have actors acting with each other in real time.
Pretty much every time we shot in here,
we had between 5 and 8 people.
We knew that it was probably gonna take a little bit longer to shoot,
but it was gonna give us a big advantage
when it came down to the organic feel
of the banter and the conversation.
The most deadly woman in the galaxy just admitted...
She loves us.
I did not.
You did.
You said you were in love with us,
right after the part about killing your sister.
I said I enjoyed your company.
That is the Katathian definition of love.
Although we're telling a very unique story,
in our own kind of unique universe,
we don't want to disregard the long history
of the Marvel comics, or even the MCU.
So what we tried to do is walk that fine edge,
where we found actors that reminded you or maybe felt comfortable,
but also had something very unique
and had their own take on these characters.
What say we go stop a nutjob cult leader?
Yes!
We're supposed to be a team.
Teams don't leave people behind.
When I saw Jon, I knew he was the perfect fit for Star-Lord.
Right away, he just had this kind of comfort and rhythm
that you were looking for, for the character.
Star-Lord is this kind of smooth-talker,
great at persuading people to do stuff.
Drax, bud.
Is everything alright?
But also, Jon had this adolescent mischievousness.
But wrapping around a real heart of gold.
My mom...
When the Chitauri came...
She also died for no reason.
Kim, who plays Gamora,
When we found her, she had never done performance capture before.
We had her come in and do a shoot in the volume.
Gamora, wait, hold on a sec.
Why!?
So more children can be sacrificied in the name of Raker's flarked-up church?
No...
Of course not, just-
Just what, Peter!?
And then we took that performance, solved it,
and put it into the scene to see if it would actually work.
And luckily, because Kim is a rock star,
it worked flawlessly and it remains in the game to this day.
This isn't about Thanos!
It's about Nikki.
And what men like Raker and Thanos do to girls like her.
Like me.
After all this time, you haven't changed.
I now have a daughter... apparently.
Nikki is a 13-year-old Kree girl in the story.
We were looking to try to cast potentially close to that age.
But the tough thing is,
you have to be a very good young actor
to be able to carry the emotional weight of some of the scenes.
You ruined everything, mom was gonna come in and-
All I want
is to see her.
We had this young girl come in, Romane.
And she said hi, you know, 5 feet, whatever.
And she goes, uh, 21.
And I was like, there's no way she's 21-years-old.
And she nailed the performance.
She could play 13,
but she had the gravitas of somebody who had lived a little bit longer.
So she also could bring that weight to the emotional scenes.
I need things to go back to how they were,
even if it means making the same stupid cake for all stupid eternity.
Just the thought that she might come back
is better than admitting that she never will.
And that...
And that it's all my fault.
I am Groot.
Casting Groot, I mean...
You'd think it would be an easy thing to do.
It's actually not.
You know you're probably gonna do some type of digital alteration to the voice,
because it has to be even bigger than most people can go.
But that being said,
Robert, who plays Groot...
The guy is a magician with his voice.
Not only can he give you a million nuanced versions of "I am Groot".
But, physically, he can embody the character, it's amazing.
He just transforms into him, it's wonderful.
I am Groot!
Oh, great!
When we're casting characters,
one thing we do have to take into consideration is
their physicality.
For Drax, we did really need somebody who understood
physical presence, of being able to kind of intidimidate.
When Thanos murdered my family,
for a long time I believed that their wasted lives
would be redeemed if I took revenge on him.
What was great about Jason, whom we found for Drax, was
he was a stunt man.
So I could talk to Jason on a purely physical standpoint sometimes,
where it wasn't about what the character was feeling,
or the line,
it was more like, I need you to try to hit this pose,
or try to be in this physical space.
Now, watching the scenes,
I can't imagine anybody else as Drax.
Peter Quill.
Yeah.
I hope your mother found her way to heaven.
Rocket!
Look at what it did!
It chewed everything to scut!
Alex, who plays Rocket,
right away I knew he was the right guy for the character.
Oh, great.
He had this really kind of scratchy,
rawness to his voice.
He just had an edge to him,
which was exactly what we were looking for, for Rocket.
Luckily, I know a guy on Knowhere who's got the parts we need.
And he can get rid of that Nova tracker cheap.
There are some days when we're in here where,
I don't even know how he does it, because...
He talks a lot.
I mean, Star-Lord talks a lot.
Rocket is probably a very close second.
Hey, that's not fair.
You know what isn't fair, Quill?
Being the only one who actually seems to give a scut about the Milano.
I truly believe that
what the viewers will see on screen at the end of the day
is something that is unique and is a new take on the Guardians,
but feels absolutely right and comfortable,
which is wonderful.
This is about us.
Growing together as a team.
Because we are a team.
Yes!
Hell, we're a family!
We're the flarkin' Guardians of the Galaxy!
Yeah!