Squadron 42: Interview - Gillian Anderson

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

1. 00:00:08

   Hey everybody, I'm Sandy Gardner and I am here with a very special actor by the name of Jillian Anderson. Thank you for coming to the interview today. I know you're a very very busy lady, so we love having you. Um, tell us about being on Squadron 42 and what it was like to be in a mocap suit. I remember on the first day being led into the room where the jumpsuit is put on and you're kind of going, "Oh, okay. All right. Okay. All right. I I can deal with this." And then they start sticking the reflective bobbles on and and then you walk into this room that has, you know, 20 people working here in a skin tight suit with bobbles on it. It's like, "Hi guys, I'm This is great." Um, and then the the the dots get put on and then the helmet puts

2. 00:00:57

   on and you are you are in probably your your most appealing and attractive state when you start doing the very um uh sexy exercises that they have you do at the beginning to get the computer uh synced up to your movements. This is your first video game, right? No, the the the one and only time I did was at the very very very beginning of its invention, I think, for an XFiles video game, where for the first time when I was doing the dialogue for the game, they had a camera on my mouth. They put lipstick on and had a camera on my mouth. And that was the one and only time that I've ever

3. 00:01:46

   had to do it. And that was many, many years ago. How did you feel in just the big empty volume? It it took me a while to kind of figure out what was going on and and that even though everything around us was fake and temporary, that what was being captured, it was important to keep it as real as possible. And what about the facial capture, the facial animation capture? It's a little what what's disconcerting is that you know that you see the list of of expressions and you know that there's like 50 or 60 or something of them that you're going to do and um and they are every possible range of emotion and

4. 00:02:35

   strange look and terror and fear and happiness and sadness and etc. But sadness with your eyes that way and your mouth slightly open. sadness with your eyes that way and the grimace sadness with you know and uh so a and again completely um have to be completely not self-conscious in any way shape or form as your face is captured in stills in the most distorted uh frames possible. Um um but fun. What was your overall experience on the shoot? It'll uh increase my credibility uh with my sons. So, I find that the most exciting of all. I might actually

5. 00:03:23

   be a cool mom finally when the game comes out cuz I'm not a cool mom right now. Will you be back with us a second time? Do know that it was lots of fun and I hope you like it and um hopefully I'll be back for more. Thanks, Jillian. We look forward to seeing you in game. See you next time. [Music]