Gymnast finds fame as ape actor

Directing with wolves

It's all about making a spectacle

"I just took every little video I could and dissected it into moments," he says. "And I just always watched the videos as though I was watching a person in an ape suit, playing an ape. It made me realize ... it's all in the subtleties."

Notary had six weeks to put the actors and stuntmen starring in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes through his ape training. The first step? Shed preconceptions and human conditioning and just "be".

"It's not about doing anything. It's about undoing," he says. "If you can start to get back to the base, neutral animal that we are, you're an ape."

Letting go of human tendencies can take weeks, but once the actors get it, "it's magic".

"You're tapping into your instinct," he says.

With a relaxed mindset and intention rooted in the gut, this would also include bounding about on all fours-with a little help from Notary's foot-long "arm extensions".

For the latest Planet of the Apes film, Notary even trained his two daughters, ages 9 and 11, in simian technique. "They're playing little-kid apes," says Notary, who was on a media tour to promote the film.

Nearly every ape in the film, except the tiniest baby, was played by a human actor in a motion-capture suit. Tiny lights recorded their every movement, including a helmet with a face camera that tracked emotional expression. Animators at Weta Digital then transferred the data onto each of the computer-rendered apes in the film.

Now, Notary is off to New Zealand to work on the next Hobbit film, but it took awhile for him to let go of his inner primate.

"It takes me about four months to get out of it," he says. "My wife's like, 'Can you sit up please? You're slouching'."