MATT REEVES: As "Dawn" begins the feeling is that it's the dawn of a new species.

That it's intelligent apes have inherited the earth.

The thing that happened between "Rise" and our film...

...is that Weta has taken a quantum leap forward.

ANDY SERKIS: This film is actually...

...in many ways more challenging than the first film in terms of it's scope, it's scale.

ERIK WINQUIST: Obviously something that was going to be huge to the success of this film because on...

...the last film we had fairly large arenas, but this time almost everything was outdoors.

DYLAN CLARK: Never has it been done like this before.

We decided to use 3D cameras and really what we wanted to do...

...was take that technology that WETA has perfected...

...and apply into exterior sets, even more than we did on "Rise".

JOE LETTERI: We're working for the most...

...part in a less controlled environment.

Motion capture works because...

...it can see what the actors are doing and when you're shooting in a forest full of trees...

...that makes it really tricky so we had to specially arrange dozens of cameras every time...

...we changed location just to try to be able to really accurately get the actor's performances.

And the wireless cameras were great working in this kind of environment...

...because we didn't have to worry about laying cables and maintaining cables. It gave us a lot of freedom.

MATT REEVES: They are using motion capture cameras and tracking markers and witness...

...cameras to capture all of the detail of the actor's performances.

And then they're tracking that detail into these photo realistic ape models.

ERIK WINQUIST: The other thing though that was a real huge help on this film was...

...the actual active body marker strands.

And so you can velcro that to the performers, you know, and they could roll around,

they could fight, they could do all the active stuff they needed to do as apes.

DIRECTOR (O/S): Action!

JOE LETTERI: Then really a lot of it just comes into the software that we've written to help...

...translate that after we've acquired all the information to really just more accurately...

...understand what the actors are doing and to be able to see that.

MATT REEVES: The hair simulation, the skin simulation, the, the moisture simulation.

Everything that they do in terms of the actual apes bodies is so much more realistic.

ERIK WINQUIST: One of the big things that we have introduced into the pipeline...

...that was only barely seen, you know, in the last film. Was this whole element of wet fur.

DAN LEMMON: We see the apes when they're dry, we see them when they're damp,

...we see them when they're kind of soaking wet.

It's an incredibly complicated system.

CAESAR: Show me.

MATT REEVES: And that's the amazing magic of what Weta is doing, is finding a way in which it...

...can take the parts of the actors and the parts of the apes and meld them in such...

...a way that, that emotion comes through. Seeing the results is incredibly exciting.