Jar-Jar... real actor?

Hi

One of my friends told me that Jar-Jar Binks was a real actor and that the documentary on the TPM DVD says so. I thought he was computer made - all the way!

(I know who is his voice)

Same guy as the voice 'plays' Jar Jar. As the above response said, a few shots show parts of the suit he wore, but he is mostly replaced with CGI. Watto was played by a man on set too. And Boss Nass was Brian Blessed.

And he's a help for other actors - so they don't have to speak to empty space (he's deleted from scene after).

I believe Ahmed Best 'stood in' for Jar-Jar in every scene during filming... sometimes in the black bodysuit with the ping-pong balls for motion capture, sometimes in the costume and prosthetics... then, for the most part, he was replaced by a CGI character post process.

Same for several other characters in the movie.

It's the same for almost all the CGI characters.

There's ALWAYS a real actor doing the voice and they often stand in (including saying their lines) to help the animators with movements and shadows, and give the other actors an 'eye-level' to look at when interacting with the future CGI characters.

Ahmed Best did the motion capture stuff and some real asswipe did his lines, that's why he uses 10 year old Wayne's World jokes;'...excweese me'

There is also a part shortly after QUi-Gon and Obi-Wan, the bumbling Jedi Failure meet Jar-Jar that there is sort of a close up shot of the three talking(in TPM) where you can plainly see that Qui-Gon is looking at the area where Jar Jar will be but isn't there yet, because of no CGI on a live set. It's pretty bad. I mean in ESB you can make an excuse for Vaders Helmet moving in the high winds during the battle with Luke, but the CGI thing in TPM was bad. In fact just before TPM was released, Liam Neeson said he would never do a movie with so much CGI again. more proof that TPM is definetly the WORST SW movie of all.

I should say, the stand-in actor is usually present for a couple of takes and then another take is done without him/her there. Then George Lucas picks the best take to hand over to the CGI team to add the CGI charcater animation.