Monkey business is harder than it looks.
Before each “Planet of the Apes” film starts shooting, the actors must attend what is affectionately called “Ape Camp” for six weeks on location in Vancouver, Canada.
Terry Notary, an actor and movement choreographer, has trained the humans who play chimps, gorillas and orangutans in the rebooted series since 2011. The latest installment, “War For the Planet of the Apes,” hits theaters July 14.
“We call it ‘Ape Camp’ because it’s fun,” says Notary, who also plays Rocket, leader Caesar’s right-hand chimp. But, he adds, “We take it very seriously.”
For this third film in the saga, Notary prepared 19 new performers and worked with about five others who returned. Unlike in the original 1968 film, there are no monkey suits, heavy makeup jobs or wigs. All of the apes audiences see on-screen are motion-capture CGI apes, which lends them a more realistic effect as the CGI is based on the actors’ actual movements.
The actors making their “Planet” debuts are always surprised to discover that training involves much more than just jumping up and down and trying to look like they’re telling Tarzan something.
“They’re expecting me to show them what to do to become an ape,” Notary tells The Post via phone from Los Angeles. “I love that aspect of it, because you know what they’re thinking, which is, ‘I’m gonna learn how to be an ape. I’m gonna get on the arm extensions and I’m gonna be running around like an ape today.’
“And that’s the farthest thing [from what] they get to do.” Instead, they spend the first few days mostly talking, delving into what makes a human and what makes an ape.
California native Notary, 48, got his professional start with Cirque du Soleil, and seems to have a thing for ape roles. Earlier this year, he brought King Kong to life in “Kong: Skull Island.” In May, he walked like a monkey on the red carpet at Cannes, there for his film “The Square,” in which he plays a Swedish artist who takes on monkeylike behavior at a black-tie dinner.
For the camp, Notary decided that simplicity was the way to go, after working on Tim Burton’s separate “Planet of the Apes” film in 2001, also as a movement choreographer.
“It was crap,” Notary says of his own early attempts to bring out actors’ inner primates.
Later on, he says, “I got to play with two chimps and it was like, ‘Oh my god. Now I get it.’” He figured out that it wasn’t strictly about the mechanics of acting like an ape, but also about the feeling and psychology of being an ape.
Now, the first several days of his training program are actually more like one-on-one therapy sessions, in which Notary and the actors explore the subconscious tics and mannerisms that come with being a modern person.
“What is it that makes you human? What are the things that you brought along with you throughout your life? What are the conditions you put upon yourself that categorize who you are in your own mind?”
The goal, he says, is to arrive at a neutral, natural, more apelike body.
“We just sit there and breathe,” he says. “I want to see their souls. I want to look into them. I want them to open up so much, I want to see all the little fears that come up.”
Once they learn how to let go of everyday habits, they can go ape. The actors will do physical exercises like re-learning how to sit in a chair, or running back and forth and completing a simple task. Then they start playing in pairs, groups of three and, eventually, as a whole pack.
The training culminates in group treks through the forest in full ape character.
“We’ll do two-hour-long hikes on a trail in Vancouver without saying a single word,” Notary says. “We’ll just emote through action and sound and start to develop amazing moments with the actors.”
Some of those special moments have even been known to get violent.
“One will come over and start to get mad because one tried to take an acorn away from him,” Notary says. “The other guy gets pissed and there’s a fight that breaks out, and we’ll have to come over and break it up.
“And it’s real!”