When my twin grandchildren, Linda and Lyeke, were born two years ago, it changed me. I felt it was the essence of what life is about, and I cried all day. When my son Pierre, their father, was born I didn't cry like that.
My approach to Pennywise was, on one hand, I wanted to stay true to the essence of the character but at the same time make it an edgier character that is basically unpredictable and people won't expect everything he comes up with.
At the beginning when you're writing and building the beats of the story, everything that you put in there seems very essential to the story. However, when you have the movie finally edited and it's 4 four hours long, you realise that some of the events and some of the beats can be easily lifted but the essence of the story remains intact.
You have to go to what the essence of what Pennywise is about - the dark power of adulthood. It's not coincidence all the grown-ups in town are evil. This is not a story about a monster. It's a story about the end of childhood.
Performance capture, for me, is finding the essence of a performance.
The source of all the material comes from nothingness, illusion is working more on things you can prove. That's the principle, the essence of life, it is actually an illusion, not immaterial. That's worth pursuing. So illusion is not nothing. In a way, that is the truth.