In the long-awaited sequel to the sea, Avatar: The Way of the Water, James Cameron makes good on his promise to explore the sparkling seas of Pandora, 13 years after the historic success of 2009′s live-action and motion-capture hybrid epic Avatar. But to bring the blockbuster sequel to life, it took Oscar-winning director and cinematographer Russell Carpenter and a team of actors, experts and technicians to bring the “impossible” to life again.
In 2013, Cameron, who had thousands of pages of notes expanding Pandora’s world, decided to use the aquatic setting as a backdrop and put together a writing team to write a sequel. But John Landau, who has directed every Cameron film since Titanic, immediately foresaw the problem: the technical process used to film actors playing Na’vi on dry sets does not yet exist for filming wet actors. “We immediately jumped into research and development,” he said, “because no one has ever done underwater photography.”
The long-awaited James Cameron blockbuster, which is expected to gross between $150 million and $175 million by Sunday, got off to a strong start.
A new corner of Pandora, set years after the events of Avatar, The Path of Water finds former Marine Jack Sully (Sam Worthington), Omaticai warrior Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and their four children who have taken refuge in the traveler Metkaina clan, with which they must adapt to life at sea in order to survive. For more than half of the film, the characters swim, bond, and fight below the surface of the water, gliding on slippery mounts mounted on creatures called iloos and fighting alongside giant whale-like tulkuns.
They dive in and out of the ocean while racing at high speed, socialize and communicate while swimming in the depths of the water, and engage in a series of harrowing maneuvers – all performed by actors and stunt teams equipped with a special wetsuit and face-grabbing device. camera while freediving in the water.
Nearly a decade after it was conceived, Cameron’s sequel needed innovation comparable to the original: developing a new underwater cinematic language and the technology to capture it. Here’s how they succeeded.
For virtual supervisor Ryan Champney, the journey to Waterways begins in the bathroom.
Champney, credited to Cameron and Landau’s Alita: Battle Angel, worked on the Simulcam system for the first Avatar, which allowed Cameron to see computer-generated elements integrated into real-time action and robotic aiming technology. allows human actors to play pre-programmed physical appearances of their 9-foot-tall Na’vi co-stars on set.
Joining the sequel in 2012, Champney was part of a small team tasked with taking the techniques used in the first film and bringing them to life in water scenes without losing the actors in the motion capture process. Nuances of acting.
“Most films get approved, it takes months to prepare, and there’s a limit to what you can do,” he said. “And I think there’s an opportunity for Jim, like we have to do this – let’s move forward whether other people accept it or not.”
The crew first experimented with dry and wet shots, with the performers wearing motion-capture suits held in the air by wires to mimic their movements in the water. Needless to say, Cameron didn’t. “We did the AB comparison to show Jim and ask, ‘Can you see the difference?’” Champney says. “He said, ‘I don’t need it. We are going to use an underwater solution. He didn’t even look at the test paper.”
Experiments were carried out at home and then in the Landau pool to establish a method for waterproofing a chamber in an underwater housing. But the water itself creates new problems. “We quickly figured out that infrared light is absorbed by water, which is how we normally do motion capture, so we had to use ultraviolet light… it went through the water but was also picked up by the camera sensor. “, Champney said. “There is not much information on this topic, so it took a lot of trial and error.”
As the methodology was implemented, testing gradually moved to larger and larger locations: a diving training pool where individual figures could be captured in 3D, a large open tank that could accommodate more performers.
In the process, says Landau, “We realized that a performance capture system that runs on water wouldn’t work underwater. As we said, we needed to create two different volumes, but they had to run in sync with each other, because what we need to capture the person jumping on top and grab the person below and make all these things work together.”
While Landau declined to say how much a sequel would cost during development—Ways of Water was estimated at $350 million—he believes 20th Century Fox studios can meet the production’s unique needs. (The first Avatar, which grossed $2.92 billion in a lifetime, remains the highest-grossing film of all time.)
“I learned from the Titanic that we were a little surprised that we didn’t work hard enough to get enough research and development money to sink the ship from all sides,” Landau said. “This lesson taught me that if you are now fighting for R&D funding and doing it right, you will end up with a more efficient process.”
“Yes, our films are blockbusters,” he said. “But I do think that if you look back at the films we’ve made, after all, what’s on the screen, they’ve been made more efficiently than anyone else.”
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After a proof-of-concept phase at the Lightstorm Leisure Center, Cameron and Landau designed two large tanks at their Manhattan Beach studio, one for practice and more intimate character scenes. The second, larger tank – the “Swiss Army Tank Knife” – measuring 120 feet long, 60 feet wide and 30 feet deep and with a capacity of 250,000 gallons – was fitted with powerful wave and current machines to capture more of the film’s action. Multi-action – Compressed sequences featuring Na’vi characters.
There are performance capture cameras installed around the tank, as well as security cameras to monitor people in the water. To control light reflection from above, the water is covered with small white floating balls, inspired by an article in the Los Angeles Times Champney read about placing shading balls in the Los Angeles reservoir to reduce evaporation, and also by Cameron in his 1989 A. a similar approach was used in the movie The Abyss.
“As soon as we started to work, they started throwing cars, lifeguards, waves and everything else. I thought, “Well, we haven’t tested anything. But we did it!” Champney said. “That’s a good idea Jim. He pushes it until it breaks and pops out a bit, and then he says, “Now deal with the broken part.”
In order to capture underwater activity clearly enough, it is unlikely that someone in an aquarium will use scuba gear, as air bubbles can affect the accuracy of the sensor. So how does Cameron keep his actors in the water long enough to capture their performances?
The solution is both simpler and more complex than the alternatives: EVERYONE, including new and returning actors such as Worthington, Saldana, Sigourney Weaver and Kate Winslet, reference camera operators, decision makers, and each of the rescue divers’ accompanying actors. I had to hold them while working and breathe underwater, which required extensive training, additional security measures and a lot of time.
“It’s like nothing that’s been done before,” said professional freediver and instructor Kirk Krak, who spent months testing cast, stuntmen and crew before filming Avatar. “This is the most epic diving movie ever made because it’s filmed wet – it’s not Aquaman hanging on wires with a fan in his hair. a film that did what this submersible does, on the same level as we do, with the realism of reality that we do.”
A chance encounter on a shared flight many years ago turned Krak into a seasoned freediver who worked on the 2009 documentary The Cove and had the opportunity to introduce himself to Cameron. “I came up and said, ‘No risk, no gain,’” Clark recalls with a laugh. “My name is Kirk. I’m a freediver and I’ll give you my business card and say, “How long can you hold your breath?”
Krak only got a call a few years later while freediving at a shipwreck in Truk Lagoon in Micronesia. Soon after, Cameron met with Clark in Los Angeles to showcase his Avatar pickle.
“He told me about the project, the different films, how [Avatar] 2 is 60 percent water, 3 is 30 percent, 4 and 5 is 15 percent,” Krak said. “Like the new Na’vi people in the ocean are called Metkaina, they’re freedivers, they’re going to have trouble catching because of air bubbles. They’re thinking of using rebreathers instead of scuba gear, I think freediving can do that. I said, ‘Of course. That’s how I I will do it.”
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Krak’s solution was to teach the cast and crew how to hold their breath using technical freediving techniques. This means using a nitrox mixture to increase breath holding before or after a dive to reduce the risk of hypoxia and speed up recovery.
Working with the actors in the practice pool, Crack helped the Avatar stars feel so comfortable in the water that they stopped thinking about diving. “You can’t hold your breath and dive in and try to bring your character to life when you’re just holding your breath and looking like your cheeks are [puffing out],” Clarke said.
He and the actors considered how their characters would move in relation to the ocean and how comfortable they would be in it, and rehearsed underwater scenes to create the basis for an experience they could use during filming. An underwater workflow was set up: the actors turned on their cameras for each take, counted to safety, dived and found their markers with the Krak, and then acted out their scenes.
“It’s like launching a rocket,” Champney said. “The security team to move, the support chambers to move, the hydraulics to move – how is everyone?”
In between takes, Cameron took notes, Clarke used non-verbal cues to help translate, and then they tried to quickly reset the settings. “He is Michelangelo. Just, you know, painting with 1,500 people,” Clarke said. “He’ll get it until he tells the story, the physics is clear and the movement doesn’t make sense. Whereas most other directors or studios would probably just say, ‘Well, that’s close enough.’ Here’s what does this film is one of the greatest films of all time.”
During the 18-month performance shoot that began in 2017, Krak’s crew, cast and crew recorded over 250,000 freedives. During the busiest period, a tank crew of 26 held their breath underwater, and a motorized water vehicle stood around Pandora’s marine life.
But one of Krak’s proudest moments was how Weaver, who was 69 when she began her freediving training, held her breath while performing scenes adopted by her new Na’vi character Kiri, teenage Jake and Neytiri. their family.
“It’s like holding your breath,” Krak said, marveling at how Weaver ran for another three minutes before returning to the surface. “She is so exciting. She is her character. She held her breath in this huge metabolic scene. I’m so proud, it’s a testament to all the work she’s done.”
Swimming, let alone freediving without a rebreather or scuba gear, was not intuitive at first for Interview with the Vampire actor Bailey Bass, who later plays the role of Cyreia, a teenager from Metkaina who makes the ocean her home.
But for five months, Bass, then 13, practiced holding her breath for a few minutes with her partner. Given her character’s comfort in the water, she also earned her diving certification in Hawaii before starring in one of the “next generation” Na’vi characters she envisioned in The Way of the Water for two years.
“It’s about being able to calmly hold your breath and really feel comfortable underwater,” says Bailey, now 19, who also finds the practice of yoga helpful. “The calmness that yoga brings allows me to hold my breath longer, relax and meditate underwater.”
By the time filming for the second, third and fourth films was completed, freediving had become second nature to the cast. “I’m more comfortable running underwater than on land,” Bass says.
According to her, the average duration of a performance capture dive is four minutes. For non-divers, this can be intimidating. But Bass found that it was liberating. “When you swim underwater, you are there, just you, without any sound, and it is so liberating,” she said. “I would like to do it again.”
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Post time: Dec-28-2022