Original subtitles

And action! Action! Action!

The Abyss was the most physically taxing film I've made

because we're underwater so much.

I think Avatar was certainly the longest and the most complex film I've ever made,

more complex than Titanic or the Terminator films or anything else.

On those films, especially the Terminator films,

we broke new ground with the CG effects and so on.

And we were always trying to push the envelope.

This time it pushed back. And then we pushed harder.

And it took a long time. There's no book to look this up.

There was no manual for how you do this sort of film.

And we were doing it very differently than previous performance captured films,

because we went beyond.

It's by definition, as exploring a frontier, you're gonna make mistakes.

We made mistakes, but we figured it out.

I'm only smart enough to surround myself with enough smart people

to solve the problems.

And I had a great team, "cause we were way out in the unknown, but that's cool.

That's where I like to be.

People have asked me, "What was your inspiration? What was the trigger?"

They're looking for some kind of proximal cause and there really isn't one, okay.

It's my whole life. It's my entire childhood.

I grew up in a town in rural Canada. I spent all my time in the woods.

I loved critters, you know. I would catch anything that moved

and study it, keep it as a pet. Snakes, frogs, amphibians,

whatever it was I could get my hands on.

So, I grew up with this kind of profound sense of wonder about nature.

And I was also a science fiction and fantasy fan

from the earliest time I could remember.

And I was an artist, so my way of processing that was to draw and to paint.

And I was painting creatures and painting alien worlds

for as far back as I can remember.

So, Avatar is really the sum total of all that.

There was no single moment of inspiration.

Now, the thing that got me off my duff to actually sit down and write it,

this movie that I'd had in my head for most of my life in some form or other,

was that I was the CEO of a big visual effects company.

And I wanted to challenge that visual effects company to go beyond,

not just beyond what everybody else was doing, but beyond the beyond.

I wanted to be so far out in front that nobody would ever catch us.

And that's essentially what Avatar is.

It's the most high-tech film, in terms of its execution,

dealing with essentially a very low-tech subject,

which is our relationship with nature.

And, in fact, the irony is that the film is about our relationship with nature

and how our technological civilization has taken us several removes away

from a truly natural existence, and the consequences of that to us.

JON LANDAU: I first heard of Avatar when we were prepping Titanic,

so it was 1995-ish.

And Jim gave me a scriptment to read.

And think of the scriptment as a novella

with certain scenes broken out into dialogue.

Come on! Come on!

The essence of what I got out of reading the scriptment was that

it was an emotional journey set in a world beyond what I certainly could've imagined.

CAMERON: I figured, if we can do that, we could do anything.

And, of course, the answer that I got was, "We can't do this."

Nobody can do this. And that was in '95.

LANDAU: It was several years after that that we started to even think about it.

When we did some tests on Brother Termite,

which was a movie that involved

an alien character in Washington, D.C.

And we needed this character to interact with humans.

And we said to ourselves, we need to do that with performance capture.

And we actually tested a whole sequence.

Marion, some of my people have disappeared.

I need to know why.

LANDAU: And Jim envisioned doing the facial performance

with an image-based process.

That was the seed that really proved to us that there was the potential

to finally be able to do a film like Avatar.

Avatar was written in '95 to be the next film after Titanic.

And there was supposed to have been a continuity of work

during the time that Titanic was being made to prepare us

for making Avatar after Titanic,

but we made a decision that it wasn't even worth

putting together the couple of million dollars that we wanted to spend

in research and development during that time,

because we wouldn't be able to get there in that time period.

So, I went off and made Titanic. And then after Titanic

I got very focused on deep ocean exploration,

and I did six subsequent expeditions.

And my last expedition ended in summer of 2005,

and that's when we started Avatar.

LANDAU: So we proposed to Fox that they support us for a year,

and we would do several things during that year.

First, we would research the technology.

Could we really do the things we think we can do?

And we'd begin to develop the art of the world,

So that they could get a visual sense of where this movie would take place.

We were doing two things simultaneously and they involved

two completely separate groups of people.

LANDAU: One was the technical side led by Rob Legato and Glenn Derry.

And the other was on the design side,

where we'd brought in a handful of artists that included

Neville Page, Yuri Bartoli, Jordu Schell, Wayne Barlowe,

and a gentleman by the name of Rob Powers.

They went out to Malibu where we set up in a facility,

So it could be near Jim, working on the designs for the film.

We got the best artists we could find, that had excellent portfolios,

beautiful work in the fantasy and science fiction area,

brought them together, formed a small core team.

YURI BARTOLI: They wouldn't even tell me what the project was. I had no idea.

We go in, we have this meeting with Jim.

And we get the scriptment, we read the scriptment and we start seeing

all these big design possibilities, it was a whole world.

We're salivating, 'cause this is the chance to really come up with some new stuff,

you know, something really unique.

It was gonna be this really colorful jungle world, you know,

of Pandora, very alien.

That was one of the big issues at the beginning was how alien do we get?

NEVILLE PAGE: Mostly the process is you start out with the big, broad strokes.

So, we would do tons of drawings, just sketch away

until Jim sees something that feels like it's getting close.

All the time you're trying to predict or get into his head

and see what it is that he sees.

CAMERON: The banshee is a great example of a creature

that took a long time to create.

It took almost two years to get the finished banshees.

What I kept coming back to them with, my question that I always posed to them is,

"What's the metaphor? What are we trying to say to the audience?

"What are we communicating with

"every bone and sinew that we put into this creature?”

And the answer to the metaphor question with the banshee is,

"I want it to be a bird of prey. I want it to be like an eagle, but an alien eagle.”

You could apply that to all the different creatures.

(ROARING)

The metaphor for the than at or, well, was the biggest, baddest,

meanest terrestrial predator in the entire Pandoran rainforest.

And it actually landed pretty close to the initial description

from 10 years earlier, which was that it was

a black, armored, six-legged panther from hell.

PAGE: Their constant is that they're all hexapedal to some degree,

meaning they've all got six legs or six limbs.

CHRISTOPHER SWIFT: How do you make that work?

Unfortunately a real horse doesn't work with six legs.

So, we'd have to reengineer an actual horse as a Na'vi can.

That's kind of what we did.

So, even in the flying creatures, there's a vestigial element of that in them.

CAMERON: We looked at the colors of poison dart frogs and tropical reef fish.

PAGE: This is one of the things that

I think is gonna separate all the creatures

from a lot of creatures we've done in the past.

These creatures are extremely colorful, very bright, very flamboyant.

When you look at 'em it's just like, "Wow."

It's like a big kimono coming at you.

(SCREECHING)

CAMERON: The Na'vi took a long time to design

but the blue color was never in question,

because I felt that it was a fundamentally alien skin color

that could be quite beautiful,

but the idea that they incorporated animal-like features,

cats' ears and cat tails and a slightly more protrusive muzzle

and kind of a flatter, more feline nose, big eyes, lemur-like eyes,

this was all something that we arrived at

over the course of designing these characters.

We initially started out with kind of more amphibian-like

and reptilian kind of forms and alien structures,

you know, kind of antennae and things like that.

And we kept realizing that it wouldn't work as a love story.

To see them not be attractive, but they couldn't be human.

And then they kept coming back to just blue skinned humans.

I said, "Well, that's no good either."”

So, we have to find ways of pushing away from human,

but in a way that people would not find off putting, and in fact, might even find

to be kind of quite beautiful. I wanted people to say, "I wanna be one of them.”

Our art department started out working in flat artwork.

We had nothing that we could hold up that was tactile in front of us.

And we realized we had one of the great sculptors in our business on the show.

And we tasked him with starting to sculpt out and build the characters.

One of the most important things about the maquette

is not that you're just showing the design,

what the maquette allows us to do, it gives it the human touch,

and it also imbues the character

with a sense of character. That cannot be stressed enough.

You get a sense of attitude.

The amount of character you can get in clay, as far as I see right now,

is still superior to what you can get in just a digital rotatable model.

It's interesting. Stan Winston Studios did something on this movie

that Stan Winston had not allowed them to do on any other movie in the past.

They initially worked only as concept artists.

STAN WINSTON: The Na'vis don't all look alike. They all look like Na'vis,

but they all have very implicit, very distinctive characters.

And that's, of course, what we're most proud of,

is, you look at these characters and they are very, very rich

and specific and quite mind-blowing.

When Jim first came to us he was looking to help flesh out

the Na'vi character. He already knew some of the parameters.

They were gonna have markings. And he knew the basic overall size.

So, that's what we started doing, was creating Na'vis, trying to get

a photo-real kind of essence of these people.

LANDAU: What happened in April of 2005, Rob Legato came to us

and showed us some tests that he had actually done

where he used a virtual camera, but in a post-production method.

And he had the idea that he could apply that same thing to performance capture.

How it started was essentially

coming up with an emulation of how we like to make

live action movies.

Normally you go into a film and you at least have a basic idea.

There's a process that's in been place for, you know, 100 years

towards creating these images, but Jim wanted to do it different.

JOSH McLAGLEN: I remember the day Jim and Jon visited the Beowulf set,

which basically was a blind cap paradigm,

which means reference cameras only for the performances of your actors,

and not seeing any rendered caricatures or environments at all.

And I saw this little glint in Jim's eye and I knew he was up to something,

but he didn't tell any of us. He didn't tell me.

That's basically the genesis or the idea where he says,

"I think we can do a tool for the director enabling him to come up with

“real time performance capture.”

So, we had to come up with a way that was sort of director centric

and give him the tool set that he needed to be able to work with.

I went to Jim and I had said, "I can make this thing that you would like."

So, essentially, out of spare parts, made a virtual camera.

So, we put you in a spatial volume.

The Volume is the stage. And the stage is really what we can capture,

what our cameras are seeing.

CAMERON: You've got a bunch of markers on the actor's body that are being

picked up by hundreds of cameras. So, the hundreds of cameras are providing

different views of these markers.

Each camera's image just looks like a cloud of dots.

And then the computer is creating a real time moving skeleton of you.

From that skeleton we now can drive a computer generated character.

And that image is then pumped out to me at the camera.

When somebody is standing in front of the camera,

I don't see them, I see their character.

So, I'm basically walking around with a monitor.

There's no lens on this thing.

It's just a markered object that the system recognizes as a camera

and pointing it at things. And it's showing me what that would look like

through a real time computer render.

So, we call it a "camera," but it's not truly a camera.

Cut. Save that, please.

LANDAU: It wasn't until we brought in Rick Carter and Rob Stromberg

that the world of Pandora really came to life.

Actually I was only supposed to be on this film for two weeks.

I came on because Jim needed help with the presentation to the studio.

I did a couple of images and Jim saw those and said,

"You know what? You're staying."

LANDAU: We are very lucky to have gotten Rick Carter to come onto our film.

And he came in and he saw the movie on so many different levels.

I think that what's unique and special about Avatar is that it's an experience.

The part of the job that matters to me is, what's it about?

The big question's of "Why?" Not just how are you gonna do it,

which, of course, you have to do it, but you have to come up with the whys,

because those are what motivate you to actually inspire this army of people.

LANDAU: And he was able to bring into the fold

Ryan Church and James Clyne and others who just elevated everything.

And he worked collaboratively with Rob Stromberg.

And Rob and Rick shared the responsibility, ultimately, of designing the world.

RYAN CHURCH: This is a real alien planet.

The degree to which

Jim has thought through the ecosystems and the interactions,

this is the first time I've seen anything like this.

STROMBERG: When you first get there, it's actually a very scary place.

We wanted to play out the haunted house factor, the sort of,

you know, you don't wanna go in there.

But then over time as the characters develop, so does the environment.

It develops into beauty and you get to respect it,

much as the people who live there respect it.

It's a very primeval landscape,

huge, craggily mountains, exciting ring structures from magnetic fields

and stuff like that, and then, of course, the giant floating mountains.

So, it's very science fiction, but yet we're trying to take

those very science fiction things, but kind of ground that in sort of a reality.

For inspiration we looked a lot at various regions of China,

such as the Guilin area and the Zhangjiajie area,

'cause they have these limestone formations called Karst formations.

And we also reference a lot of South American jungle, a lot of Venezuela,

areas around Tepui and Angel Falls.

Oh, my God.

COLE: For like the smaller things such as the alien plants,

we would reference a lot of small lichen, small succulents

that actually exist on Earth, exotic flowers and just really play up the scale of those.

Jim was really adamant about wanting Pandora to be possible.

So his vision was to really have as much real and good science in it as it could be.

On Pandora or anywhere,

the environmental factors that would have the most influence on plants

would be the light, the solar radiation, which is needed for photosynthesis.

So, on Pandora there's a very strong magnetic field

and very weak gravity so plants were able to grow much larger,

So gigantism, the large trees, the large plants.

That is one big damn tree.

LANDAU: By starting out with the designs of the daytime stuff,

it was after that that we got into the bioluminescence.

The idea that there is fairly low light could conceivably cause

plants to evolve bioluminescence.

We wanted it to have this kind of dreamlike quality,

but the eye needed to be educated through the experience of the film.

First, we're gonna fly down through clouds.

Then we're gonna go to this human base.

Then we're gonna move off that base out into the forest,

but we're gonna go out there in the daytime.

And then we're gonna gradually

take you into that more and more alien experience with Pandora.

And that was by design. We knew we were doing that,

'cause we knew that ultimately we were gonna wind up in a fully CG rainforest

with fully CG characters and it had to look real.

STROMBERG: As it's getting dark for the first time in the jungle,

Jake lights a torch,

and we play the whole scene sort of torch-lit,

So you don't give away the bioluminescence.

And there's a moment in the film where Neytiri takes the torch

and throws it in a river.

It's almost like opening the door to Oz.

The torch goes out and you see the bioluminescence for the first time.

MAN: Prep it up.

One of the first things we did when we had the system up and running

is we shot what we call a prototype.

Maybe we were crazy, but we never doubted that it would work.

So, we cast two actors who were not going to be

the final actors, and we shot a short scene.

Okay, I'm sorry. Whatever I did, I'm sorry.

And then ILM finished it for us, through to a so-called photo-real level.

You only come and make problems. Only.

ACTOR: Okay. Fine, fine.

Fine.

You love your little forest friends.

So why not just let them kill my ass? What's the thinking?

Why save?

Yes, why save?

You not fear.

You strong heart.

But stupid! Ignorant like child.

CAMERON: From that moment when we saw that little 37-second clip,

we knew this would work.

It was just a question of how easy it was gonna be and, of course, it wasn't easy,

how much it was gonna cost, and how long it was gonna take,

but we never doubted that it could be done.

Weta Digital started with us doing the R and D on a project

and was very eager to do the film.

JOE LETTERI: Jon came to New Zealand to talk to us

and brought a copy of Jim's original treatment for Avatar.

I read it and I just devoured it. It was fantastic.

And so, we just started talking about it and just,

just talking about the ideas that were in the story,

the characters, the jungle, the floating mountains,

the plants, just the whole world.

It just seemed too fantastic to not put it on screen.

LANDAU: They'd just come off of Lord of the Rings.

They were finishing up King Kong.

And they had two firm offers to take very big shows.

And they went to the board of directors at Weta,

and they made a decision

to pass on those money paying shows and wait for Avatar

in the hope that we would get green-lit.

Are we gonna have somebody from your team with us next week

while we're doing these scenes?

- Yeah, I'll be there. - Joe's gonna be there and...

- (ALL LAUGHING) - Can't complain about that.

We worked with two different sides of Weta.

We worked with Weta Digital led by Joe LETTERI that was gonna do

the visual effects on the movie. And we began working with Richard Taylor

and his incredible team of artists at Weta Workshop.

RICHARD TAYLOR: One of our trademarks at Weta is that

we love to design a historical culture, a believable lineage of culture

within a world. I felt that this offered us that opportunity.

I would suggest the Na'vi culture is more aligned to a Pacific culture

and what we've done is we're gonna hire weavers that come from the Pacific,

and they are able to put that little culture in.

Regardless of the fact that it was set in the future, the people of this world

needed to feel that they had lived in the past,

they'd been on a journey to this place. And I found that really exciting.

CAMERON: We had a discussion. You know, what kind of culture are they?

Well, they're a Neolithic culture.

They can't use metals, because they're in these very powerful magnetic fields.

So, they have to make everything out of bone and crystal and leather and so on.

Also, woven into it, Jim definitely saw a further layer of adornment

that would be suggestive of a culture that existed beyond the moment in the movie.

That would be suggestive of a culture that existed beyond the moment in the movie.

What Jim wanted to portray in the Na'vi people

is actually a tribal look that was unique, soft, and beautiful, organic,

reflecting the kind of philosophy that the Na'vi people live,

which is very utopic and happy.

- WOMAN: How's that? - I can still breathe.

- Still breathing? - Yeah.

We'll have to be careful if you start to turn blue.

CAMERON: I think one of the biggest disservices on this movie

during the "awards season," if you will,

was that the costume design was not recognized.

There were actually two costume designers,

but when Deb Scott came in, she actually fabricated

every single article of clothing that every single virtual character in the movie wore.

DEBORAH L. SCOTT: It was a little bit of a learning experience

for everyone to really try to figure out

what the place of the costume designer might be.

I didn't understand anything to do with computers really or how that process was

when I started. So, I was completely playing catch-up.

I was stitching and sewing with a lot of amazing crafts people

who had been working on the project.

They were approaching it just like the Na'vi would.

Like how would you weave a chest plate?

So, it was really like a giant jigsaw puzzle, taking some pieces

that other people had already built,

adding on to new pieces that

I had crafts people who had already been working on the project build for me,

and sort of taking on and trying to finish off each character,

which ended up being quite a few pieces.

The other challenge, of course, is that

it can't look like anything you'd ever find on Earth.

And that's fantastic. That's just such a cool challenge,

to start from scratch. What does a knife look like, you know?

How do you wear it? All of the stuff informs everything else.

CAMERON: It's impossible for CG artists to imagine

how to simulate this stuff if there's no real-world reference first.

Mo'at's ceremonial gown, what we called her mantle, we had to make that.

And it was actually made in a number of different fabrics

until we got exactly the right weight

that would move the way we wanted it to move.

(SPEAKING NA'VI)

The same thing with Tsu'tey"s battle fringe.

Deb Scott made up all kinds of different fringe

with different weights and different lengths and so on and we tested.

Basically we did wind tunnel testing and saw what it looked like, imaged it.

And we said, "All right, that's the weight. That's the right fringe.

"That's exactly the right color and length.

"Now, Weta, you guys have to figure out how to do a simulation

"and incorporate it into the animation.”

CAMERON: All right. Here we go.

And action.

Two of the biggest challenges of keeping people engaged in the movie

while we were going through this process were our two stars,

Sam Worthington and Zoë Saldana.

We spent months and months looking at people,

and then all of a sudden Sam came on. And I... I mean, I remember the moment.

When I first came here, it was just orders,

and then something happened.

I fell in love with the forest

and The People.

And with you.

And the thing for me about Jake was, in the end I had to believe

that The People would follow him.

Well, we will send them a message.

That this is our land!

I sold everything I owned. All I had was basically a bag of books

and a bag of clothes and a $3,000 car.

And then I get a phone call to do this audition,

where they wouldn't tell me anything about the script,

wouldn't tell me who the director was.

And I'm thinking "Well, once again here's another waste of my time."

And then about a week later I get a phone call going,

"Jim Cameron wants to fly you to L.A. to audition for him."

I said, "What the hell for?" They said, "That audition you did."

I went like, here we go. I said, "Well, I've gotta get down."

I was snowboarding at the time. I said,

"I gotta get down off the mountain first.

"I could be dead." Especially the way I snowboard.

CAMERON: All right. Got that. All right, here we go.

WORTHINGTON: And because I was coming from having nothing to lose,

it actually powered me up to actually kind of not be scared.

So, when you go into the audition and there's the guy who did Aliens and Titanic

and you go, "What do you got, mate? Let's go.”

I think that's the character right there.

I wanted him to be young,

'cause I wanted him to be a guy who...

The promise of his life had been taken away by his injury.

And Sam was exactly 30 when I met him, I think maybe even 29,

but Sam had all the qualities that I was looking for to play Jake,

(IN AUSTRALIAN ACCENT) but he talked like this.

(LAUGHING)

He was like "Crocodile" Dundee.

We had to work on the accent a little bit.

I ain't gonna show that I'm weak. Unless you want me to.

CAMERON: But he did it. As Sam does with all things, he conquered the accent.

He conquered the physicality.

And we slapped an experimental head rig on his head

and said, "Now, be the star of this movie."

He didn't blink, you know. He just did it.

A clean Kill.

You are ready.

SIMKIN: Zoë had a combination of delicacy and boldness.

There was a fierceness about her

and an incredible physicality that was essential to being able to do this.

It was unusual, the auditioning process.

From Margery to Jon and after finally meeting Jim,

I was that close, but at the same time I was that far from getting the part.

It was just a fun experience.

This is your fault. All your fault. They did not have to die.

WOMAN: They attacked me. How am I the bad guy?

Your fault! You're like a child.

Making noise, not knowing what to do.

The way they painted it out is like we were just gonna have fun,

experiment and see where it might take us.

And once they kept it that light, I was able to not feel the pressure

of wanting to get this job.

Why save you?

WOMAN: Yeah, why save me?

You have a strong heart.

We decided to do a little informal screen test between Sam Worthington

and Zoë Saldana, our two leading choices for the roles,

because the key to this was performance and chemistry.

Jake and Neytiri, that relationship had to work or the movie

wasn't going to work.

I've chosen.

Now the woman has to choose me.

She already has.

Out of that, again, Jim felt very comfortable in his decisions,

but we didn't have a green light on the movie.

The studio was also thinking, "Gee, you really need a star in this movie,

"you know, for the Sam Worthington character.”

You know, their eyes get a little bit too big for what they're really ready to embrace.

WORTHINGTON: It was a six-month process of waiting.

You know, I said to Jim, "I'll stand by the whole way.

"I want to go on this journey. And I need a damn job."

So, we did an old-fashioned, Hollywood screen test

with a slightly new twist, that it was in 3-D.

We will send them a message.

That they cannot take whatever they want,

and that this,

this is our land!

(YELLING)

It was after watching those scenes that Fox came on board and realized

that Sam was the right one for that part.

In January of 2007 we got the green light.

And that was both a very exciting day and a very daunting day,

'cause all of a sudden we really had to make the film.

Outstanding.

CAMERON: I wanted to have my main character become

the stranger in the strange land, become the alien.

See the world through alien eyes, but still with a human perspective.

So, he was a human in an alien body trying to integrate into an alien society.

And I wanted that idea of trying to learn the other culture.

And, of course, the first key to that is always language.

(SPEAKING NA'VI)

What's he saying?

I had done some of that stuff before I ever met with a linguist.

I was just basing it on my sort of casual acquaintance

with some Polynesian languages, some other languages

that had these kind of various symbols and indicators for pronunciation.

So, then when I started working with Dr. Paul Frommer, he got excited by that.

He said, "What does this apostrophe mean to you?" I said, "Well,

“It's just the way you pronounce that word."

He said, "Okay, let's work with that. And we'll incorporate that into it."

And then he went miles and miles beyond those initial ideas.

He wanted something that didn't sound like anything that we'd ever heard before,

but also that sounded like something that was doable,

in the sense that the actors could master it.

He showed me some of the words that he had come up with,

and that gave me a sense of the kind of sounds he had in mind.

So, at that point, I kind of built from there.

FROMMER: It's...

(SPEAKING NA'VI)

All the lines that were to be spoken in Na'vi first appeared in English,

and then it was up to me to turn that into Na'vi.

Once I had the elements of the language in place,

it was pretty much a translation exercise, except that I didn't have a dictionary.

I was the one who created the dictionary.

So, of course, I had to create the words as well as put them together into sentences.

SIMKIN: When I started the job I asked if I could meet with Paul

who was writing the language,

and he was still in the process of writing it at that point.

So, every actor that came in,

whether they were coming in for human-into-an-avatar or a Na'vi role,

all the auditions have them sitting there doing...

(IMITATING NA'VI)

You know, all this sort of stuff.

(SPEAKING NA'VI VOWELS)

Basically what they did was, you walk in there, casting director says,

"Okay, you're gonna do the audition, but you're not gonna do it in English."

(SPEAKING NA'VI)

I know a lot of people that got pissed, and they walked out of there angry.

And I just remember, like I was speaking gibberish.

And I walked out and I was like, "Nobody's gonna like that."

It was awful. I was embarrassed.

(SPEAKING NA'VI SYLLABLES)

ALONSO: They responded to it.

And more than anything, my performance came through.

(SPEAKING NA'VI)

Like a month and a half later, I get a call,

and they're like, "Jim wants to meet you."

I'm like, "Over that?"

You're Jake, right?

Tom's brother.

Wow! You look just like him.

CAMERON: Sigourney and I had been through an experience

early in both our careers

that was a huge break for both of us. She got an Academy Award nomination

for playing a character in a science fiction movie,

which was almost unprecedented.

Get away from her, you bitch!

But that was, you know, 23 years earlier.

And in a funny way I had almost discounted working with Sigourney,

because we had done Aliens, and because it was a science fiction film

about an encounter with an alien species.

I thought, "Mmm, that might be a little too close to home,"

but then I thought, you know, "Idiot, she's perfect for this character.

"She can do an amazing job with Grace Augustine.

“Grace Augustine is not Ripley."

- I'm changing her name. - Oh, okay.

Because I don't wanna do Ripley and Shipley.

- All righty. - (ALL LAUGHING)

CAMERON: Let's say it's gonna be Grace Augustine.

SIGOURNEY WEAVER: Frankly, it's thrilling to be working with Jim again

since we did Aliens,

but also to be in the first movie

he's wanted to do since Titanic.

And to see how excited he is about the writing, the shooting, the this, the that,

you know, the joy he has of working on this finally.

He's quite unique, I think, really unique.

CAMERON: And I just felt that there was an interesting spin

on her being involved in a story in which we are the aliens, you know.

The word "alien" is used in the film.

It's used by the Na'vi speaking of us.

(SPEAKING NA'VI)

So, there's an interesting irony there.

WEAVER: It's such a great adventure.

And it's also at the same time a great love story,

also very much about big business

and their blindness to the destruction they cause.

You murderer!

ROSENGRANT: As we got the actors,

it kind of fell into place that we would incorporate

the actor into the design, and kind of came up with an idea

that it would be great to try to retain the mouth

and some of the facial characteristics of that actor

So that that actor's performance would come through.

And to develop Zoë, who plays Neytiri,

we actually went to the set and put her through a whole battery of photographs.

And then, on top of the actress's photographs,

then we would turn her into a Na'vi.

So, we did complete turnarounds,

all different angles of the head and neck.

This is a photograph that I used to start this image here.

We took this through at least 50, 60 versions.

ROSENGRANT: For each actor, we put them through a life cast process,

which we used for our designing purposes when it came to a 3-D sculpture.

Look at that.

It's absolutely fantastic.

- What an incredible cast. - I must say.

SALDANA: No eyebrows in there?

- Your eyebrows are right there... - They are still on your head.

(MEN LAUGHING)

ROSENGRANT: Which in turn gets scanned into computer files,

which are sent to Weta,

and then they will then work off of this design that we've done

and help bring those to life.

It was very important for us to put all of our actors

through a training regimen that was specific to their characters.

Everything they say, everything they do,

every physical part of their performance is all done by actors,

it's captured performance.

And this applies to Sam Worthington's character

and all the other characters as well, that are Na'vi or avatars.

How they move, how they breathe,

how they stand, everything had to be created by them.

So, Sam, we had him learn Na'vi.

(READING NA'VI)

We had him work out with a trainer.

Sam had to do military training, and he worked with my brother

who's a former Marine. He fought in Desert Storm.

So, we got some of his Marine Corps buddies

and they took him out, put him through his paces

and that gave him a little bit of the mindset

to draw from to play his character.

I think I've given you, Sam, the upside of staying out of combat...

They want you to kind of be proficient with weaponry and stuff like that,

'cause the guy's a Marine.

So, I wanted to actually meet other Marines.

MAN: Fourth time.

Go, go, go.

WORTHINGTON: To me it was more the way these guys see the world

and the way that their training has made them think.

And nothing can stop them.

I mean, it's drilled into them to achieve their mission.

(MAN SHOUTING ORDERS)

You got the man next to you and if he goes down you pick him up,

and you keep going.

MAN 1: Keep going. MAN 2: You got it, Sam, let's go.

MAN 1: Keep going, keep going.

WORTHINGTON: And that gave me a base to jump from.

So that was the best training I had.

- MAN: Welcome to our world. - Jesus Christ!

- I should just drop here. - MAN: Okay.

Zoë went through a tremendous amount of training, as did Laz and CCH.

Zoë went through a tremendous amount of training, as did Laz and CCH.

She went through horseback training, archery training, movement training,

dance training, language training.

(ENUNCIATING) Neytiri.

To say we did a lot of training IS an understatement.

We actually had to learn how to walk like a Na'vi.

We had to learn how to do everything from our core.

They only exhibit speed or power

when they absolutely have to, until they explode.

And when they explode, I mean, they move like the wind.

CAMERON: They worked with a movement coach, Terry Notary.

And Terry came up with certain ways of moving

that involved the way the chest and the spine would move

to create some kind of animal grace and power in the step.

We worked with each actor as a whole.

And then separate them and work with them as individuals

so that they can first create a base technique.

So, there's some inspiration coming from different sources.

It's not an ape or it's not a cheetah.

It's a combination of a bunch of things that the character is inspired by.

SALDANA: Without Terry Notary, we would have a species

that would talk a different language,

but would walk human and react as humans do.

LANDAU: Terry worked with the complete cast

to create a unity of movement

and create a believability in this culture that they have grown up together.

LULA WASHINGTON: There's a connection between the people

and their environment.

This is part of how they get their strength. This is part of how they survive.

This is part of them getting energy. We play around with all of that.

CAMERON: There were some big dance numbers

that got cut out of the movie,

but her choreography, her movement that she created,

it's still very much a part of the film.

When you see all the ceremonial stuff

where they're swaying and rocking around and throwing their arms in the air,

in these very precise time signatures,

all of that was created by Lula and by her troupe.

(ALL REPLYING IN NA'VI)

(MO'AT SPEAKING NA'VI)

GARRETT WARREN: I got a hold of Zoë and we taught her how to run,

how to jump on a wire, how to shoot her bow.

That was one of the biggest things we had to work with for her

was how to shoot this bow and arrow

more different than ever has been done before.

LANDAU: Zoë was the first person we started to teach the bow work to.

Zoë's a lefty.

So, once we established that they were lefties,

we said all of them had to be lefties.

Jim came up with the idea of, "This is such a human gesture.

"Let's just do this."

And all of a sudden it's no longer human feeling,

and it also accentuates the idea that the Na'vis only have three digits.

CAMERON: It wouldn't work very well for a human,

but the Na'vi are subtly different in terms of their bio mechanics.

And you can see that in their upper body musculature and so on,

especially the males.

The archery teacher came to me puzzled.

And he says, "All right, you're showing the actors one way of doing it,

"but you're having me teach them proper archery.”

And I said, "Well, I want them to respect the power of the bow,

“and I want them to understand

“the focus, the breathing and all those things that you can teach them."

That strength has to project

from the core of your body, through the bow arm, towards the target.

And, if nothing else, you think of your target as... (EXCLAIMS)

Think of your target as... (EXCLAIMS)

LANDAU: And we had two instructors from the Olympic team

come to help work with our actors.

And we showed them this idea of doing it backwards.

And at first they were very skeptical.

And he said, "You know, you can't shoot a bow that way."

And I said, "Really, you can't? Come with me."

So, I got a bow from the prop man, and I got an arrow.

And I walked out behind the studio

and I said, "You see that bush over there, that's about 75 meters away?"

He said, "Yes."

And | went (WHOOSHES) like that

and hit it.

And he said, "Oh, you can shoot a bow that way."

"Cause I'd been out there practicing, and I got lucky with that one shot,

but I hit it.

Let's go through the first page of background dialogue, part one.

What we've done is we've really worked on it as a company of actors.

And what we've been doing the last couple of weeks

Is having them speak their way of speaking Na'vi to each other.

What we've just been doing is to have Zoë and Laz come up

and just do a little bit of the dialogue

so that Wes can hear what we've established,

so that rhythmically and so on, he can match up,

and he's doing great.

So that we're artificially creating that melting pot.

(READING NA'VI)

It's a part of your costume. It's a part of who you become.

So you want it to become natural and fluent.

(READING NA'VI)

I'm lucky,

because the character only just learns it over the course of the movie.

So, if I slip up, it helps the character.

- Na vi. - "Nari."

- Nari. - "Narrri"!

Narrri!

CAMERON: Paul Frommer had created a language.

He wasn't creating an accent.

So, I basically said, "Zoë, you get to establish what Na'vi sounds like,

"and what the Na'vi accent sounds like,

"because you're the one with the most lines.

"And then everybody else is just gonna have to try and match you

"as best they can."

It's very hard, 'cause, how do I speak English with an accent?

I barely speak English all in itself.

The one who interprets the will of Eywa.

To me it's been the most challenging thing is to speak English with a Na'vi accent.

I need your help.

You should not be here.

CAMERON: I knew that we were gonna be working in

this sterile gray space, this Volume.

And I didn't want the actors to just come in

on the first Monday morning of the shoot,

and not have any basis for feeling like they were in a rainforest.

So, we went to Kauai.

We went way up in the mountains and we acted out the scenes.

Relax, Marine. You're making me nervous.

And we just did behaviors, but trying to stay in character,

and talking as if they're characters.

Sigourney fed on this a great deal. I know Sam and Zoë got a lot out of it.

We didn't know what it was gonna be like and Jim took it further.

I thought we were just gonna be in our regular clothes, you know,

hiking, just to get a physical taste of what it's gonna be like

to live in a planet and not have to rely on anything comfortable,

but it was that, but also wearing our costumes.

(LAUGHING) So, I was naked for three days in Hawaii,

(LAUGHING) So, I was naked for three days in Hawaii,

up in like the forest just digging and climbing and muddy,

and we're videotaping,

and we're going through the inside of this jungle.

SALDANA: Are you stepping on my tail?

(CAMERON LAUGHING)

And I saw this headless rat,

and I'm with my bow, and I'm in character, and the moment I saw this rat

I was immediately back to my New York state of mind.

I was like, "Oh, my God. I can't deal with this."

(LAUGHING) And he's like, "Suck it up.”

Jim was like, "Come on, Neytiri. Suck it up."”

I'm like, "Right. Right, okay.

"Zoë, leave.

"This is jungle, no TV, no BlackBerry. Let me just do this.”

So, it's been a struggle every day

to undo everything that has been done up until my years.

WORTHINGTON: I just absorbed that place.

I absorbed the beauty of the rainforest there.

And we did a couple of scenes and we'd run around in loin cloths,

pretending we were the Na'vi and the avatar.

There's a difference between being out in the real world

and then coming into this gray, desolate area,

and actually trying to have to remember what it was like in the water.

So, if you're swimming,

even if you're swimming on just a rolling chair,

your brain can remember it.

We got to rehearse a few of the scenes,

and we got to rehearse with physical things,

because we knew that we were gonna be going into a mocap stage

and you don't know how your foot lands in mud

if you're just standing on cement.

So, your body reacts differently to things

once you've actually gone out and done those things.

CAMERON: I was shooting them with an HD camera the entire time

Just watching how they moved, how they behaved,

how the light played on their faces, the light through the trees,

if it was sunny, if it was rainy, if it was cloudy.

And a lot of that fed my process, you know, on the visual side,

for how we would light these scenes later.

So, it was very, very instructive,

but I think the biggest part of it that was valuable,

was just the kind of kinesthetic sense memory

that it allowed them to create. What did it smell like? What did it feel like?

What did the trail feel like under your feet?

So, it was about making it real for the actors.

And action!

It took us from 2005 to 2007

to get the performance capture system up and running, and proven to work,

in a way that neither diluted nor augmented the actor's performance.

And so, the actors were convinced going in

that what they did on the day that they did a scene was definitive,

that that's what their CG character would be seen doing later.

I told them, "You're not doing a voice part.

"You're acting your character just as you would if there was a camera there.

"There just isn't a camera.”

So, you have to think of it as CG makeup.

Let's dance.

I was on a quest for the holy grail.

And the holy grail was to be able to reproduce full human emotion

in a CG character.

And, of course, the thing we were afraid of is

what people have sometimes called the dead-eye effect.

Describing the strange disconnect that we have sometimes from CG characters.

And I knew that Avatar would just fail utterly if we didn't crack this problem.

And the idea that I had clung to for a long time

was this idea of mounting a camera directly to the actor's head.

So, we started drawing this up.

And Glenn Derry and his little ragtag team of engineers

started looking at how do we keep it light.

So we wound up with a tight-fitting, carbon fiber helmet,

that was molded to the actor's head.

So, we've got this very wide angle sort of data lens,

that's here on their face,

but we have to be able to see the entire performance of the talent.

LANDAU: So, we would shoot reference cameras of the actors.

And these are a critical step in the virtual production process.

CAMERON: It's important to understand that the reference cameras

and the virtual camera are two completely different things.

The virtual camera shows us what the shot will look like

with the CG characters and the world combined,

because we can't see the fine nuances of the performances in the virtual camera.

The reference cameras are absolutely critical

for getting exactly the moment that we want.

You got five takes.

They're all gonna be good, because they're good actors,

but there's gonna be one take that's special,

or maybe special for a moment. We need to know that.

That's what the reference cameras are for.

And then the animators take the reference footage

and they use it to make sure that they're not making a mistake.

MAN: Let me know when you're ready, Dave.

I'd like to introduce the performers into the Volume, please.

(SHOUTING IN NA'VI)

I had to take everything I learned in training and apply it to my first day.

I had to ride a horse,

Jump off of him appearing to be as graceful as possible,

land, move like a Na'vi.

And from that first moment when they set that horse

and they let that thing go,

instantly, Tsu'tey just jumped in my body, and Laz went somewhere else.

(SPEAKING NA'VI)

What's happening?

WORTHINGTON: You've gotta swim pretty quickly

otherwise you're gonna drown in it.

And Jim makes you comfortable. You dive in.

And it doesn't take you long to get rid of all the technical aspects.

I need your help.

You should not be here.

WORTHINGTON: It's liberating. It's just you and the other person.

Yeah, they've got dots on their face and a helmet cam and power packs,

but you can still see their eyes.

And it takes acting back to what it should be,

which is trying to get something from the other person and vice versa.

I trusted you.

Trust me now, please.

(SHOUTING IN NA'VI)

What I can say is that every day I would go to work,

the same way I went to work for Star Trek or other movies that I've done before,

and there was nothing different about what I was doing,

just the prep work.

As opposed to going through hair and makeup

I went through dots.

And then all of a sudden I was on the set. I was playing Neytiri.

Jim says "Action,” and I don't know what happens.

I, at least, have no idea that I'm wearing this.

I feel like I'm blue and I'm nine feet tall.

And I'm as sexy as hell. Like I just totally forget.

Na'vi!

Actors have said to me, you know, sort of half jokingly, but a little nervously,

"So, are you trying to replace actors?”

And, of course, the answer is no. We love actors.

This whole thing is about acting,

and it's about creating these fantasy characters

through the process of acting.

What we're replacing is five hours in the makeup chair

having rubber glued all over your face.

So, I think the actors found it very collaborative, empowering, and freeing.

I think it was just plain fun.

It's kind of fun.

There's been a lot of discussion about performance capture

and what it means for actors and the impact it'll have.

To me, it completely expands what we're capable of doing.

And I think digital prosthetics is an interesting way of looking at it.

- Grace? - Well, who'd you expect, numbnuts?

Ultimately, I felt that it totally expanded what the actor could do.

I feel like I could play any age character, any species, anything.

I can play an alien now. I think it actually kind of gives us wings.

And action.

CAMERON: We used that sandbox,

we used that spatial environment to do everything,

it's where we created the sets.

It's where we blocked the scenes. It's where we captured the actors.

It's where we did all the stunt work.

I mean, we had horses galloping around this place.

We did everything in the Volume.

We came up with a number of methodologies

for shooting some of these big aerial scenes.

Start by, first of all, figuring out what the aerial choreography would be.

So, we thought, "Well, if we're gonna talk about it,

"why don't we act it out at the Volume?"

So, we made little wire models of the various creatures and aircraft,

put markers on them so the system would recognize them,

and then we'd just go out there and fly them around.

RICHARD BANEHAM: Basically chasing each other

like kids playing with two toys.

This was a very, very instant way to do it.

We could block it very quickly,

We could block it very quickly,

understand whether or not the overall performance worked

before we ever even gave it to an animator

and said, “Now, that has to be legitimized."

LANDAU: The performance capture system

would record the motion that Jim was getting.

Those flight paths were then used

to animate the banshees against, the Samsons against, the Dragon against.

BANEHAM: The integration of animation was another headache, you know.

In and of itself, it doesn't seem like a big deal,

but we had to take them through phases and work out a pipeline.

So what we would have is

either a puppeteered version where we saw, from Jim, the flightpaths,

or we had our creature performers.

Shut up and fly straight!

CAMERON: We really found that flying the banshee was the hardest problem.

So we created a manually operated gimbal rig that they could balance on.

And we then asked the actors to perform

to the timing and movement of the flightpath.

So if their banshee banked to the right,

the rider had to do the opposite to maintain a center of gravity.

MAN: Bank.

Level.

Flare. Flap, flap, flap. Jump.

When you see them flying these things, they were working hard.

And they used to be just in absolute agony the day after a flight scene.

(SCREAMING)

The biggest set pieces for the stunt department

really have been this thing that we called the beanstalk.

Jim wanted the actual beanstalk to be created.

So these people actually had to climb it as if we were climbing it on a cliff.

Climb up there, and then get around to the left side.

Come on, climb up. And then climb right around to the left side right away.

And so we put them on wires, and we put two sandbags,

which would take about 40 pounds off the person,

and they can climb it a little bit faster than they normally would.

LETTERI: You need to build all of these physical cues

for the actors and for Jim to work with.

So that the digital world starts to take on the character of the real world.

Stop!

That's how you wrestle a banshee.

We would have to build layouts,

which were the physical, interactive set pieces.

So that if you saw the Na'vi climbing a mountain,

we had to create, let's say, a 20-degree grade.

If they were climbing a vine, we dropped ropes down,

and you'd see them climbing a vine.

So it was all very interactive. Yet there was no environment there.

There was no jungle.

And we can be very improvisational, 'cause we're not bound by the set.

STROMBERG: There's nothing on the set. It's a gray set.

But the difference is that a big boulder

would take an hour and a half with a bulldozer and crew to move it.

In our world, it literally takes a second. We'd select it and move it.

And if he says it's too big, we scale it down.

Everything in our environments is modular.

Okay, bring the camera around.

POWERS: Any plant, any mountain, any exotic alien life form

can be completely moved, and configured, and sized,

and scaled with a push of a button.

The thing that's amazing about it is that we don't wait for lights.

Things that you normally wait for on a film set

have been switched over to computers, and to digital this, and digital that.

CAMERON: If I wanna whistle up a tree, or a mountain,

or anything, I can do it very quickly.

And there were often times

when we'd come in to work a scene on a given day,

and we'd get some ideas, and we'd run with that.

CCH POUNDER: He likes actors, which is really helpful.

Particularly for something like this,

where you're not seeing the physical set.

It's really important to have the kind of director who can lead you,

and let you know what's happening, and then you can react to that.

(SCREAMING IN HORROR)

His detail is spectacular.

So he can create the picture for you that you're not seeing.

We would create very rough animation

in the virtual production stage for our creatures.

It's a territorial threat display.

Do not run, or he'll charge.

So, what do I do, dance with it?

(WORTHINGTON YELLING)

Jim would be there with a pole and going after Sam,

and he'd be representing the hammerhead.

(ROARING)

We did an animation pass on that

just to figure out what we wanted this creature to be.

Jim shot Sam doing Jake's reaction.

So what about this one? Run? Don't run? What?

LETTERI: Jim could play back that animation on stage

as if the creature were there,

because in his camera, he would see it, so it becomes just another performer.

If I have a good overlap,

then I can play them and get them into their positions.

MAN: Yeah, cool.

LETTERI: So he could direct Sam how to play off of that,

because, again, in the virtual world, it's all there for him.

Run! Definitely run!

CAMERON: Cut.

LANDAU: We thought we learned everything

in the first year of research and development,

'cause we had done a test

and based all of our reasoning on a scene with only two people in it.

We hadn't done a scene with 10 people or 100 people.

And those represented more difficulties in virtual production.

BANEHAM: If we even got past five characters,

it would create a problem just capturing the motion.

Never mind getting them to run with fully-fledged sets and lighting.

We just hit a ceiling, man. We taxed the hardware to the max.

And the software, at that point, was untested.

It was not built for what we were trying to do.

So every time we pushed, it crashed.

MAN: Quiet on set.

Let's go again, please.

Here's an example of a scene that almost broke the system.

(SPEAKING NA'VI)

JOHN REFOUA: Made of a lot of different elements.

You can see there are horses, different performances of the principals,

and the crowds that were on the side,

they were all combined together in one shot.

RIVKIN: We're selecting specific actions, and syncing them all up,

so that they all play relative to whatever is happening.

This is, like, reinventing the wheel.

It was really challenging, I have to say. I've never been so challenged on anything.

CAMERON: So, here we are, two years into making Avatar,

which is longer than it took us to do all of Titanic

right through finishing the movie.

And we're still six months away from starting an entire live-action movie,

and it had nothing to do with the virtual production.

It was pretty daunting.

One of the big challenges of designing this movie was

that you have two completely separate worlds coming together,

with two completely separate modes of technology,

and two completely separate aesthetics.

You've got the Na'vi who are a weaving culture.

And you've got the humans who work with technology,

with metals and electronics and with composite carbon fibers,

all of this sort of thing, advanced military weaponry.

Basically, different artists worked on these two different cultures.

We brought in people like TyRuben Ellingson, Ben Procter,

and Paul Ozzimo, who all worked on that type of material.

BEN PROCTER: Most directors are content to have something, kind of, look cool.

And Jim, that's just not his world at all.

When it comes to mechanics and manmade objects, or bits of technology,

or bits of architecture, vehicles, all this sort of stuff,

he wants it all to work. He wants it all to make sense.

He wants to see an engineering mindset was put into it, a practical mindset.

Why is this handle here? What is this piston doing?

It's not about strict art direction and cosmetics.

It's about a more thoughtful design process,

and he holds us all to that standard.

All the way from Earth to Hell's Gate, it had to have a human scale to it.

It had to have a human livability in it.

Jim wanted this contrast of gray tones and kind of depressed look to everything.

It looked livable.

It looked like it had been there for a long time,

or it looked like it'd kind of gone through the ringer a bit.

Of course, I love all that hardware stuff.

I'm an unrequited engineer.

I worked with Ty very closely

to make sure that the ampsuit's shoulder motion would work,

and was thought-out in terms of the various articulations

and where the servos would go.

Range of motion was all thought through, and where the power supplies would go,

where the servos would go, and all that.

Put a guide in here. Something like that over there.

It should be more low and back.

TYRUBEN ELLINGSON: When you're approaching things,

even inanimate objects,

often times you'll find if you listen carefully to what the director's saying,

or if you just think about it in terms of the story,

they do have to have a narrative quality to them.

For example, Scorpion was just one of our small attack vehicles.

It's called the Scorpion. You know, Jim came up with that name.

Of course, which is an angry, fighting little insect.

And in the course of this film, this thing is a deadly force to reckon with.

Scorpions, pursue and destroy.

ELLINGSON: So you wanna build that into your design.

You want this thing to look aggressive and arrogant and powerful,

badass little killing Scorpion.

That's the shapes. That's the marks you make.

And that's what you hope to get onscreen.

Once the creative part of designing the movie is done,

you then settle down to the hard work of getting it all made.

And we were able to ultimately tackle a lot of different items

from the weaponry, the guns.

But also the art department's sending out

many of their designs they'd already finished,

such as the link units, the amnio tanks for us to start building on.

I'm the point person between the art department in LA,

run by Rick Carter,

and the physical art department of New Zealand.

We spent about three months doing research, and building little models,

and figuring out how to build the sets.

Getting a construction plan and process based on what information,

'cause this was fast-tracked, in that they were still designing the sets in L. A.

That we would be building in New Zealand. So we would take every little morsel,

every scrap of information we got and run with it.

In our original production plan, we were gonna have a number of weeks

where Jim was gonna be able to get down to New Zealand

and treat it like a normal show.

And all of a sudden, because of the schedule changes,

and the need to edit, the need to turn over to Weta,

that window that Jim was gonna be in New Zealand

before we started filming shrunk.

He was only gonna be down there for about six days,

but we realized that we had built a set of tools that could be helpful in this.

And we took the virtual production and applied it to our live-action sets.

CAMERON: We'd location scout.

Just like you'd get in your car, and drive out to a location,

and scout it with a viewfinder,

I'd walk into the Volume, and I'd scout it with a virtual camera.

LANDAU: And Jim was able to rehearse in these virtual environments,

and made adjustments to the sets down in New Zealand

without Jim ever going there.

I'm wondering if we should just sort of slide this part of the set around.

NEIL KIRKLAND: We've got roughly 25 sets worked out.

We've got something like 40,000 square feet of floor area.

Plus the rainforest, another 10,000 square feet.

So they're quite big numbers.

The crew of 140, you know, it's not a particularly big crew,

but this was not the sort of show that you could just throw a lot of people at

and say, "Here, finish that." ” It's just so technically demanding.

CAMERON: This is really nice.

- Remember that sentry gun we had? - Sure do.

Here it is.

It can go shoulder, or you can split it and go two hands.

We built all of Hell's Gate that you saw in the interior,

from the ops center, to the commissary where Quaritch makes his first speech,

to the jail cell that they break out of.

We built the two shacks where they do the research.

We built the Samson itself.

We had to build the link room and the links themselves.

And these things had to work.

From Jim on down, you feel like, in every department,

we're working with people who exist at the pinnacle of their craft.

And the attention to detail and the demand for excellence on all levels,

I think, is just mind-boggling.

It's almost like there are two different films being made,

as there are sort of two different worlds.

There's the world of the Na'vi and Pandora.

And then there's the humans and the stuff that's not necessarily CGI as much.

And so it was kind of new for everybody.

Wearing a Velcro wetsuit, and everything's built so detailed

that it kind of makes your job a lot easier than even being in the mocap world.

It feels like a different movie, 'cause we've got a whole different cast.

You got Stephen Lang and Giovanni and Dileep,

and then you've got Michelle as well.

Stephen Lang had respect for ideas of duty and courage and things like that.

And he understood how he could channel that

into a character that's basically a villain.

Into a character that's basically a villain.

And he's this very pure creature, and he came in for an audition,

and he knocked it out of the park. He was just riveting.

It's my job to keep you alive.

I will not succeed.

Not with all of you.

He said, "Do you remember when we met?" And I said, "I sure do."

And we'd only met once before, and it's about 20 years ago.

It was for Aliens. And he remembered the audition very well.

And I find that kind of wonderful that you can audition for something,

and then 20 years later, you get the part, you know. I think it's great.

There is time to salvage the situation.

- Parker... - Shut your pie hole!

Or what, Ranger Rick? You gonna shoot me?

I could do that.

(MAN SHOUTS)

With the live-action, we did more weaponry training, fight training.

Quaritch carries this laser-sided pistol, and this comes into play occasionally.

We worked with Stephen inside the ampsuit

and make it look like he's been doing it for the last six, seven years.

They didn't build this base for a guy in a wheelchair.

They built it for able-bodied soldiers. You have to work out how to do it.

I took him along to a local basketball game

in the wheelchairs playing basketball, which was pretty cool.

Me and 10 other stunt guys got some wheelchairs from the hospital

and smashed them up a bit.

And then you realize that your attention shouldn't be on the wheelchair.

It should be on where you're going and what you're aiming for.

(CHEERING)

This, right here, is the Samson.

CAMERON: Michelle, she wanted to learn to fly that helicopter,

that rotorcraft, in the movie as if it were real.

So I gave her to a friend of mine who's a helicopter pilot

and said, "Take her out and show her how to fly a helicopter."”

And she learned how to fly a helicopter.

You're gonna look like you know what you're doing,

but you have to reach up and fire your guns, or whatever you're gonna do.

I got a couple of really exciting hours in L.A. flying a helicopter

with Kevin, who actually taught James how to fly helicopters.

There's something about being in the air that's just beautiful.

Thank you for flying Air Pandora.

- Hey. - Hey, beautiful. How you doing?

- WORTHINGTON: When'd you get in? - Just this morning.

Welcome to sunny New Zealand.

LANDAU: We never really felt like we had this first day

except when we went down to New Zealand,

'cause that was a truly new break for us.

Let me just have everybody's attention for a second.

This is kind of a pinch-me moment. We're actually getting to make this movie.

It's a dream project.

The script, the first draft of I, was written 12 years ago.

And we didn't start on the film then

because, frankly, the visual effects guys told me I was mad to even try.

We had high expectations coming into this

that we were gonna see something exceptional.

And I would have to say that our expectations have not only been met

but exceeded, by the workmanship, the dedication, the professionalism.

And I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank everybody

for what it's taken to get to this moment.

Now, we obviously have hurdles ahead. There is no such thing as an easy shoot.

I think, when people wrap on time, it's because they ran out of ideas.

(ALL LAUGHING)

So don't count on that.

Here we go. And action!

Dr. Augustine! You can't be up here!

Back off!

CAMERON: The thing that's hardest to understand of all this

is we actually created two completely separate camera systems

that had completely different jobs.

One was our virtual camera system

to capture actors and shoot them virtually in a virtual environment.

The other one was the Fusion camera system,

which was for shooting live-action, actors, and sets in 3-D.

Okay, that's a cut.

I fell in love with 3-D when I made my first 3-D film, which was in '95.

And that was 123-D.

The logistics and the technology required were enormous.

The cameras were the size of refrigerators.

This didn't seem to be practical.

So the Fusion camera was an outgrowth of all the 3-D camera development

that Vince Pace and I had done for several years previously.

It was designed to be a state of the art, professional,

cinema camera for 3-D production.

VINCE PACE: When we first looked at the camera system,

we called it the Reality Camera System or the RCS,

because we were trying to mimic the human eyesight experience,

so reality, if you will. Then Jim came with the name Fusion,

which really is fusing creativity and technology.

It's fusing the two images to form one, and that's really what we're doing.

MAURO FIORE: The design of the camera's been researched

for a long period of time.

What they've done is just take all the weight off a 3-D system

and essentially assembled two cameras with a beam splitter

that are able to simultaneously photograph two images at the same time.

And you have a series of servos that...

Basically, you can align the two images or dis-align them

according to how much 3-D you're looking for in a shot.

I've never done a film in 3-D,

So the experimentation was really enticing for me.

CAMERON: And action!

DILEEP RAO: The technology for the 3-D took a little getting used to,

'cause it's like there's two cameras,

and they have to just check the 110 every once in a while.

It's not that different, but it's just a little bit different.

And you learn quickly. It's a technical morph.

The fact that the cameras will photograph the same exact thing the same exact way,

what your eyes do naturally.

It took years and years to develop to make the cameras do it.

Cut!

MOORE: Once we're done shooting a scene,

you can just walk 15 feet away, get yourself into a pod,

put on some glasses, and watch your scene in 3-D.

A lot of our sets, we made the decision not to build full sets.

A lot of our sets, we made the decision not to build full sets.

We would put in green screens, and we would do set extensions.

Roger that.

LANDAU: If you take the link room, for example,

we only built one side of that set.

It was a mirror image on the other side, and we were able to fill that in digitally.

Where we are right now, is one end of the armor bay.

And it goes about 50 feet.

You realize that the armor bay is probably 10 times as long as we have it.

It's absolutely filled with heavy weapons and ampsuits.

There's your man.

See you on the flight line.

STEVE INGRAM: Now probably the biggest gag on this will be

the motion base we built for the Samson.

It's huge. You know, it's the size of a bus, really.

We'll also have the Samson on the back lot,

which is going to be hung from a large crane.

RODRIGUEZ: It's really cool. They basically land the thing.

All the guys jump out just before it hit the ground.

I don't know how many feet in the air. It was probably about 40.

And they turn on these massive fans

to make all of the foliage on the ground move.

It's been the whole gamut of effects, really.

Things breaking, simulated helicopter flights...

Go, go, go, go!

...bullet hits,

fire.

MAN: Three, two, one, fire!

POPPLETON: Garrett sent me down his stunt breakdown,

different gags that were related to those scenes.

Door gunners are getting pulled out of Samson choppers by banshees.

Also some stuff that happens in the Dragon.

Multiple stunts and sequences where troopers are getting taken out.

Probably the most technical movie I've been on.

A challenge for everybody,

but I think it's gonna be a wicked product at the end.

CAMERON: I have to say, these stunt guys, I mean, they really gave us their all.

There's such a great spirit there in New Zealand.

The energy they bring. The excitement.

And action!

The live-action shoot, as it turned out, was exhausting.

It was a seven-day-a-week process while we were down in New Zealand.

So the shoot in New Zealand, which everybody thinks of

as an exotic, easy location, was none of that.

I just wanna say thank you very much for making this

a long and grueling shoot, but a wonderful shoot.

In the sense that, I really appreciate

the energy, and the workmanship, and the spirit.

No matter how long the hours got, everybody still pulled hard.

And I think I'm on my way.

As we were saying our goodbyes on the set,

a stunt coordinator came up and said,

"The stunt team has something that they'd like to give you."

- Is it gonna hurt? - Challenge...

(ALL LAUGHING)

And I turned around,

and here they all were, these New Zealand stunt guys.

(ALL CHANTING IN MAORI)

Some were Maori. Some were not Maori, but they were all New Zealanders.

And they had all worked on this haka.

Apparently what this haka does, if translated,

is it challenges you to continue to do your best.

And that was their way of thanking me.

And they handed me the Taiaha, which is the ceremonial staff.

And that was their way of saying, "New Zealand thanks you

"“for bringing this project here and for making us a part of it."

And it was a very, very emotional moment.

- We'll be back. - All right.

I want to see you back.

Thank you.

CAMERON: The whole time I was in the Volume, I said,

"You know, if I was shooting this, it'd be so easy.

"You guys just spent five minutes trying to move one light

"20 degrees around the subject."

And if I was there, I could reach over and move it myself.

It would take 20 seconds.

Then I got to live-action shooting

and moving big objects around in the background.

And I said, "You know, if this was CG, I could've moved that in 30 seconds.”

So the whole time I was shooting the virtual camera,

I was complaining that it wasn't live-action.

The whole time I was doing the live-action,

I was complaining that it wasn't CG.

By the time I got back to doing virtual production again,

after the live-action, I just kept my mouth shut.

And action!

Action!

What I realized is that they're both art, and they're completely different.

So you have to have a good team that knows one discipline

and a good team that knows the other discipline.

After the live-action filming is completed, most movies are done.

We still had a tremendous amount

of scenes that we had captured performances on

that we had not yet done camera on.

RIVKIN: These would play back on the stage with Jim and the virtual camera.

So now, the actors are gone, and he's out there with this virtual camera...

Cut.

Playing back their performances from sometimes months before.

CAMERON: Let's do a take.

MAN: Okay, Foley up.

- Ready? - And playback.

LANDAU: When he looked through the lens of the virtual camera,

it was as if those actors were there giving him the performances live.

Yeah, beautiful thing.

He would now go and create the actual shots that became the movie.

Action!

CAMERON: So after all the frenzy and activity of a live-action shoot...

Lifting.

And it's just me with the virtual camera out on a big, empty stage for a year.

It was a year of this, shooting these cameras.

Cut. Save that, please.

Now you've actually got, sort of, dailies for the first time. Actual shots to cut with.

Now, you edit the scene. Get that the way you want it.

And then that edited cut is what goes to Weta for them to finish.

LETTERI: We call that the template. We would see where he put his light,

where the compositional elements were, how the art direction was laid out.

Basically, Jim handed that over to us as a master guide

for what he wanted the shots and the scenes to look like.

NOLAN MURTHA: Weta's only building what we're sending them.

Instead of building out shots,

instead of going through these massive amounts of iterations

with lighting tests and all these other things,

we're giving them something that's much more concise, to the point.

This is the length of the shot, here's the motion, and here's the camera.

And we just followed that.

We would start replacing that with all the high-resolution elements.

(SCREAMING)

CAMERON: Weta were able to field a team of some of the best animators in the world.

And it sort of broke down into two separate areas.

One was the creatures, and the other one was the characters,

where they were animating from captured performances.

Traditionally, when people think of animators,

they think of someone who's gonna add life to something that's inanimate.

Where Avatar comes in, we're not asking our animators to create the performance.

The performance has already been created by the actor.

Think fast.

Motor control's looking good.

(CHUCKLING APPRECIATIVELY)

JONES: The animator's job is to analyze the performance,

analyze every detail of it, and make sure it's coming across.

GUY WILLIAMS: It was very important for us to make sure that

whatever Zoë did,

or whatever Sam did actually came through their avatars onto the screen

and played as convincingly as when they were on the stage.

JEFF UNAY: You take a character like Neytiri, and the idea is

that the audience just has to fall in love with this character.

When she smiles,

there has to be a connection between her smile and the audience.

LETTERI: It really is a collaboration.

It's working with the actors and then working with the animators

to bring the character to the screen.

I See you.

I See you.

LETTERI: We have to figure out how to maintain that integrity,

maintain that performance...

Toruk Macto?

...So that the characters you see on the screen

are really what the performance was intended to be.

(SHOUTING IN NA'VI)

We had the actors on set at Weta Digital.

We scanned them with our own software, and that's when we were able

to take 60, 70 different FA CS poses from them,

default states, you know, eyes looking left and right, up and down,

any kind of data we could get from the actor

just to make sure that the eyes really did feel like Zoë and Sam.

JONES: The eye motion and the eyes,

it's something that's kind of overlooked in a lot of animation films.

Our eyes work independently of our bodies and our heads.

They also do these little subtle movements.

That was another thing we looked for with the reference.

It's one of the reasons why the eyes came to life in Avatar.

We studied all those details, and we made sure they were in there.

We made sure Neytiri's eyes were locked on Jake when she was arguing with him.

What are you saying, Jake? You knew this would happen?

Yes.

But the real trick to it was figuring out what they call "the rig."

And "the rig" is how they program the facial muscles to work.

And we all have the same facial muscles,

but they're in different proportions and the way in which they fire.

Meaning how your brain controls your face is different for every person.

And this took months and months for each character,

and it had to be done individually for each character.

I will stand and fight.

STEPHEN ROSENBAUM: The reference cameras play an integral part

in how we evaluate

and study the detail within each performance.

As good as our facial capture system is,

if we really wanted to just see the subtleties on somebody's face,

there's nothing better than just seeing a close-up, high-def video of that.

They live, Jake,

within Eywa.

JONES: The stress of the animators is to actually

animate to the reference camera,

and then we'd make sure the performance looks the same

or all the details are in there.

(SPEAKING NA'VI)

Then we'd go back to the actual shot camera and see if there's any loss.

Usually, you had gained a lot by doing that.

85% of this is taking from the actors, their performances

and preserving them in their computer generated characters.

I See you.

I See you.

CAMERON: But that last 15% requires animators to come in

and add things like the tail and the ears.

You had to study cat and dog and other animal behavior

and incorporate that into how the ears moved, how the tails moved.

We had studied lions, and we incorporated that into our character.

So in a way the animation is a turbo charger

on top of this whole facial-capture idea.

You should not be here.

CAMERON: When Neytiri's furious with Jake,

her ears flatten out, and her tail's going back and forth.

So there's a total character that's created.

(HISSING)

The animators have taken what the actors are doing

and gone even beyond that, and it's a lot of fun to watch.

How you feeling, Jake?

Hey, guys.

WORTHINGTON: It is my performance. This thing walks and talks and acts like me.

And it's my interpretation.

Even though I'm big, nine-foot-tall, and blue, it's got my personality.

It's got my soul.

- Jake. Come on. - Jake! Listen to me.

You're not used to your avatar body.

- This is dangerous. - This is great.

Zoë really enjoys watching the footage of her as Neytiri,

'cause Neytiri is this creature that's of her, created by her,

but it's apart from her, as well.

She looked so sexy.

She was so cut and long and lean. I was like, "Damn."

(YELLING)

The first sequence that we turned over to Weta Digital,

we turned over in February of 2007.

We did not get it back until May of 2008.

CAMERON: Those first shots that I finaled, which was the scene

where we first see Neytiri, and she draws the bow,

and the wood sprite comes down and lands.

They were so gorgeous that all of a sudden, it was this moment of,

"Holy crap. That looks real. She looks completely real."

And we'd just sit there and go, "Hey, look at that."

Finaling those first 10 or 11 shots in that scene was absolutely critical.

That's the moment where we knew this movie was gonna work.

We didn't know yet if we could get all the other 2,600 shots done,

but we knew we could make a real character.

LANDAU: We were cutting the whole movie together, and in the summer of 2008,

a full year and a half before the movie was released,

we sat down for the first time

to watch a full cut of the then-existing movie.

And the movie, at that time, was very, very long.

So the film was like a mosaic of scenes that were in various stages.

So you'd have scenes that were in a pre-cut,

and then something that was in a virtual camera cut

next to something that was turned over Six months ago

that was in animation level, and it was hard to watch.

CAMERON: We had to cut the film shorter, 'cause it wasn't quite jelling up.

It always felt too long making its points.

And I kept surgically taking little bits out here and there,

and we eventually wound up cutting out about 40 minutes of film

from the time we first screened it for ourselves a year earlier

to the time we finished the cut.

LETTERI: There was a point

where we had been hoping to just be able to handle the whole film ourselves,

but Jim handed us a cut

that was about 45 minutes longer than the one that got released.

And it still had a lot of character work in it.

We said, "Okay, if we focus only on this character work,

"that's more work than we thought we were gonna be doing,

"and it's too late for us to gear up to do the other work."

We made the decision to pull work in late 2008,

but we didn't get the approval to do it until spring of 2009.

So these shots were just lying in wait, the work building up,

Jim stressing out about it.

Yeah, okay, so you still have some tech work to do

on contact shadows and reflections.

CAMERON: And it was a nail-biter.

The whole movie was a nail-biter in terms of getting things done,

"cause we were always missing these deadlines

that we kind of made up out of nowhere.

“Let's do this by this date.”

Because we sort of knew if we didn't do that by that date,

we wouldn't get this done over here.

ILM took the most number of shots and the most complicated shots.

And their shots had to seamlessly fit in with Weta's work in the end battle.

Other sequences were standalone sequences,

where we would give companies like Hydraulx, Framestore, or Hybrid,

and the other visual effects vendors a complete sequence

that they would deliver to us.

Because of the way this film was done

and how long it took to finish shots,

we were in a constant state of deadline for, I think, a year and a half to two years.

CAMERON: Fire.

Ready. Three, two, one, action!

CAMERON: Basically, for the last part, we were kind of in a marathon run.

We couldn't back off the throttle.

And we actually went back and shot a little more live-action

again later after our last capture.

So it sort of went capture, live action, a lot of capture,

little, tiny bit of live action at the end.

Action.

ERIK WINQUIST: This particular shot, we got a live-action Stephen Lang

where we had to extract that off the green screen,

put it together with the digital Jake, combine it with the atmospherics,

the digital jungle, everything else.

The rebreather face masks in all of these shots as well was digital,

because it's glass. You're reflecting all of the studio lighting

instead of the actual jungle that didn't exist.

With Avatar we had to do everything.

There were vehicles, there were creatures,

there were characters, there were jungles, nighttime, daytime, clouds, weather, rain.

Anything that you could think of we had to create. It covered the whole gamut.

The first 13 shots we did for the movie took a year,

and after that, it was sort of an exponential curve up,

and we were delivering 200 shots a week at the end.

LANDAU: And what we had to teach ourselves was that

there was a process of development.

And the slower we went at the beginning,

the more Weta was able to learn and improve the infrastructure.

Which actually worked okay, because we got better and better and better

as we got toward the end. So we could actually go faster and faster.

So even though we back-loaded the whole schedule,

we had learned how to go fast enough to be able to compensate for it.

The first time that we actually showed it to a large group of people

was Cinema Expo, which is an exhibitors convention in Amsterdam.

We argued about what content to include.

And there was a concern that we were including too much

of the FernGully elements of the film.

In particular, the scene where the wood sprites land on Jake.

We decided that we were gonna keep it in,

and we presented this in Amsterdam to a mixed audience, 3,500 people.

The response was remarkable.

That was really when it proved to us

that you could not just sell this movie in 30-second bites.

More of this movie was more.

We went out, and we did Comic-Con

where we showed an abbreviated version of what we showed at Cinema Expo.

Are you ready to go to Pandora?

(AUDIENCE CHEERING LOUDLY)

All right. Then let's go.

LANDAU: There was some concerns at the studio

that the reaction wasn't big enough.

I thought it went perfectly. It was a great introduction to an audience.

Still, they were dealing more with the 3-D and with the CG.

They weren't dealing with the film as a narrative.

They weren't dealing with it as a story.

So we were introducing them to what the film might be.

We don't want you to know until December 18.

We want you to still hold back something for the fun of the voyage.

And then Jon Landau and I came up with this idea to do Avatar Day.

Avatar Day was when we went out, and we took over theaters,

and we invited audience members to come for free

to see 15 minutes of the movie

in 3-D around the world.

It was interesting. The trailer for the film went out the day before.

And the trailer got a very mixed response.

There was this sense of, "Well, what's all the fuss about?

"This looks like Smurfs or Thundercats or whatever."

And pretty soon, they're ripping us a new one on the Internet,

7,500 comments long, about how bad this movie is,

and how it's doomed to fail.

WORTHINGTON: I did the press for another film on Avatar Day,

and all those guys were bagging the movie,

'cause they'd just seen the little trailer on the TV.

That was a hard thing to stand there and defend,

but I'll defend this product all the way, you know.

Jim just said, "We just stand by what we do and keep telling the story."

But the Avatar Day footage, when people went and saw it in the theater

and didn't see it in a minute and a half or a two-minute trailer,

but saw 15 minutes of the movie, the response was overwhelming.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)

Are we ready to rock?

- MAN: It's loaded. - All right, cool.

I remember in the last year before the release of the film,

I think I got about five or six days off in a year

between doing the sound, doing the music, doing the visual effects,

working with all the different teams that were working on the finish.

It was unbelievable.

LANDAU: And we did video conferencing

so that Jim could actually physically point out something.

And we would spend hours, if not days, in these review sessions.

And often times, we would schedule multiple ones in one day

where we would schedule the crews that were in London

in the early morning, 'cause it was already their late night.

- CAMERON: Tim, how you doing? - Good morning, Jim, thanks.

What time is it there? Must be fairly late.

We would schedule the crews that were in California midday,

and we would schedule in the afternoon, Weta,

because it was now just their morning.

CAMERON: It's still boiling here, and then we essentially run out of it

to what is now 100% Pandoran atmosphere.

LANDAU: One of the biggest challenges on this movie was James Horner's.

How do you create music for a world that doesn't exist?

Jim wanted him and challenged him

to combine indigenous sounds into a traditional, cinematic score.

He came to the set when we were filming the scenes that had the music.

He had to create music early on

so that we could play it back during certain scenes.

That's it.

CAMERON: The first thing James did on this film

was bring in an ethnomusicologist

and start collecting sounds, vocal sounds and various different instruments

from around the world.

JAMES HORNER: Initially, the music was a lot more ethnically based.

There were lots of people playing stuff.

The art department drew about 12 or 15 ethnic percussion instruments

that these people would play.

And so I was tasked with writing songs for these instruments.

And all of that had to be done before things were shot,

because obviously, the actors had to do the motion capture for that stuff.

And what I did was I sampled a lot of interesting instruments.

(STRING INSTRUMENTS RUMBLING)

And then I worked with them electronically to get an effect

that was different than the instrument could make

but that had kind of a weird spectral quality

that made it sound like you really haven't heard it before,

but it doesn't sound quite human either.

Three, four.

(SINGING IN NA'VI)

And there were two women that just are professional singers,

and they just pinched off their voice

to sound like sort of half-African, half-Na'vi children-adult.

A couple of days went by where we didn't really keep anything that was sung.

It was just getting the right sound.

We can get one good one.

- No, we trust your ears. - Yeah.

HORNER: Paul Frommer was the guy who invented the language,

and I asked him to write me syllables and consonants

that I could use when my people were singing.

(SPEAKING NA'VI SYLLABLES)

(SINGERS REPEATING)

I was true to the Na'vi language.

(PLAYING DRAMATIC MUSIC)

I think it's an amazing score,

and because it has all this textural richness

from all these ethnic instruments.

He would segue between stuff that sounded very tribal

into very orchestral sections of the score,

but I thought the transition between the two was seamless.

(HEROIC MUSIC PLAYING)

And I think it's incredibly powerful.

I mean, I think he gets to these amazing kind of spiritual moments.

He gets to these huge, epic, heroic moments.

(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING)

Which by the way, there are a number of composers

who can do that epic, heroic thing.

But to integrate that all organically and always tell the audience

exactly what they should be feeling without trying to force them to feel it.

It should always accentuate beyond what you're already predisposed to feel.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)

(APPLAUSE)

Movies aren't made by one person. They're made by a big group of people.

And there's got to be one idiot that charges out in front and says,

"Come, guys, let's go!" But then after that,

what you're putting up on the screen is the result of a team.

And in this case, we're gonna put a movie out there

that's gonna look amazing no matter what version you see it in.

But we can know in our hearts that we've made a great film.

So I think you guys should give a little round of applause for yourselves.

Jim said that we would solve our last problem

on the last day we deliver the movie.

And that held true.

GEOFF BURDICK: Jim looks at every phase of production and says,

"At a certain point, this is gonna go out of our hands.”

So what we envisioned doing was basically customizing the release

So that every viewer in every theater got the best possible experience.

There's a lot of vagaries when it comes to public exhibition.

Screens are different sizes.

You've got different formats and technologies involving 3-D.

So we did something that had never been done before.

We did a customized release.

Wherever you went,

it was gonna be the perfect digital cinema package for that theater.

And you were gonna get the best possible screening of Avatar

that you possibly could.

CAMERON: We spent four and a half years on Avatar.

We wanted to deliver a perfect experience.

Perfect in the photography, perfect in the post-production, perfect in the CG.

And we really jumped through a lot of hoops

to deliver that experience to the audience.

WEAVER: Just to put the glasses on, and start that movie,

and be taken right into space and right to Pandora, it was so visceral.

It was so exciting.

And I'd never been taken literally, it felt, to another world.

I wasn't prepared for, first of all, how powerful the emotional story was

and how subliminal the effects were. It was seamless.

And [ just forgot all the work that had gone into it

and was just transported.

The reaction around the world has just been incredible.

It really just caps the work. It's just really a nice way to just say,

"Okay, we think this worked."

The only difference was in blogs after the fact

where people started sort of criticizing the film's take

on the military or corporate America. And I thought, "Well, that's fine.

"Those comments are there in the film for a reason.

"So if it provokes a reaction, that's great. That's what it's supposed to do."

WORTHINGTON: I think we're living in a day and age now

where we realize what we're doing to this planet.

It's right in the forefront of a lot of people's minds.

You young people are gonna have to accept this responsibility.

It's your lives.

This movie's basically saying, "Let's just stop for a minute

"and take a damn look at what we're doing to this world."

It seems quite simple, but doing something,

you can make a change, it just comes down to your choices in life.

It seems like the Na'vi have discovered that,

how to live with one with their planet and live with one with all their insecurities.

That, to me, is the message of the movie.

It's never too late to change. It's never too late to make a better choice.

I've been asked to be here to help them raise this voice,

raise this cry and to be a part of this very, very important moment

in this very important battle.

This movie has sent those messages out in a very profound way,

and we all, I think, collectively have been touched by that.

Jim has gone to such great lengths to not only try to say,

"Suspend your disbelief.” He's trying to say, "Be. Be here. Experience this."

I love the fact that I'm part of a project that's always gonna be remembered

or thought of as a very significant moment in the history of film.

It feels really, really good to have been a part of something so special

and to have worked with people that were so passionate about something,

that we all just held together and gave it our all.

And it's a really good family to belong to.

And that's what thrills me is the fact that throughout history

we're stamped, and nobody can take that away.

Like, it did happen, and it did conquer, and it feels great.

(LAUGHS)

CAMERON: Whatever one thinks of the movie,

I know what we accomplished in solving these technical challenges.

I know that we were able to take from the actors

their beautiful, amazing performances and preserve them

in their computer-generated characters, and that was my biggest goal.

See the world we come from.

There's no green there.

They killed their Mother.

And they're gonna do the same here.

CAMERON: The question remains, "How much does a piece of entertainment,

"a movie actually change the way people act?”

One can hope if people feel that little twinge of conscience,

that little sense of responsibility,

it can only be a movement in the right direction.

I just don't wanna feel that I'm going through this process

of making these movies just entertaining people, and it has no higher purpose.

I'll settle for a small change.

NEYTIRI: I See you.

I worked on Avatar summer of 2007. First movie I ever did.

Avatar is...

Blood, sweat and tears.

A new way of creating movies.

The epic experience.

More than just another movie project.

A ground-breaking movie.

A great warning to our planet.

Best film I've ever worked on.

Like going back to film school.

An amazing roller coaster ride.

Sci-fi, epic awesomeness.

I'm getting paid overtime for it.

The most challenging.

Avatar is a date magnet.

- A director's vision. - Truly a sacred experience.

The first feature film I worked on.

Completely immersive experience.

It's new. It's inspirational.

It's my wife and I having our first child.

I spent nine months on James Cameron's Avatar.

It's long hours.

It's also part of my personal history now.

Great storytelling.

It's also a lot of friendship.

I met my wife through someone on Avatar.

I had two more kids, I was on it for so long.

A surprisingly musical world.

Mentally stimulating.

We had our first kiss at a crew party.

Exciting.

An achievement to be proud of.

We got married and had a child all while I was doing Avatar.

It offers a brand new future.

Avatar is all kinds of awesome.

Simply amazing.

Avatar is spectacular.

(MAN READING)

Avatar is gonna rock your balls off.

(AMPLIFIED)

- Difficult. - A testament of love.

The greatest visual effect film ever.

Art, science and awesome.

Creatively rewarding experience I think I've ever had.

The most complex, challenging, rewarding show that I have ever worked on.

A reminder that there are no boundaries to filmmaking.

The collaboration of seemingly endless talent and passion.

It's the defining film of our generation.

(SPEAKING NA'VI)

Was so inspiring.

Avatar stands for family.

ALL: It takes a planet to make a movie.

An odyssey of discovery.

Amazing seminal work of art.

The new blueprint.

MAN: Avatar is about seeing the forest for the trees.

The artistic challenge of a lifetime.

What's that?

Avatar is such a great movie. I'm gonna go watch it.