All language subtitles for Capturing Avatar (2010)

the abyss was the most physically taxing

film i've made because we were

underwater so much i think avatar was

certainly the longest and the most

complex film that i've ever made more

complex than titanic or the terminator

films or anything else

[Music]

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 was 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

capture films because we went beyond

it's by definition as exploring a

frontier you're going to 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 because

we were way on the unknown but that's

cool that's

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 can

remember and i was an artist

so my way of processing that was to draw

into 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 moves

away from a truly natural existence and

the consequences of that to us

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 a 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 have imagined i figured if we

could do that we could do anything and

of course the answer that i got was we

can't do this nobody can do this that

was in 95.

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 dc 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 marian

some of my people have disappeared i

need to know why

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 the 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 2005

and that's when we started

avatar 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 can 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 one

was the technical side led by rob legato

and glenn derry and the other was on the

design side where we brought in a

handful of artists that included neville

page yuri bartoli george rochelle wayne

barlow and gentleman by the name of rob

powers they went out to malibu where we

set up in a facility so it could be near

gym 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 they wouldn't even tell 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's a whole world we're

salivating because this is the chance to

really come up with some new stuff you

know something really unique was going

to be this really colorful jungle world

you know pandora very alien that was one

of the big issues at the beginning was

how alien do we get mostly the 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 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 pose 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 evil

you could apply that to all the

different creatures

the metaphor for the thanator well it

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

constant is that they're all hexapedal

to some degree meaning they've all got

six legs or six limbs

how do you make that work unfortunately

a real horse doesn't work with six legs

so you have to re-engineer an actual

horse's anatomy and that's kind of what

we did

so even the flying creatures there's a

vestigial element of that in it

we looked at the colors of poison dart

frogs and tropical reef fish this is one

of the things that i think is going to

separate all the creatures from a lot of

creatures down in the past these

creatures are extremely colorful very

bright very flamboyant when you look at

him i was like wow that's

it's like a big kimono coming at you

the knobby 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

cat's 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 he 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 want to 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 play 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 the navies don't all look alike

they all look like knobbies but they all

have very implicit and 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 navi character he

already knew some of the parameters they

were going to have markings and he knew

the basic overall size so that's what we

started doing was creating navies trying

to get a photo real kind of essence of

these people

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 put 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 been in

place for you know 100 years towards

creating these images but jim wanted to

do it differently i remember the day

that jim and john 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 jim zion 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 gave him

the tool set that he needed to be able

to work with i went to gym and i 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

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 you

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 you what that

would look like through a real-time

computer render so we call it a camera

but it's not truly a camera

save that please

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 a presentation to the

studio i did a couple of images and jim

saw those and said you know what you're

staying 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 questions of why not just how

are you going to do it which of course

you have to do but you have to come up

with the whys because those are what

motivate you to actually inspire this

army of people and he was able to bring

into the fold ryan church and james

klein 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 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 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 want to 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

craggly 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 sort of a

reality for inspiration we looked a lot

at various regions of china such as the

guilin area and the zheng jiaji area

because they have these limestone

formations called karst formations and

we also reference a lot of south

american jungle a lot of venezuela areas

around tipwee and angel falls

[Music]

oh my

god

for like 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

by starting out with the designs in 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 going to fly down through

clouds then we're going to go to this

human base then we're going to move off

that base out into the forest but we're

going to go out there in the daytime and

then we're gonna gradually

take you into that more and more alien

experience of pandora and that was by

design we knew we were doing that

because we knew that ultimately we were

gonna wind up in a fully cg rainforest

with fully cg characters and it had to

look real 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

netery 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 bloody luminescence for the first

time

one of the first things we did when we

had the system up and running is we shot

what we called 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 reel level you only

come

and make

[Music]

[Music]

you're not fear

you strong heart

but stupid

ignorant like child 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 of

course it wasn't easy how much it was

gonna cost and how long it was going to

take but we never doubted that it could

be done wedded digital

started with us doing the r d on the

project and was very eager to do the

film john came to new zealand to talk to

us and brought a copy of jim's original

treatment for avatar i read it 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 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 on the hope

that we would get green lit are we going

to have somebody from your team with us

next week while we're doing these scenes

yeah i'll be there next year it's going

to

complain about that

we worked with two different sides of

weather we worked with wedded digital

led by joel terry that was under the

visual effects on the movie and we began

working with richard taylor and his

incredible team of artists at weta

workshop one of our trademarks at wetter

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 navi culture is a is

more aligned to a pacific culture and

what we've done is we're going to hide

rivers that come from the pacific and

they're able to put that liberal culture

in

regardless of the fact 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 we had

a discussion you know what kind of

culture are they well they're 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

what jim wanted to portray in the navi

people is actually a tribal look that

was unique soft and beautiful organic

reflecting the kind of philosophy that

the people live which is very eutopic

and happy

i'm so worried

don't breathe

we'll have to be careful if you start to

turn blue

i think one of the biggest disservices

on this movie sort of during the awards

season if you will was that the costume

design was not recognized there were

actually two costumes

but when deb scott came in she actually

fabricated every single article of

clothing that every single virtual

character in the movie wore it's 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 navi would

like how would you weave a chest plate

so it was really like 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

built 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 just start

from scratch what does a knife look like

you know how do you wear all of this

stuff informs everything else

it's impossible for cg artists to

imagine how to simulate this stuff if

there's no real world reference first

moat's ceremonial gown what we call 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

the same thing with soute's battlefront

deb scott made up all kinds of different

fringe of different weights and

different lengths and so on and we

tested it basically we did wind tunnel

testing and saw what it looked like and

imaged it and then 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

incorporate into the animation

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 zoe

siddhan we spent months and months and

months looking at people and then all of

a sudden

sam came on and i i mean i remember the

moment so i first

came here with his daughters

and then

something happened

i fell in love with um

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

would 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 in my

3000 car and then i got a phone call to

do this audition where they wouldn't

tell me anything about the script and

tell me who the director was i'm

thinking well once again there's another

waste of my time and then um about a

week later i get a phone call going look

jim cameron wants to fly you to la to

audition for him i said what the hell

for i said that audition you did no not

here we go i said well i've got to get

down i thought i was snowboarding at the

time i said i've got to get down with

the mountain first it'll be dead so uh

especially the way i snowboard all right

got that all right here we go

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

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

because i wanted him to be a guy

who the promise of his life had been

taken away by his injury 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 but he talked

like this

he was like crocodile dundee

we had to work on the accent a little

bit i ain't going to show that i'm with

you

unless you want me to but he did 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're ready

zoe he 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 margie to john 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

it's your fault all your fault didn't

have to die

they attacked me huh how am i 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 going to

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

yeah my sick

how strong are you we decided to do a

little informal screen test between sam

worthington and zoe saldana our two

leading choices for the roles because

the key to this was performance in

chemistry jake and nateri that

relationship had to work with the movie

wasn't going to work

the woman has to choose me

she already asked

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 it was a six

months process of waiting you know i

said to jim i'll stand by the whole way

i want to be 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 3d we will send

them a message

that they cannot take whatever they want

and that this

this is our land

[Applause]

it was after watching those scenes that

fox came aboard and realized that sam

was the right one for that part

and in january of 2007 we got the green

light and that was both a very exciting

day and a very daunting day because all

of a sudden we really had to make the

film

outstanding

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

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 you know 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 he went miles and miles

beyond those initial ideas he wanted

something that didn't sound like

anything that we've 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

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 navi 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 one who created the

dictionary so of course

i had to create the words as well as put

them together into sentences

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 a human into an avatar or a navi

role all the auditions have them sitting

there doing

and and you know all this sort of stuff

ah

oh 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

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

they responded to it and more than

anything my performance came

like a through 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

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

that was you know 23 years earlier in a

funny way i'd almost discounted working

with sigourney because we had done

aliens because it was a science fiction

film about an encounter with an alien

species i thought

that that 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 and grace augustine is

not ripley i'm changing her name oh okay

because i don't want to do ripley and

shipley all righty

let's say it's going to be grace

augustine

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 that you know the joy

he has of working on this finally he's

quite unique i think

really unique 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 navi

speaking of us

so there's an interesting irony there

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

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 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 zoe who plays

nati we actually went to set and put her

through a whole battery of photographs

and then on top of the actress's

photograph then we would turn her into a

navi so we did complete turnarounds all

different angles of the head and neck

and this is the photograph that i use to

start this image here we took this

through at least 50 60 versions

for each actor we put them through a

life cast process which we used for our

designing purposes when it came to a 3d

sculpture

look at that

it's it it's absolutely fantastic what

an incredible cast i must say no

eyebrows in there

oh your eyebrows are right there they're

still on your head

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

orthington's character and all the other

characters as well that are navi or

avatars how they move how they breathe

how they stand everything had to be

created by them so sam we had him learn

navi navi take the suv we had to work

out with the trailer sam had do military

training and he worked with my brother

and he's a former marine he fought a

desert storm so we got you know 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 that i'm giving you sam

they want you to kind of be proficient

with weaponry and stuff like that

because the guy's a marine so i wanted

to actually meet

other marines

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 him and it's drilled into him

to achieve their mission

you've got the man next to him if he

goes down you pitch him up and you keep

going

keep going got it sam let's go

yeah that gave me a base to jump from so

that was the best training i had welcome

to our world hey it

first

i should just drop here

zoe went through a tremendous amount of

training as did laws and cch she went

through horseback training archery

training movement training dance

training language training

to say we did a lot of training is is an

understatement we actually had to learn

how to walk like a navi 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 they worked with the

movement coach terry notary and terry

came up with certain ways of moving it

involved the way the chest and the spine

would move to create some kind of animal

grace some power in the stem we work

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

without terry notary we would have a

species that would talk a different

language but would walk human and react

as humans do terry worked with the

complete cast to create a unity of

movement and create a believability in

this culture that they've grown up

together

there's a connection between the people

in 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

there were some big dance numbers that

got cut out of the movie but her

choreography her movement that she

created is 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 troops

[Music]

i got a hold of uh zoey 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 it's how to

shoot this bow and arrow

more different than ever has been done

before zoe was the first person we

started to teach the boatwork to it

zoe's a lefty

so once we established that they were

lefties we said all of the narpy lefties

gm 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 a

human feeling and it also accentuates

the idea that the knobbies only have

three digits it wouldn't work very well

for a human but the navi are subtly

different in terms of their their

biomechanics and you can see that in

their upper body musculature and so on

especially the males the archery teacher

came to me puzzled 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 boom think of your target as

boom 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 said that's about 75 meters

away he said yes i went

like that and hit it

and he said oh

you can shoot a bow that way

because i'd been out there practicing

and i got lucky with that one shot but i

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

navi to each other but what we've just

been doing is to have zoey and last come

up and just do a little bit of the

dialect so that wes could hear what

we've established so that rhythmically

and so on he can kind of match up and

he's doing great so that we're

artificially creating that melting pot

iosp

it's part of your costume it's part of

who you become so you want it to become

natural and fluid

well i'm lucky because the characters

only just learned it over the course of

the movie so if i slip up it it helps

the character

nadi nali

paul farmer had created a language he

wasn't creating an accent so i basically

said zoe you get to establish what na'vi

sounds like and what the nabi accent

sounds like because you're the one with

the most lines and then everybody else

is just going to have to try to match

you as best they can it's very hard

because how do i speak english with an

accent i barely speak english all in

itself the one who interprets the will

of awe to me it's been the most

challenging thing is to speak english

with a naughty accent i need your help

you should not be here

i knew that we were going to be working

in this

sterile gray space this volume and i

didn't want the actors to just sort of

come in on the first monday morning of

the shoot and not have any kind of 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

maureen

you're making me nervous

and we just did behaviors but trying to

kind of stay in character

and talking as if they're their

characters sigourney fed on this great

deal i know sam and zoe 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 not have to rely on anything

comfortable but it was that

but also wearing our costumes so

i was i was naked

[Laughter]

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 are you sleeping

on my table

and i saw this headless rat

and i'm you know i'm with my bow and i'm

in character the moment i saw this rat i

was just like immediately i went back to

like my new york state of mind i was

like oh my god i can't deal with this

and he's like suck it

jim was like come on nick terry suck it

up i'm like

right

right okay zoe leave this is a

jungle no tv no blackberry let me just

do this so it's been a struggle every

day to kind of

you know undo everything that has been

done up until my ears

i just absorbed that place i absorbed

the beauty of the rainforest there

and we did a couple of scenes and we ran

around in loincloths you know pretending

we were the navi and the avatar and

there's a difference between

being out in the real world and coming

into this

great desolate area and actually trying

to have to you know remember what it was

like in the water so if you're swimming

in here if you're swimming on kind of

just a rolling chair

your brain can kind of remember we got

to rehearse a few of the scenes and we

got to rehearse with physical things

because we knew that we were going to be

going into a mocap stage and we weren't

going to you know 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

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 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 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

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

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 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 glendari his little ragtag

team of engineers started looking at how

do we keep it light so we wind 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 so we

would shoot reference cameras of the

actors and these are a critical step in

the virtual production process 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 performance

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 going to 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

let me know when you're ready dave i'd

like to introduce some performers into

the volume

[Music]

i had to take everything i learned in

training and applied to my first day i

had to ride a horse jump off of them

appearing to be as graceful as possible

land move like a navi and from that

first moment when they set that horse

and they let that thing go instantly

soute just jumped in my body and lads

went somewhere else

what's happening you've got to swim

pretty quickly obviously you're going to

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 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 some from the other person

and vice versa i trusted you trust me

now please

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 also i was on the set and

i was playing a

jim says action 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 actors have said to me you know

sort of half jokingly but a little

nervously so while you're 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 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

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

could play an alien now i think it

actually

kind of gives us wings and actually we

use that sandbox we use that spatial

environment to do everything it's where

we created the sets it's where we block

the scenes it's where we captured the

actors that's where we did all the stunt

work i mean we had horses galloping

around this place we did everything at

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 going to talk

about it why don't we act it out in 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 just go out

there and fly them around 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 understand whether or not

the overall performance work before we

ever even gave it to an animator and

said no that has to be legitimized 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 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 it through

phases and work out a pipeline so what

we would have is either puppeteer

version where we set up in gym doing

flight paths or we would have preacher

performers

shut up and fly straight 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'd ask the actors to

perform to the timing and movement of

the flight path so if they're banshee

bank to the right the rider had to do

the opposite to maintain a center of

gravity bang

level

flare

laugh laugh

when you see them flying these things

they were working hard and they used to

be just

absolute agony the day after a flight

scene

[Music]

the biggest set pieces for the stunt

department really have been this thing

that we call 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 clamber 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 they can climb it a little bit

faster than they normally would 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 the real world

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 navi climbing a

mountain we had to create let's say a 20

degree grade if they were climbing a

vine we'd drop 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 because we're not

bound by the set there's nothing on the

set it's a great 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 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 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 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 vests and

digital vat if i want to whistle up a

tree or a mountain or anything i can do

it very quickly and there were often

times when we come in to work a scene on

a given day and we get some ideas and

we'd run with that 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

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 before he'll charge

so what do i do dance with it

[Music]

jim would be there with a pole and going

after sam and he'd be representing the

hammerhead

[Applause]

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

what about this one run don't run what

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 oh i

have a good overlap then i can play them

and get them into their positions yeah

cool so he could direct sam how to play

off of that because

again in the virtual world it's all

there for you run definitely run

right

we thought we learned everything in the

first year of research and development

because 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 in it and

those represented more difficulties in

virtual production if we got past five

characters it would create a problem

just capturing the motion never mind

getting them to run with fully fledged

sets and light we just hit a ceiling

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

here's an example of a scene that almost

broke the system

made of a lot of different elements you

can see there are horses different

performances of the principles and the

crowds that were on the side they were

all combined together in one shot we're

selecting specific actions and syncing

them all up so that they all play

relative to whatever's happening this is

like reinventing the wheel it was really

challenging i have to say i've never

been so challenged on anything

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 navi

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 and

we had basically different artists

worked on these two different cultures

we brought in people like ty ruben

ellinson and ben proctor and paul osmo

who all worked on that type of material

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 man-made 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 sort of art direction and

cosmetics it's 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 kind of gone through

the ringer a bit of course i love all

that hardware stuff

i'm an unrequited engineer i worked with

tai very closely to make sure that the

amp suits 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

low and back when you're approaching

things even inanimate objects oftentimes

you'll find if you listen carefully to

what the director is 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 which is

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

so you want to 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 on screen

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 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 and l.a runway 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 because this

was fast-tracked and that they were

still designing the sets in la 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 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 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 the virtual camera 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 you should just sort of

slide this part

we've got roughly 25 sets worked out

we've got something like 40 000 square

feet of floor area plus the rain forest

another 10 000 square feet so they're

quite big numbers the crew of 140 and

it's not a particularly big crew but

this is 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 this is really

nice

remember that sentry gun we have sure do

here it is

it goes shoulder where you can split it

and go uh

two hands

we built all of hell's gate that you saw

on the interior from the op center to

the commissary where forage makes his

first speech to the jail cell that they

break out of we built the two shacks

where they do the research and we built

the samson itself we had to build the

link room and the links themselves and

these things how to work from gym on

down you feel like in every department

we're working with people who exist at

the pinnacle of their craft and

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 navi and pandora and then there's

the humans and stuff that's not

necessarily cgi as much and so it was

kind of new for everybody you're not

wearing a gopro wetsuit and everything

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 because we've got a

whole different cast to be honest with

you you've got stephen lang

and giovanni and philippe and then

you've got michelle as well

steven 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 but he's this very pure creature

and he came in for an audition and he

knocked it out of the park he's just

riveting it's my job to keep you alive

i will not succeed

not with all of you

so 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

or what

ranger rick

you're gonna shoot me

i can do that

[Music]

with the live-action side of it we did

more weaponry training fight training

porch

carries this laser sighted pistol and

this comes into play occasionally

[Applause]

we work with steven inside the amp suit

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 to build it for able-bodied

soldiers and you have to work out how to

do it we took him along to a local

basketball game in the wheelchairs

playing basketball which was um which

was pretty cool me and ten of the stunt

guys got some wheelchairs from the

hospital and smashed it up a bit and

then you realise that your attention

shouldn't be on the wheelchair it should

be on where you're going or what you're

aiming for

[Music]

this right here is the samsung 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 to take her out 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 if you have to reach up and

fire your guns 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

[Music]

it's something about being in the air

that's just beautiful thank you for

flying air pandora

[Music]

sunny new zealand

we never really felt like we had this

first day except when we went down to

new zealand because that was a truly new

break for us

i can 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 you know

this script the first draft of it 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 going to see something

exceptional and i would have to say that

our expectations have been not only 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's no such thing as

an easy shoot i think you know when

people rap on time it's because they ran

out of ideas

[Laughter]

[Applause]

so

don't count on that

here we go

and action dr honesty

he can't be up here

basketball

the thing that's hardest to understand

about 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

3d okay that's cut

i fell in love with 3d when i made my

first 3d film which was in 95

and that was t2 3d

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 3d 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 3d production 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 and 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 the design of the

camera has been researched for a long

period of time what they've done is just

take all the weight off a 3d system and

essentially assemble 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 disline them according to how much 3d

you're looking for in a shot i've never

done a film in 3d so the experimentation

was really enticing for me

technology for the 3d particularly

getting used to because it's like

there's two cameras they have to just

check the i o every once in a while it's

not that different but just a little bit

different and you learn quickly like

it's a technical marvel like the fact

that the cameras will photograph the

same exact thing at the same exact way

what your eyes do naturally it took

years and years to develop to make the

cameras do it

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

3d

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 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 bag

and it goes you know 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

amp suits

there's your man

see you on the flight line

our probably biggest gag on this will be

the emotion base we built for the samson

it's huge you know it's the size of a

bus

we also have the samson the backlot

which is going to be hung from a large

crane it's really cool they basically

land the thing all the guys jump out

just before it like hit the ground i

don't know how many feet in there

probably about

40 and they turn on these massive fans

to make all of the foliage and the

ground moon

it's been the whole gamut of effects

really

things breaking

simulated helicopter flights

fire

[Music]

garrett sent me down his stun 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

[Music]

probably the most technical move you've

been on a challenge for everybody but i

think it's going to be a wicked product

at the end

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

[Music]

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 want to say thank you very much for

making this a

long and grueling shoot on a wonderful

shoot uh in the sense that i really

appreciate

the uh the energy and the

the workmanship of the spirit

no matter how long the hours got

everybody still pulled hard and i think

i think i'm on my way as we were saying

our goodbyes on the set the stunt

coordinator came up and said the stunt

team has something that they'd like to

give you is it going to hurt challenges

and i turned around and here they all

were these new zealand stunt guys

[Music]

some were maori some were not maori but

they were all new zealanders and they

had all worked on this

apparently what this haka does if

translated is it challenges you to

continue to do your best and that was

their way of thanking

[Applause]

and they handed me the taja 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

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 and it would take 20 seconds then

i got to live action shooting and you

know moving big objects around in the

background and i said you know if this

was cg i could have moved that 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

what i realized is that they're both

hard 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 was 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

these would play back

on the stage with jim in the virtual

camera

please so now

the actors are gone and he's out there

with this virtual camera

playing back their performances from

sometimes months before let's do a take

okay

[Music]

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 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 say 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

and then that edited cut is what goes to

weta for them to finish we call that the

template we would see kind of 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

what is 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 and we would start

replacing that with all the high

resolution elements

we're able to feel the 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 i 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 controls looking good

the animator's job is to analyze the

performance analyze every detail of it

and make sure it's coming across it was

very important for us to make sure that

whatever zoe did whatever sam did

actually came through their avatars onto

the screen and played as convincingly as

when they were on the stage you take a

character like nateri 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 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

we have to figure out how to maintain

that integrity maintain that performance

so the characters you see on the screen

are really

what the performance was intended to be

[Applause]

you might not be you're happy

we had the actors on set at weda digital

we scanned them with our own software

and that's when we were able to take 60

70 different facts 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 zoe and sam 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 a reference

it's one of the reasons why the eye came

to life in avatar we studied all those

details and we made sure they were in

there we made sure nate terry'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 the reference

cameras play an integral part in how we

evaluate 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

stress with the animators was 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 navia

and then we go back to the actual shock

camera and see if there's anything lost

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

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 studied lions and we incorporated

that into our character

so in a way the animation is a

turbocharger on top of this whole facial

capture idea you should not be here

when nathiri is furious with jake her

ears flatten out and her tails going

back and forth so there's a total

character that's created

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 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 why the

number jake jake listen to me you're not

used to your avatar body this is

dangerous this is great zoey really

enjoys watching the footage of her as

naitiri because natieri 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

[Music]

the first sequence that we turned over

to wetted digital we turned over in

february of

2007. we did not get it back until may

of 2008.

those first shots that i final which was

the scene where we first seen a tyria

and she draws the bow and the wood

sprite comes out 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 then we

just sit there and go hey look at that

finally those first 10 or 11 shots in

that scene was absolutely critical

that's the moment where we knew this

movie was going to work we didn't know

yet if we could get all the other 2600

shots done but we knew we could make a

real character

we were cutting the whole movie together

and in the summer of 2008 a full year

and a half before the movie was released

he 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 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

we had to cut the film shorter because

it wasn't quite gelling up it it always

felt too long making its points and i

kept surgically taking little bits out

here and there and you know 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 we finished the cut 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 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're

going to be doing and it's too late for

us to gear up to do the other work we

made the decision to pull work

uh in late 2008

but we didn't get the approval to do it

until spring of 2009.

so these shots were just lying in weight

the work building up jim stressing out

about it yeah okay so so you still have

some tech work to do on on contact

shadows and reflections and it was a

nail biter the whole movie was a nail

biter in terms of getting things done

because 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 stand-alone

sequences where we would get companies

like hydraulics frame store

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 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

fire

in three two one

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

[Music]

the first time

that we actually showed it to a large

group of people was cinema expo which is

an exhibitor's convention in amsterdam

we argued about what content to include

and there was a concern that we were

including too much of the fern gully

elements of the film in particular the

scene where the wood sprites land on

jake we decided that we were going to

keep it in

and we presented this

in answer 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

all right then let's go

there were 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 3d 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

18th we want you to still hold back

something for the fun of the voyage

and then john lando and i came up with

this idea to do avatar day avatar day

was where 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 3d

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 what's

all the fuss about this looks like you

know 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

i did press for another film on avatar

day and all those guys were bagging the

movie because they'd just seen the

little kind of trailer on the tv that

was a hard thing to stand there and

defend but well defend this product all

the way and 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 two minute trailer but saw 15 minutes

of the movie the response was

overwhelming

are you ready to rock

yes

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

and we did video conferencing so jim

could actually physically point out

something and we would spend hours if

not days in these review sessions and

oftentimes we would schedule multiple

ones in one day where we would schedule

the crews that were in london in the

early morning because it was already

there late night tim how you doing

you want a good thing yeah

what time is it

jeremy 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

it's still boiling here and then we

essentially kind of run out of it to

what is now 100 pandora atmosphere

[Music]

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

the first thing james did on this film

was bring in an ethno musicologist and

start collecting sound vocal sounds and

various different instruments from

around the world 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

what i did was i sampled a lot of

interesting instruments

and then i

i worked with them electronically

to get an effect

that was

different than the instrument could make

but that had a 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

and they were two women

that just are professional singers and

they just pinched off their voice to

sound like sort of half

african half navi

children adult

a couple of days went by where we didn't

really keep anything that was sung was

just getting the right sound we can get

one good one

no we trust your ears yeah

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

i was true to the na'vi language

i think it's an amazing score and

because it has all this textual 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

and i think it's incredibly powerful and

i think he gets to these amazing kind of

spiritual moments he gets to these huge

epic heroic moments

which by the way there are a number of

composers that 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

[Music]

movies aren't made by one person they're

made by a big group of people and you

know there's got to be one you know

idiot that kind of charges up front says

come on guys let's go but then after

that you're putting up on the screen as

a result of

a team and in this case we're going to

put a movie out there that's going to

look look amazing no matter you know

what version you you see it in

but we can know in our hearts that we

made a great film so i think you guys

should give give up a little round of

applause for yourself

jim said that we would solve our last

problem

on the last day we delivered the movie

and that held true jim

looks at every phase of production and

says

at a certain point this is going to 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 3d so

we did something that had never been

done before we did

a customized release

wherever you went it was going to be the

perfect digital cinema package for that

theater and you were going to get the

best possible screening of avatar that

you possibly could 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

just to put the glasses on and start

that movie and be taken right into space

and write 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 i just forgot

all the work that had gone into it and

was just transported

[Music]

the reaction around the world has just

been incredible it really just kept

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

i think we're living in a day and age

now where

we realize what we're doing to this

plant

it's right in the forefront of a lot of

people's minds you young people are

going to 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 by doing something

you can make a change it just comes down

to your choices in life it seems like

the navy you've 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 and 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 trying 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 going to 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

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

the question remains how much does a

piece of entertainment a movie actually

change the way people act one can hope

that 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 want

to 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

i see you