Director James Cameronthird post in “Avatar“Series,” Avatar: Fire and Ash, “opens in December, but the audience Jonesing for a big screen trip to Pandora can get their appetite this week with theatrical re -emissions of”Avatar: The waterway. “Released in 2022, 13 years after the original” avatar “,”The road for water“Turned out to be worth waiting, a sequel (like Cameron’s previous” foreigners “and” Terminator 2: Judment Day “) who built on it before filminnovations and dug deeper into its themes.
Because of the sequel’s new ambitions and the use of current technology, Cameron was in the same position as he was on the original film: Learning How To Make the Movie as He did.
“On the first movie we just figured out the basic technology,” Cameron told IndieWire. “How do you go a flight creature? How do we do performance?”
Cameron had solved these problems to go into “the way of water”, but created a whole new set of challenges for itself by putting so much of the film underwater. “What we didn’t know is, can we do all the things we did before, but can we do it in and under water? How do you ride on an ocean creature? Riding Air creatures were complicated enough, but we didn’t have the medium that is 800 times more tightly than air that shoots back at us.”
Cameron’s team built machines that were water jet operated so that his actor could rocket through the water under the surface, come up and fly above The surface and then reapply, while the technology drives the story and vice versa.
“It actually became a feedback trail,” Cameron said. “I Didn’t Know How People Were Going To Be Able To Ride A Water Creature. Once We figured out How the Creature Had To Move and How You Had To Ride It and Handle Weapons On It and Interact With It, We Had To Back Some of That Into The design of the design of Knee over or that you could get a foot pressed against. We had to modify our machines and then back those modifications into the creatures themselves so that the characters looked fully integrated. “
Despite the film’s massive scale, Cameron says that he and his crew remained smooth when it is not just the technology but the script. “I’m writing a script, but when I get into it with the actors I get new ideas,” Cameron said. “They get new ideas, and sometimes we change it when we go. I don’t think you write a script and it’s your drawing and you stick to that plan. I like to give and bring the actors and their growing awareness of their characters and themes they want to express. I try to be very inclusive of it.”
Cameron says that the technology for performance captivation facilitated flexibility he never had when he shot more conventional coverage. “We are building a rudimentary set. It has no color, and it is really just there to support them. It can have ramps or contoured if they are on complex terrain, or if there is a door there will be a door. But we only build what they touch. It is not everything else that you will look. So it is very quick to take this modular system.
The process of recreating the set took only about an hour, giving Cameron the freedom of simple reshoots and pickups. “I can even change the whole stage,” Cameron said. “It is an ongoing, iterative, creative process, and then it becomes reductive when you come into post -production. You start to throw things out and win it to what has the greatest visual impact or the greatest emotional impact.”
Achieving the emotional impact is, according to Cameron, supported rather than hindered by performance detainee technology, which enables minor crews on set and greater intimacy with the actors. “People think of it as a technological layer that inhibits spectacle,” Cameron said. “It is actually the opposite. It enables a purity and authenticity in acting that you normally do not get.” To prove his point, Cameron compared the experience of making the “Avatar” movies of shooting “Titanic.”
“On the set” Titanic “I had 1500 extra that I had to filter away from my consciousness so I could work with Kate and Leo and some of the other actors in the foreground,” Cameron said. That intimacy and focusing on only them is very difficult to create. Let’s now say that we did “Titanic” with performance capture. I would just be there with the people who are in the foreground. So now all these extra and the giant set and all the techniques and the illuminating cranes and all the great reflectors and everything needed to bring it all life in a single image photographically, none of what is not there.
With performance capture, Cameron can even choose his coverage after the fact, in post -production, as he captures performances in a three -dimensional space that he can recreate with all the camera angles he chooses. “My choice of lens between the wide shot, the two shots, the shoulders, the close -ups … as everything happens later,” Cameron said. “So I’m only a hundred percent focused on that moment, that moment for these characters. As the author it is a very pure art form. We are just trying to find the truth in the scene.” All this will happen later and the actors will not be exposed to it. “
They are also not burdened to make sure that any of their pictures match, because mainly all shoots can be cut into a master, close -ups, two pictures or whatever Cameron decides. “In typical cinematography we make a scene and we make the master, then we are in tighter and tighter and you have to do the same thing over and over so it matches. It is very limiting for an actor, and it is almost Kabuki theater.
The process also allows Cameron and his actors to completely convert the stage from TA, as everything will match. Cameron compares the liberating nature of the experience with theater testing – not even theater, as there is no audience to play and all pressure is off. “We can catch up to about 20 people at a time, and then when we make large crowds we have a group that we call the squad. And the squad is ten very talented Swiss army knife actors who can play anything. They can be an old lady for a minute and a young boy next minute. We make the crowds as plates and create.”
Cameron’s enthusiasm for technology extends to a desire to see other filmmakers integrate it into their own processes, although he says directors are not always good for reaching each other. “Directors are lonely wolves,” Cameron said. “They should know everything, and when you get paid to know everything, it seems in some way to avoid people that the easiest thing to do is just ask someone else who has done it. I really wouldn’t hesitate a split second to call someone and say,” Hello, how did you make that flood? It was fantastic. “
With that in mind, Cameron has an open door policy when it comes to other directors who see what he has done. “I always say to everyone,“ Look, you want to come by? Maybe you can integrate parts of it into your own creativity. I’m not trying to sell it. I do not make any money from selling the technology, we only do what we need to do to make our own movies. Each time someone will come in and go, “I can use it,” or “How did you do that?” And for me that’s how it should be.
Where Cameron sometimes collides with his peers is when he encounters what he calls the ludic mentality of thinking that anything but practical effects are at a different rate. “Give me a break,” Cameron said. “Are you kidding me? We can do something that can be done practically in CG.” Cameron says the only difference is one of the artistic choices.
“If I did” foreigners “today, would I make the foreign queen exactly that way if she was CG? Would I use so much steam to hide the wires and the rods and things we had to use? I might not, I might not light a little more. Maybe I may not want to see all our beautiful design elements, and it may not be a little root.
Cameron believes that at any time a filmmaker can do something practically it is worth it, but some things simply require CG, especially on the “Avatar” movies. “We have characters whose eyes are volumetrically four times the size of a human eyeball,” he said. “I want to see how to solve that problem. And the emotional in these eyes is a big part of why people relate emotionally to the” avatar “films.”
Cameron credits the CG character design by giving another 10 percent of the expressiveness on top of what the actors bring to the table. “You can’t do it with makeup,” he said. “You can’t do it practically. So there is some secret sauce in an” avatar “movie that has to do with emotions. I always say it’s a hundred percent of what the actor did and a little more.”
Since he sees the technology being so unclear to emotion and performance, Cameron is always sure to cooperate with his actors about the CG design. “Over the years I have talked to the actors and I have shown them things and I have said:” Do you buy this reinforcement of your emotional state? “, He said.” If they have a cat or a dog, they buy it completely. But we have had to come up with a kind of physiological vocabulary for the animation team so that they do not exceed their boundaries. “
As Cameron sees it, CG is no other tool in terms of performance other than editing or kinematography or hair and makeup. “It always supports, just as film lighting makes people look more beautiful or more serious, or whatever you want,” Cameron said. “We always try to improve what the actor does, to take what they do and drive it a bit. And we do it with editing. We do it with lighting. It is part of the craft. There is nothing clean about acting unless someone just stands there on stage. And that’s not what movies have ever been.”
“Avatar: The Way of Water” will be release again in IMAX and 3D for a week from October 3, 2025.
