Capturing Avatar (2010)

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00:00:00कुआल द culmin MON

00:00:03अचल्छम

00:00:04खवब किम अचलिन घुटार सुमी इुक

00:00:09थे अवास्ट टो

00:00:10आव टालousटि मो थे व ज sagt

00:00:14फ्प्लेक्ट यहरे दिए

00:00:16और साहा सब्टनר्दर्बो्च भर करें

00:00:21पůबma तें टम लंप कहाँ U

00:00:24में पिल्ग

00:00:24तो से व्टतना पो northeast

00:00:27औरुमार लेज़ अफेवार, फसले पूशा इन आगी है, और जले होगा है, और मेगे जह हैंगीा गीज़ कर लिए लादिट का ले लेगा है

00:00:33वें में जो पता है वे बहुटे पने खिंदा सावा भी जी की जाती है

00:00:37जी प्रवेश के यंट अला है और जा अई झाल। इना जाए हॉटा को बितकित के रहा है

00:00:46वे लिए जाएग में ये सबस्टें इना में बढाई है

00:00:49I'm only smart enough to surround myself with enough smart people to solve the problems

00:00:54and I had a great team because we were way on the unknown but that's cool that's where I like to be

00:00:59people have asked me what was your inspiration what was the trigger they're looking for some

00:01:13kind of proximal cause and there really isn't one okay it's my whole life it's my entire childhood

00:01:18I grew up in a town in rural Canada I spent all my time in the woods I loved critters you know I

00:01:25would catch anything that moved and study it keep it as a pet snakes frogs amphibians whatever it was

00:01:32I could get my hands on so I grew up with this kind of profound sense of wonder about nature and I was

00:01:38also a science fiction and fantasy fan from the earliest time I can remember and I was an artist

00:01:43so my way of processing that was to draw and to paint and I was painting creatures and painting

00:01:48alien worlds for as far back as I can remember so my avatar is really the sum total of all that

00:01:55there was no single moment of inspiration

00:01:57now the thing that got me off my duff to actually sit down and write it this movie that I'd had in

00:02:05my head for most of my life in some form or other was that I was the CEO of a big visual effects company

00:02:12and I wanted to challenge that visual effects company to go beyond not just beyond what everybody

00:02:17else was doing but beyond the beyond I wanted to be so far out in front that nobody would ever catch us

00:02:22and that's essentially what avatar is it's the most high-tech film in terms of its execution dealing with

00:02:28essentially a very low-tech subject which is our relationship with nature and in fact the irony is

00:02:35that the film is about our relationship with nature and how our technological civilization has

00:02:40taken us several removes away from a truly natural existence and the consequences of that to us

00:02:46I first heard of avatar when we were prepping Titanic so it's 1995-ish and Jim gave me a scriptment

00:02:54to read and think of the scriptment as a novella with certain scenes broken out into dialogue

00:02:59come on come on the essence of what I got out of reading the scriptment was that it was an

00:03:05emotional journey set in a world beyond what I certainly could have imagined I figured if we

00:03:11could do that we could do anything and of course the answer that I got was we can't do this nobody

00:03:16can do this that was in 95 it was several years after that that we started to even think about it

00:03:24when we did some tests on brother termite which was a movie that involved an alien character in

00:03:29Washington DC and we needed this character to interact with humans and we said to ourselves

00:03:34we need to do that with performance caption and we actually tested a whole sequence Marion

00:03:40some of my people have disappeared I need to know why and Jim envisioned doing the facial performance

00:03:52with an image-based process that was the seed that really proved to us that there was the potential

00:03:59to finally be able to do a film like avatar avatar was written in 95 to be the next film after

00:04:07titanic and there was supposed to have been a continuity of work during the time that titanic was

00:04:12being made to prepare us for making avatar after titanic but we made a decision that it wasn't even worth

00:04:20putting together the the couple of million dollars that we wanted to spend in research and development

00:04:23during that time because we wouldn't be able to get there in that time period so I went off and

00:04:28made titanic and then after titanic I got very focused on deep ocean exploration and I did six

00:04:33subsequent expeditions and my last expedition ended in summer of 2005 and that's when we started

00:04:39avatar so we proposed the fox that they support us for a year and we would do several things during

00:04:46that year first we would research the technology could we really do the things we think we could do

00:04:52and we would begin to develop the art of the world so that they could get a visual sense of

00:04:57where this movie would take place we were doing two things simultaneously and they involved two

00:05:03completely separate groups of people one was the technical side led by rob legato and glendary

00:05:07and the other was on the design side where we brought in a handful of artists that included neville

00:05:13page yuri bartoli george rochelle wayne barlow and a gentleman by the name of rob powers they went out

00:05:19to malibu where we set up in a facility so it could be near jim working on the designs for the

00:05:24film we got the best artists we could find that had excellent portfolios beautiful work and then a

00:05:30fantasy and science fiction area brought them together formed a small core team they wouldn't

00:05:36even tell me what the project was i had no idea we go in we have this meeting with jim and we get the

00:05:41scriptment we read the scriptment and we start seeing all these big design possibilities it's a whole

00:05:46world we're salivating because this is the chance to really come up with some new stuff you

00:05:50know something really unique it's going to be this really colorful jungle world you know of pandora very

00:05:55alien that was one of the big issues at the beginning was how alien do we get mostly the the processes you

00:06:00start out with the big broad strokes so we would do tons of drawings just sketch away until jim sees

00:06:07something that feels like it's getting close all the time you're trying to predict or get into his head

00:06:13and see what it is that he sees the banshee is a great example of a creature that took a long time

00:06:17to create it took almost two years to get the finished banshees what i kept coming back to them

00:06:22with my question that i always pose to them is what's the metaphor what are we trying to say to

00:06:27the audience what are we communicating with every bone and sinew that we put into this creature and the

00:06:33answer to the metaphor question with the banshee is i want it to be a bird of prey i want it to be like

00:06:37an eagle but an alien eagle you could apply that to all the different creatures

00:06:43the metaphor for the thanator well was the biggest baddest meanest terrestrial predator in the entire

00:06:49pandoran rainforest and it actually landed pretty close to the initial description from 10 years

00:06:54earlier which was that it was a black armored six-legged panther from hell

00:06:58a constant is that they're all hexapedal to some degree meaning they've all got six legs or six

00:07:08limbs how do you make that work unfortunately a real horse doesn't work with six legs so you have to

00:07:13re-engineer an actual horse's anatomy and that's kind of what we did so even the flying creatures

00:07:19there's a vestigial element of that in it we looked at the colors of poison dart frogs and tropical reef

00:07:27fish this is one of the things that i think is going to separate all the creatures from a lot

00:07:32of creatures done in the past these creatures are extremely colorful very bright very flamboyant

00:07:38when you look at them it's like wow that's it's like a big kimono coming at you

00:07:46the navi took a long time to design but the blue color was never in question because i felt that it was

00:07:50a fundamentally alien skin color that could be quite beautiful but the idea that they incorporated animal

00:07:57like features cats ears and cat tails and a slightly more protrusive muzzle and a kind of

00:08:03a flatter more feline nose big eyes lemur-like eyes this was all something that we arrived at over the

00:08:10course of designing these characters we initially started out with kind of more amphibian like and

00:08:17reptilian kind of forms and alien structures you know kind of antennae and things like that and we kept

00:08:25realizing that it wouldn't work as a love story to see them not be attractive but they couldn't

00:08:30be human and then they kept coming back to just blue-skinned humans i said well that's no good

00:08:33either so we have to find ways of pushing away from human but in a way that people would not find

00:08:39off-putting and in fact might even find to be kind of quite beautiful i wanted people to say i want to be

00:08:44one of them our art department started out working in flat artwork we had nothing that we could hold up that

00:08:50was tactile in front of us and we realized we had one of the great sculptors in our business

00:08:57on the show and we tasked him was starting to sculpt out and build the characters one of the most

00:09:03important things about the maquette is not that you're just showing the design what the maquette allows

00:09:09us to do it gives it the human touch and it also imbues the character with a sense of character that

00:09:16cannot be stressed enough you get a sense of attitude the amount of character you can get in

00:09:20clay as far as i see right now is still superior to what you can get in just a digital rotatable model

00:09:28it's interesting stan winston studios did something on this movie that stan winston had not allowed them

00:09:34to do on any other movie in the past they initially worked only as concept artists the novies don't all

00:09:40look alike they all look like novies but they all have very implicit and very distinctive characters and

00:09:46that's of course what we're most proud of is you look at these characters and they are very very

00:09:52rich and specific and quite mind-blowing when jim first came to us he was looking to help flesh out

00:09:58the navi character he already knew some of the parameters they were going to have markings and he

00:10:04knew the basic overall size so that's what we started doing was creating novies trying to

00:10:10get a photo real kind of essence of these people

00:10:17what happened in april of 2005 rob legato came to us and showed us some tests that he'd actually done

00:10:25where he used a virtual camera but in a post-production method and he had the idea that he could apply that

00:10:32same thing to performance capture how it started was essentially coming up with an emulation of

00:10:39how we like to make live-action movies normally you go into a film and you at least have a basic idea

00:10:44there's a process that's been in place for you know 100 years towards creating these images but jim

00:10:49wanted to do it different i remember the day that jim and john visited the beowulf set which basically

00:10:55was a blind cap paradigm which means reference cameras only for the performances of your actors

00:11:02and not seeing any rendered caricatures or environments at all and i saw this little

00:11:07glint in jim's eye and i knew he was up to something but he didn't tell any of us he didn't tell me

00:11:11that's basically the genesis or the idea where he says i think we can do a tool for the director

00:11:16enabling him to come up with real-time performance capture so we had to come up with a way that was

00:11:22sort of director-centric and gave him the tool set that he needed to be able to work with

00:11:26i went to jim and i said i can make this thing that you would like so essentially out of spare parts

00:11:32made a virtual camera so we put you in a spatial volume the volume is the stage and the stage is

00:11:37really what we can capture what our cameras are seeing you've got a bunch of markers on the actor's

00:11:42body that are being picked up by hundreds of cameras so the hundreds of cameras are providing

00:11:47different views of these markers each camera's image just looks like a cloud of dots

00:11:51and then the computer is creating a real-time moving skeleton of you from that skeleton you now

00:11:57can drive a computer generated character and that image is then pumped out to me at the camera

00:12:04when somebody is standing in front of the camera i don't see them i see their character showing you

00:12:10what that would look like through a real-time computer render so we call it a camera but it's not truly a

00:12:16camera yeah save that please it wasn't until we brought in rick carter and rob stromberg that

00:12:25the world of pandora really came to life actually i was only supposed to be on this film for two weeks

00:12:31i came on because jim needed help with a presentation to the studio i did a couple of images and jim saw

00:12:36those and said you know what you're staying we are very lucky to have gotten rick carter to come on to

00:12:43our film and he came in and he saw the movie on so many different levels i think that what's

00:12:49unique and special about avatar is that it's an experience the part of the job that matters to me

00:12:54is what's it about the big questions of why not just how are you going to do it which of course you

00:12:59have to do but you have to come up with the whys because those are what motivate you to actually

00:13:04inspire this army of people and he was able to bring into the fold ryan church and james klein and

00:13:11others who just elevated everything and he worked collaboratively with rob stromberg and rob

00:13:17and rick shared the responsibility ultimately of designing the world this is a real alien planet the

00:13:25degree to which jim has thought through the ecosystems and the interactions this is the first time i've seen

00:13:31anything like this when you first get there it's actually a very scary place we wanted to play out the

00:13:36haunted house factor the sort of you know you don't want to go in there but then over time as

00:13:42the characters develop so does the environment it develops into beauty and you get to respect it

00:13:48much as the people who live there respect it it's a very primeval landscape huge craggly mountains

00:13:54exciting ring structures from magnetic fields and stuff like that and then of course the giant floating

00:13:59mountains so it's very science fiction but we're trying to take those very science fiction things but

00:14:03kind of ground that in sort of a reality for inspiration we looked a lot at various regions

00:14:07of china such as the guilin area and the zeng zhaji area because they have these limestone formations

00:14:12called karst formations and we also reference a lot of south american jungle a lot of venezuela

00:14:17areas around tip we and angel falls oh my god for like smaller things such as the alien plants we

00:14:33would reference a lot of small lichen small succulents that actually exists on earth exotic flowers and

00:14:38just really play up the scale of those jim was really adamant about wanting pandora to be possible so

00:14:45his vision was to really have as much real and good science in it as it could be on pandora

00:14:52or anywhere the environmental factors that would have the most influence on plants would be the

00:14:58light the solar radiation which is needed for photosynthesis so on pandora there's a very strong

00:15:03magnetic field and very weak gravity so plants were able to grow much larger so gigantism the large

00:15:10trees the large plants that is one big damn tree by starting out with the designs in the daytime

00:15:16stuff it was after that that we got into the bioluminescence the idea that there is fairly low

00:15:23light could conceivably cause plants to evolve bioluminescence we wanted it to have this kind

00:15:29of dreamlike quality but the eye needed to be educated through the experience of the film

00:15:34first we're going to fly down through clouds then we're going to go to this human base

00:15:38then we're going to move off that base out into the forest but we're going to go out there

00:15:41in the daytime and then we're going to gradually take you into that more and more alien experience

00:15:47of pandora and that was by design we knew we were doing that because we knew that ultimately we were

00:15:51going to wind up in a fully cg rainforest with fully cg characters and it had to look real as it's getting

00:15:57dark for the first time in the jungle jake lights a torch and we play the whole scene sort of torch lit so

00:16:04you don't give away the bioluminescence and there's a moment in the film where natiri takes

00:16:09the torch and throws it in a river it's almost like opening the door to oz the torch goes out and you

00:16:15see the blight luminescence for the first time

00:16:27one of the first things we did when we had the system up and running is we shot what we called a

00:16:32prototype maybe we were crazy but we never doubted that it would work so we cast two actors

00:16:37who were not going to be the final actors and we shot a short scene okay i'm sorry whatever i did i'm

00:16:44sorry and then ilm finished it for us through to a so-called photo real level you only come

00:16:51and make problems only okay fine fine fine you love your little forest friends so why not just let

00:17:01them kill my ass what's the thinking why save yes why save

00:17:12you not fear

00:17:15your strong heart

00:17:21but stupid ignorant like child from that moment when we saw that little 37 second clip we knew this

00:17:28would work it was just a question of how easy it was going to be of course it wasn't easy

00:17:32how much it was going to cost and how long it was going to take but we never doubted that it could be

00:17:36done weta digital started with us doing the r d on the project and was very eager to do the film

00:17:43john came to new zealand to talk to us and brought a copy of jim's original treatment for avatar i read it

00:17:49i just devoured it it was fantastic and so we just started talking about it and just just talking about

00:17:55the ideas that were in the story the characters the jungle the floating mountains the plants just

00:18:00the whole world it just seemed too fantastic to not put it on screen they just come off of lord of the

00:18:05rings they were finishing up king kong and they had two firm offers to take very big shows and they

00:18:11went to the board of directors at weta and they made a decision to pass on those money-paying shows

00:18:18and wait for avatar in the hope that we would get greenlit are we going to have somebody from

00:18:25your team with us next week while we're doing these scenes yeah i'll be there next year's going to be

00:18:29there and we can't complain about that we worked with two different sides of weta we worked with weta

00:18:34digital led by joe letary that was going to do the visual effects on the movie and we began working

00:18:39with richard taylor and his incredible team of artists at weta workshop one of our trademarks at weta is

00:18:47that we love to design a historical culture a believable lineage of culture within a world

00:18:54i felt that this offered us that opportunity i would suggest the nabi culture is a is more

00:19:00aligned to a pacific culture and what we've done is we're going to hire weavers that come from the

00:19:05pacific and they're able to put that level of culture in regardless of the fact it was set in the future

00:19:12the people of this world needed to feel that they had lived in the past they'd been on a journey

00:19:17to this place and i found that really exciting we had a discussion you know what kind of culture

00:19:21are they well they're neolithic culture they can't use metals because they're in these very powerful

00:19:26magnetic fields so they have to make everything out of bone and crystal and leather and so on also

00:19:32woven into it jim definitely saw a further layer of adornment that would be suggestive of a culture that

00:19:39existed beyond the moment in the movie what jim wanted to portray in the navi people is actually

00:19:47a tribal look that was unique soft and beautiful organic reflecting the kind of philosophy that the

00:19:56nabi people live which is very utopic and happy i think one of the biggest disservices on this movie

00:20:10sort of during the awards season if you will was that the costume design was not recognized there

00:20:15were actually two costume designers but when deb scott came in she actually fabricated every single article

00:20:23of clothing that every single virtual character in the movie war it's a little bit of a learning

00:20:28experience for everyone to really try to figure out what the place of the costume designer might be

00:20:33i didn't understand anything to do with computers really or how that process was when i started so i

00:20:38was completely playing catch up i was stitching and sewing with a lot of amazing crafts people who had

00:20:44been working on the project they were approaching it just like the navi would like how would you weave a

00:20:50chess plate so it was really like a giant jigsaw puzzle taking some pieces that other people had

00:20:55already built adding on to new pieces that i had crafts people who had already been working on the

00:21:00project built for me and sort of taking on and trying to finish off each character which ended up being

00:21:06quite a few pieces the other challenge of course is that it can't look like anything you'd ever find on

00:21:11earth and that's fantastic that's just such a cool challenge to start from scratch what does a knife look

00:21:16like you know how do you wear all of the stuff informs everything else it's impossible for cg artists

00:21:23to imagine how to simulate this stuff if there's no real world reference first moat's ceremonial gown

00:21:29what we called her mantle we had to make that and it was actually made in a number of different

00:21:33fabrics until we got exactly the right weight that would move the way we wanted it to move

00:21:37the same thing with sutay's battle friend dev scott made up all kinds of different fringe of

00:21:45different weights and different lengths and so on and we tested basically we did wind tunnel testing

00:21:49and saw what it looked like and imaged it and then we said all right that's the weight that's the right

00:21:53fringe that's exactly the right color and length now weta you guys have to figure out how to do a

00:21:58simulation and incorporate into the animation all right here we go and action two of the biggest

00:22:10challenges of keeping people engaged in the movie while we were going through this process were our

00:22:15two stars sam worthington and zoe sadana we spent months and months and months looking at people and

00:22:20then all of a sudden sam came on and i i mean i remember the moment so what first came here was just

00:22:28orders and then something happened i i fell in love with the forest and the people

00:22:40and with you and the thing for me about jake was in the end i had to believe

00:22:46that the people would follow him well we would send them a message

00:22:52that this is our land i sold everything i owned all i had was basically a bag of books

00:22:58and a bag of clothes in my three thousand dollar car and then i got a phone call to do this

00:23:02audition where they wouldn't tell me anything about the script and tell me who the director was i'm

00:23:05thinking well once again it's another waste of my time and then um about a week later i get a phone

00:23:10call going look jim cameron wants to fly you to l.a to audition for him i said what the hell for i said

00:23:15that that audition you did i went off here we go i said well i've got to get down i thought i was

00:23:20snowboarding at the time i said i've got to get down with the mountain first it'll be dead

00:23:23so uh well especially the way i snowboard all right got that all right here we go and because

00:23:29i was coming from having nothing to lose it actually powered me up to actually kind of not

00:23:33be scared so when you go into the audition and there's the guy who did aliens and titanic and you

00:23:38go what do you got mate let's go i think that's the character right there i wanted him to be young

00:23:43because i wanted him to be a guy who the promise of his life had been taken away

00:23:48by his injury and sam was exactly 30 when i met him i think maybe even 29 but sam had all the

00:23:54qualities that i was looking for to play jake but he talked like this he was like crocodile dundee

00:24:02we had to work on the accent a little bit i ain't gonna show that i'm weak

00:24:08but he did as sam does with all things he conquered the accent he conquered the physicality and we slapped

00:24:14an experimental head rig on his head and said now be the star of this movie he didn't blink you

00:24:19know he just did it a clean kill

00:24:25you're ready zoe had a combination of delicacy and boldness there was a fierceness about her and an

00:24:33incredible physicality that was essential to being able to do this it was unusual the auditioning process

00:24:41from margie to john and after finally meeting jim i was that close but at the same time i was that

00:24:47far from getting the part it was just a fun experience it's your fault all your fault didn't

00:24:53have to die they attacked me how am i the bad guy your fault you're like a child making noise not

00:24:59knowing what to do the way they painted it out is like we're just gonna have fun experiment and see

00:25:04where it might take us and once they kept with that light i was able to not feel the pressure of

00:25:10wanting to get this job i saved it yeah i saved it

00:25:17you have a strong heart we decided to do a little informal screen test between sam

00:25:22worthington and zoe sildana our two leading choices for the roles because the key to this

00:25:27was performance and chemistry jake and naitiri that relationship had to work with the movie

00:25:33wasn't going to work i've chosen that woman has to choose me

00:25:47she already has out of that again jim felt very comfortable in his decisions but we didn't have a

00:25:54green light on the movie the studio was also thinking gee you really need a star in this movie

00:26:00you know for the sam worthington character you know their eyes get a little bit too big for what

00:26:05they're really ready to embrace it was a six months process of waiting you know i said to jim i'll stand

00:26:10by the whole way you know i want to be i want to go on this journey and i need a damn job so we did

00:26:16an old-fashioned hollywood screen test with a slightly new twist that it was in 3d we will send

00:26:22them a message that they cannot take whatever they want and that this this is our land

00:26:34it's after watching those scenes that fox came on board and realized that sam

00:26:38was the right one for that part and january of 2007 we got the green light and that was both a

00:26:45very exciting day a very daunting day because all of a sudden we really had to make the film outstanding

00:26:58i wanted to have my main character become the stranger in the strange land become the alien

00:27:04see the world through alien eyes but still with a human perspective so he was a human in an alien

00:27:11body trying to integrate into an alien society and i wanted that idea of trying to learn the other

00:27:17culture and of course the first key to that is always language what's he saying i had done some of

00:27:26that stuff before i ever met with a linguist i was just basing it on my sort of casual acquaintance with

00:27:31some polynesian languages some other languages that had these kind of various you know symbols

00:27:36and indicators for pronunciation so then when i started working with dr paul fromer he got excited

00:27:41by that he said what does this apostrophe mean do you i said well it's just the way you pronounce

00:27:44that word he said okay let's work with that and we'll incorporate that into it and then he went

00:27:48miles and miles beyond those initial ideas he wanted something that didn't sound like anything

00:27:54that we've ever heard before but also that sounded like something that was doable in the sense that the

00:27:59actors could master it he showed me some of the words that he had come up with and that gave me

00:28:06a sense of the kind of sounds he had in mind and so at that point i kind of built from there it's

00:28:15all the lines that were to be spoken in navi first appeared in english and then it was up to me to turn

00:28:23that into navi once i had the elements of the language in place it was pretty much a translation

00:28:29exercise except that i didn't have a dictionary i was one who created the dictionary so of course

00:28:34i had to create the words as well as put them together into sentences

00:28:39when i started the job i asked if i could meet with paul who was writing the language and he was still

00:28:45in the process of writing it at that point so every actor that came in whether they were coming in for

00:28:51a human into an avatar or a navi role all the auditions have them sitting there doing and and

00:28:57you know all this sort of stuff uh oh basically what they did was you walk in there cast director

00:29:04says okay you're gonna do the audition but you're not gonna do it in english i know a lot of people

00:29:14that got pissed and they walked out of there angry and i just remember like i was speaking

00:29:23gibberish and i walked out and i was like nobody's gonna like that it was awful i was embarrassed

00:29:32they responded to it and more than anything my performance came through

00:29:36i'm like a month and a half later i get a call and they're like jim wants to meet you

00:29:46i'm like over that you're jake right tom's brother wow you look just like him

00:29:55sigourney and i had been through an experience early in both our careers that was a huge break for

00:30:01both of us she got an academy award nomination for playing a character in a science fiction movie which

00:30:05was almost unprecedented get away from her you but that was you know 23 years earlier in a funny

00:30:13way i'd almost discounted working with sigourney because we had done aliens and because it was

00:30:18a science fiction film about an encounter with an alien species i thought that that that might be a

00:30:24little too close to home but then i thought you know idiot she's perfect for this character she can

00:30:29do an amazing job with grace augustine grace augustine is not ripley i'm changing her name oh okay

00:30:35i don't want to do ripley and shipley all right let's say it's going to be grace augustine

00:30:41frankly it's thrilling to be working with jim again since we did aliens but also to be in the

00:30:48first movie he's wanted to do since titanic and to see how excited he is about the writing the shooting

00:30:56the this that you know the joy he has of working on this finally he's quite unique i think really unique

00:31:04and i just felt that there was an interesting spin on her being involved in a story in which we

00:31:09are the aliens you know the word alien is used in the film it's used by the navi speaking of us

00:31:15so there's an interesting irony there it's such a great adventure and it's also at the same time

00:31:25a great love story also very much about big business and their blindness to the destruction they cause

00:31:32as we got the actors it kind of fell into place that we would incorporate the actor into the design

00:31:45and kind of came up with an idea that it would be great to try to retain the mouth and some of the

00:31:51facial characteristics of that actor so that that actor's performance would come through and to develop

00:31:58zoe who plays materi we actually went to set and put her through a whole battery of photographs

00:32:05and then on top of the actress's photograph then we would turn her into a navi so we did complete

00:32:13turnarounds all different angles of the head and neck and this is a photograph that i used to start

00:32:19this image here we took this through at least 50 60 versions

00:32:24for each actor we put them through a life cast process which we used for our designing purposes

00:32:33when it came to a 3d sculpture look at that it's it's absolutely fantastic what an incredible cast

00:32:40i must say no eyebrows in there no your eyebrows are right there they're still on your head

00:32:47which in turn get scanned into computer files which are sent to weta and then they will then work

00:32:53off of this design that we've done and help bring those to life it was very important for us

00:33:01to put all of our actors through a training regiment that was specific to their characters everything

00:33:07they say everything they do every physical part of their performance is all done by actors it's

00:33:13captured performance and this applies to sam orlington's character and all the other characters

00:33:17as well that are navi or avatars how they move how they breathe how they stand everything had to

00:33:24be created by them so sam we had him learn navi navi we had to work out with the trainer sam had to

00:33:31do military training and he worked with my brother he's a former marine he fought in desert storm so we

00:33:35got you know some of his marine corps buddies and they took him out put him through his paces and that

00:33:39gave him a little bit of the mindset to draw from to play this character i think that i'm

00:33:44giving you sam is outside of the combat box they want you to kind of be proficient with weaponry and

00:33:50stuff like that because the guy's in the rain so i wanted to actually meet other marines around four

00:33:54times go go go to me it was more the way these guys see the world and the way that their training has

00:34:01made them think and nothing can stop them and it's drilled into them to achieve their mission

00:34:05you've got the man next to you and if he goes down you pick him up and you keep going

00:34:14keep going keep going keep going

00:34:25that gave me a base to jump from so that was the best training i had

00:34:28so we went through a tremendous amount of training as did laz and cch she went through

00:34:38horseback training archery training movement training dance training language training

00:34:45to say we did a lot of training is is an understatement we actually had to learn how to walk

00:34:49like a navi we had to learn how to do everything from our core they only exhibit speed or power

00:34:57when they absolutely have to until they explode and when they explode i mean they move like the

00:35:02wing they worked with the movement coach terry notary and terry came up with certain ways of moving

00:35:08that involved the way the chest and spine would move to create some kind of animal grace some power

00:35:13in the step we work with each actor as a whole and then separate them and work with them as

00:35:19individuals so that they can first create a base technique so there's some inspiration coming from

00:35:25different sources it's not an ape or it's not a cheetah it's a combination of a bunch of things that

00:35:31the character is inspired by without terry notary we would have a species that would talk a different

00:35:37language but would walk human and react as humans do terry works with the complete cast

00:35:45to create a unity of movement and create a believability in this culture that they've grown up together

00:35:55there's a connection between the people in their environment this is part of how they get their

00:36:00strength this is part of how they survive this is part of them getting energy we play around with all of that

00:36:08there were some big dance numbers that got cut out of the movie but her choreography her movement

00:36:13that she created is still very much a part of the film when you see all the ceremonial stuff where they're

00:36:18swaying and rocking around and throwing their arms in the air and these very precise time signatures

00:36:23all of that was created by lula and by her troop

00:36:26i got a hold of uh zoe and we taught her how to run how to jump on a wire how to shoot her bow

00:36:42that was one of the biggest things we had to work with for her it's how to shoot this bow and arrow

00:36:47more different than ever has been done before zoe was the first person we started to teach the

00:36:52bow work to it zoe's a lefty so once we established that they were lefties we said

00:36:57all of them would be lefties jim came up with the idea of this is such a human gesture let's just do

00:37:04this and all of a sudden it's no longer human feeling and it also accentuates the idea that the

00:37:11navis only have three digits it wouldn't work very well for a human but the navi are subtly different in

00:37:16in terms of their their biomechanics and you can see that in their upper body musculature and

00:37:21so on especially the males the archery teacher came to me puzzled me says all right you're showing

00:37:27the actors one way of doing it but you're having me teach them proper archery and i said well i want

00:37:31them to respect the power of the bow and i want them to understand the focus the breathing and all

00:37:37those things that you can teach them that strength has to project from the core of your body through the

00:37:43bow arm towards the target and if nothing else you think of your target as boom think of your

00:37:49target as boom we had two instructors from the olympic team come to help work with our actors and

00:37:56we showed them this idea of doing it backwards and at first they were very skeptical and he said you know

00:38:02you 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

00:38:10and i got an arrow and i walked out behind the studio and i said you see that bush over there

00:38:13that said that's about 75 meters away he said yes i went like that and hit it and he said oh you can't

00:38:22shoot a bow that way because i'd been out there practicing and i got lucky with that one shot but i

00:38:28but i hit it

00:38:30let's go through the first page of background dialogue part one what we've done is we've really

00:38:39worked on it as a company of actors and what we've been doing in the last couple of weeks is

00:38:45having them speak their way of speaking navi to each other but what we've just been doing is to have

00:38:50zoe and last come up and just do a little bit of the dialogue so that wes can hear what we've

00:38:54established so that rhythmically and so on he can and match up and he's doing great so that we're

00:39:00artificially creating that melting pot and we'll be there i always but it's only get one of good

00:39:07with red then i'll balloon alone because that thing it's part of your costume it's part of who you

00:39:13become so you want it to become natural and fluid south to be a lot for that for california i'm lucky

00:39:20because the characters only just learns it over the course of the movie so if i slip up it helps

00:39:25the character naughty naughty naughty naughty Paul frommer had created a language he wasn't creating

00:39:34an accent so i basically said zoe you get to establish what navi sounds like and what the navi

00:39:40accent sounds like because you're the one with the most lines and then everybody else is just

00:39:44going to have to try to match you as best they can it's very hard because how do i speak english

00:39:49with an accent i barely speak english all in itself the one who interprets the will of able

00:39:55to me it's been the most challenging thing is to speak english with a naughty accent i need your help

00:40:03you should not be here i knew that we were going to be working in this sterile gray space this volume

00:40:11and i didn't want the actors to just sort of come in on the first monday morning of the shoot and not

00:40:15have any kind of basis for feeling like they were in a rainforest so we went to kawaii we went

00:40:21way up in the mountains and we acted out the scenes relax marine you're making me nervous

00:40:28and we just did behaviors but trying to kind of stay in character and talking as if they're

00:40:34their characters sigourney fed on this great deal i know sam and zoe got a lot out of it we didn't know

00:40:39what it was going to be like and jim took it further i thought we were just going to be in our

00:40:43regular clothes you know hiking just to get a physical taste of what it's going to be like to live

00:40:50in a planet and have to rely on anything comfortable but it was that but also wearing our costume

00:40:57so i was i was naked for three days in hawaii up in like the forest just digging and climbing and

00:41:07muddy and we're videotaping and we're going through the inside of this jungle

00:41:15and i saw this headless rat and i'm you know i'm with my bow and i'm in character the moment i saw

00:41:20this rat i was just like immediately i went back to like my new york state of mind i was like oh my

00:41:25god i can't deal with this and he's like okay jim was like come on nick teary suck it up i'm like

00:41:31right right okay zoe leave this is uh jungle no tv no blackberry let me just do this so it's been

00:41:41a struggle every day to kind of you know undo everything that has been done up until my years

00:41:49i just absorbed that place i absorbed the beauty of the rainforest there and we did a couple of scenes

00:41:54and we ran around in loincloths you know pretending we were the navi and the avatar and there's a difference

00:41:59between being out in the real world and coming into this great desolate area and actually trying

00:42:06to have to you know remember what it was like in the water so if you're swimming if you're swimming

00:42:11on kind of just a rolling chair your brain can kind of remember we got to rehearse a few of the scenes

00:42:18and we got to rehearse with physical things because we knew that we were going to be going into a mocap

00:42:23stage and we weren't gonna you know you don't know how your foot lands in mud if you're just standing on

00:42:28cement so your body reacts differently to things once you've actually gone out and done those

00:42:33things i was shooting them with an hd camera the entire time just watching how they moved how they

00:42:39behaved how the light played on their faces the light through the trees if it was sunny if it was

00:42:44rainy if it was cloudy and a lot of that fed my process you know on the visual side for how we would

00:42:50light these scenes later so it was very very instructive but i think the biggest part of it that

00:42:55was valuable it was just a kind of kinesthetic sense memory that allowed them to create what did

00:43:00it smell like what did it feel like what did the trail feel like under your feet so it was about

00:43:05making it real for the actors

00:43:13it took us from 2005 to 2007 to get the performance capture system up and running and proven to work in a

00:43:20way that neither diluted nor augmented the actor's performance and so the actors were

00:43:26convinced going in that what they did on the day that they did a scene was definitive that that's

00:43:32what their cg character would be seen doing later told them you're not doing a voice part you're acting

00:43:39your character just as you would if there was a camera there there just isn't a camera so you have

00:43:43to think of it as cg makeup let's dance i was on a quest for the holy grail the holy grail was to

00:43:50be able to reproduce full human emotion in a cg character and of course the thing we were afraid

00:43:56of is what people have sometimes called the dead eye effect describing this strange disconnect that we

00:44:02have sometimes from cg characters and i knew that avatar would just fail utterly if we didn't crack this

00:44:08problem and the idea that i had clung to for a long time was this idea of mounting a camera

00:44:14directly to the actor's head so we started drawing this up and glendary his little ragtag team of

00:44:19engineers started looking at how do we keep it light so we wound up with a tight fitting carbon fiber

00:44:26helmet that was molded to the actor's head so we've got this very wide angle sort of data lens

00:44:32that's here on their face but we have to be able to see the entire performance of the talent so we

00:44:37would shoot reference cameras of the actors and these are a critical step in the virtual

00:44:42production process it's important to understand that the reference cameras and the virtual camera

00:44:46are two completely different things the virtual camera shows us what the shot will look like

00:44:50with the cg characters and the world combined because we can't see the fine nuances of the

00:44:55performance in the virtual camera the reference cameras are absolutely critical for getting exactly

00:45:00the moment that we want you got five takes they're all going to be good because they're good actors but

00:45:05there's going to be one take that's special or maybe special for a moment we need to know that

00:45:08that's what the reference cameras are for and then the animators take the reference footage

00:45:12and they use it to make sure that they're not making a mistake let me know when you're ready

00:45:17game i'd like to introduce some performers into the volume i had to take everything i learned in

00:45:24training and apply it to my first day i had to ride a horse jump off of appearing to be as graceful as

00:45:30possible land move like a navi and from that first moment when they set that horse and they

00:45:35let that thing go instantly sutte just jumped in my body and lads went somewhere else what's happening

00:45:43you've got to swim pretty quickly otherwise you're going to drown in there and jim makes you comfortable

00:45:47you dive in and it doesn't take you long to get rid of all the technical aspects i need your help

00:45:52you should not be here it's liberating it's just you and the other person yeah they've got

00:45:59dots on their face and a helmet cam and power packs but you can still see their eyes and it takes acting

00:46:05back to what it should be which is trying to get something from the other person and vice versa i

00:46:09trusted you trust me now please look out what i can say is that every day i would go to work the same

00:46:15way i went to work for star trek or other movies that i've done before and there was nothing different

00:46:19about what i was doing just the prep work as opposed to going through hair and makeup i went

00:46:24through dots and then all of a sudden i was on the set and i was playing a theory jim says action

00:46:30i 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

00:46:36nine feet tall and i'm as sexy as hell like i just totally forget actors have said to me you know sort

00:46:45of half jokingly but a little nervously so what are you trying to replace actors and of course the

00:46:49answer is no we love actors this whole thing is about acting and it's about creating these

00:46:53fantasy characters through the process of acting what we're replacing is five hours in the makeup

00:46:58chair having rubber glued all over your face so i think the actors found it very collaborative

00:47:03empowering freeing i think it was just plain fun there's been a lot of discussion about performance

00:47:11capturing what it means for actors and the impact it'll have to me it completely expands what we're

00:47:18capable of doing and i think digital prosthetics is an interesting way of looking at it grace well

00:47:25who'd you expect numbnuts ultimately i felt that it totally expanded what the actor could do i feel

00:47:31like i could play any age character any species anything i could play an alien now i think it actually

00:47:39kind of gives us wings and we use that sandbox we use that spatial environment to do everything

00:47:45it's where we created the sets it's where we blocked the scenes it's where we captured the

00:47:51actors it's where we did all the stunt work i mean we had horses galloping around this place we did

00:47:56everything in the volume we came up with a number of methodologies for shooting some of these big aerial

00:48:01scenes start by first of all figuring out what the aerial choreography would be so we thought well

00:48:07if 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

00:48:13various creatures and aircraft put markers on them so the system would recognize them and then

00:48:19we just go out there and fly them around basically chasing each other like kids playing with two toys

00:48:23this was a very very instant way to do it we could block it very quickly understand whether or not

00:48:28the overall performance work before we ever even gave it to an animator and said now that has to be

00:48:32legitimized the performance capture system would record the motion that jim was getting those flight

00:48:39paths were then used to animate the banshees against the samsons against the dragon against

00:48:45the integration of animation was another headache you know in and of itself it doesn't seem like a big

00:48:50deal but we had to take up two phases and work out a pipeline so what we would have is either a

00:48:54puppeteer version where we set up in jim doing flight paths or we had a creature performers

00:49:02we really found that flying the banshee was the hardest problem so we created a manually operated

00:49:07gimbal rig that they could balance on and we'd ask the actors to perform to the timing and

00:49:13movement of the flight path so if their banshee bank to the right the rider had to do the opposite

00:49:17to maintain a center of gravity bang level flare flap flap flap jump when you see them flying these

00:49:29things around to the left side come on climb up and then climb right around to the left side right away

00:49:34and so we put them on wires and we put two sandbags which would take about 40 pounds off the

00:49:39person they can climb it a little bit faster than they normally would you need to build all of these

00:49:43physical cues for the actors and for jim to work with so that the digital world starts to take

00:49:48on the character the real world we would have to build layouts which were the physical interactive

00:50:00set pieces so that if you saw the navi climbing a mountain we had to create let's say a 20 degree

00:50:05grade if they were climbing a vine we dropped ropes down and you'd see them climbing a vine so it was all

00:50:10very interactive yet there was no environment there there was no jungle and we can be very improvisational

00:50:15because we're not bound by the set there's nothing on the set it's a great set but the

00:50:20difference is that a big boulder would take an hour and a half with a bulldozer and crew to move it

00:50:26in our world it literally takes a second we select it and move it and if he says it's too big we scale it

00:50:32down everything in our environments is modular okay bring the camera around any plant any mountain any exotic

00:50:40alien life form can be completely moved and configured in size and scaled with a push of a

00:50:45button the thing that's amazing about is that we don't wait for lights or a mountain or anything i

00:50:51can do it very quickly and there are often times when we come in to work a scene on a given day

00:50:55and we get some ideas and we'd run with that he likes actors which is really helpful a lot of different

00:51:00items from the the weaponry the guns but also the art department sending out many of their designs

00:51:07they'd already finished such as the link units the amnio tanks for us to start building on i'm

00:51:14the point person between the art department in la run with rick carter and the physical art department

00:51:20of new zealand we spent about three months doing research and building little models and figuring out

00:51:25how to build the sets getting a construction plan and process based on what information because this was

00:51:31fast-tracked and that they were still designing the sets in la that we would be building in new

00:51:36zealand so we would take every little morsel every scrap of information we got and run with

00:51:41it in our original production plan we were going to have a number of weeks where jim was going to be

00:51:47able to get down to new zealand and treat it like a normal show and all of a sudden because of the

00:51:52schedule changes and the need to edit the need to turn over to weta that window that jim was going

00:51:57to be in new zealand before we started filming shrunk he was only going to be down there for about six

00:52:01days but we realized we had built a set of tools that could be helpful in this and we took

00:52:06the virtual production and applied it to our live action sets we'd location scout just like you'd get

00:52:12in your car and drive out to a location and scout it with a viewfinder i'd walk into the volume and

00:52:17i'd scout it with the virtual camera and jim was able to rehearse in these virtual environments and made

00:52:23adjustments to the sets down in new zealand without jim ever going there i wonder if we should just sort of

00:52:28slide this part of the set around we've got roughly 25 sets worked out we've got something

00:52:34like 40 000 square feet of floor area plus the rainforest another 10 000 square feet so they're

00:52:40quite big numbers the crew of 140 and it's not a particularly big crew but this was not the sort

00:52:45of show that you could just throw a lot of people at and say here finish that they're just so technically

00:52:50demanding this is really nice remember that century gun we have sure do here it is and go

00:52:57shoulder or you can split it and go uh two hands we built all of hell's gate that you saw in the

00:53:03interior from the op center to the commissary where quarge makes his first speech to the jail cell that

00:53:08they break out of we built the two shacks where they do the research and we built the samson itself

00:53:14we had to build the link room and the links themselves and these things had to work from

00:53:18jim on down you feel like in every department we're working with people who exist at the pinnacle of

00:53:24their craft and the tension of detail and the demand for excellence on all levels i think is just mind

00:53:30boggling it's almost like there are two different films being made as there are sort of two different

00:53:37worlds there's the world of the navi and pandora and then there's the humans and stuff that's not

00:53:43necessarily cgi as much and so it was kind of new for everybody you know wearing a pelcro wetsuit

00:53:49and everything built so detailed that it kind of makes your job a lot easier than even being in the

00:53:54mocap world it feels like a different movie because we've got a whole different cast to be honest with

00:53:58you got steven lang and giovanni and delete and then you got michelle as well

00:54:05steven lang had respect for ideas of duty and courage and things like that and he understood how he

00:54:11could channel that into a character that's basically a villain but he's this very pure

00:54:16creature and he came in for an audition and he knocked it out of the park he's just riveting it's

00:54:21my job to keep you alive i will not succeed

00:54:29not with all of you i said do you remember when we met and i said i sure do and we'd only met once

00:54:34before and it's about 20 years ago it was for aliens and he remembered the audition very well and i find

00:54:40that kind of wonderful that you can audition for something and then 20 years later you get the

00:54:44part you know i think it's great there is time to salvage the situation shut your pie hole or what

00:54:53ranger rick you're gonna shoot me i can do that

00:55:01for the live action side of it we did more weaponry training fight training

00:55:05for each carries this laser sighted pistol and this comes into play occasionally

00:55:14we work with steven inside the amp suit and make it look like that he's been doing it for the last

00:55:18six seven years

00:55:22they didn't build this space for a guy in a wheelchair they built it for able-bodied soldiers

00:55:28you have to work out how to do it we took him along to a local basketball game in the wheelchairs playing

00:55:33basketball which was um which was pretty cool me and ten of the stunt guys got some

00:55:37wheelchairs from the hospital and smashed them up a bit and then you realize that your attention

00:55:41shouldn't be on the wheelchair it should be on where you're going or what you're aiming for

00:55:50this right here is the samson michelle she wanted to learn to fly

00:55:55that helicopter that rotorcraft in the movie as if it were real so i gave her to a friend of mine who's

00:56:02a helicopter pilot to take her out show her how to fly a helicopter and she learned how to

00:56:05fly a helicopter you're going to look like you know what you're doing you have to reach up and

00:56:08fire your guns whatever you're going to do i got a couple of really exciting hours in la

00:56:14flying helicopter with kevin who actually taught james how to fly helicopters

00:56:20there's something about being in the air that's just beautiful thank you for flying air

00:56:30pandora

00:56:37sunny new zealand we never really felt like we had this first day except when we went down to new zealand

00:56:44because that was a truly new break for us i can just have everybody's attention for a second

00:56:49this is kind of a pinch me moment we're actually getting to make this movie it's a dream project

00:56:54you know this script the first draft of it was written 12 years ago and we didn't start on the

00:56:59film then because frankly the visual effects guys told me i was mad to even try high expectations coming

00:57:06into this that we were going to see something exceptional and i would have to say that our

00:57:11expectations have been not only met but exceeded by the workmanship the dedication the

00:57:16professionalism and i just wanted to take this opportunity to thank everybody for what it's taken

00:57:21to get to this moment now we obviously have hurdles ahead there's no such thing as an easy shoot

00:57:27i think you know when people wrap on time it's because they ran out of ideas

00:57:34so don't count on that

00:57:36the thing that's hardest to understand about all this is we actually created two completely

00:57:50separate camera systems that had completely different jobs one was our virtual camera

00:57:54system to capture actors and shoot them virtually in a virtual environment the other one was the

00:57:58fusion camera system which was for shooting live action actors and sets in 3d okay that's cut

00:58:03i fell in love with 3d when i made my first 3d film which was in 95 and that was t2 3d the

00:58:13logistics and the technology required were enormous the cameras were the size of refrigerators this

00:58:18didn't seem to be practical so the fusion camera was an outgrowth of all the 3d camera development that

00:58:25vince pace and i had done for several years previously it was designed to be a state-of-the-art professional

00:58:30cinema camera for 3d production when we first looked at the camera system we called it the

00:58:35reality camera system or the rcs because we were trying to mimic the human eyesight experience so

00:58:42reality if you will then jim came with the name fusion which really is fusing creativity and

00:58:47technology it's fusing the two images to form one and that's really what we're doing the design of

00:58:53the camera has been researched for a long period of time what they've done is just take all the weight

00:58:57off a 3d system and essentially assembled two cameras with a beam splitter that are able to

00:59:03simultaneously photograph two images at the same time and you have a series of servos that basically

00:59:10you can align the two images or this line them according to how much 3d you're looking for in a

00:59:15shot i've never done a film in 3d so the experimentation was really enticing for me technology for the 3d

00:59:24particularly getting used to because it's like there's two cameras and they have to just check the

00:59:27i.o every once in a while and it's not that different but just a little bit different and

00:59:30you learn quickly like it's a technical marvel like the fact that the cameras will photograph the same

00:59:35exact thing the same exact way what your eyes do naturally it took years and years to develop to

00:59:39make the cameras do it once we're done shooting a scene you can just walk 15 feet away get yourself into

00:59:46a pod put on some glasses and watch your scene in 3d a lot of our sets we made the decision not

00:59:56to build full sets we would put in green screens and we would do set extensions roger that if you

01:00:01take the link room for example we only built one side of that set it was a mirror image on the other

01:00:06side and we were able to fill that in digitally where we are right now is one end of the armor bay

01:00:12and it goes you know about 50 feet you realize that the armor bay is probably 10 times as long

01:00:18as we have it it's absolutely filled with heavy weapons and amp suits there's your man see you on the

01:00:25flight line our probably biggest gag on this will be the emotion base we built for the samson it's huge

01:00:33you know it's the size of a bus we also have the samson in the back lot which is going to be hung from a

01:00:39large crane it's really cool they basically land the thing all the guys jump out just before

01:00:44it like hit the ground i don't know how many feet in there it was probably about 40 and they turn on

01:00:50these massive fans to make all of the foliage and the ground move it's been the whole gamut of effects

01:00:57really things breaking simulated helicopter flight before it hits

01:01:04fire

01:01:17garrett sent me down his stunt breakdown different gags that were related to those scenes door gunners

01:01:21are getting pulled out of samson choppers by banshees also some stuff that happens in the dragon

01:01:29multiple stunts and sequences where troopers are getting taken out

01:01:34probably the most technical movie i've been on a challenge for everybody but i think it's going

01:01:37to be a wicked product at the end i have to say these stunt guys i mean they really gave us their

01:01:42all there's such a great spirit there in new zealand the energy they bring the excitement

01:01:47the live action shoot as it turned out was exhausting it was a seven day a week process while

01:02:03we were down in new zealand so the shoot in new zealand which everybody thinks of as an exotic easy

01:02:08location was none of that i just want to say thank you very much for making this a uh a long

01:02:15and grueling shoot on a wonderful shoot uh in the sense that i really appreciate the uh the energy and

01:02:22uh the workmanship of the spirit no matter how long the hour has got everybody still pulled hard and i

01:02:29think i'm uh i think i'm on my way as we were saying our goodbyes on the set the stunt coordinator

01:02:34came up and said the stunt team has something that they'd like to give you it's gonna hurt

01:02:40and i turned around and here they all were these new zealand stunt guys

01:02:51some were maori some were not maori but they were all new zealanders and they had all

01:02:56worked on this hawk apparently what this hawk uh uh does if translated is it challenges you

01:03:01to continue to do your best and that was their way of thanking me

01:03:13and they handed me the taiaha which is the ceremonial staff and that was their way of saying

01:03:18new zealand thanks you for bringing this project here and for making us a part of it

01:03:23and it was a very very emotional moment we'll be back all right all right thank you

01:03:33the whole time i was in the volume i said you know if i was shooting this it'd be so easy you guys

01:03:38just spent five minutes trying to move one light 20 degrees around the subject and if i was there i

01:03:44could reach over and move it myself it would take 20 seconds then i got to live action shooting and you

01:03:49you know moving big objects around in the background and i said you know if this was cg i

01:03:53could have moved that in 30 seconds so the whole time i was shooting the virtual camera i was

01:03:57complaining that it wasn't live action the whole time i was doing the live action i was complaining

01:04:00that it wasn't cg but the time i got back to doing virtual production again after the live action i just

01:04:06kept my mouth shut

01:04:12what i realized is that they're both hard and they're completely different so you have to have a

01:04:16good team that knows one discipline and a good team that knows the other discipline after the live

01:04:21action filming was completed most movies are done we still had a tremendous amount of scenes that we

01:04:27had captured performances on that we had not yet done camera these would play back on the stage with jim

01:04:36and the virtual camera hey yeah please so now the actors are gone and he's out there with this virtual

01:04:44camera cut playing back their performances from sometimes months before let's do a take

01:04:53play back when he looked through the lens of the virtual camera it was as if those actors were there

01:04:58giving him the performances live yeah beautiful thing he would now go and create the actual shots

01:05:05that became the movie action so after all the frenzy and activity of a live action shoot lifting and it's

01:05:12just me with the virtual camera out on a big empty stage for a year it was a year of this

01:05:18shooting these cameras cut say that please now you've actually got sort of dailies for the first time

01:05:24actual shots to cut with now you edit the scene get that the way you want

01:05:30and then that edited cut is what goes to weta for them to finish we called that the template we

01:05:36we would see kind of where he put his light where the compositional elements were how the art

01:05:40direction was laid out basically jim handed that over to us as a master guide for what he wanted the

01:05:46shots in the scenes to look like weta is only building what we're sending them instead of building

01:05:52out shots and instead of you know going through these massive amounts of iterations with lighting

01:05:57tests and all these other things we're giving them something that's much more concise to the point

01:06:02this is the length of the shot here's the motion and here's the camera and we just followed

01:06:07that and we would start replacing that with all the high resolution elements

01:06:14weta were able to feel the team of some of the best animators in the world

01:06:19and it sort of broke down into two separate areas one was the creatures

01:06:25and the other one was the characters where they were animating from captured performances traditionally

01:06:30when people think of animators they think of someone who's gonna add life to something that's

01:06:33inanimate where avatar comes in we're not asking our animators to create the performance the

01:06:37performance has already been created by the actor think fast motor control is looking good

01:06:49the animator's job is to analyze performance analyze every detail of it and make sure it's coming across

01:06:54it was very important for us to make sure that whatever zoe did whatever sam did actually came through

01:06:59their avatars onto the screen and played as convincingly as when they were on the stage

01:07:04you take a character like natiri and the idea is that the audience just has to fall in love with this

01:07:09character when she smiles there has to be a connection between her smile and the audience it really is a

01:07:16collaboration it's working with the actors and then working with the animators to bring the character

01:07:21to the screen i see you i see you we have to figure out how to maintain that integrity maintain

01:07:32that performance so the characters you see on the screen are really what the performance was intended to

01:07:40be we had the actors on set at weta digital we scanned them with our own software and that's

01:07:53when we were able to take 60 70 different facts poses from them default states you know eyes looking

01:07:59left and right up and down any kind of data we could get from the actor just to make sure that the eyes

01:08:06really did feel like zoe and sam the eye motion and the eyes it's something that's kind of

01:08:11overlooked in a lot of animation films our eyes work independently of our bodies in our heads they also

01:08:15do these little subtle movements that was another thing we looked for with the reference it's one of

01:08:19the reasons why the eyes came to life in avatar we studied all those details and we made sure they're

01:08:23in there we made sure that natiri's eyes were locked on jake when she was arguing with him what are you

01:08:28saying jake you knew this would happen yes but the real trick to it was figuring out what they call

01:08:37the rig and the rig is how they program the facial muscles to work and we all have the same facial

01:08:44muscles but they're in different proportions and the way in which they fire meaning how your brain

01:08:50controls your face is different for every person and this took months and months for each character and

01:08:55it had to be done individually for each character i will stand and fight the reference

01:08:59cameras play an integral part in how we evaluate study the detail within each performance as good

01:09:05as our facial capture system is if we really wanted to just see the subtleties on somebody's face there's

01:09:10nothing better than just seeing a close-up high-def video of that they live shake within awa stress with

01:09:20the animators is to actually animate to the reference camera and then we'd make sure the performance looks

01:09:24same or all the details are in there navia blew your pain and then we go back to the actual

01:09:31shot camera and see if there's anything lost usually you had gained a lot by doing that 85 percent of this

01:09:38is taking from the actors their performances and preserving them in their computer generated characters

01:09:44but that last 15 requires animators to come in and add things like the tail and the ears you had to

01:10:01study cat and dog and other animal behavior and incorporate that into how the ears moved how the

01:10:06tails moved we studied lions and we incorporated that into our character so in a way the animation

01:10:14is a turbocharger on top of this whole facial capture idea you should not be here when natiri is

01:10:23furious with jake her ears flatten out and her tail is going back and forth so there's a total character

01:10:27that's created the animators have taken what the actors are doing and gone even beyond that and

01:10:35it's a lot of fun to watch how you feeling jake hey guys it is my performance this thing walks and

01:10:41talks and acts like me and it's my interpretation even though i'm big nine foot tall and blue it's got

01:10:47my personality it's got my soul jake jake listen to me you're not used to your avatar body this is

01:10:53this is dangerous this is great zoe really enjoys watching the footage of her as natiri because

01:10:58natiri is this creature that's of her created by her but it's apart from her as well she looked so

01:11:05sexy she was so cut and long and lean i was like damn the first sequence that we turned over to weta

01:11:16digital we turned over in february of 2007 we did not get it back until may of 2008.

01:11:26those first shots that i finaled which was the scene where we first see natiri and she draws the

01:11:30bow and the wood sprite comes down and lands they were so gorgeous that all of a sudden it was this

01:11:35moment of holy crap that looks real she looks completely real and then we just sit there and go

01:11:41hey look at that finaling those first 10 or 11 shots in that scene was absolutely critical

01:11:47that's the moment where we knew this movie was going to work we didn't know yet if we could get

01:11:51all the other 2600 shots done but we knew we could make a real character

01:12:01we were cutting the whole movie together and in the summer of 2008 a full year and a half before the

01:12:07movie was released he sat down for the first time to watch a full cut of the then existing movie

01:12:14and the movie at that time was very very long so the film was like a mosaic of of scenes that were

01:12:22in various stages so you'd have scenes that were in a pre-cut and then something that was in a virtual

01:12:28camera cut next to something that was turned over six months ago that was in animation level and it was

01:12:34hard to watch we had to cut the film shorter because it wasn't quite gelling up it it always

01:12:39felt too long making its points and i kept surgically taking little bits out here and there and you know

01:12:44we eventually wound up cutting out about 40 minutes of film from the time we first screened it for

01:12:48ourselves a year earlier to the time we we finished the cut there was a point where we had been hoping

01:12:54to just be able to handle the whole film ourselves but jim handed us a cut that was about 45 minutes longer

01:13:00than the one that got released and it still had a lot of character work in it we said okay if we

01:13:04focus only on this character work that's more work than we thought we're going to be doing and it's

01:13:10too late for us to gear up to do the other work we made the decision to pull work uh in late 2008 but

01:13:17we didn't get the approval to do it until spring of 2009 so these shots were just lying in wait the work

01:13:25building up jim stressing out about it yeah okay so you so you still have some tech work to do

01:13:31one on contact shadows and reflection and it was a nail biter the whole movie was a nail biter in

01:13:36terms of getting things done because we were always missing these deadlines that we kind of made up

01:13:41out of nowhere let's do this by this day because we sort of knew if we didn't do that by that date we

01:13:46wouldn't get this done over here ilm took the most number of shots and the most complicated shots

01:13:52and their shots had to seamlessly fit in with weta's work in the end battle other sequences were

01:13:59standalone sequences where we would give companies like hydraulics frame store or hybrid and the other

01:14:07visual effects vendors a complete sequence that they would deliver to us because of the way this film

01:14:13was done and and how long it took to finish shots we were in a constant state of deadline for i think

01:14:22a year and a half to two years fire three two one basically for the last part we were kind of

01:14:33in a marathon run we couldn't back off the throttle and we actually went back and shot a little more

01:14:38live action again later after our last capture so it sort of went capture live action a lot of capture

01:14:44a little tiny bit of live action at the end action this particular shot we've got a live action

01:14:52steven lang where we had to extract that off the green screen put it together with the digital jake

01:14:57combined with the atmospherics the digital jungle everything else with the rebreather face masks and

01:15:02all of these shots as well was digital because it's glass you're reflecting all of the studio lighting

01:15:06instead of the actual jungle that didn't exist with avatar we had to do everything there were vehicles there

01:15:12there were creatures there were characters there were jungles nighttime daytime clouds weather

01:15:17rain anything that you could think of we had to create it covered the whole gamut the first 13 shots

01:15:22we did for the movie took a year and after that it was sort of a exponential curve up and we were

01:15:28delivering 200 shots a week at the end and what we had to teach ourselves was that there was a process

01:15:35of development and the slower we went at the beginning the more weta was able to learn and

01:15:42improve the infrastructure which actually worked okay because we got better and better and better

01:15:47as we got toward the end so we could actually go faster and faster so even though we we sort of

01:15:52back-loaded the whole schedule we had learned how to go fast enough to be able to compensate for it

01:15:57the first time that we actually showed it to a large group of people was cinema expo which is an

01:16:06exhibitors convention in amsterdam we argued about what content to include and there was a concern that

01:16:13we were including too much of the fern gully elements of the film in particular the scene where

01:16:19the wood sprites land on jake we decided that we were going to keep it in and we presented this

01:16:26in answer to a mixed audience 3500 people the response was remarkable that was really when it proved

01:16:35to us that you could not just sell this movie in 30 second bites more of this movie was more we went

01:16:44out and we did comic-con where we showed an abbreviated version of what we showed at cinema expo

01:16:50are you ready to go to pandora all right now let's go there were some concerns at the studio

01:16:59that the reaction wasn't big enough i thought it went perfectly it was a great introduction to an

01:17:06audience still they were dealing more with the 3d and with the cg they weren't dealing with the film

01:17:11as a narrative they weren't dealing with it as a story so we were introducing them to what the film might

01:17:17we don't want you to know until december 18th we want you to still hold back something for the fun

01:17:23of the voyage and then john lando and i came up with this idea to do avatar day avatar day was

01:17:30where we went out and we took over theaters and we invited audience members to come for free

01:17:37to see 15 minutes of the movie in 3d around the world it was interesting the trailer for the film

01:17:46went out the day before and the trailer got a very mixed response there was this sense of what's

01:17:52all the fuss about this looks like you know smurfs or thundercats or whatever and pretty soon they're

01:17:57ripping us a new one on the internet 7 500 comments long about how bad this movie is and how it's doomed

01:18:04to fail i did press for another film on avatar day and all those guys were bagging the movie because they'd

01:18:10just seen the little kind of trailer on the tv that was a hard thing to stand there and defend

01:18:15but i'll defend this product all the way and jim just said we just stand by what we do and keep

01:18:20telling the story but the avatar day footage when people went and saw it in the theater and didn't

01:18:25see it in a minute and a half or a two minute trailer but saw 15 minutes in the movie the response was

01:18:30overwhelming are you ready to rock all right cool i remember in the last year before the release

01:18:42of the film i think i got about five or six days off in a year between doing the sound doing the music

01:18:49doing the visual effects working with all the different teams that were working on the finish

01:18:53it was unbelievable and we did video conferencing so jim could actually physically point out something

01:19:00and we would spend hours if not days in these review sessions and oftentimes we would schedule

01:19:06multiple ones in one day where we would schedule the crews that were in london in the early morning

01:19:11because it was already there late night tim how you doing great you doing good thanks yeah what time

01:19:16is it there it would be fairly late we would schedule the crews that were in california midday and we

01:19:23would schedule in the afternoon weta because it was now just their morning it's still boiling here and then

01:19:29we essentially kind of run out of it to what is now 100 pandoran atmosphere

01:19:38one of the biggest chain indigenous sounds into a traditional cinematic score he came to the set

01:19:46when we were filming the scenes that had the music he had to create music early on so that we could play

01:19:51it back during certain scenes the first thing james did on this film was bring in an ethnomusicologist

01:20:02and start collecting sound vocal sounds and various different instruments from around the world

01:20:08initially the music was a lot more ethnically based there were lots of people playing stuff the art

01:20:14department drew about 12 or 15 ethnic percussion instruments that these people would play and so

01:20:22i was tasked with writing songs for these instruments and all of that had to be done with an effect

01:20:31that was different than the instrument could make but that had a kind of a weird spectrum

01:20:38that caused it to be done to help level the world that had to be done with something that was

01:20:49something that was interesting for us to connect to the element of the music department of the music

01:20:54that was a great size and a lot of the music that was called background music that they were

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