Inside Avatar: Fire and Ash: James Cameron Takes Fans Back to Pandora

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Go behind the scenes with director James Cameron as he reveals how Avatar: Fire and Ash expands the world of Pandora with new characters, environments, and action. The latest chapter follows Jake Sully, Neytiri, and the Sully family in an immersive new cinematic journey. Avatar: Fire and Ash is now playing exclusively in theaters.

Transcript

00:00Avatar movies are made using 3D computing tools to create a 3D presentation.

00:05Our eyes don't see 3D, each one sees a 2D image.

00:09They go into the brain, into the visual cortex, and that's where it gets turned in our minds into a stereoscopic view of the world.

00:18So, shooting what we call stereoscopic 3D, that can apply to live-action photography and it can apply to CG rendered scenes.

00:28In live-action, I need to shoot, not with one camera, but with two cameras.

00:32Kind of like human vision, two cameras side by side.

00:35The only problem with that is that the distance between the lenses, it has to move dynamically.

00:40If I'm coming in very, very close to an actor, I have to get the cameras closer together than they can physically go.

00:47They gotta go to here, sometimes.

00:49How are you gonna do that?

00:51Well, you're shooting a beam splitter.

00:53One camera's looking through the beam splitter, the other camera's looking down.

00:56It's like a two-way mirror.

00:58And those cameras will move like this during the shot.

01:01If I'm tracking in on an actor from 20 feet back, those cameras will be here and they'll go to there.

01:06And it's all motion controlled.

01:08So we had to work all that out.

01:09In the year 2000, I just bolted two cameras side by side.

01:13Then we started working more and more with beam splitters and then the rigs got big.

01:17And then we started to find very small cameras and smaller lenses that would have high quality.

01:22And we figured out the servos, systems, essentially the robotics that allowed these cameras to move and breathe.

01:28Also, as you move in, the cameras toe in, just like human eyes.

01:32If you ever watch somebody take a pencil and try to focus on it with both eyes, they'll go cross-eyed.

01:37Watch, they'll go cross-eyed for you right now.

01:39That's called toe in or convergence.

01:42So we have to do what the eyes do and we have to do what the brain does to put 3D up on a screen and make it viewable for people.

01:51So as we speak of it today, my team and I have had 25 years of experience doing this.

01:57We know the technology, we know the guidelines, we know what makes beautiful 3D.

02:02I think that's one of the things that sets an Avatar movie or any Lightstorm movie that I'm involved with apart.

02:08It's 3D that's simultaneously not trying to be a 3D movie every second and poke you in the eye.

02:14It's just there, it draws you in, it wraps around you.

02:18It makes you feel like you're physically present, much more so than a flat 2D movie.

02:23And at the same time, we want to make it comfortable.

02:27So it's a question of finding the sweet spot.

02:29I want to find that sweet spot where it's there and you see that it's in 3D and it's impacting you,

02:35usually at a subconscious level, but it's not a gimmick.

02:38It's not coming at you, it's not throwing stuff at you all the time.

02:42Maybe once in a while we'll throw something at you, but not that often.

02:45And so it's an art form, it's a technical procedure and it's an art form.

02:51You know, we have to think of it like a score.

02:54Sometimes we want to be loud, sometimes we want to be quiet.

02:56You know, it's like the sound design of the movie.

02:58There's also the spatial design of the movie.

03:01And that's very important to us as artists.

03:04I don't think anybody goes to a movie because it's in 3D these days.

03:08I think you associate 3D with a certain type of filmmaking, a certain type of world building that you want to go and see on the big screen.

03:16And the 3D is just part of it.

03:18It's like the color, it's like the lighting, it's like the scope and scale of the world.

03:22And they all support each other, like the parts of an orchestra.

03:25And so, you know, I could talk about 3D for hours, but that's sort of my approach and my philosophy.

03:35I can't wait to share more of Avatar, Fire and Ash with all of you when it comes to theaters December 19th.

03:42First of the theaters, December 19th.

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