- 7 weeks ago
In episode two of THR's special edition of the 'Behind the Screen' podcast series, we take a deep dive into how 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' production designers Dylan Cole and Ben Procter evolved their Oscar-nominated work, expanded their color palette with the introduction of new characters and environments and drew on cinematic influences to shape their art.
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00:00Come on!
00:02Two!
00:07We look at everything we do with like a National Geographic lens,
00:10and it's not sci-fi fantasy.
00:11You know, we always look for what the real-world analogy is.
00:15In designing Pandora, we always say, you know, like,
00:17Earth is super diverse, why can't Pandora be just as diverse as Earth?
00:21And so we always, you know, as we're doing new biomes,
00:23you know, we have all the biomes here on Earth to explore as well.
00:30Hello and welcome to a special episode of The Hollywood Reporter's Behind the Screen,
00:38in partnership with 20th Century Studios,
00:40featuring artisans who helped to create Avatar, Fire & Ash,
00:44from the Oscar-winning filmmaker James Cameron.
00:47I'm your host, THR Contributing Editor, Stacey Wilson-Hunt.
00:51My guests today are production designers Dylan Cole and Ben Proctor.
00:55Welcome, gentlemen. How are you?
00:56I'm doing great. Thanks for having us.
00:58Doing great. Great to be here.
00:59And congratulations on the film. Again, it is quite an achievement.
01:03But before we talk about Fire & Ash, I did want to learn a little bit more
01:06about your journeys to this point in your careers.
01:09And I'd like to start with Ben.
01:11I would like to know, Ben, what films were most formative to you
01:14in igniting an interest to pursue production design?
01:17That is a great question.
01:18I mean, I'm thinking of Ralph McQuarrie posters that were on the walls of my room
01:22when I was, you know, I don't know what it was, a nine-year-old, something like that.
01:26But there was this great poster pack that you could buy, beautifully printed, really big format.
01:30And I just wallpapered my room.
01:33So I think it was seeing that you can make a picture of an at-at walker in the snow with a tauntaun running after it.
01:40And Dylan, I know you know the exact image I'm talking about.
01:42And it's so evocative and it's scared me, right?
01:45I mean, like Empire Strikes Back was scary to a kid to watch and has a lot of serious themes.
01:50And that, you know, so I think understanding how design and imagery, you know, gives an emotional response
01:56and how there are people that do that.
01:57I think it took me a long time to realize more fully that there are people that do that.
02:01It was probably because I became obsessed with Blade Runner as a teenager.
02:05And then, of course, Sid Mead, the godfather of sci-fi concept design, is credited as a visual futurist in that film.
02:12And so that was like, wait a minute, that's badass. Who's this visual futurist got?
02:17So I'd say those two things maybe were primary.
02:20I had the Ice Fortress toy as a kid where, you know, the thing and you can shoot the thing.
02:26Yeah, I do it somewhere in my parents' attic, I think.
02:28It's worth a lot of money.
02:31And how about you, Dylan?
02:32Did you have a formative film that really not so much taught you about what the director does or what the writer does,
02:37but sort of the world building aspect of film?
02:39Yeah, normally Ben goes straight to Aliens and Blade Runner, and I'm the Star Wars nerd.
02:44Yeah, no, I was growing up in the 80s, and so I was a Star Wars kid for sure.
02:49And it was that, and specifically Empire Strikes Back, it was just the world building, transformative, aspirational nature of seeing these places that I just wish existed.
03:03And I just wanted to go there.
03:05Like, I desperately wanted to go to Cloud City.
03:07I wanted to be on all these different spacecraft.
03:09You know, there was no internet.
03:10You know, there was no resources.
03:11I was a kid in the suburbs.
03:12I had no idea how movies were made.
03:14But I always loved Star Wars, and so I wasn't really exposed much to the concept art until I was probably a teenager when the art of Star Wars books were re-released for the special editions.
03:23And I had also picked up the Art of Special Effects from Industrial Light and Magic Book, and that's where I saw traditional matte paintings.
03:30And early in my career, I was a digital matte painter, and it was really that stuff that was very formative to me.
03:37But before that, I mean, I was into comic books because I could understand how stuff was like, oh, that has a penciler and an inker.
03:43Okay, I get that.
03:44You know, I can do that.
03:45And then it was like, you know, science fiction illustration.
03:48It wasn't only until I realized, you know, oh, just other artists make movies too.
03:52And so that, yeah, that was my path then.
03:55Dylan, didn't you also intern at ILM?
03:57I did.
03:58That was, yeah, a giant dream come true when I was in college.
04:02I kind of crashed their talk when they came to UCLA.
04:06I was a fine art major, and they were speaking to the design department, which at that time was like just good old-fashioned graphic design.
04:11And I totally crashed it.
04:13I showed them traditional paintings that I had done, and I hadn't even touched Photoshop, you know, other than a computer to write, you know, papers and do emails and stuff.
04:21So, yeah, I ended up getting an internship in the matte painting department based on my traditional portfolio and promptly bought a Mac and got Photoshop and trying to frantically learn and take advantage of their wealth of knowledge.
04:33Wow.
04:34What an incredible entree to that world.
04:36Yeah.
04:37Congratulations on landing that gig.
04:38A very coveted internship, I imagine.
04:40It was.
04:41Thanks.
04:42And I know you both served as concept art directors on the first Avatar.
04:46How did you get that job, and what were your first impressions of working with James Cameron?
04:50Yeah.
04:51We didn't get those jobs.
04:53Those titles were given to us as a sort of really nice honorific after the fact.
04:57We didn't expect it.
04:58We didn't know it was coming.
04:59So we saw it in the credits, and we're like, oh, my God, that's incredible.
05:03So technically, a concept art director is a role that, like, the guild would normally not know what to do with that.
05:09But the way we use it, even in the departments that we've staffed for the sequels and the way it was given to us is sort of like a way to acknowledge concept illustrators that have made, you know, in some way an outsized contribution to the design of the film.
05:22That's kind of how we inadvertently or unknowingly, as we worked for a year and a half, for me, I don't know how long you were on the show, Dylan, probably something a little bit like that.
05:30Someone.
05:31Yeah, made an impact, slowly but surely, and got awarded that after the fact, which was great of Rob and Rick to arrange that for us.
05:38And so we figured we'd pass it to future generations.
05:41But I think it's worth saying, like, we were both sort of like the right hand guy to the production designer.
05:48Ben was sort of Rick's right hand guy.
05:49I was Robert Stromberg's right hand guy.
05:51And, you know, we were both doing a lot of concept art, but then also, you know, art directing sets a bit more than a concept artist would.
06:00I was doing a lot of the virtual set art direction.
06:03Ben, I know you were heavily involved in the practical sets and virtual as well.
06:06Yeah. Yeah.
06:07It was a first contact with the New Zealand art department, which, of course, now, like, they're our best buddies because we work with them all the time.
06:13Then it was this exotic thing of like, we're going to shoot the movie in New Zealand and we've got to interface with all these Kiwis and send all the drafting.
06:19And now they use meters and we use feet.
06:21And it was a whole kind of cultural discovery that had to happen.
06:24But it was it was great.
06:25And it's a terrific team down there.
06:27Yeah, for sure.
06:28And to answer the other part of your question about first meeting with Jim, mine was funny because I was, you know, working with Robert doing all the Pandora natural design stuff.
06:37First thing I was doing with the Tree of Souls.
06:39But the first painting Jim actually saw of mine was actually a painting I'd done of Earth.
06:43And so it was this, you know, kind of, you know, super techie, neon-y, not neon-y, but lots of advertising type of structure.
06:52I mean, and I love doing the tech design stuff.
06:54Just Ben's better.
06:56And so and so so it was it was super fun to do that.
07:00And I was I was very nervous because I was like, oh, am I going to be doing this or am I doing the natural world stuff or a little bit of everything?
07:06But thankfully, he was he was receptive to it. And so, yeah, that was that was my first first meeting Earth painting.
07:13Well, Earth is a good point of reference for all of this, right?
07:16Absolutely. And yeah, I mean, we always say, you know, we look at everything we do with like a National Geographic lens and it's not sci fi fantasy.
07:24You know, we always look for what the real world analogy is and designing Pandora.
07:29We always say, you know, like Earth is super diverse. Why can't Pandora be just as diverse as Earth?
07:34And so we always, you know, as we're doing new biomes, you know, we have all the biomes here on Earth to explore as well.
07:39And and I always say it's kind of silly and arrogant to think in like an afternoon sketch,
07:44you can do something better than millions of years of evolution and nature came up with.
07:49So it's it's it's why not start with something amazing?
07:52Absolutely. And of course, that equally applies on the technological side in that in that, you know, really, really smart architects,
07:58engineers and physicists and, you know, have been coming up with incredible equipment to achieve varieties in a variety of functions over the course of human history.
08:07And to, you know, the more I look at real photos, the more I'm amazed at the things that are out there in the world right now that your average person has never seen.
08:15I come across things that I'm like a nerd and I'm the kind of person that looks at photos of oil rigs for fun.
08:20OK, like there's something wrong with me and I find things that I've never seen that and like, oh, my God, that's so cool.
08:26And so we're always getting inspired by reality and trying to bring that into our film, because if our world feels real, this is what any production designer does.
08:33But I think for us, we're dealing with something that's as as broad and as fantastical as the kind of stories that we're telling on this alien world and also trying to keep it very kind of human in the sense of the emotional scale of the films.
08:45Right. That's what Jim is so great at in these stories is doing stuff that's epic and intimate and really moving at the same time.
08:51It's just that much more burden on us to make sure the world is never a distraction from that mission.
08:56Right. Where the world needs to support the story and make everything feel as real as the as the actors are able to make these scenes feel.
09:02Yeah, because it's in our instinct as designers to go hog wild and just do something crazy or super cool or, you know, just but but then if it's distracting, it utterly fails, no matter how great it may look.
09:13You know, we always just have to serve the story. And especially like when it comes down to like the alien design of Pandora, it can't be too alien because you need to relate to it and accept it.
09:22It needs to be hopefully wondrous and amazing, but you need to instantly get it.
09:27You know, it's sort of like, you know, design is like a joke.
09:31If you have to explain it, it's not very good.
09:34That's a good that's a good line.
09:36Yeah, I like that comparison and sort of talking about your division of duties.
09:41Ben, you have tended to handle the human world, Earth, weapons, vehicles, and Dylan, all things Pandora and Navi.
09:48Are you working side by side in those moments to make sure that there aren't too many incongruities with each of your approaches and that there aren't things that are overly jarring in each of your pieces of work?
09:59How are you making sure that they have synergy?
10:01Yeah, I mean, we're very much aware of what the other is doing.
10:04There are illustrators on the team and art directors and all kinds of different members of the art department that will will be flex players who go back and forth between the human world of technology and of course the beautiful Pandora and stuff.
10:16So there's a there's a sort of natural mixture that happens there and there's a heavy awareness.
10:20I mean, you know, our offices were we work from home these days, but our offices at Manhattan Beach Studios were right next to one another.
10:26So just out of creative curiosity and companionship would be moving around and checking one other stuff out.
10:32But I also, you know, I would say in general, yes, keeping an eye on how our color palettes work, you know, against one another and with one another to kind of create the contrast that we need.
10:42We definitely kept a strong eye on that. But the fact that we have two designers each with a different design sensibility is not a bad thing for the for for what ends up in the movie.
10:51Right. The fact that you've got a design universe that has like these obviously two cultures that are clashing and that they have a sort of distinct sort of look.
10:58And it's distinct vision for each of those that don't fit together is kind of part of the point of the story.
11:03And so I think it has an advantage there.
11:05Yeah. I mean, literally light years apart in origins.
11:09And so and yeah, I mean, I think we would only check in kind of as needed, you know, not again, like I love seeing it, but it was more curiosity and fun than need.
11:18The main things we would check, as Ben mentioned, color palette.
11:21But then, of course, scale of things was was a giant issue, you know, because we have sort of different classes to make sure that the battles work where it's like, OK, that creature is the size of this vehicle or, you know, something as simple as that.
11:32Or that the Tolkien can fit on the Sea Dragon or the factory ship.
11:35And, you know, just just those sort of basic scale relationships.
11:39Totally. But we did have a really fun crossover set in in Fire and Ash that was predominantly under Ben at Bridgehead.
11:47But, you know, it was it was it was the Ash encampment. And Ben, do you want to chat about that?
11:51Yeah. I mean, so so the Ash people we know end up at Bridgehead and we're going to see a lot more in the movie of an encampment that they have where they kind of take up residence.
12:00Whether the the dudes on the on the tarmac who had all their equipment shoved aside by these really terrifying Ash people, you know, whether they liked it or not, the Ash people were moving in and making themselves at home.
12:10And what's really fun about them as a clan is that they forsaken AWOC. Right. So that means certain rules are thrown out the window.
12:17So the kind of trepidation that, let's say, the Metcaina have about weapons when they were given the opportunity to use assault rifles to help, you know, fight the RDA.
12:25The Ash love technology. They love using metal. And it's almost a Jim described it once as a kind of cargo cult sort of vibe that they have with it.
12:33And so they they show up in a human environment that's full of industrial stuff and metal.
12:37And it's like they're kids in a candy store. And so they just start taking the material around them like tarps and pieces of helicopter, you know, replacement struts for a helicopter or whatever.
12:46They're not like ripping vehicles apart, but they're finding everything they can as raw material for this new living environment.
12:52But they're still Navi. Right. They still have the swoopy design sensibilities that Dylan has done such an amazing job to invent of how they build a Marui, how they kind of kind of organize their living situation.
13:04And so we end up with this kind of hybrid visual cultural moment. Right.
13:08It's basically a ghetto full of ash people made of RDA stuff that still feels very much like a kind of tribal living situation.
13:16And so it's just fun. Again, like we we don't often get these chances to work directly hand in hand on something and it's just super fun.
13:23And the other aspect of it is Dylan did an amazing job, an amazing job of taking weapons that the ash people are going to use and then doing adornments to them that the ash people just just because, again, it's this beautiful object and they almost worship technology.
13:35So why wouldn't they decorate with both color coloration of their own color palette and also bangles and skulls and little things that they put on there?
13:43And it's just it's so much fun for me to see those crossovers.
13:46Yeah, it's a lot of fun to watch, too, in the fascination with ammunition and the medals.
13:51And I love the interplay between the two. And speaking of new characters, Dylan, I'd love for you to talk about the Wind Traders, the new nomadic clan.
13:58I love the Wind Traders. They're so beautiful. Tell me about incorporating music and dance and travel into those designs, because they really are very distinct.
14:07Yeah. I mean, the Wind Traders was the thing I was most excited to do on the sequels, like period, all the sequels.
14:15I'm from my first meeting with our dearly departed producer, John Landau, which is way back in 2013, if you can believe it.
14:23When I was first meeting to talk about the sequels, John's like, Dylan, I want to read you some of Jim's notes.
14:28And and he read an excerpt of Jim describing the Wind Traders in a very kind of poetic, evocative way about, you know, this nomadic caravan in the sky suspended from these giant jellyfish like creatures backlit by the sun, lit up like paper lanterns.
14:44And I was like, I want to design this right now, like right now, right now, like sign me up.
14:47I want to do this. And and here we are, finally get to share it 12 years later.
14:51And so, yeah, I was drawn to them from the start, just from that just impactful visual, you know, just beauty of seeing this caravan in the sky.
15:02And we looked at many different nomadic cultures from Bedouin to the Romani to the Algari and the Turkana.
15:10And so, you know, it's just from all different continents. We don't want to just try and reference, you know, one people as a starting point.
15:15But what was fascinating is to see the the commonality of a lot of color, a lot of assemblage and honestly, a lot of happiness and joy and music and culture.
15:27And that we just wanted to imbue the Wind Traders with those qualities.
15:32Like it's it's very easy to have everyone just be, you know, so stoic and, you know, and all this serious.
15:38And it's like, OK, let's let's have some fun. Let's have some fun with these guys.
15:42And and as John used to say, you know, they're they're traders.
15:45And then whenever they come to the village, they bring many goods. But the most important good of all is gossip.
15:49And so they just want to hear what the what the guys did in two villages over.
15:54And and it's always a party when they come to town.
15:57And so in there in the design specifically of like of like their gondola, which was my my biggest challenge on fire and ash, it's their home.
16:05It's a vehicle, but it's also kind of a living story of their travels and who they are as a people.
16:11So while we have this very complicated structure, it's also adorned in an interesting way where in all the in all the variety of rope work, you know, we've woven in shells and trinkets and beads that are stories of where they've been.
16:24And it's it's this constant thing that's being added to. I really wanted to get layers of many different types of rope with subtle color differences and all the braid differences are different.
16:33And it's nothing we fetishize in the movie, but hopefully that that layering, you know, and that reality can come across.
16:41And we do see briefly a nice lighthearted moment where like everyone's just dancing in the in the we call it the deck.
16:48It's sort of like like the deck house on a ship. And we see some of the musical instruments that, you know, we developed in conjunction with what a workshop.
16:55And then also Simon Franklin was involved and, you know, just a super wonderful partnership, seeing their their richness and joy was was a nice breath of breath of fresh air in their culture.
17:07And the beauty of designing because we did Way of Water and Fire and Ash as one giant production designing basically three clans at once, which was the Mechaena, the Wind Traders and the Ash.
17:18You know, it was it was extremely valuable because we knew where we were going.
17:23And in potential further films as well, we also know where we're going.
17:26So so it's so helpful to reserve certain things for different clans so that you can have a clear cultural identity because you don't want to just be this homogenous Navi thing.
17:35They're very, very distinct. And so, you know, something as simple as color palettes was fantastic to just.
17:41OK, so with the Mechaena, we're going with the more brighter, saturated ocean colors, the, you know, science, greens, yellows for the Wind Traders went much more earth tones.
17:49You know, we did warmer earth tones into the burgundies, the burnt oranges, that sort of stuff.
17:53And then the ash obviously is black and white and red. The symbolism of it is is just, you know, to to fun, you know, where you got OK, you got the white is the ash.
18:01The black is the burnt char and death. And then red is, you know, blood and fire. So it just it just works.
18:07You know, it's like, how do you how do you not do that? But with the wind traders, we were very, very careful to create that that distinction.
18:14That's very cool. And Ben, I'd like to talk about one of your challenges in a new set piece, which was the scanner log, which really reminded me of old school James Cameron, the first alien.
18:24I really felt like I'd been brought back into that ship, that original ship all those years ago.
18:29Tell me how you kind of drew from classic sci fi themes and design without making it overly sterile.
18:35And of course, this is where we see the character of Spider going through.
18:38So we don't want to spoil, but there is a very important plot point involving Spider in this new movie.
18:42Indeed.
18:43And so tell me your approach to creating this kind of intersection of the two worlds.
18:47What's great about working on a 3D movie. Right.
18:50And I'm hoping that most of the viewers of Avatar are going to go out and desperately try to find an incredible 3D cinema to watch the film.
18:55And because it's really kind of the only way to do it is that it encourages layer. Right.
19:00So so Dylan was just talking about the the deck Marui and all the incredible details on the wind trader gondola.
19:05That's a kind of environment that's designed for 3D. Right. That's designed with with layers and with ropes.
19:11You know, they're kind of cutting across frame and all that kind of stuff.
19:13So with the scanner lab, knowing it had to convey that this is everything about fire and ash is like, you know, we saw the RDA double down and way of water. Right.
19:22This is a triple down. Everything has to look like they spent that much more money because they're sick of getting their ass handed to them by these little blue guys.
19:29You know, Jake's only pan in the ass. So, you know, the scanner lab, like the factory ship and like other elements, the scanner lab had to convey a kind of next generation aspect to it. Right.
19:39So it was bigger, you know, than the neural lab that we'd seen in Avatar 2.
19:44It was bigger than than the bi lab in Avatar 1. And I wanted to have a sexiness to it. Right.
19:49So so I know that building things on a curving plan is a pain in the ass for everybody.
19:54It's a horrendous construction thing to have to do. But it gives a certain sophistication to the place that feels like this is, you know, Bridgehead is becoming a fully urbanized, corporate led, incredibly expensive endeavor.
20:06They're not giving up. They're coming back. And then the layering sense that allowed this bigger layout allowed me to use lots of glass partition walls.
20:14There's an element that has a plastic tarping aspect to it. And so I wanted it to be a sense of sheen and glass and reflections that conveyed all this sort of production value of how seriously the RDA is taking this moment.
20:26And then layers that you could see through. Right. And what's great about 3D.
20:30I was worried. You know, I think any any production designer might worry about a set with that many glass layers that you really need to meaningfully see through.
20:38Is it going to get we're going to get a bunch of highlights is going to be hard to read, whatever.
20:42And then my first day of onset where it was fully set up and the camera was was was firing.
20:47I ran out to the pod, which is which is a trailer outside the stage in anywhere we're shooting.
20:52But in this case, it was in Wellington, New Zealand, where Jeff Burdick's team is reviewing the stereo in life.
20:58Right. They're looking at a stereotype on a stereo screen to make sure that that looks cool.
21:02And the minute I got to see my set in 3D, like how it would be in the movie, I was like, oh, my God, this is amazing.
21:07It looks it looks great when we show you things in Avatar using the kind of quality stereography that Jim does.
21:14It's like you're seeing them in real life. It was as if I just walked back into the stage.
21:18I'm like, OK, I'm there. That's great. You know, and so it's as true for a live action set as it is for for digital.
21:23Wow. That is incredible. So one thing I really liked about Fire and Ash is that the sort of moral ambiguity now of these characters.
21:31Not all the Navi are all good and the humans are all bad.
21:35It's sort of intermingling in this third chapter, which I really like because it's it leaves us questioning motives and also stereotypes that we've had of these characters
21:43over the last few movies. How do you think your production design on Fire and Ash reflects the moral ambiguity of this particular story?
21:50Yeah, I think it allows us to be, you know, more more complex because, I mean, and it's just frankly, it's just more real. Right.
21:56I mean, life exists in the grays, you know, and that's that's what the world is.
21:59And so, you know, it was nice to get away from, you know, Navi's good, humans bad.
22:03You know, and so and to really embrace that.
22:06And obviously, you know, with with the introduction of the Ash clan and we're wrong, you know, we do that in a very, very dramatic fashion.
22:12And so, yeah, I think it allowed the warmth and goodness of humanity to be seen as well, you know, in someone like Garvin.
22:20And then we get to see the bad side of Pandora. And so, you know, for us creating that that ambiguity, it was it was wonderful to be unleashed.
22:27You sort of on on Pandora with the Ash people where, you know, instead of everything being, you know, harmonious with nature, we just get to make the anti-Navi basically where, you know, they are intentionally killing.
22:38They're intentionally wasteful. They are intentionally just just destructive and all in rebellion against Awa because they're, you know, because they blame her for not saving them when a volcano took out their home.
22:49But instead of leaving, they are resilient, you know, and they're like, nope, we will not be moved.
22:54And that's kind of what their whole ethos is, is with the scarification and the self mutilation is that it's just showing how resilient they are.
23:03It's like, how much can we take? Well, it's what we're going to prove to everyone how much we can take.
23:07And anytime you can reinforce themes in design, you know, it's it's it's a wonderful thing, because like one thing that happened was as scripted, the Ash people did did not live in a burnt out grape tree.
23:17It was just kind of a village in this ash wasteland. And it's sort of in discussions in the art department.
23:22And then with Jim just about, well, how would they have lived before this?
23:26And what would they be doing now? And how can we tell that?
23:28I was like, well, let's say they weren't very dissimilar from the Amatakaia, Neytiri's clan from Avatar one, just living in a home tree.
23:34So once you made that connection, you got kind of their tragic past.
23:39And, you know, it's sort of like every villain is the hero of their own story. Right.
23:42And so you almost kind of give them a reason to show that visually was fantastic.
23:46So it would kind of create this, you know, iconic silhouette of this broken grape tree was was a really fun, grounding thing.
23:53And again, just to just to turn everything on its head is fantastic.
23:56It's very cool. And it keeps us very much on our the edge of our seats.
23:59We really don't know what is coming next in the best possible way.
24:03It's true. It's true.
24:04And I can't speak to the details of it for obvious reasons.
24:07But as we know, you know, that there have always been characters on the on the good guy side of things in Avatar who are scientists.
24:13Right. So we have Norman, Max and of course, Garvin is our latest addition.
24:18The moral ambiguity of humans that have sympathy for nature and for Pandora and want to fight to protect it has always been there.
24:24But there's a huge expansion of that in Fire and Ash.
24:26So we're going to see some really surprising, really, really fun things that come out of that dynamic.
24:30And, you know, one of the things that I do on the film is a careful scrutiny of all the holographic elements and motion graphics.
24:37And and one of the things I'm always trying to do that that, again, we get to do in Fire and Ash is is find the beauty in science, which is what drives these characters.
24:45Why is it that the scientists can see, understand and see the beauty of Pandora to the point where they're willing to turn on their own species when the suits cannot.
24:52Right. It's because they think, number one, direct physical contact with the planet, but also they understand the beauty of Ewa.
24:58They understand the connectedness of the network and and how people live in balance in a way that the other characters don't.
25:04And so we're going to continue that theme.
25:06Very cool. And I was intrigued to hear James describe his ethos when it comes to design in all of his films, which he said is fantasy with limits.
25:15And I want to know what that means to you in terms of your work and specifically on these films.
25:20That's interesting. I hadn't heard him say that because, you know, he tends to shy away from the fantasy.
25:25But, yeah, it's it's it's funny. We are as rooted in reality as a movie with floating mountains and 10 foot blue aliens.
25:31It's kind of the way I like to say it. And one thing I like to you know, I want to touch upon is that, you know, there's such a misconception that,
25:40oh, it's just a big digital animated movie. Right. And, you know, nothing could be further from the truth.
25:44Obviously, what effects does, you know, incredible work.
25:47And I think Fire and Ash looks shockingly somehow better than Way of Water does.
25:52Like, it's amazing. And it was a privilege to work with them, you know, hand in hand the entire way.
25:56And how we got there is by many, many, many different means.
25:59And even on, I mean, besides Ben's incredibly large, expansive, beautiful sets built down in New Zealand,
26:05you know, there were also a lot done on my side of things that people might be surprised by.
26:10You know, we built a 14 foot miniature of the Sully Marui there, their home at Reef Village
26:15that was featured heavily both in Way of Water and Fire and Ash that was, you know, photographed and scanned by Weta.
26:21But then also with the Wind Traders, you know, we came out that design and execution from everything,
26:26from practical miniatures all the way to technical VR.
26:29But then when we were having to shoot a lot of things with Spider, and so we needed practical set pieces.
26:34And, you know, we engaged with a workshop to create a bunch of, you know, unique and beautiful rope sampling
26:40to try and figure out, you know, okay, what is this textural quality and difference in their builds?
26:45And so we built many different smaller chunks of the gondola that were just beautifully detailed.
26:50And then we were able to take all that wonderful tactile reality and apply it to the rest of it.
26:56And even the tactile reality can come from our big proxy set builds because we, you know,
27:02when we're doing performance capture, it's not just on a flat stage.
27:05We have to approximate what the set is.
27:07And so we filled our biggest stage at MBS with a proxy for the gondola.
27:13And it had the main deck, a chunk of the below decks, also some of the ribs and some of the rigging,
27:18so that we could stage these large action sequences and people running from, you know,
27:23bow to stern and needing to know how that all interacted.
27:26And so just having that reality was fantastic.
27:28But of course, Jim being Jim, you know, wanted to make sure that, okay, so if we're tacking port,
27:35I need to know which guys are letting out lines, which ones are pulling in.
27:38Any other director would be like, yeah, just pull on some ropes.
27:40It's fine.
27:41But he knew exactly how it worked.
27:43And so thankfully in our design, we had made sure that all the rigging corresponded from the gondola to the giant medusoid.
27:50And we actually knew how to do it.
27:51So we ended up literally making a manual of how you fly this thing and rushed it down to stage so that any given scene,
28:00we could tell all the performers what they need to be doing at that given moment.
28:03And then that, you know, translates all the way through to final.
28:08So, yeah, so there's always some element of reality and practicality and human artistry that we try and do with every step of the way.
28:18Yeah, we did a manual, too, for the crab suit, which is, of course, the underwater amp suit.
28:22And, you know, there was some thinking that you just working with Jim, you just have to think things through because he wants to know.
28:27He wants to make sense. Right.
28:28So how do you drive a crab suit?
28:30How do you control, you know, four legs of this thing?
28:33I've got a toy right here working to demonstrate.
28:35How do I control this creature that can walk on coral and can grab onto kelp and do all these kinds of things and has four limbs in the back?
28:43Right.
28:44But the arms is simple.
28:45I understand that I use my arms.
28:46I use my arms. How do I tell it where to go?
28:48And so we had to come up with a whole scheme of how you basically ride it like a horse.
28:52Thankfully for me, my wife has a horse.
28:53And so I know about how you use leg pressure and things that are not your hands to make the creature move around.
28:59So we have these paddles and we have to come up with a whole training document for the actors to know what they should be doing to make their crab suit move a certain way.
29:06So I would say just in terms of the fantasy with limits, I would say that everybody on the film, including the actors, including everyone involved.
29:16We're basically we're in an active collective imagining all the time.
29:20Right. We're dealing in a world where we've got an incredible story that's sitting on paper.
29:25We know the movie is going to be, you know, the most photo real, most incredible resolve thing at the end of the day.
29:30But we most for most of our time, we're living in this in between mode.
29:33Right. Where we're seeing, you know, the actors have to work with gray sets.
29:36We're seeing proxy versions of our virtual sets that we know are going to get detailed are going to get turned into beautiful live action, fully photo finished sets.
29:44But we have to sort of work together through that sort of ambiguity through the active imagining.
29:49Right. We all have to keep our eyes on the prize of treating Pandora as if it's a real place, treating the technology as if it all is plausible.
29:56And I think that that all pays off in the film because, you know, I think the audiences respond emotionally to the story because they feel that Pandora is a real place.
30:04You know, there's a reason people leave the theater and kind of wish they could go back in and stay in there is because it's palpable on a visual and emotional level that I think only Jim pushes people to even attempt.
30:16So my last question for you both is how do you think your design work on Avatar has most pushed and challenged you as artists?
30:23Yeah, I mean, you know, Jim, Jim demands excellence as he should.
30:27And, you know, it's it's so many other production designers or or directors would just be fine with if something just, oh, if it looks cool, if it's pleasing, if it's neat.
30:35And with us, it has to have a function and a reality to it.
30:40And so by working with Jim, it is absolutely made me a much better designer.
30:45And I I enjoy that component of it. The function, the reality of it gives you unexpected results with a naive just, oh, I'm just going to scribble something and think what what I think it would be.
30:56There's so much kind of randomness and utilitarian details that exist in reality.
31:01And so, you know, to to lean into that and, you know, accept something unexpected to create something unique is the power of it.
31:10And yes, it's for sure made me a much better designer.
31:13Yeah. I mean, look, we all work for a lot of different people.
31:16I would say that, you know, if you're working on good movies, you're typically working for demanding directors or demanding leaders of some kind.
31:23And there's a version of that that's kind of about taste.
31:26That's about trying to figure out somebody's taste, like what were the kinds of things this person likes?
31:30And sometimes it's mercurial. But, you know, you still like you get little glimpses and you try to figure it out.
31:35What's amazing about Jim is he's he's a great teacher to us in the process.
31:39And he's also every time he's demanding about something, it's not about taste.
31:44You know, it's about it's about the thing doesn't serve the story properly.
31:48The thing is too confusing visually. People won't get it in the in the 10 frames that it takes the human brain to kind of comprehend what it's looking at in a shot.
31:56People will be confused. Right. He's essentially advocating for the audience all the time.
32:00So I think looking at any kind of filmmaking effort of any kind, really even editing or just whatever part of the process,
32:06but particularly designed from that perspective is very different and kind of illuminating because you realize that your your job isn't just to like show something cool.
32:14It's to it's lead someone's awareness and consciousness through a story. Right.
32:18And so so you might make totally different choices.
32:21You might design something that doesn't feel great if you stare at it as an image, as a photo or as an illustration for 20 seconds straight.
32:28But that's not how you see the movie. So look at it through the through the lens of how you can really see it.
32:32And maybe something that has a more evocative emotional kind of design to it is the right choice to make in those instances. Right.
32:39And even with with designs that are hyper detailed and hyper realistic, you know, I feel like it was our first day where he said, what's the metaphor?
32:48Find a metaphor, you know, and he's driven that into us. And so trying to find designs that work on both levels that can be both could be stared at for 20 seconds and hold up to the scrutiny of an aeronautics engineer.
32:58That's looking at how the wind work and does that actually work and also makes you feel scared, makes a 10 year old kid feel scared because the thing looks like it kind of has a mouth and has a creature like quality.
33:08Of course, I'm talking about the Sea Dragon, but also this relates to the new factory ship and fire and ash.
33:13I think being able to fire on those different cylinders. And then, of course, there's just Jim, the practical filmmaker that is just thinking about how do you get through your day?
33:22How do you wild the walls? How do you how do you create a layout that's going to work? And so if you can hit all three points of those triangles, you're doing a good job.
33:29And once you've learned to do that, as well as he demands that we do it 100 percent, it has a huge impact on everything you're going to do going forward.
33:36Well, thank you both so much for your time. I've learned so much about your process and even more about Avatar, Fire and Ash.
33:42And I can't wait for fans to discover this latest chapter and also just see your magical work, hopefully on a big screen.
33:49In 3D.
33:50Indeed.
33:51Thank you so much.
33:53Thank you so much.
33:54I'd like to thank Dylan and Ben for joining me on this special episode of The Hollywood Reporters Behind the Screen.
34:00Tune in for more conversations with other artisans from Avatar, Fire and Ash.
34:04I'm Stacey Wilson-Hunt. Thank you so much for listening.
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