James Cameron is one of the biggest directors in Hollywood, part of that is how persistent he is in pushing boundaries in filmmaking and innovating in incredible ways. Cameron pushed 3D to a new level with Avatar and elevated special effects to a really incredible place, while some may not enjoy the actual story of that film, it's a technical achievement worth applauding.
Now, over half a decade after the release of the box office smash hit, Cameron has begun production on one of four sequels that are all scheduled to release in the early – mid 2020s and he's still finding new ways to get creative with filmmaking. You see, the sequels plan on being set mostly underwater and that's usually hard to convey, just ask James Wan, director of the upcoming Aquaman film. So, to make it even more difficult Cameron is doing all of the motion capture underwater since the chararacters aren't human. Collider recently spoke to Cameron about how they're going to do it and what hurdles they've had to overcome to make it work.
"Well, we’re doing it. It’s never been done before and it’s very tricky because our motion capture system, like most motion capture systems, is what they call optical base, meaning that it uses markers that are photographed with hundreds of cameras. The problem with water is not the underwater part, but the interface between the air and the water, which forms a moving mirror. That moving mirror reflects all the dots and markers, and it creates a bunch of false markers. It’s a little bit like a fighter plane dumping a bunch of chaff to confuse the radar system of a missile. It creates thousands of false targets, so we’ve had to figure out how to get around that problem, which we did. Basically, whenever you add water to any problem, it just gets ten times harder. So, we’ve thrown a lot of horsepower, innovation, imagination and new technology at the problem, and it’s taken us about a year and a half now to work out how we’re going to do it."
Furthermore, there's a new generation of unknown actors heavily featured in the film and Cameron and his team have basically turned them into aquatic humans who can fully act for minutes at a time underwater. Guess if this whole acting thing doesn't pan out they could be olympic swimmers or something.
"We’ve done a tremendous amount of testing, and we did it successfully, for the first time, just last Tuesday [November 14th]. We actually played an entire scene underwater with our young cast. We’ve got six teenagers and one seven-year-old, and they’re all playing a scene underwater. We’ve been training them for six months now, with how to hold their breath, and they’re all up in the two to four minute range. They’re all perfectly capable of acting underwater, very calmly while holding their breath. We’re not doing any of this on scuba. And we’re getting really good data, beautiful character motion and great facial performance capture. We’ve basically cracked the code."
The end result of Cameron's Avatar saga will likely be incredibly interesting to see but we'll have to wait a bit as Avatar 2 isn't scheduled for release until December 18, 2020. Avatar 3 will release the following year on December 17, 2021, Avatar 4 on December 20, 2024; and Avatar 5 on December 19, 2025.
