Avatar 2 and its sequels have been taking a very long time to get started to the point it looked like they would never happen but now we seem to have the reason why. James Cameron recently spoke with Collider about shooting Avatar 2 which will predominantly take place underwater and talks about how they have handled the difficulties that come along with that.
“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.”
So it looks like water and motion capture are not the best of combinations and Cameron and his team has obviously done a huge amount of work to get the job done. Cameron then goes on to talk about the first successful test run last week and how the actors are adapting to this new method.
“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.”
It will be interesting to see how this all pans out and how else the upcoming sequel will break the mold on motion capture like its predecessor. Hopefully its worth the wait when the film lands in theatres on December 18th, 2020.
What do you guys think of this Avatar 2 update and is anybody still excited about the sequel? Tell us in the comments down below!