Original subtitles

We're creating a world .

Every blade of grass, every leaf on every tree,

every vine, every bug, every insect, everything everywhere.

Imagine a forest, imagine a world.

Imagine mountains, imagine oceans and all the life in it.

There's no location photography.

And it has to be up to a level ofphotorealism.

I just want them to believe that Pandora's a real place

and these people are real people.

Before a single creature, character, or environment is created ...

-(I LU MOANS) -(GASPI NG)

-Hey, you lived ! -Whoo !

LAN DAU : Before a single line is written or an image drawn,

we begin with a core idea.

(SQUAWKI NG)

That's how world building begins.

I went to the studio and I said , "Let's not do a sequel .

"Let's launch ourselves on a big story arc."

All the world building that we do, all the character building that we do.

Let's not just do another movie.

Let's do Star Wars. Let's do Lord of the Rings.

Let's swing for the fences.

So now I had to go off and notjust create a story.

I had to create a greater sort of mega story arc

that had finite stories within it.

Why don't you come on out, Mrs. Sully?

You and I , we got some

unfinished business.

The script is the blueprint from which everything else is built,

and we needed that foundation and we needed it for all four movies

because the decisions a character makes

in movie four have to reflect the journey they've been on in movie two.

KI RI : They took him.

They took him .

CAMERON : It started out as a grand vision and then it grew from there.

(LAUG HS)

My feeling was just map 'em all out.

Map out all the stories that I want to tell .

LAN DAU : The decision was made

to keep our stories on Pandora.

We have swamps and deserts and mountains and ice and glaciers

and tropical islands and everything right here on Earth .

Why wouldn't Pandora have the same number of different biomes? Right?

And with every biome, you have a distinct culture.

People have learned to adapt. Humans are adaptable.

Why wouldn 't the Na 'vi be equally adaptable?

We are Reef People.

You are Forest People.

Your skills will mean nothing here.

LAN DAU : Concurrently with the writers working in the writing room,

we had an art department on that started the initial designs for Pandora.

We were designing worlds and creatures as, you know,

J im and the writers were crafting the story.

LAN DAU : Their artwork served as great inspiration for the writers.

We would bring them up to the art department

to see what the art department was working on .

But conversely, if the writers had a new idea,

the art department could run with it and visualize it.

COLE: The whole idea of worldbuilding is thrown around a lot.

And I thought I knew what it meant until I worked on these films.

Never before have I been a part or heard of any project

that has done it to such detail

and verisimilitude as Pandora.

Endless conversations about the detail of a leaf.

How did it grow? Where is it from?

Sometimes those decisions become just as important as the epic vistas

and the floating mountains because if it's in a shot, it has a story to tell.

Jim uses every opportunity to tell a story.

The challenge of designing for J im , whether it's on the technical side

or the natural side,

is in Jim's mind, all this stuff is real.

We're not making a movie,

we're filming some reality thatjust happens to exist on another planet.

To him, every detail of every woven structure,

every creature and its evolutionary biology

led it to look the way that it does.

It's kind of divided so that those teeth actually kind of do that.

It's funny that J im the Scientist, and J im the Designer,

and Jim the Director,

sometimes they're debating with one another

as to whether a design can work.

If you're in a high-speed boat, this actually feels pretty good .

So much thought to everything that he does

and that goes all the way into the design details.

And he, you know, expects our stuff to measure up to that level of realism

and to be something the audience just doesn 't question.

COLE: What's fun about working with Jim is that you engage with him as an artist.

And he understands the value of a napkin sketch.

And so, he can look past the prettiest,

the most photo-real rendering, beautiful painting ever to the core idea,

if the idea wasn 't there, itjust didn 't matter.

What's this?

PROCTER: That's a crane for loading stuff onto that back deck.

J ust a folded davit.

LAN DAU : Deborah Scott was an essential part

of our world-building process

in creating the costumes for both

the Na 'vi characters of Pandora and the RDA characters.

When you put a character up on the screen,

the costumes, the props, the hair, the makeup, the tattoos,

it all is part of what embodies them

in that character and reflects back the world around them.

DEBORAH SCOTT: Costume design is one of the most important parts

of expressing a character.

How a person dresses, what their clothes signify in a clan ,

people who perform different functions, the leader, the fishermen, a child,

that all these people have a different place in the clan.

Come hunting with us.

SCOTT: We researched indigenous people literally worldwide.

The environment in which the clans live is extremely important to what they wear.

So the Omatikaya are Forest People. They use things from the Pandoran forest.

The Metkayina are much more adapted to water.

AON U NG : You are not good divers.

Maybe good at swinging through trees, but...

(ROTXO LAUG HS)

One of the very first things he said to us was,

what's the metaphor for this thing

that connotes the right thing to the audience?

How are we communicating to them?

What's this design gonna remind them of that gives them an emotional response?

CAMERON : And what are the metaphors for the animals

that we interact with as human beings on Earth?

You know, whales, dolphins, sharks, things like that.

What are those metaphors?

How do they manifest themselves in the ocean ecosystem of Pandora ?

We are introduced to this whole new world

where we have beautiful tropical islands, but also there's a culture that lives

in this very large mangrove called the Metkayina.

And they have built

their whole village suspended over the water under these roots.

(JAKE YI PPI NG)

What's beautiful about reef village is that

it very much exemplifies the Na'vi belief in connectivity.

You know, every single bit of this village is connected.

Someone walks, you feel it in the house,

you know, if someone is moving around next door, unloading nets,

you're gonna feel it down the walkway.

And it is all about this connectivity with nature,

but connectivity with each other.

And when you look at a plan of the village,

it has this sort of expanding web of connectivity.

This is our home now.

LAN DAU : If we want Wötä FX to make something look real,

we need to give them something tangible

to ascribe to as their touch base for reality.

We turned to Richard Taylor and the incredible artisans at Wötä Workshop.

Wötä Workshop, to me,

is the paramount place for cultural artisans

where the work they do is steeped in a history of culture.

The first thing that was so impacting for me

was the fact that we were creating worldbuilding ,

from the very inception of the culture up.

-CAMERON : She can wear that in the water. -SCOTT: Totally.

TAYLOR: Jim had conceptualized these

extraordinary people on this far-offplanet

and they required an in-depth cultural research and development team.

(YELLI NG WAR CRY)

My experience of J im is that he is a worldbuilder,

but he builds a world that he has to figure out.

He doesn 't know it from scratch.

Even if he knows that he wants Pandora

in some respect to be very much modeled after our planet,

stand-in for Planet Earth,

he builds a world that's totally individual,

totally his own, totally unique to that world.

RICHARD BAN EHAM: One of the reasons I like working with Jim

is he always strives to find the truth in things.

For me, that is everything.

When you try to stand up visual effects or make people believe in an illusion,

you have to begin with truth . It's the same thing .

Jim, as far as worldbuilding is concerned, is all about that.

Ifyou can drill down and understand how it works,

well, now you can give it a place in the world.

From the first time it's on the page,

J im is thinking about the world that we're inhabiting

and why we're there and why it makes sense for the characters to be there.

Everything is built for a reason

and it all comes together in what you see visually.

LAN DAU : We are worldbuilding.

That worldbuilding doesn't just stop

with the production designers or the costume designer.

And what I love about what these people bring to it,

they don 'tjust bring something

because it looks good.

They can articulate the reason behind their design.

Trying to incorporate something that gave him that stature.

You're gonna be down low on this thing , you know? The legs spread a little bit.

-I think they look dangerous like this. -MAN : Yeah , they do.

That's worldbuilding .

There are different ways to make films that have CG characters.

What we're interested in with performance capture,

is the totality of the performance.

-Physical, emotional, facial. . . -(YELLS)

CAMERON : . . . the eyes, everything.

The actor creates the emotion. The actor creates the moment.

It's ourjob to make sure that everything the actor did is preserved

in their CG character.

You are very hard on them .

I'm their father. It's my job.

Everything that Jake Sully as a Na'vi does,

Sam has done.

And that's the point.

It's not about changing and creating your acting ,

or animating your acting.

100%. That's my performance.

That's the whole point ofperformance capture.

(WH ISPERS) I thought we'd lost them .

(SIG HS SOFTLY)

You can capture the emotion .

You can capture the subtleties, the nuances of the movements.

You can capture the eye and capture the ticks, everything.

Capture it all.

Those assets can then be translated into the character.

In this case, Quaritch has become an avatar.

Nine feet tall, hugely muscled with a tail.

(CH UCKLES)

I'll be nice once. Then I won't.

ZOE SALDAÑA: The moment I saw her for the first time,

I was just like, "You're just so beautiful ."

Blue has never looked more beautiful .

(LAUG HS)

This is not a squad .

It is a family.

Performance capture gives actors the opportunity

to play characters that they could not otherwise play.

And Kiri's character, and Sigourney's performance,

are the perfect example.

The amazing thing is that the technology gives me that portal

to bring my 14-year-old self to play.

JOCELYN : Avatars only, go around !

(KI RI MIMICS MOCKI NG LY)

Cut.

(ALL LAUG H I NG , CHATTERI NG)

In making a movie set on Pandora, Pandora doesn't exist.

Avatars don 't exist at nine foot tall.

We have actors working in a volume.

Whether it was our dry performance capture,

or a tank that was capturing underwater performance.

They have markers on their body, facial head rigs on their head,

and we capture 100% of their performance in the digital world.

It is the most actor, director centric process you could possibly have.

JAMI E FLATTERS: At the beginning of the day,

the first thing we do is get into the performance capture suit.

And that is a skintight two-piece

and it's totally filled with ping-pong-like balls around us,

so they can then track my arm.

And then translate that into the virtual world.

They have all these little cameras that send these little rays

which would give an image ofyou moving around,

so every little movement is your movement.

And then we put a head rig on and it's a helmet and it has a camera

that's right in front ofyour face.

One of the big advances that we've made, technologically, on the sequels

is the facial performance capture.

On the first movie, we used a single standard camera to record a person 's face.

On the sequels, we're using two high-definition cameras,

and we are capturing a much higher fidelity ofperformance.

I know one thing .

This family is our fortress.

(BREATH ES SHAKI LY)

FLATTERS: That allows the team to map the actors' faces

and translate their emotion on screen and then put it into the characters.

Bro, why do you always have to make things so hard?

The amount of dots they put on us,

every dot is important, so they can get every smile,

every tear.

Every motion is captured and seen.

I See you .

DALTON : It's actual acting.

It's just like a camera here and here,

right here and then I'm talking to you

and we're doing the scene. It is just as real.

The whole clan hates me.

Demon blood .

Alien . That's all they see.

CAMERON : The reference cameras are a very important part of this

because I need to edit with something and I can 't edit with the raw feed

that's coming out of the facial cameras.

So I insist that we get close ups of every actor,

so you can imagine in a group scene,

this turns into a lot of cameras, up to 16.

It's like if the Sullys were the Kardashians...

(ALL LAUG H I NG)

...this is the way they would have a baby:

reference cameras all around you .

MARIA BATTLE CAMPBELL: And then there's the virtual camera.

It's not really a camera at all.

It's really a monitor that has controls on it

that can simulate a camera move.

And Jim is able to see on the monitor of the virtual camera,

the actors represented as their characters,

and be able to see the virtual terrain in front of him.

When you look on screen , you're a Na'vi .

And there could be anything surrounding you.

It could be a jungle, a beach, a tent with campfire around it.

FLATTERS: Before our first day of filming,

they actually let us go and be in the volume

and see our virtual reality selves.

I remember the first time I saw myself

I just waved . It was very weird . A very out-of-body experience.

Like I was introducing myself to myself.

So the first time I saw Tsireya,

we're walking and then I look at the monitor

and I'm like, "Whoa, that's Tsireya. I am good-looking. Okay, I see."

And I was like, "I'm blue." (LAUG HS)

I was like, "What?" (LAUG H I NG)

"How did I get there?"

There's a couple of us. We're doing some dances.

(LAUG HS) Like, "Look at him move."

(LAUG H I NG)

The first time out, I was a live-action character

and part of me always was curious

and kind of longing to do performance capture,

and now doing it, the entire performance in performance capture,

it's been great.

I know you're all askin' yourselves the same question .

Why so blue?

I've done a lot of green screen . I've done a lot of blue screen ,

but never anything, of course, like this,

where there really is no screen. You're just acting in a space.

Now you must stand with us.

Imagining a world like Pandora,

it was always looking at everything in wonder.

(G IGG LI NG , WHOOPI NG)

We don't have the actual props that'll be in the movie.

So they'll give us things that are similar weight and shape.

It'll be a stick. It could be my weapon.

They are killers of tulkun.

They must die.

Here. Today.

(ALL SHOUTI NG WAR CRI ES)

Open fire.

(VOCALIZI NG G U N FI RE)

MAN : Ready!

(BREATH I NG H EAVI LY)

And dive !

Cut.

-WOMAN : Cut! -Perfect.

BRAD ELLIOTT: The capture world is one set ofprops

where things have to have the right weight and shape and behavior.

But they don 't really have to look like anything

because they're going to be digitally replaced anyway.

It's just to give them a little more reality in the scene that they're in.

Being in the volume is about playing and imagination ,

and there is no kind of fear or no shame.

You can do whatever you need to do to get to that truth .

CU RTIS: It all comes down to your imagination

and your commitment to fulfill what's on a page.

The actors are in a very pure process.

Some of them have likened it to black box theater.

No set, no lighting, no nothing.

J ust the other people.

That's all actors need, is an emotional reality to play within.

WORTH I NGTON : When you're in there and there's 20 people

and everyone is doing a war cry, you are in it.

You forget that you're actually making a movie.

You're getting ready for a battle and when we do it,

the feeling is real .

Saving their lives, that's all that matters.

It's a very creative sandbox and the actors really love it.

And you see it in these performances.

Why am I different?

You really look at what the actor is bringing

to the performance, emotionally.

What is this moment about?

And then you look at what they're bringing to it physically,

what's happening with their body, what's happening with their faces.

And you try to bring those things together

as you're evolving the shot.

We're tracking down to pore detail on characters

so that we can actually track what muscles are firing,

how the muscles are reacting.

So we're capturing much deeper detail on the characters,

which really helps us to make sure we're getting the performance.

We get the little twitches in everyone's face

that really bring the characters to life.

It's worth the effort because we see such great performances

out of you know, Sam and Zoe and Stephen Lang and Sigourney.

To me, it always comes down to the characters

and the ability to be with them,

to be in the moment with them, to see their performances,

to understand what they're feeling and what they're going through.

That emotional connection is always what you're going for.

-(SOBBI NG) -I need you with me.

And I need you to be strong .

Right now.

Strong heart.

Strong heart.

(N EYTI RI BREATH I NG H EAVI LY)

(SHOUTI NG WAR CRY)

I've just enjoyed learning the techniques,

and the opportunities that it presents.

It's a new component to acting

and in the way that we're making movies, it's an important one to know.

It is just remarkable to be able to see the movements

and the performance go straight into the character.

And it's like, there's Kate and then, here, there's Ronal.

So that has been fascinating to me.

(CRYI NG) What is this, Tonowari?

(SCREAMS) What is this?

It's one of the purest forms of play that I've ever done in my career.

You're only armed with this childlike purity to play and to imagine.

(ALL SHOUTI NG WAR CRI ES)

I find as a director, I am much more attuned to the actors

because that's all I have to worry about.

I'm not distracted by the camera move or the extras in the background.

I'm just there for them. That's all I care about.

That's all I'm watching. It's an amazing process.

It's also the only way to do it. It's the only way to make this film .

(SNARLS)

(BLOWS SHARPLY)

DYLAN COLE: What was really fun about this project is

we were designing a world and creatures,

but if they don 't serve the story, then they're useless.

So, the best place to start is just with the story.

We wanna see something new, something amazing , something scary.

Something that you can form a bond with.

JON LAN DAU : If we're designing a creature, itjust can 't look great,

it has to have a backbone of how it functions.

That function then informs its design .

When we were designing creatures for Avatar,

we often start with metaphors, and in the first film ,

there's a direhorse, which was a horse,

but does not look like a horse.

(BUZZI NG)

The tulkun is evocative of a whale,

but when you look at it, this is not a whale at all .

There's many, many different things different with it.

You may not literally know exactly what it's referencing,

but you feel it.

LAN DAU : We had to develop a whole biosystem

that could exist underwater,

and we left it to the design team

to go have fun and create the underwater world of Pandora.

And the number of underwater creatures that they came up with,

from Rays to Pincer Fish is remarkable.

(WHOOPI NG AN D CLICKI NG TONG U E)

-(AN IMAL G RU NTS) -(TSI REYA YI PS)

-These are ilu. -(TSI REYA YI PS)

If you want to live here,

you have to ride.

CAMERON : The ilu are frisky, they're pla*ul, they're social.

We used , sort of, dolphins as a social guide

for ilu behavior, but they don 't look like dolphins.

COLE: It needs to be friendly.

You need to believe that you can ride it, it's aspirational .

CAMERON : It looked like some kind of a cross

between a biplane version of a manta ray

fused onto the long neck of a plesiosaur

with the Canard wings of a European jet fighter.

(LAUG HS)

So, you know, it just doesn't look like any other animal that ever existed .

IAN JOYN ER: Early days of ilu ,

all we knew was that it was going to be a rideable creature underwater,

their main mode of transportation,

much like the ikran were in the previous film.

They'll swim around and they'll pay attention .

And when you call them, they'll come, and you can basically

just dive in the water and they'lljust be right there for you,

and you just grab on.

(I LU CH I RPS)

-(SHOUTS) -(SKIMWI NG SNARLS)

COLE: The skimwing design had its origins in a flying fish,

that have fins like wings that they can actually glide,

and they have very rapid tail movement to get them up to speed.

J im had the idea of taking that motion ,

but applying it to a much larger creature, more like a predator.

CAMERON : Skimwing is described as a warrior's mount,

meaning it's more aggressive, it's more dangerous, it's faster.

The second it comes up out of the water medium, it can hit a top speed

of something more like 35 or 40 knots, and what they're doing is,

their tail is like an outboard motor that's in the water

and they're just propelling themselves along on the tail.

(SCREECH ES)

COLE: We explored many, many, many different head designs,

and we did hammerhead stuff

and then finally just wanted something that feels very water-based .

Like a marlin or sailfish, something with a longer nose.

We've evolved into more of like a caiman,

so it's notjust a point, but it's a bit of a wider nose and mouth.

(SKIMWI NG SCREECH ES)

COLE: In looking at these wings, is that they're not wings and skin,

but they actually are very much large fins,

that when it goes underwater, they collapse.

So they needed to feel like a fin

and to be a little more smooth, little more transparent.

And so, we looked at many different types ofpatterns.

The thinking of this was to have wings that kind of jump out.

And so, of course, orange sticks out from the blue

because they're contrasting colors.

And so, I got to do some patterns for the wings.

The skimwing moves through the water

and over the water in several different ways.

It starts off first how you see it here, which is very much in a clear fish form .

But then, as it gains speed, it'll break the water surface

and deploy its large wing-like fins.

And then as it gets up enough speed, it can actually

come fully out of the water and actually glide for a little bit.

(VI LLAG ERS YI PPI NG)

COLE: Here's the Akula. We wanted a big, sleek, threatening predator.

This is the shark metaphor of Pandora.

So, you know, we didn't want it to be a literal shark.

So we tried to change up the body plan a little bit.

We have the eyes coming out on stocks so that they can see around this mouth.

-It's gotta be better than a great white. -Mmm-hmm .

To me, that's the magic.

If it doesn 't scare me as much as a great white for pure brutality

in its distended form with its jaws out.

COLE: Which we want it to be a surprise,

where you see what appears to be a threatening water predator,

but when it opens its mouth and attacks, it goes to a whole new level.

So, what looked threatening before

gets extremely scary (LAUG HS) after it opens its mouth.

And so, we like having those, sort of, surprises in the creatures of Pandora.

(G RU NTS)

(CONCH BLOWI NG)

(BELLOWS)

The design of the tulkun has been one of the biggest challenges on this project.

We knew we needed not only a creature,

but also a character and an intelligent species.

We knew the analogy was a whale,

but the challenge was, "How alien do you get?"

CONSTANTI N E SEKERIS: The assignment when I came on board was

to try and take a whale creature and push it.

This was a sketch that Jim had started

that through our process, I've just kind of helped puzzle things together,

and it's been inch-by-inch design.

COLE: This is an occasion of having Design

have to jump through many different storytelling needs.

First and foremost is the sensor crest.

It's an auditory sensor that plays very much into the tulkun hunt.

We needed Lo'ak to be able to ride on a fin and look Payakan in the eye.

And that was a challenge, because having a fin

that close to the eye is kind of weird.

So, we ended up making a smaller cephalic fin

that is almost, kind of right behind the jaw.

And so this spatial relationship was a challenge to get,

and was actually defined,

you know, in some of the first scouts to the Bahamas.

CAMERON : It's one thing to design all of these worlds and characters,

but, like, how are we actually gonna do this?

GARRETT WARREN : We are out in the Bahamas.

We're testing a bunch of the creatures that we created .

The skimwing, the ilu , Payakan,

riding the fin.

We had a number of technical challenges

that we knew could never be answered in the tank.

So what did we do?

We went to the ocean with some ideas of how we were gonna create the creatures

and how we were gonna move the actors through the water.

(ON PA) The purpose of this entire week is to get good usable reference

for what they should look like on these creatures.

-Yeah . -Good . Good plan . Excellent.

I don't think the world gets just how much

of an old-school filmmaker J im is in a new-school world .

Even though it might not look like it's practical,

everything we do is practical.

So if we are swimming underwater, we do go underwater.

If we fly above water, we actually do fly above water.

AASH RITA KAMATH : We need to have the specific representation

of the creature itself

If we have an ilu, what do the divers ride?

And what do the actors ride?

We made lots of tests, proxies, and things that we took out into the ocean

and working closely with stunts,

working closely with the performers that are gonna ride these things.

(ON PA) So, let's make sure we get

good footage and body position of the rider.

WARREN : Most of the creatures in the movie are supposed to be traveling

at speeds of like, 20 miles per hour underwater.

That's ridiculous.

I mean, a human being really can 't hold on at that speed,

but we wanted to try to get them up to those speeds and see what it's like.

CAMPBELL: (ON PA) Okay, here we go! Face plant! Action, action, action!

(ENG I N E REVVI NG)

(ALL CH EERI NG , EXCLAIMI NG)

-(APPLAUSE) -MAN : Ow.

CAMPBELL: (ON PA) Okay, cut!

CH RIS DEN ISON : We're spyhopping the skimwing coming out of the water,

breaching and then going straight back in.

I kept getting ripped off.

Garrett's like, "Dude, can you stay on that thing?"

I'm like, "Yeah , I'm trying ."

(ENG I N E REVVI NG)

I was just hanging on for dear life.

Looked like, kind of, a cartoon version of Wacky Races out there.

And we put these devices into the water, and some of them would be self-propelled,

like the Jetovator, which pumps, you know, thousands of liters of water

through the jets and allows the actor

to be able to fly, not just above the water,

but also under the water at huge, incredible speeds.

MI KE AVERY: I think we've gotta be the first people

to actually ever take it underwater.

I took it out for a spin and came back with a big smile on my face.

(LAUG HS)

(ENG I N E REVVI NG)

Great work, guys. That was perfect, exactly the way you did that.

GARVI N : This 200-foot whale,

pretty difficult to get that in a tank

to do what it wants. So, it was always gonna be about

which parts of that creature the actor's reacting to

and how do we recreate that part of the creature.

So, we spent a lot of time experimenting

with elongated fins and mechanical devices.

How can the character of Lo'ak hold onto a fin ?

How can he stand on the fin as it's moving through the water?

How can he react to the creature?

Where is the creature's eye?

To a certain extent, the creatures were reverse engineered

to what the riding position was gonna be.

The ilu , for example.

So we built a buck of the creature, just a shape,

that could actually move through the water at high speed.

Then we shot underwater just figuring out how you'd ride it,

just what your posture would be, how you'd do it, how you get control.

And then we adapted our designs.

We designed a fin that you could hook your knee over

and then, kind of prone your body out

at kind of almost a Superman flying position

and use your back leg as a kind of a rudder

to keep your balance on the creature and direct it.

And it's all quite beautiful and graceful.

And this all worked out in the real ocean .

CAMERON : This is great.

I actually wanna do shots like this, where it...

See how it's nulled out to the creature?

-The creature's not moving. -MAN : Yeah.

(MU FFLED G RU NTI NG)

(GASPS)

(SQUAWKS)

COLE: What was really fun about this project

is we were designing worlds and creatures,

sometimes a piece of art will even inspire the story.

And it's extremely gratifying, and an honor when you see,

"Oh, you just wrote my painting into the movie."

That's pretty cool . (LAUG HS)

CAMERON : I'm an artist, a painter, designer, et cetera.

But I don 't think I designed anything on these films.

Why would I? I get to work with the best artists in the world .

You see these designers, these young men and women

thatjust. . . their brains are exploding with ideas.

Ijust wish I could write a story so comprehensive

that I can use all their ideas, but it's just not possible.

There were a number of challenges particular to the new film .

(TU LKU NS MOAN)

The first and most obvious is right there in the title, The Way of Water.

We had to learn the way of water.

And the challenge was about the way of water.

We had to figure out how to shoot really underwater

and really at the surface of the water.

(GASPI NG)

That was a non-trivial problem, but we had to figure it out.

KI RK KRACK: You can 't fake it.

If you want the audience to buy in and live that experience,

you gotta do it...

(GASPI NG I N SHOCK)

...wet for wet.

Water was the biggest problem and that's something we knew going in ,

that was gonna be our challenge.

But we hadn 't really cracked the code on how to capture underwater.

So they tried to talk me into hanging the actors on wires

with , like, a gimbal thing so they could swing around and do stuff.

GARRETT WARREN : We tried to pitch it to Jim and say,

"Look, you can do dry-for-wet. It's just as good as water."

And we had to experiment with how we were going to do it.

MAN : (ON PA) Down.

(I N DISTI NCT CHATTER)

We had people on wires and it just never worked .

It just doesn't work. It looks phony.

And it also is distracting from performances as well,

and you're not getting the real water physics.

RYAN CHAMPN EY: We looked into different underwater capture techniques.

We kind of knew that the bar was gonna be that he wanted to do it live

and shoot it live the way that he's shot the rest of the stages.

So we built our own camera.

CAMERON : So we had already completely worked out how you capture

in the volume, right? And that's basically an air volume.

And for that, we use infrared cameras.

For underwater, infrared doesn 't go through water

so we had to create a completely new system.

So we decided to use ultraviolet

because ultraviolet will penetrate through water quite far.

CHAMPN EY: The next test was seeing if we couldjust do a range of movement

with the performer in the water. And then we tested it in a large dive tank,

which was called Tank 1. It was a big oil drum

with 40 cameras there, and that was with multiple performers.

And then we built a test tank where we could learn from.

So, make all of our mistakes in this tank, learn from those mistakes incrementally.

CAMERON : Now the question is how do we go from a little tank

to something where we could shoot the ocean with creatures

and swimming long distances, and riding 20 miles an hour, and so on.

We need all the things that you'd have in the ocean ,

but in a controlled environment.

JOH N GARVI N : We ended up going for a 90-foot long tank

which is 40-foot wide. It's a monstrous tank,

it's 675, 000 gallons of water.

The stage 1 8 tank was all the departments coming together

and saying, "We're gonna need to build the wave maker like this,

"we're gonna need to build the current movers this way,

"we're gonna need to build a center island,

"so that once we build it, we know it's all gonna work."

Here we are, first day in the big tank.

And we're doing it and it's looking good .

So thanks. . . thanks to everybody.

JAMI E FLATTERS: Going into the water tank for the first time,

I had that butterfly feeling again .

Because it was going into the unknown. It is massive.

Nobody had ever done performance capture in water before.

And we couldn 't have done it

without the cast wanting to learn how to free dive.

They would do their breathe-up at the surface

and when they went underwater, they became the character

and were able to give a performance

the same as if they were standing on a stage.

CAMERON : It turns out that to be able to capture underwater,

you can 't have a lot of air bubbles.

'Cause every one of those air bubbles is a little wiggling mirror

and the system that's trying to see all the marker dots

on the actor's body so it can get their body motion

can 't tell the difference between a marker dot and a bubble.

If you think about every bubble being a mirror,

what about that big moving mirror called the surface up there?

So you've got all these ultraviolet cameras underwater

and they're trying to see the markers.

But they're not only seeing the markers on the actor,

they're seeing a reflection of the actor up there

with a bunch of markers that are moving around .

The system just got overloaded

and the characters kind of turned into, like, an octopus.

GARVI N : The whole image shattered and we lost the magic.

Jim actually borrowed from an idea

he had in one of his earlier films, The Abyss.

CAMERON : We used black plastic beads on The Abyss

to break that mirror surface so it looked like

we were 1, 000 feet down instead ofjust 60 feet down.

That's what gave me the idea and I proposed that

and everybody said, "Yeah, but how are we gonna get light through it?"

And I said, "Well, let's think of something else."

CHAMPN EY: We came up with the idea of using hollow translucent balls

that would allow light to travel through,

float, and allow performers to go through .

CAMERON : So what we essentially wound up with was

a volume for underwater and a separate volume for the air.

And those two volumes, one had to sit right on top of the other

with only, like, an inch in between .

And so the computer's taking data from one volume,

data from the other volume, and in real time,

in a tiny fraction of a second,

it's integrating all that information together

and showing me on my virtual camera

people coming and going, they could act at the surface

just like they were swimming in the water, and they could dive in.

-(TU K SCREAMS) -KI RI : Whoo !

Oh , my God , in the liquid volume.

I was always looking at everything in wonder.

J ust like, what is this?

If we'd done this on wires, it would look hokey.

If we'd tried to do this any other way

instead of being legit, it wouldn 't be a James Cameron film.

KATE WI NSLET: The underwater performance capture,

first of all , it's a huge amount to think about.

So there's not just the physical challenge of holding your breath ,

there's then the added challenge of acting out a scene underwater

where everything is very different. You're having to imagine coral reefs,

you're having to picture other Na 'vi swimming around you.

Then you have the challenge of

your movements are very, very different underwater.

Finding that serenity and that calm, so there's all of that to take care of

And that's what you're after, just the truthful sensation .

And that truth is what you need to make these movies work.

(SKIMWI NG SCREECH ES)

What J im wanted to do is give the actors an environment

that was gonna be as realistic as possible,

build sets and give them the ability to swim through the water

and give it waves, and current, and everything.

We had decks that had this U nistrut system built

that were on gantries and chain motors

so that we could lift them up and build the set on top of it

above the water and then lower them back down once the set was built.

That system has the ability to also tilt those platforms

and a lot of times, we will need that relationship with interacted topography.

(G RU NTS LOU DLY)

Safety was a big concern

when you're dealing with things in motion of this scale.

And that was our number one concern. We did everything in our power

to make this multifunctional tank,

what Jim calls the Swiss Army knife of tanks,

just to make it as safe as possible.

Rich Schwalm devised ways of getting

all of these scenes into this 40-foot by 90-foot tank.

We could do everything in the tank.

(WH I RRI NG , CLAN KI NG)

We could do waves and we could crash waves onto the shore,

and have people trying to get out of the water while they're getting hit.

SCHWALM: The wedge consists of two 20, 000 pound pieces of steel, right?

And in between those,

there's steel pipes that hold the whole rib section together.

On the top of those, we have four hydraulic cylinders.

We can get these 6-foot cylinders to move 6 feet in one second.

So, total of two seconds, 12 feet of movement

for the largest wave that we can do.

CAMERON : (ON PA) And the waves...

And action!

AON U NG : Come on ! Come on !

Yeah !

CAMERON : It felt real. It felt like you're in the ocean.

We created a big propeller system with two 6-foot diameter ship propellers

to drive a current. We called it a racetrack.

Our current generator, two brass props,

1, 000 pounds each. We could pump a million gallons of water

through these current generators in less than a minute.

That creates a 11-foot column of water for stunt performers

to perform some really cool acrobatics.

CAMPBELL: We had them attached to a cable and we would keep them

in a certain position in the wind tunnel

within a range ofprobably about 10 feet

so that they wouldn 't go too far back and forth

and be able to keep them in the camera view.

And the current would be going up against them.

And we had Mike Avery, who is our pilot for our creatures,

holding onto the front, and he would move the creature around

left and right in banks.

The Skimwings are like riding a log . (LAUG HS)

I've got a person over there with a machine, and a person back there

and it feels like they're both trying to get you to fall off the log.

That's what it feels like.

And then because I'm the chief Tonowari,

I have to look like I know what I'm doing.

(LAUG HS)

And I think we're pulling it off.

(YELLS)

We spent a lot of time with the creatures,

and it's really mostly about

what the performer is interacting with on the creature.

Hyah !

WARREN : Having them propelled by Jetovator was fantastic.

And we have these Seabobs, so that the Seabob doesn't just go fast,

but it can also spiral and cut fast.

I especially like riding the ilu and you are in fact riding something .

They have created something that has one or two humans connected to it

and it's on a Seabob so you really move in the water.

And you can dive right down 20 feet and then swirl around.

Honestly, it's the most fun thing in the world .

(TU LKU N WH ISTLES)

SCHWALM: For the Payakan wing, the performer would be riding the wing

in the current with all the facial , ripples in the face

and muscle structure changing,

depending on what part of the wing that you're holding onto.

So the actors could hang onto it and an operator

could control the pitch and it would go up, control it again,

and it would go down and you were just essentially trying to fly

this big wing in front of the camera 's lens.

SCHWALM: We were able to get these really good shots

and we used that rig quite a bit and it worked really well.

We were very happy with the Payakan wing .

(SIG HS) The way this movie puts you into the ocean

with all of these creatures and into this world,

it's going to allow us to bond with the ocean

in a way that I think we never have before.

And to me, this has been the most exciting thing.

I just love being in the tank.

I don't care how many hours we're in the tank.

It's just such an amazing ensemble experience.

Then when you add water to it,

and then you add waves to it...

It's just, like. . . I can't believe that I'm doing this, it's so exciting .

(I NAU DI BLE)

JON LAN DAU : These movies, no matter what the scale and the scope of them are,

it's all about the characters you put up on screen

and the cast who portrays those characters.

It was almost impossible for me to imagine an Avatar sequel without Sam and Zoe.

(CH UCKLES, YI PS)

CAMERON : There's the 14-year-old adopted daughter, Kiri,

played by Sigourney Weaver, basically playing her own daughter.

H i , Ma.

CAMERON : And of course, the great nemesis, Colonel Miles Quaritch, is back.

Except, wait a minute, he's dead . Well , yeah , he's dead , but he's also back,

and he's 10 feet tall, and blue and pissed off.

(H ISSES)

ZOE SALDAÑA: What inspires me about Neytiri is the fact

she is a creature that is living in a world

where having to be a feminist doesn 't exist. (LAUG HS)

It doesn 't process through the minds of any males or any females.

I liked that, 'cause I was never really playing the empowerment of her.

I was just playing her essence.

Jake, in the first film , is a young guy who went to another planet

to try to fit in , brought the clans together...

This is our land !

WORTH I NGTON : . . . and ended up saving that planet.

Something really special happened when we reunited for Avatar 2.

Zoe and me were always just very close, and that gave us absolute freedom

to just bounce off each other and enjoy the ride.

-(N EYTI RI YI PPI NG) -(JAKE LAUG HS)

BOTH : Whoo !

I don't think they quite realized

how much they had been in training for this movie

for the past 1 3 years as parents.

We couldn 't have planned it better if I'd said,

"Okay, what I need you guys to do is find somebody you really love

"and get married and have some children, and that's your prep for the next movie."

WORTH I NGTON : She's now had several children,

I've had several children.

When we get back into this world,

it's like putting on an old pair of gloves.

You just have a trust for each other.

CAMERON : I think they started to get it when they read the script,

but I don't think they really got it until they were on set

with the young cast that play their children,

and realized, "Oh, yeah, I've said that."

-Well , I hate you times infinity, Lo'ak! -Hey! That's enough !

Don't make me come over there.

WORTH I NGTON : By giving Jake and Neytiri kids,

this one opens up all the trials and tribulations

that come with having family.

Now, the stakes are higher. Now their children are everything .

They manage to find their own version of happiness.

U ntil the Sky People come back.

WORTH I NGTON : Jim's very good at making a very subtle shift in plot,

but just enough that it actually kind of opens up a wide gap.

And by putting Quaritch in a nine-foot-tall body,

and bringing him back from the past in such a ferocious way,

how do you now take this on ?

The dilemma of any father is "How do you protect your family?" That's it.

-Are you hurt? -No, I'm okay.

-Tuk, you hurt? Hey, hey. . . -Daddy.

CAMERON : And his dilemma in this, "Do I save the world and lose my family?"

Or, "It's not myjob to save the world.

"It's my job, as a father, to protect my family."

Jake makes that decision, and it all plays out.

WORTH I NGTON : I think Jake and Neytiri is the ultimate love story.

It showed you in the first movie, it didn 't matter what race you were,

what planet you were, what color you were, love is love.

They have forged an unbreakable bond between them .

It gets tested, just like any marriage. But I think that Neytiri is Jake's world.

That's the world that he found.

SALDAÑA: You know, we became a unit as actors, as colleagues, as parents.

We needed to become a family. We needed to become the Sullys.

This is not a squad .

It is a family.

Quaritch knows that Jake's weakness is his family,

and that's where he knows he can strike the hardest.

You're his, aren't you?

(SNARLS)

WORTH I NGTON : And if he can tear that family apart,

taking Jake's family hostage,

then you're pulling that one pin .

(YI PPI NG)

LAN DAU : Stephen Lang was an incredible villain in the first movie.

In the sequels, people are gonna even see

a greater depth and complexity to his character, and hate him even more.

Hope doesn't exist without the despair. Eden doesn't exist without the serpent.

Quaritch is a necessity.

He becomes part of the fabric of this planet,

even if it's to test it.

CAMERON : Quaritch is like the gunslinger who's been brought in with his bad guys,

only he's got his highly trained team of recombinants,

which means they have the body of Na 'vi.

Our mission is to hunt down and kill Jake Sully.

Quaritch is a fascinating character for me because there's this existential angst

around like, "Who am I? Am I the new guy, or am I the old guy?"

So he's fighting to make himself his own thing,

and not be a slave to just all these memories,

except that he can 't help thinking he's that guy.

Even when he's confronted with his own skeletal remains in the forest,

he rejects it. He crushes the skull.

He says, "I'm not that guy. I'm not that guy."

LANG : Quaritch realizes Spider is his kid, and that sort of blows his mind.

Spider was not a part of his plan .

Except he's kind of cool .

And I see a lot of myself in him when I was that age.

Miles?

Nobody calls me that.

Spider's like, "Who's this asshole? I didn't ask for this."

LANG : It's odd that maybe the more Na 'vi he becomes,

in a sense, the more human he becomes.

There are emotional doors that have been locked in Quaritch

for most of his life, which are now being kind of shaken .

Demon ! I will kill you as many times as I have to !

That's right! They're coming for you !

CAMERON : So there's the 14-year-old adopted daughter, Kiri,

played by Sigourney Weaver.

At the end of the first film, Grace Augustine had died.

Avatar Grace was still alive at the end of the movie.

And then , they find out she's pregnant.

Like, whoa. When that daughter's born, Jake and Neytiri adopt her

and raise her as their own.

I remember having lunch with J im .

He started to talk about this kind of forest girl

who had a special gift of connection with living things.

And she's going to be about 14.

He said, "And you and I know how immature you are,

"so I think you can handle this." (LAUG HS)

CAMERON : When you see Sigourney,

she's playing a character a quarter of her actual age.

She didn 't consciously do a specific voice,

but unconsciously, she just became younger.

It was crazy to observe.

Why can't I just be like everyone else?

(SOFTLY) Oh , Kiri .

CAMERON : There are things going on with her

that she doesn 't know why they're happening.

I know you think I'm crazy.

But isn't that every teenager?

Things happening to their body, things happening to their brain,

things happening to them socially and with their family.

Life feels out of control.

What do you want?

So she's got all that sort of normal teen angst,

but on top of it, she does strange things.

She has a power to attune herself to her natural surroundings

in a way that is unnatural, even for a Na 'vi.

WEAVER: I have had to work completely differently than I ever have before

because you do have to strip away (LAUG HS) all of that, you know,

Sigourney Weaver, whoever that is.

And it's been an amazing experience

to go back in time and be with that person every day.

SALDAÑA: She's marvelous. To watch her, it's such a work of art.

You're watching , like, a flower unfold . And all of a sudden , you do not recognize

that you are talking to a woman that is 5' 1 0",

(LAUG HS)

That has walked this earth for decades and has made her mark.

LANG : There so clearly is a mischievous little girl in Sigourney.

And she can be as imperious as you want, and can also be a complete knucklehead .

(QU I ETLY) Thank you .

We ask a lot of questions with Kiri that we don't answer,

even over the course of the entire film . It's a greater story arc.

It's a bigjourney for the audience with her.

But it's okay, because you care about her. She has a luminous quality.

WEAVER: Jim has this amazing ability

to write straight into the heart of a character.

He just goes for it.

He tells these really, really compelling stories

about the family and the world and what's happening on the planet.

And it's so wonderful for an actor

to work on material that's so rich , you just can't get to the bottom of it.

Casting was a daunting task for Margie Simkin .

Avatar, as a whole, is about celebrating diversity of cultures.

And Margie scoured the globe for all of our young cast members.

Often , in casting , it comes down to one quality

that each character has to have

in order to do what I see Jim is looking for.

(CH UCKLES) Yeah , that's it.

Jamie Flatters plays Neteyam .

He's the older brother.

He's kind of the guy who most wants to be Jake.

He wants to be that warrior.

-(G ROANS) -(G U N FI RES)

He just wants to pretty much walk in the footsteps of his father.

Go on , dismissed .

FLATTERS: He's constantly seeking approval,

but that approval is never gonna be truly given .

No, no, you stay with ikran.

But, Dad , I'm a warrior like you . I'm supposed to fight.

Jamie, as a performer,

came in with that same confidence that we saw in Sam Worthington.

Smart choice. And from now on , I need you to respect my sister.

CAMERON : And cut. N ice.

LAN DAU : And he was able to bring to it a strength of character,

but also a vulnerability.

Ow, ow! Ow.

Jamie has a very calm presence for a guy that young .

He is a natural leader, but he doesn 't actually see that yet.

When you're in a scene with him, he's very present and he's honest

and that's a great thing .

Sir. I take full responsibility.

JAKE: Yeah , you do.

'Cause you're the older brother. You gotta act like it.

FLATTERS: Being able to have Sam and Zoe

instantly created this parent and child relationship off-screen as well ,

because they helped us through the film

and helped us enter into our own characters and into the world.

Jamie carried the burden of being the oldest quite beautifully.

Lo'ak!

Get back here, you . . . Argh !

Lo'ak, played by Britain , feels that he's overshadowed by his brother.

You guys aren't listening .

CAMERON : He doesn 't live up to expectation.

He acts out, probably, because of that,

maybe to be noticed.

(SNARLS)

CAMERON : Not noticed as much by his father except when he's screwing up.

You're grounded . No flying for a month .

Yes, sir.

For the audition process, J im had called me.

He said, "First day I saw you in auditions,

"I knew I wanted to see you in this film."

Don't leave me, please ! Wait!

Wait!

CAMERON : Great instinct.

And he's taken us to all these places, it's really cool .

Britain , there was that quality in the character.

He's the frustrated, younger brother.

You mean why can't I be the perfect son like you?

Get off me.

SIMKI N : And there were just those elements in Britain,

where you kind of feel him struggling to find his place.

Britain's a wild child and I love it. (LAUG HS)

He fights the system. That's what he is.

And, to me, that's what Lo'ak is.

(U LU LATI NG)

DALTON : Jim wanted me to put my own heart and soul into it.

Lo'ak is a rebel. He's a guy who gets in trouble.

You brought shame to this family.

DALTON : He's also misunderstood

and he's an outcast and that's how I thought of that.

This is how it would feel if I was treated that way.

This is not Aonung's fault.

This was my idea.

Aonung tried to talk me out of it.

I pray for the strength that I will not pluck the eyeballs out of my youngest son .

Britain turns out to be a very central and pivotal character unexpectedly.

And you always know what he's thinking and what he's feeling

and it's there in his face in a nuanced way.

Our facial capture system just picked it up.

The CG animators loved Britain Dalton because he just boomed right through .

Are you all right?

You're too fast!

Wait for us.

So, the youngest child , Tuk, is played by Trinity Bliss

and Trinity just puts a smile on your face whenever you see her.

TRI N ITY BLISS: Tuk is a curious and mischievous and daring little Na 'vi.

And sometimes she finds herself in trouble

(LAUG HS) because she loves to follow her siblings.

I'm telling that you guys are going .

WOMAN : What? You wouldn't do that to us.

Yes, I would .

SALDAÑA: Tuk is stubborn, Tuk is brave, and Tuk is very smart.

She's also very transparent.

I want to go home.

SALDAÑA: So, whenever she feels she's being treated like the youngest,

she finds ways to rebel and remind us that she is a Sully as well .

We've got to go back for her.

She had really amazing range.

-Fear, terror, fury. . . -(SNARLS)

...impudence, funny, laughter, joy of life.

It's all honest, it's all real .

She's tough, she's spunky. We like her.

We see Tuk going to the inferno, but she gives as good as she gets.

When she confronts the bad guys,

she just gives them the old Na'vi snarl threat display.

(SNARLS)

(SNARLS)

I'm going , I'm going .

Spider was our big challenge.

Finding a young actor who could play opposite Sigourney Weaver,

who could play opposite Stephen Lang,

who could play opposite Sam and Zoe and hold their own was challenging .

SIMKI N : Jack was so smart, so interesting, so fun.

And from the beginning , he had an enormous imagination .

For such a sweet kid, he also has a ferocity.

And I felt like you could believe him in this world.

You believe he was this abandoned kid who had to figure it out

and who was trying to make a family

out of this group ofpeople, but wasn 't really a part of them.

It has been just a crazy, life-changing experience,

because I'm not the same person I was when I first got the role.

You call that speaking the language? You guys sound like three-year-olds.

The training has changed me. J ust, like...

I've learned so much more about acting with Jim.

I got a personal trainer and you can see how much I've just physically grown.

It's insane.

(LAUG HS) Yes !

Working with Jack has been a true blessing as a coach .

And works incredibly hard .

To be honest, he hadn 't had too much athletic experience in the past

and knowing what Spider was going to have to, A, look like,

but, B, also be able to do, we had our work cut out for us.

(SNARLI NG)

I didn't even recognize myself.

Spider is the one human we get to know, he's also caught between two worlds.

He's kind of the bridge between all the worlds

that Jim is so interested in connecting.

JOCELYN : Avatars only, go around !

Spider's kind of an orphan .

He never really knew his father and what he knew was all the tales told

about this guy who was kind of a horrible person, or at least the enemy,

so Spider's probably always wondered about his father.

Guys, sometimes it's not so great to know who your father was.

Whatever.

Don't even remember him .

Spider...

You are not him .

He's been raised by the Na'vi , and he's pretty much , like, a pink Na'vi

because he understands their culture, he speaks Na 'vi.

(SPEAKI NG NA'VI)

CHAMPION : He squats like them. He runs like them.

-He tries his best to fit in. -Oh !

(BOTH SNARL)

Jack would ask me, "So, what am I really thinking here?"

I said, "Well, what do you think you're thinking?"

He said , "Well , I don't know, I'm confused ." I said , "Exactly."

(LAUG HS) I said , "J ust play that,

"because there are no simple answers for somebody in that situation ."

-I'm not gonna be a part of this. -Is that right?

These people don't know anything ! They don't know anything !

We also had the challenge of finding three young , teen actors

who could play the Metkayina kids.

We found Filip and Bailey Bass

to play the children of Ronal and Tonowari.

And they both helped create the triumvirate of Metkayina children .

I play Aonung , and he is their only son .

When my father moves on, then I will become the new chief

I asked if you were a freak.

G ELJO: Aonung kind of gets into altercations with the Sully boys.

You are not good divers.

Maybe good at swinging through trees, but...

(ROTXO LAUG HS)

Later on , he comes out to be a pretty cool guy.

SIMKI N : Tsireya, what I realized was uncompromisable

about whoever we cast, was a luminosity.

And when I first saw Bailey's tape, I saw that quality.

I trust you .

SIMKI N : I think she has a loveliness

that is very special and really important for this character.

She just lights up the screen when she smiles.

We have a connection .

Bailey Bass, she brings different cultural experiences in the door with her.

Tsireya is a reef teen girl . She's 1 3. She's part of the Metkayina clan .

She's the daughter of the Tsahik and the chief

I see her as someone who's very kind .

We don't speak this finger talk, guys. We don't know what you're saying .

I will teach you .

BASS: She honestly has a big heart and always wants to help someone.

And if you want that help from her, she's gonna give it to you .

LAN DAU : Duane Evans was cast as Metkayina teenager

and he's from New Zealand.

My character, Roo, he is a peacemaker.

He is the character that doesn 't exactly pick sides.

-I don't know how to breathe properly. -I'll teach you !

EVANS J R. : He loves everyone for what they are,

and he likes the new people, the Sullys.

The Way of Water truly tests the bonds of family.

What toll does it put on Jake and Neytiri?

What toll does it take on the siblings?

It's the unexpected . It's something you never forget.

Wherever we go, this family is our fortress.

-(SNARLS) -What's your name, kid?

Spider...

JAMES CAMERON : The thing I love about the Spider character is

he's the glue that holds the story together.

He turns out to be a pretty amazing character.

He's played by a young actor named Jack Champion.

He's creating Spider before our eyes.

And he's great.

JACK CHAMPION : It has been a crazy life-changing experience.

I feel like my mind has been opened .

(CH UCKLES) This is gonna be good .

JON LAN DAU : When Jim writes a script,

he writes it without the boundaries of what is possible.

He writes it to tell the best narrative story

and then when you pick up and read The Way of Water, you go,

"How are we possibly going to do this?"

The challenge of capturing the performance of Spider

is so daunting .

But that's what excites us about the process.

DAN COX: Somebody asked me at one point early on in the film,

"What do you think is gonna be the hardest?

"The water's gonna be the hardest thing?"

Nope, Spider's gonna be the hardest thing .

Spider's difficult for a lot of different reasons.

Jack's got the unenviable task of being the only human .

I know what that's like from the first film,

and to be honest,

he has bigger shoulders than I did 1 0 years ago.

MARIA CAMPBELL: A lot of his scenes are in the virtual world.

And he has to be put into a set that isn't there

orjust a very small postage stamp of a set.

CHAMPION : The reason I had to do performance capture

even though I'd eventually have to do it live-action in New Zealand

was so J im could have, like, that real human-to-human interaction .

Me and Sigourney, and me and Sam or anything like that,

and when I would do it in New Zealand , I would remember

doing the scene and what it was like.

(SNARLS)

Put it down ! Down !

Put it down !

LAN DAU : When we did capture on the first movie,

we were capturing everybody at the same scale.

It was 1- 1.

Here, we had so many scenes with humans and Na'vi characters

that we need multiple scales to capture a scene.

SIGOU RN EY WEAVER: The logistics are mind-blowing to me,

having people be different sizes.

Spider's this big and I'm like that big .

We would often times have two sets.

One at the Na 'vi scale, one at the human scale.

And we had to tie those two things together

and they had to be in lockstep

so everything matched .

GARRETT WARREN : We had to come up with a way to represent Spider in this movie.

He's a small human child against a 9-foot tall Na'vi .

So we brought in some very short performers,

the person named Kacie, who is fantastic.

I double for Spider because I'm the human offset to a Na'vi .

Na 'vis are nine feet tall.

Your average human 's about six feet tall,

but we have average-height humans playing our Na'vi ,

so we need someone who's smaller than an average human to play a human

so that the eyelines will be correct.

WORTH I NGTON : Jack is there to give you the true emotion for the scene.

He then has to go do it again

in New Zealand in human form with us scaled a bit higher.

So, whereas we're acting with Kacie to give us the right scale,

he then has to act with giant replicas to get the right scale.

It's a very difficult task.

ERIC SAI N DON : It was really critical to make sure they got the capture

and the performance that Jack would've done with the other characters.

We then needed to recreate that on a live-action stage.

A lot of our live-action shooting is around Jack's character.

We've spent two years capturing all the big blue people

and now Jack has to interact with their recorded performances

which all get merged together.

More than half of the scenes, I would say 70% of the scenes

have at least Spider in them if not any other live-action characters.

It is like the Jack Show

since I am the only actor filming right now.

It can be a little lonely sometimes

since I am, like, the only person under 18 on the set,

but at the same time, everyone's really fun to work with.

LAN DAU : To make the Spider character,

we needed to improve on some of the technologies from the first film

and invent new technologies that would allow us to accomplish

what Jim had in his head for the character.

We challenged Wötä FX to help us enhance Simul-cam .

Simul-cam is something we created on the first Avatar film that allowed us

to shoot with a live-action camera

and simultaneously see in the eyepiece of that camera

computer-generated elements that weren 't really there.

People see it everyday.

When you watch the weather and you see someone say,

"There's rain here. There's a storm over there."

They are pointing at a blue screen.

They're looking at a TV that's off camera to know where to point.

In the first movie, we did Simul-cam a number of times,

but the live-action integration,

putting a live-action character with a CG character was difficult.

-(EXCLAIMS AMUSI NG LY) -You're wiggling your toes !

MALE TECH : Good .

What we're doing with the Simul-cam is tracking the camera in real time

so we know, in the environment, where the camera is

and then the things that aren 't there,

whether it be the Na 'vi or a digital set extension,

we're compositing that in real time.

Second best only to really having the Na'vi here on set with us.

LAN DAU : The next step after Simul-cam was we wanted to be able to integrate

computer-generated objects that weren 't there.

Moving behind things, in front of things, around things.

So, we needed to create what we called "real time depth compositing ."

Depth comp is basically real time depth estimation model

that gets used to place any live-action element in the right depth,

away from CG scenes.

He's out at the lab with her all the time.

We're getting depth information from the filming ,

and we can put our real time CG characters inside of the shot.

So, as a CG character walks behind Spider, with depth,

we actually get that proper depth through the live-action camera as we're filming.

Hey, Spider.

-Hey! Your ass is mine. -I'm right here.

SAI N DON : Now, Jim never worries that he's got the right framing on a shot

'cause he knows exactly what's gonna be in that shot.

He knows the relationship between Jake and Spider

because he can see them both as he's filming it.

And we're really relying on it for every shot in the movie.

MOMCI LOVIC: Every aspect of the production, of ourjob on set,

and on the production of the first movie has gone

through a number of generations of improvements of technology,

sort of updates and changes.

All the stuff that we're working with

or technology we developed is brand new.

On the live-action set, there's CG characters or digital elements.

The actors are basically playing to nothing.

Or, at best case, there's a tennis ball and a stick

but the person that's holding that stick doesn 't necessarily know

where that CG character is gonna be either.

We needed to create an eyeline system

for live-action actors to be able to follow,

not somebody holding a tennis ball, but to follow the performance

of a computer-generated character in a scene.

-Hey, buddy. -MAN : Winner, winner.

You see how funny this is when I do that? That's your future.

We created an eyeline system .

It's basically using a Spidercam system that you would see at a sporting event

where a camera flies over the field.

And Ryan Champney took that system

and converted it to work in our live-action environment.

CHAMPN EY: Instead of flying around the field,

it's flying around a live-action set.

Instead of a camera being on it, it's a small witness monitor.

And that's now reacting and behaving and moving around the set

as if the Na 'vi character at nine feet would be talking to the human character.

It was supposed to be, like, the head of a Na'vi .

The iPad would show screen recordings

of her face and her voice when we were doing a scene.

I'd be looking up at her and the machine would go through her exact movements.

I don't know how they do it, but it's amazing .

SCHATZ: When Spider's interacting with Quaritch,

they're really having a dialogue and you really think

he's talking to a nine-foot Na 'vi because he kind of is.

(ON SPEAKERS) Technically, you and I...

...we're nothin' to each other.

CHAMPION : It really helps you get immersed into the character

and perform the scene better.

RUSSELL CARPENTER: I couldn 't believe how fine

an operation this turned out to be.

I mean, they could park that monitor

within an eighth of an inch of where it was supposed to go

and then it could fly around the set and then be in the next place

it was supposed to be. It was a very valuable tool.

They've done so many things on this movie that are just

new and phenomenal and advanced the filmmaking process.

It makes it easier for us in editorial 'cause we don 't have to choose a take

based on whether the eyeline is right or not.

Outstanding .

One of the most complex and challenging sequences we have

where human Spider is helping the Na 'vi kids

lift something out of the water.

If you're pulling something out of the water,

your performance is gonna change based on the surge of that water.

And we were able to capture those performances with a true surge.

Waves splashing and Spider climbing out of the water

and watch with the depth comp and the Simul-cam,

and you're getting the proper depth

and they're integrated into the water. It's amazing to watch, to be honest.

LAN DAU : There's a scene in the biolab that is indicative of the challenge

where human Spider is there and we literally have Kiri hugging him

and pulling on his body.

How would we tackle those type of challenges?

We turned to our troupe who are a group of these incredible actors

who play multiple roles.

We put them in a blue suit.

STEPH EN RIVKI N : It's essential that if Jack's hugging a CG character,

there has to be someone in a blue suit

because you can't pretend to put your arms around someone.

Jim wouldn 't accept anything less than something that looks believable.

You are not him .

I don't think the audience gives you brownie points

for making what they think of as photography look like photography.

It doesn't make it a better movie in their minds.

What makes it a better movie is the people, the characters,

the creatures, the things they're seeing, the things they're experiencing.

Whoo-hoo !

CAMERON : But if they can let go of their disbelief . .

"Did these guys go to this other planet and shoot it?

"I feel like I'm really there."

The animals don't think of me as human .

Wait. You're human?

-Ha-ha. -(G RU NTS)

CAMERON : It's all working at a subliminal level.

It's taking away the disbelief

And if they believe in it and they invest in it,

now it's up to the story and the characters, like Spider,

to work on the audience's heart and mind .

Come in . Come in .

JON LAN DAU : The first day, Cliff came and he did a Mäori blessing.

(SPEAKI NG I N MÄORI)

LAN DAU : Culture and history of his lineage is very important to him.

(SPEAKI NG I N MÄORI)

(ALL REPEAT I N MÄORI)

LAN DAU : Then on our first day of filming in New Zealand,

Cliff brought his entire family to give another blessing.

-(MAN I N MÄORI) -(ALL SHOUT I N MÄORI)

LAN DAU : We brought a shaman from Brazil up

to interact with the cast and with the crew,

just talking about what it's like to be an indigenous culture and what that means.

It was really a training in how to become Na 'vi.

(I N ENG LISH) I'm saying we come from all corners of this earth .

We're all gathered together and we all have a place in this.

LAN DAU : We went to Hawaii to give the cast a sense memory experience

of what it was really like to be in this beautiful pristine rainforest.

The more you remember,

the more you can bring those details into the volume

and create that world out of nothing.

J ust being told that, "Okay, so we're going to Hawaii ," was a big deal for me.

Feeling the sand between your toes,

feeling the current pushing you back and forth,

diving down and seeing all these animals

really helps me understand Tsireya.

How she sees Pandora and how she feels about the creatures,

and why she cares so much about them.

It was like Lo'ak going to the reef clan in a way.

They brought us up to the rainforest.

We had to hunt for food and we would bring it back to the rainforest

and we would cook it there.

And we took them on a night dive with manta rays.

CLI FF CU RTIS: It blew my mind.

That's one of the best things I've done in my life and my career.

ZUCCARI N I : This manta ray was this close to Sigourney

and it did these back rolls right next to her.

We're just seeing her eyes wide open with these manta rays at night

with just a flashlight lighting them.

It was like the perfect way to introduce them to that feeling .

What? (LAUG HS)

Wow, that's a whole other planet underneath there.

ZOE SALDAÑA: By removing us from our comfort environments,

we get to sort of separate our personal selves.

And then we get to incarnate our characters.

Then we become a unit.

Hawaii definitely gave us that.

These characters have a grace and a beauty and a very unique quality

that we spent a lot of time creating.

LAN DAU : The Na 'vi move in a different way than humans

so we did a whole series ofjust movement training.

We did a series of breath training.

We did a series of hunting.

How do Na 'vis hold bows?

It was really a training in how to become Na 'vi.

It's like, you want me to shoot, you want me to climb,

you want me to run,

you want me to ride a horse with no saddle. I was prepared .

Because I was on the first film

and I knew, like, Neytiri's movement so well ,

andjust the Na 'vi movement in general,

they brought me in early to help train the actors and train the troupe

and the stunt people on how to move like a Na 'vi.

There's sort of a composure to it

and a real strength and a groundedness.

They walk in a very fluid way with their legs.

The shoulders are very upright.

VELA-BAI LEY: They lead with their chest. It's like their heart.

Even when they hear something in the woods,

-it's like their ears might spin around . . . -(YI PS)

...but it's more of a chest movement that starts the movement of the look.

Jake's a bit more of a warrior this time.

(SNARLS)

SALDAÑA: Sam wanted more target training.

You know, and battle training ,

so that he can sort of freshen up his soldier self.

He's a bit more adept at archery, adept at riding a banshee.

BOTH : Whoo !

You could tell in the beginning with these kids, especially the guys,

they have some of the movement down,

but they're adding their own little swagger

where I'm like, "That's a bit too much human ."

(LAUG HS) Like, you're trying to be all cool and hip.

And I'm like, "No, the Na'vi don't know about that."

I loved the movement. We had really good movement teachers.

And we even pretended to improvise on scenes that we might do in the movie.

And we even made up dances for, like, when we're celebrating anything.

VELA-BAI LEY: Little Trinity. Oh, my gosh.

She always brought, like, this special childlike sloppiness

in a way to the character, and it worked perfectly for her.

The archery was exquisite.

I mean, don 't take my word for it.

I cannot shoot as a regular human .

I can only shoot as a Na'vi .

It makes me so happy to know that.

You have to learn to shoot with your left hand .

Everything is backward. So that was challenging for all of us.

Can I tell you a fun fact?

I actually just learned this a little ago.

Did you know that women have better aim than men in archery?

MAN : Boom . Awesome !

(ALL RECITI NG I N NA'VI)

A language has been built, has been properly, properly built by a linguist.

And we have had no choice but to learn it, understand it,

and say it with true conviction

in the way that you would any regular piece of dialogue.

Uturu?

When the movie came out in 2009,

I think we had approximately 500 words in the language.

(SPEAKI NG NA'VI)

(SIG HS)

FROMMER: Today, I think we're probably around 3, 000 words.

The language does continue to expand.

WORTH I NGTON : Paul was telling me that they now have big conventions

where everyone comes and speaks Na'vi .

So we had to get it kind of dialed in

because these people out there actually do speak it.

The accent provided a challenge

because it wasn't supposed to be as thick as it was in the first movie.

You're like a baby. Making noise, don't know what to do.

SALDAÑA: 'Cause I would go either too thick or not thick enough.

So thank God that Carla Meyer was on set with us,

always reminding me to curve it here and curve it there.

The kids. . . J im wanted to feel as though they were casual .

They were easygoing with this.

And one of the things that he did that really helped make that happen

is that the older characters don 't use contractions.

The younger characters do.

Every single one of us has an individual way of speaking

and how they say things.

You know, different emphasis is on different, uh , words and stuff like that.

(SPEAKI NG NA'VI)

Language itself seemed to me to be easier for people that were multilingual ,

which , as it turned out, was almost the entire cast.

I speak Belarussian and Russian

so I can roll my Rs, and that did help me a little bit,

but I was getting very frustrated . I am a perfectionist,

so when I did not get something ,

it was not easy. But Carla helped me understand it.

(ALL RECITI NG I N NA'VI)

There are certain words, or certain sounds and letters

that we don't have in Na'vi that exist in English .

So we have to pull those things out and we have to stress other sounds.

It's complicated. There's a lot to it.

-(SPEAKS NA'VI) -Yes.

When you're underwater, you know, you can't speak.

So from a character standpoint,

we created a Na 'vi sign language

and we hired CJ Jones

to come in and create a Na 'vi sign language

with a hand with four digits, not five.

J im also talked about how when you're riding a skimwing ,

you're holding on with one hand so a lot of the language

had to be with one hand and not with two.

Creating sign language is a whole new process for me,

and I needed to make sure that what I created

was the right sign for what you're trying to express.

And I would sign that. And I tried it and I tried the handshake like this,

and then I would watch the actor do it and see if it fit.

JAMI E FLATTERS: The sign language was wicked.

It was something that I've never even

thought I'd be getting the opportunity of learning .

Every little detail is very crucial to translating .

JON ES: I watch the actors to make sure

that the feeling is incorporated into the language.

You can't just sign and do the movement.

You have to include the facial expression .

The emotion has to be incorporated in your body,

you have to speed it up, slow it down.

There's a lot of variation.

He knows how you're supposed to use your hand .

He knows how much power

is in a certain sentence compared to another one.

I remember when J im said ,

"Oh , yeah , yeah , yeah , you're going to have to hold your breath

"for about three or four minutes."

And I said, "Jim, I can 't hold my breath for 30 seconds. '' (LAUG HS)

And he said, "You'll be able to."

LAN DAU : The first film took place in the rainforest.

Now we are introduced to a clan who live in harmony with the oceans.

We knew of Kirk Krack, a world-renowned free diver,

instructor on free diving,

and we had worked previously with John Garvin,

who was our Dive Master,

and the two of them teamed up to train our cast.

In freediving or breath-holding . I mean , we are holding our breath ,

but when you look at it from a physiological point of view,

it's not like you're without oxygen, right?

It's like supply and demand. It's basic economics.

There's only so much supply of oxygen in your body.

It's in your lungs and your blood.

Training with the cast was interesting

because I had people who are really good water people

to people who were just really learning to be water comfortable and swim,

let alone free dive.

WEAVER: And I thought, "oh, this is just Jim."

And yet, at the first lesson that Kirk gave us,

I held my breath for a minute and a half

and I thought, "Wow, what is this?"

And it just shows you how little we know about our systems and what they can do.

The training was scarier in theory,

but once you met Kirk, and you went through the breathing trainings

and understanding why we do the things that we do

in terms of like, how to get your body to hold its breath more,

then you're so proud ofyourself for doing it.

WEAVER: You can literally feel your whole bodyjust changing,

relaxing into the water till the waterjust holds you up.

WI NSLET: Jim believes that everyone can push themselves

just that little bit further

to have a sort of an inherent belief that humans can be capable

of almost superhuman things sometimes.

CAMERON : I've been a free diver for 50 years

and I can dive down to 135 feet.

And I think the longest I've ever held my breath was five and a half minutes.

So these ladies, with a couple of weeks training,

just smoked us all.

-(HORN BLARI NG) -WI NSLET: Whoo !

(MAN LAUG HS)

Yes !

Right. Champagne?

Champagne? Yeah .

(BLOWS LONG NOTE)

(JAKE WHOOPI NG)

(SQUAWKI NG)

(PEOPLE YI PPI NG)

We are Reef People.

In the first movie, the Omatikaya designs were inspired by the rainforest.

The Metkayina designs are all inspired by the ocean,

and that is true for both costumes and production design .

JAMES CAMERON : The Metkayina have adapted half a million years ago to ocean life.

We wanted to force our characters to rapidly adapt to an environment

that the Metkayina had had centuries to adapt to.

I started cranking out all these images of different ideas for the reef people.

Researching as much influence as I could from around the world.

U ltimately, though , we took the designs all the way to the point of breaking them .

They were bulkier, a bit more of a swimmer's body, stronger thighs.

And Jim was art directing all of us into that direction.

The Ocean Na'vi have very different physiology.

They have a very powerful tail.

It's part of their ability to swim.

Very deep chested so that they can hold their breath for seven to eight minutes.

The hips are slightly wider, which is perfect for me.

I'm excellent casting .

And they have a sort of a fin on their lower arm

that helps with a particular stroke to propel them faster

and more efficiently through the water.

And their shade of blue is slightly different.

It's more of a kind of a cyan blue

than that sort of brighter blue of the tree people.

We see that they have strong markings on their bodies and faces.

And instead of very linear stripes,

they're much more variegated and wavy style stripes.

And one of the reasons we thought of that

was that its water adaptation to mimic

more the effects of light going through water

and creating what we call caustic patterns,

where you see like light ripples for more of a camouflage underwater.

They're good at living in the forest and we're good at living on the sea.

You are Forest People.

Your skills will mean nothing here.

Even though they are alien characters, that actor has to be that character.

So Joe will take photographs of the actor

and really take a lot of their facial elements.

That's the starting point.

And then we try and take what is inherent around their eyes.

Since so much is expressed through the eyes,

so it'll be like eye shape, eye placement,

obviously, it's Na'vi , so the eyes are further apart.

But if there's distinctive eyelids or wrinkles or furrows in their brow,

we try and take whatever we can

to make sure that that actor's humanity will be in that Na 'vi character.

And then as the character begins to emote, that changes a lot.

-No way! -So the dimple,

it'll move the way you do.

COLE: Ultimately, from stripe placement and tattoos,

it still evolves in visual effects.

CAMERON : We had a costume designer, Deborah Scott,

Academy Award winner I've worked with since Titanic.

She had to kind of have a foot in both worlds

because she had to design all the costumes for the RDA.

But she also had to have the whole other half of her brain

to design all the costumes andjewelry

and hair designs and hair decoration and everything for the Na'vi .

DEBORAH SCOTT: There's something kind of appealing about that.

On the first film , we would make maybe a partial piece

because you can replicate it if it's something like a neck piece

that is the same in the front as it is all the way around.

The digital artists can duplicate that,

but the motion of the garment

cannot be understood without having the whole piece.

So if something's heavy or feathery or light or stringy or fringy,

the way these things move in air, standing in a breeze,

underwater for sure, which is a huge part of the movie,

you really have to have the sample to see what happens to it.

It's gonna be amazing .

-It really is. -Exciting .

-Oh , my god ! -(BOTH LAUG H)

PEPE: The Cliff Curtis costume movement test.

That's the first time, really, I got to see Cliff as a human ,

but dressed as Tonowari.

CAMERON : It's really nice, it has some pretty amazing pattern .

(SHOUTS)

(SHOUTS)

With the cape and a wig on .

And they threw him on top of one of the skimwing bucks.

Turned on the Ritter fan to like 75%.

And he had a spear and he's posing.

He's doing his character and you're like, "Ah ! Wow! It's come to life."

CAMERON : Pretty heroic image, buddy.

It's really good .

And it was fun to watch J im walk right on a stage

and he starts to smile because you can tell he sees it.

And you feel it too.

Pretty cool , right?

I honestly believe that being able to create the garments

in their full glory as opposed to just a piece of 2D concept artwork,

is changing the way that digital films will be made.

Every fabric and every woven piece or every braid and feather,

they all have their own life to them.

They all move in their own way.

And that's not something you can get from just looking at a piece of a*ork

and translating that to a screen.

Having real samples that you can really hold

and you understand the weight of them and the way that they would move.

That's been really valuable to me.

It's also creating a coherency across departments

that we haven't really ever had to this extent before.

JOH N ROSENG RANT: Even though these are digital characters,

I think there's something to be said

about bringing the character into the real world ,

if nothing else, but to look at it, see how the coloration works on the face,

see how the hair really responds

'cause we're making real wigs and hair on the characters.

It really helps to bring them to life.

It's totally the way to do this, to just get the hair on the model .

Oh , wow.

That's. . . (GASPS) Wow.

Everybody's in love with this.

We have a tremendous amount of materials that we were lucky to gather,

and they come from everywhere.

I mean, we can have something as simple as a piece of string

and we can have some exotic fibers

that have come from Fiji or Polynesia or some other place.

There are a lot of things from the natural world.

We spent a lot of time, me, myself personally, on beaches

picking up driftwood and shells

and skeletons of things that were all inspirational to the project.

And we also got a big loom

and we literally have woven fibers ourselves,

dyed them , made fabric, completely from the ground up.

We do try and root ourselves in some sort of reality.

So it's weaving . I mean , is this weaving even possible?

How do we transition from one weave to the next?

Because Jim is incredibly technical,

so he wants to know how these things are actually made.

These pieces come from a shell that I found on the beach

and then we 3D-modeled them in different ways

they don't really grow in nature so it's otherworldly

and then cast them and painted them

and it looks like real shells of some sort.

It'll be hard for even me to tell

which are the real and which are the laminate ones.

And then we also did a lot of, uh , knives.

STEPH EN CROWE: When we started looking at designing the knives

for the Metkayina, we needed to somehow differentiate them

from the kind of knives and weapons that we'd seen for the Omatikaya.

And one way to do that was through materiality and color.

The kinds of materials that they used for the blades

were sort of like a crystal material or an obsidian material, as...

We're here with Karl

who's working on the scabbard for Ronal's ceremonial knife.

This is one of the most complex and amazing pieces I think we've created .

Now, Karl is working out how to actually turn this clay sculpt

into a believable piece of real shell .

So Karl is cutting out individual panel pieces

and then forming them and gluing them all back together

to form the backbone of the scabbard .

It's looking amazing .

And the final piece is going to be incredible.

This all speaks to J im's process a bit.

The detail we put into the knives and the logic

and the forethought that we put into the props

are all there to make the story more real,

to give the audience a real sense that this clan is different than this clan.

And if we pay attention to these details,

we think that it'll help build the worlds that we're trying to show,

the different regions of the greater planet

in a much more real way.

-CAMERON : Oh , that's nice ! -Isn't that cool?

-You get style points. -(LAUG HS)

RICHARD TAYLOR: Our team are defining multiple cultures

across multiple artifacts.

We're trying to bring the same level of craftsmanship

that a Na'vi may have learned since birth

through the hands of our extremely well-skilled technicians.

COLE: Here's where we ended up with Metkayina village,

very much an analogy for the Na 'vi

and the way they exist on Pandora in general is it's all about connectivity.

So the walkways and all their homes, all these marui, they're all connected.

It's all done with tensile structure,

tensile membrane, stretch triangle shapes and curves.

KAMATH : How a whole village is so tensile,

that it was an inherent part of the question, you know.

And then it's also like, all these various weaves,

how did they come together?

So we took that section and then I talked to Workshop about,

you know, how this could actually happen.

And then we talked of the various materials.

There's a specific kind of flax we were looking at.

Cracking the visual look of the marui was very difficult

and this was one of the ones that Jim felt was successful

in terms of being realistic and working in its environment.

It's beautiful , but it's engineered at the same time

and they really take care,

they have a lot ofpride in the homes that they build

and everything is done with high intention,

with uniqueness to its family.

MONA PETERS: One of those miniature buildings

that we're working at the moment,

the Sully Marui that Jake Sully and Neytiri are living in

when they're in the Reef Village.

We are creating this at sixth scale, so quite a small size,

which is still in our world about four by seven meters.

We're weaving this and knotting this at an incredible high amount of detail.

I think our team worked about 4, 000 hours on just the Sully Marui itself.

That believability, that reality that we're managing to bring to the movie

is 1 00% going to make it just more real for everyone.

Any big system is the same, excellence in , excellence out.

We created all this stuff in advance in such detail.

What comes out is quite stunning.

Seeing all this stuff really coming to life,

it's just so exciting.

Everything that we do on this film is based in some sort of reality.

Because that's the only way to engage ourselves as audience members.

(WI NGS FLUTTERI NG)

We want this to look like we went to Pandora with a film crew,

shot the movie, came back, here it is.

JON LAN DAU : Our expectations of what Wötä was going to deliver for visual effects

is beyond anything ever is asked

of a visual effects company before.

We are asking them to create

more characters, more assets, more effect simulations

for all of the water work we are doing than anyone has ever done before.

And we're asking them to do it

at a higher level of result.

LENA SCAN LAN : This is a massive project.

Normally, visual effects houses get 4 to 600 shots coming through .

But this is 3, 400 shots.

So we knew that we had to not only develop the tools

to be able to look fantastic

and make sure the images were amazing,

but also create them over and over and over again.

LAN DAU : Wötä has made improvements to every visual effects technology

aspect of the film, including character animation,

creatures and environments, especially water.

But their focus was on improving the facial animation.

JAMES CAMERON : I think the biggest challenge on this film

is that we have to create

a very human emotional reality,

what the actors did, what they brought

in a tight close up with a face that's made up ofpixels.

U ltimately, the job of the actor is to make choices.

And then for me, particularly, being able to look at the animation ,

it's really the quality of the performance, the attention to detail

and understanding where the idiosyncrasy of each performance is.

Get outta here.

BAN EHAM: And how somebody's feeling and what they really mean when they talk,

if you can get that to carry, now you have a performance.

STEPH EN CLEE: What we get as a template form,

which is just a mock-up of where the character should be,

which performance they've chosen for that character.

We would then bring in the raw performance capture.

We also track their face.

We then put that all together

and making sure that we get the truest performance

to what the actor had on the day.

I will not stand and do nothing !

It's a trap. They want us to hit back.

They're not hunting tulkun.

They're hunting us.

We're interested in the character that reminds us of the actor.

So we take the actor's features, we try to preserve

as much as we can, especially around the mouth and the eyes.

You look at the topography of the face

and how that's moving , and extrapolate backwards

into what's driving it,

how the muscles are laid out.

It's pretty revolutionary the way that the facial's been done.

Previously, when you capture facial,

the data that it's picking up

is essentially surface data. With the new system, it takes that data,

but it embeds that data into muscle strains.

There's a lot of artistry still involved , but out of the box,

it's gonna look like the actor.

It's completely changed the way we do things.

Do not test me !

In order to create a shot of Zoe playing Neytiri , first of all ,

we would take Zoe through a full gamut of her expressions and range.

Little details that make Zoe Zoe.

The signature moves of how she holds tension in her lip,

the tension that forms around her philtrum is very iconic.

The outer lower corners, the way they pull down through the risorius muscle.

And what we really want to do is to create a digital double

that can recreate all of those subtleties.

And then the journey begins to transfer that into Neytiri.

And what does Neytiri have that maybe Zoe doesn't?

Obviously, eyes that are so much bigger,

different anatomy of face, forehead.

We try to keep as much of Zoe into Neytiri as we can ,

but there are obviously differences, with one being a Na'vi .

The way that the nose wrinkles

and behaves more like a lion, lioness' nose.

U ltimately, our job is we wanna see a performance that Zoe gives us.

I pray for the strength that I will not

pluck the eyeballs out of my youngest son ! (SNARLS)

SCAN LAN :I sometimes forget (LAUG HS) that Neytiri and Jake aren 't real people

'cause I've spent so much time with them over the last five years,

but also, they're just so real .

You watch them and it's all about the faces.

ADCOCK: As we evolved the puppet of Kiri,

we were constantly testing against older footage of Sigourney.

J im was really precious about trying to get the same feeling

and the same youthfulness

that Sigourney evoked on screen forAliens.

And so we did a little dialogue test to make sure

that the Kiri puppet held up quite well to some of this reference.

Sigourney holds herjaw quite far forward.

It's very much a Sigourney characteristic.

She also has these supporting pillars underneath her lip

that give her a presence,

and a Sigourney smile is very unique to her.

And we needed to kinda capture that,

but also capture it so it felt more like a teenage version of Sigourney.

It was a real challenge, but a great exercise and something that

looking back on now, the performances really ring through .

-Where's Spider? -They took him .

They took him .

CAMERON : These characters, in a funny way, are almost more emotional.

You feel them, which is kind of the thing that I'm most satisfied about,

it's an emotional movie.

And we did succeed in preserving what the actors did .

(ALL PANTI NG I N EXHAUSTION)

(SOBS)

LAN DAU : One of our favorite elements of the visual effects process

is creating the creatures of Pandora,

building them with scientific rigor of a real creature

while giving them the force and personality

of real animals as well.

Creatures Department provide puppets to animation and the motion departments.

So that means providing

a kind of an internaljoint hierarchy that can either be driven by a key frame

in terms of animators animating controls and moving those joints around

or it can be driven using performance capture.

Whoa, whoa ! Bro !

MARCO REVELANT: Ifyou talk about creature,

you have a skeleton structure,

you have a muscle system, and you need to make sure

everything behaves realistically. Also the rigging process involved,

creating the tool for animation to use.

The way they interact with the character,

how they move the arm, hands, etc.

We have the skimwings. We have the ilus.

We have the tulkun and they're all based off of marine animals,

which means as animators, we have to go out and find reference.

ERIC SAI N DON : There's always something real that we can base our creatures on

to understand their motion.

You have to believe these creatures could move like that

or your mind just won't allow it to think it's real .

REYNOLDS: The ilu , they've got these giant fins,

they could swim like dolphins,

they could swim like manta rays,

or they could swim like X-wing fighters 'cause they had four sets of wings.

So we built all these different swim cycles.

It's possible they can use all of them, depending on their mood.

For the capture for the ilu, we have our performers and stuntees

riding around on Seabobs underwater in the tank.

So this gives us a really good starting point,

because it gives accurate reactions to the water and very believable motion.

From there, the animation team will bring in our ilu puppet,

and we'll try and integrate the character with that ilu .

REYNOLDS: The ilu also has this long neck

which affords you the ability to have a look around and be kinda curious

and be quizzical and emote in a way that fish can 't.

Seals have necks, they're aquatic,

they're built in the same way. So we used

some reference from seals, who can also be cute.

-(I LU G RU NTS) -(G IGG LI NG)

JOH NSTON : This is one of these whale-like creatures

that we were asked to build.

It has some kind of recognizably whale-like features,

but also, you know, some very Pandorian kind of features.

The tail is very different in terms of the way

that it spreads out at the back. When it's moving,

there's some kind of tendrils and things that are clearly

not what you'd see on a whale.

These are kind of really interesting features we needed to take into account

when we started to rig the creature up

and to kind of turn it into something that was going to function.

SAI N DON : Jim really wanted that fun interaction

between a boy and his tulkun .

Payakan didn 't want to be just a big, hulking whale going through the scene.

He wants to be this character

that you can relate to, that you feel for.

With not a lot to emote,

like in his face, you have to feel that emotion

through his fins, through his eyes.

LAN DAU : The new film takes us beyond the forests

with new biomes, new environments,

and most especially, the very unique and alluring, water.

As long as I've been working in this industry, water's been hard .

It's something that we're all very familiar with.

When it's not perfect, you can tell that it's not perfect.

The water is really a living creature on this film ,

and it's a hard one to control.

JOH NATHAN N IXON : The water tells its own story.

It's being used to show what are the conditions that the characters are in .

So, hey, we need bigger splashes or we need the water to be more calm.

This is supposed to be a lagoon, not supposed to be a big, violent ocean.

And so you do need to work with the characteristics of that water

in order to help tell the story.

J im was very clear on what the look of the water is.

How clear is it?

What is the color? How far can I see?

How is the light traveling? How are things moving?

(N EYTI RI YELPS)

(N EYTI RI G RU NTS)

N IXON : Your environment is dynamic.

Where a lot of times you work on a movie, the environment doesn 't move.

You're inside of a building or inside of a forest.

Or here, you're inside of an ocean . And that ocean is constantly moving

and creating its own character to what's happening in the environment around it.

TODD LABONTE: The biggest challenge is the scope.

Every shot is packed to the rafters

with characters, water interaction.

So you've got boats on the water,

people on the boats, tulkun on the water.

So we have a rough water surface basically.

An infinite plane of sine waves that simulate a water surface.

We can put a boat on that, and it looks pretty decent.

We can put a tulkun on there and we know that roughly,

his head is out of the water this much .

So now you have a boat chasing the tulkun,

and it's splashing.

The tulkun wake now affects the boat,

so the boat has to lift.

Then the boat lifts, but that changes the water as well.

So then the boat might have to drop down again ,

because everything is simmed on top of itself

It's like this circular ring of suffering that has to be solved . (LAUG HS)

So the water interaction is this crazy loop of animation

to effects, to animation to effects, to animation.

Brace yourself!

(ALL YELL)

LAN DAU : It's notjust about the water.

What is the water's impact on a person's body?

If I'm underwater and I'm traveling at a high speed,

what is that water doing to my face?

What is that water doing to my hair?

We know intrinsically what someone's hair looks like

when they dive into a swimming pool, but actually simulating that

and trying to simulate every single hair is really difficult.

This shot, here, we've got a live-action foreground .

The rest is all digital and we have to have a character

coming up out of the water here,

and she needs to feel like she's obviously fully affected

by what's going on with the water.

We run a simulation here, and we try and approximate

what's happening with the live-action plate

and our extension of it as close as possible.

We then use that simulation to affect the hair.

This is the result we can get out of what we'd call a coupled simulation.

-(GASPI NG) -Kiri !

SAM COLE: There's shots and sequences where the water is on fire.

There's characters with fully coupled clothing and hair

inside of the water sim that's fully coupled . It has foam , aeration ,

micro bubbles, all of that going on

all in the same shot while delivering dialogue.

Grab on .

It sort of hits the bingo of everything that's difficult to do in a shot.

And it all gets simulated together at once, which is fantastic.

When we started on the project, I was really keen to work

on something that had biolume.

We have this sequence of Kiri and Jake sitting

on the canoe docks and she's rotating her legs in the water.

It's a beautiful sequence. It's plaul,

it's meant to be her connecting with Pandora and Eywa,

and she's having a moment with her dad.

We started with this animation. We had the direction from Jim to say

it's all about the storytelling . It's about Kiri sitting there,

she's thinking about stuff, and Jake's being a dad

and it's that moment, we had bioluminescent coral inside the water.

We also had these fishes where the fishes have trails.

So the faster a fish swims,

it would do a certain kind of trail , and produce more particles,

brighter particles.

The tricky thing was we had never done biolume

that was inside water.

These are unicelled organisms.

And ifyou irritate them really quickly, they'll flash brighter.

Ifyou softly move them, they have a soft glow.

And for a small organism like that to have that complexity of behavior,

that's what's amazing about this.

We need to put all of the stuff we've learned for effect sims,

for look, for particle simulation,

for lighting and let's learn and make this look amazing.

So a lot of detailed research , tons of research

that all went into this shot. And this is the product

of, I guess, two years of learning how to do this stuff.

Jim was very happy with the sequence.

So what does Eywa's heartbeat sound like?

Mighty.

I don't think there's anybody out there that can do what Wötä does.

They proved it on Avatar and Alita.

They proved it on the Apes films.

They proved it on The Lord of the Rings films.

(PAYAKAN BELLOWS)

And they proved it tenfold on this film .

(YELLI NG)

(G RU NTS)

(BOTH GASPI NG)

Avatar is about a clash between civilizations

and the beauty of the planet of Pandora.

The bad guys need their ways of doing the terrible things they do.

A lot's changed since your last tour here.

Walk with me.

(MACH I N ES WH I RRI NG LOU DLY)

JAMES CAMERON : For the human world,

which is highly technological and highly recognizable to us

we wanted to have a high degree of creativity

and be very tech-forward

in the tradition of Syd Mead who did great futurist designs.

Ben Procter is the best designer

of near future technology that I've ever seen.

He's not only amazing as an artist himself

but he also understands that they're there for a narrative purpose

and what are they saying .

PROCTER: Jim is always first and foremost a storyteller,

and he doesn 't want to ever fetishize technology in the movie.

He doesn't want to make a point of it.

It is there to tell the story just like everything else.

Hell's Gate, as formidable as it may have seemed in Avatar 1 ,

was just a tiny piece of what the RDA is doing.

It wasn 't the full might that's available back on Earth.

Now the RDA has a lot of money and they're not messing around

and they're not gonna make the same mistake twice.

So when they come back, they come back on a whole different scale.

That means all the vehicles, all the weapons, all the props,

all the RDA wardrobe were all designed by a team of artists.

PROCTER: When we first see Bridgehead,

the impression that Jim wanted to give is just of infinite construction.

Ifyou think of how Dubai looked

at certain points in its recent development,

where there was just so much money going in to turn the desert into a city

with hundreds of cranes visible at the same time,

that's the impression that we're going for.

It's a full-blown industrial port.

It's got all kinds of different capabilities.

But everything the RDA does, they're doing at Bridgehead

because they have a new ocean-going operation.

I don't think it's any secret that I like the ocean ,

I like being underwater, I like being at sea,

I like to be in submarines.

So give me a blank slate.

Let's see what the RDA does with the ocean .

The SeaDragon is the big enemy ship, 400 feet long,

which is this monstrous ship that can come up on hydrofoils

and lift itself right out the water in ground effect

and skim over the water at 120 knots.

U nlike the Dragon in Avatar 1 which was explicitly a military craft,

the SeaDragon is actually a commercial ship

that's essentially a mothership

for all kinds of other vehicles that form the whaling operations of the RDA.

CAMERON : Imagine a whaling ship that can move 120 miles an hour.

That's pretty cool , right?

But it's put together from bits and pieces of technology

that really exists in the world today and are possible.

The SeaDragon has a big magic trick up its sleeve

and that is that, lo and behold ,

the entire nose of the thing clamshells open into two,

forming not only the central foredeck,

but now that foredeck has a couple of different wings for deploying Crab Suits

and recovering other vehicles and whatnot.

(ALARM BLARI NG)

PROCTER: The SeaDragon was one of the sets

that we needed to build almost in its entirety.

SCORESBY: Get in there !

PROCTER: We built the well deck.

It was a giant set that's only a partial of what's really there.

(ALL G RU NTI NG)

PROCTER: The most fun aspect of these big RDA vehicles,

of course, is how they die, how do they meet their demise.

LU KE FREEBORN : We can 't do a James Cameron movie

without a scene of water chasing people through a sinking ship.

WOMAN : Action !

(SCREAMS)

(SCREAMS)

(SYSTEM TRI LLI NG)

PROCTER: The Matador is a 50-foot boat.

There's only one Matador and the purpose of those

is herding and corralling of the tulkun pod using grenade launchers.

Target over here.

Yeah , that's it. Wait.

The Matador's the kill boat which then comes in and uses this harpoon .

CAMERON : Adam , you do...

You don't want to be standing here talking to somebody like this

-and pull the trigger. -MAN : He'll do it. I've done it.

-GARRETT WARREN : You can do it. I did it. -(LAUG HS) Right. Right.

It's awesome. It's one of my favorite things

that I've ever seen in my life. I want one.

It's huge. And to see the harpoon gun on the front of it was badass.

MAN : (ON PA) Three, two, one. . . Action.

(G RU NTI NG)

Reload ! Reload !

Back full ! Back full !

Man your weapons !

-CAMERON : That will do. -(VOCALIZES COCKI NG WEAPON)

-Yup. -(WARREN G RU NTS)

Where are you , you son of a bitch?

CAMERON : Yeah . And you're getting towed while that's happening .

-Yes. So. . . (VOCALIZI NG CRASH I NG) -Yes.

The whole thing about the Matador

is that this overall design conveys the speed , right?

It has to be a fast boat.

SCORESBY: Keep going . Let's go !

Go, go !

CAMERON : (ON PA) And action!

The Matador weighs maybe ten and a half tons.

So Steve, he's building a new massive motion base to cope with that.

(ON PA) Three, two, one. . . Base.

And. . . action!

And. . . go!

I bought one from Air New Zealand which was an ex-flight simulator

and then we had to pull it apart and re-engineer the whole thing.

(LOU D WH I RRI NG)

CAMERON : So you've got this big ship that rocks up

and it puts the small boats in

and so the lead ship, the Matador, Spanish for killer,

and then there are the Picador boats.

(SYSTEM TRI LLI NG)

What do the picadors do in a bullfight?

(ENG I N ES WH I RRI NG)

They hector and move the bull around and tire it out

and all that for the Matador to make the kill shot.

Well, this is the motif that they do

when they're hunting these gigantic creatures.

The Picador is being fabricated from scratch in New Zealand ,

and as opposed to any normal movie

where you would go and find a boat that kind of looks good enough,

Jim wanted the boat that we want it to be.

So that's exactly what we've built.

-WOMAN : Action ! -(LOU D WH I RRI NG)

MAN : Camera !

I used a guy, Alister Baxter,

and we just started from the ground up and designed the boat.

When I first got the Picador,

Ben Procter had done a lot of work

in kind of realizing what he was hoping it to be.

The engines, I ordered as custom-built engines in the States

and the jet units were custom,

and then we had three different CNC milling companies

machining all of our different elements.

Wow. That's awesome.

We're here this morning in this beautiful secret location in North Auckland .

And we're here to test the Picador and put it through its paces.

(ENG I N E REVVI NG)

SI NCLAI R: Does over 42 knots,

can stop from top speed in one boat length.

Which is quite frightening when you're aboard it.

You've gotta hang on .

PROCTER: It was pretty amazing.

We've been working on this boat for, God , about 5 years now or something like that.

But until Ijust got on it and saw it on the water,

I feel like I've never seen it in its natural environment.

So pretty cool to get that perspective on it.

(SCREAMS)

(SYSTEM TRI LLI NG)

So our air vehicles in the sequels have gotten an upgrade.

(WH I RRI NG)

CAMERON : I didn't think we'd be able to beat the Samson,

the Samson was pretty cool.

But, you know, the H uey had to give way to the Black Hawk,

so the Samson got to give way to the Kestrel .

The Kestrel is the twin rotorcraft.

It's longer, higher, and wider.

It's substantially larger and very complicated .

It makes the Samson look pretty simple.

Here, Spider's engaging .

-He's like. . . (VOCALIZES FI RI NG) Right? -MAN : Yeah .

And then he just gets grabbed and taken .

The Kestrel is still a really military vehicle full of ammunition .

It's a gunship, so it's still got that hard edge.

They haven 't got soft cushions on them.

They haven 't got all that luxury, you know?

MAN : Grab it just like this.

-This way? -MAN : Yeah , exactly.

-Now if you grab the piece of cylinder. . . -I don't know if they'd buy it.

I would not trust my life to that grip. I'd trust my life to that grip.

-MAN : Yeah , yeah . -You know what I mean?

Whoo-hoo-hoo ! (LAUG HS)

(SYSTEM TRI LLI NG)

JON LAN DAU : There's a new exoskeleton that we call a Skel Suit.

It's something that allows humans to operate

at the scale of a Na 'vi or of an avatar

and characters like General Ardmore will have a Skel Suit.

So when she's out in the field,

she can be eye-to-eye with an avatar where it amplifies their movement,

but it also has very fine detail,

enough for someone to even pour a cup of coffee and drink from it.

Earth is dying .

J EREMY HAN NA: The tricky side of it is, it had to have quite a complex mechanism

for how you would actually control the motion of the hands

being that the arms would be so much longer than a human arm.

Ifyou wanted to be able to touch your own face,

the hand has to be able to come really close to you

and then when you reach out,

the hand has to go much, much further than you can reach.

I think that was quite a complex part for us to resolve.

EDI E FALCO: The Skel Suit is a suit of metal parts

that are meant to make her have the same stature as a Na'vi .

She's taller and arms are longer.

It's just more like a psychological thing

so she makes sure everybody knows who's in charge.

-(PANTI NG) -General Ardmore.

-Good to meet you , Colonel . -H mm .

I've heard good things...

(SYSTEM TRI LLI NG)

PROCTER: The Crab Suit is the answer to,

"What do you do when you want an AMP Suit that goes underwater?"

Jim felt that the RDA would take inspiration from a sea creature, right?

That it literally looks like a crab

because you can borrow a lot of the aspects of a crab

for practical reasons.

The crab has different modes, right?

So unlike an AMP Suit which is just one thing ,

a crab can be a crab

and then it also has a mode where it tucks its legs in

and becomes extremely hydrodynamic.

So we call it Crab Mode and Sub Mode.

MARTI N I : When it's in Sub Mode, you can see the legs folded.

Jim was like, "Look at a real crab.

"That's how I wanted it to actually look like."

So I actually had to kind of back engineer what it actually looks standing .

ADAM GOU RLEY: So this is the Crab Suit.

It's a highly detailed portion of a build .

It's an amazing piece.

Everything is real, real milled parts, real functional things here.

This is not a cheat.

CAMERON : A lot of the shots are the crab just flying around .

-And their arms are stowed . -MAN : Cool .

CAMERON : There's other shots where they're flying around in Crab Mode.

The seat is really like the main focal point of this build .

The analogy that I've always used is it's kinda like riding a horse.

We have a Waldo system for the arms, right?

But the legs, you've got a four-legged creature

that can do all this crazy behavior.

Ifyou were trying to shoot an arrow off a horse,

you'd be using your hands to operate the weapons

and using your legs to tell the horse where you want to go.

(WH I RRI NG)

(SYSTEM TRI LLI NG)

PROCTER: On the SeaDragon , we have Mako subs

which are launched out of a sort of a bomb bay moon pool

in the bottom of the ship in a very fun way into the water.

Because Jim knows submarines and knows these kinds of vehicles so well,

we had to hold ourselves to a very high standard

in terms of the detailed design.

J im had the chance to build a sub himself

when he explored the deepest portion of our ocean as we know it.

So, when it comes to listening to him giving notes

and critique about a submarine design,

it's incredible because he does have the experience for real.

He's been through many deep-sea explorations.

CAMERON : This all your work?

Collaboration , of course.

N ice.

Fantastic.

-I'm buying that sub. -Sweet.

-Look at how cool it's gonna be. -Literally.

Part of the human factors on this was how to get people in and out.

And that's where the top hatch came in.

We felt that that was the best placement for it.

You need to be able to get in and out real quickly.

We have a certain beat where the Mako is crashed and flooded .

(HORN BLOWI NG)

PROCTER: And of course, Jim who loves

these kinds of calamitous things with water,

wants to do it all really practically with a camera and a wet housing inside here.

WOMAN : (ON PA) Guys are getting in.

-Let's shoot. -MAN : All right, here we go.

WOMAN : Here we go.

And three, two, one. Action!

-(ALARM BEEPI NG) -Go ! Breach ! Masks on !

Masks on ! Go !

(G RU NTI NG)

(VI LLAG ERS SHOUTI NG)

As the bad guy production designer on the film ,

there's nonetheless an enthusiasm for totally brutal machinery

thatjust looks really cool.

And the amount ofpower and the amount of engineering

and the amount ofplanning and all that stuff

that goes into something like a mission to another planet.

(ENG I N E ROARI NG)

(WH I RRI NG)

I thought I'd just start by welcoming the newcomers.

J im and I , we have sort of talked over the years

about trying to come up with something to do together.

Find an opportunity to work together again.

And I obviously really loved the first film .

J im wrote a very complex and deep character.

Ronal is the shaman of the Metkayina people.

Casting that role required us to find

an actress who could be strong and bold yet subtle.

There's more happenstance sometimes in casting than people are aware of.

We had been looking at a number of people for this role.

And J im literally called one day and said ,

you know, "I was just talking to Kate about a personal thing ,

"and I was thinking, what about her for Ronal?"

WI NSLET: My children said, when I said to them,

you know, "J im Cameron's sending me the script for Avatar."

They just said , "Why are we even having this conversation?

"Obviously, you've got to do it. You've got to do it."

And I have to say, the added watery element,

for me, was another huge pull, because I am a water person,

all Titanic jokes aside.

Yes !

JAMES CAMERON : Kate's kind of a ball of fire.

-We were obviously lucky to get her. -(SCREAMS)

She came in and she spent two or three days watching how it was all done

and then basically started producing the scenes.

-But it was fun. I welcomed that. -(LAUG HS)

He's been amazing at letting me bring lots of ideas about Ronal .

The character's really, really evolved

as a specific result of the conversations between Jim and myself

You allowed this.

You allowed him to bond with the outcast!

CAMERON : Kate has quite a presence in the film.

She's not really like anybody else in the movie.

Maybe Neytiri's the closest 'cause they're both very strong , alpha characters.

And of course, they clash. That was fun.

Watching them meet and clash is one of my favorite parts of the film.

Their arms are thin .

-Mom . -Their tails...

-Ow. -. . .are weak.

You will be slow in the water.

(BOTH SNARLI NG AN D H ISSI NG)

J im brought her into his cutting room

and we were showing her some stuff that we'd been working on

and she looked at us and said,

"Do you know that you've been a part of my life now

"for more than half my life?"

(CH UCKLES)

So it's great to have Kate back.

You brought this war to us.

Now you must stand with us.

CLI FF CU RTIS: Kate Winslet is a legend.

Not because of her past work alone, but the way she just rocked in here.

She has these huge underwater sequences

and she did it all and she made it look easy.

I know it wasn 't easy.

I know how hard she works, but she's amazing . She's a real force.

Ronal's husband Tonowari is an imposing chief of the Metkayina clan .

JAKE: I See you , Tonowari .

Jake Sully.

LAN DAU : We needed to find an actor who would have the presence

of strong royalty in a clan-like structure.

And we were so lucky that Cliff Curtis chose to do this part.

Hear my words, boy.

LAN DAU : Cliff Curtis comes from New Zealand. He's Mäori.

Culture and history of his lineage is very important to him .

This is what we call he koha aroha.

So, this is our gift of love to you all , to wish you all your best.

(SHOUTI NG I N MÄORI)

CU RTIS: This was something special.

This was an invitation for me to bring who I am as a Mäori ,

as an indigenous person ,

and to engage on a sort of spiritual level .

-(ALL SI NG I NG) -And I'd never been so inspired

to do some of the things that I've done on this shoot.

Cliff brought a specific kind of homage or a nod toward Polynesian culture

with all its rich detail and belief systems.

-What's wrong? -Sky People.

CAMERON : He not only brought it for himself

but he inspired a lot of the other actors to sort of emulate the way he did things.

Working with Cliff has just really been terrific.

I've been very aware of his work for a long time as an actor,

and it's just been so exciting.

Weapons. Sound the alarm !

(YI PPI NG)

I ride !

CU RTIS: This story is my story.

I think you can go around the globe and most indigenous people agree.

It's like, ah , this is amazing to see our story being told

with such a rich canvas and with an integrity

to what we've all been through together.

Treat them as our brothers and sisters.

CU RTIS: Yes, it's gonna be an amazing ride and a spectacle and a fantastic movie,

but I think there's something else that J im is bringing to the table

and it is something about the human spirit.

(SHOUTS)

(TU LKU NS BELLOWI NG)

LAN DAU : When the RDA comes back,

they come back with a new commander, General Frances Ardmore, Edie Falco.

Take us in .

And her sole focus is to take back the planet

to save humanity and to open the door

for Pandora to become the new home for humans.

We're not here to run a mine, Colonel .

As On-World Commander,

I have been charged with a greater mission .

FALCO: The mission that she's on is her guidepost for everything.

And I think she is not about letting anything get in the way

of getting the work done

and trying to gather people around who will participate in the mission

and is just not used to taking no for an answer.

I kind of love that. I love being that.

Earth is dying .

Our task here is to tame this frontier.

I have great respect for people who have an idea of a change

that can make people's lives better and they work to that effect.

The fact that Jim is using his platform

to tell stories that potentially can motivate people to change their lives...

I don't know, what else are we here for, ultimately.

Blue One. Get back to the rally point now.

Let's go, Dr. G . Let's make some money.

LAN DAU : When she comes back, she brings two people

who are sometimes at odds with each other.

One is Ian Garvin , who's a scientist.

He wants to protect the tulkun .

(TU LKU NS WH ISTLE)

Mick Scoresby played by Brendan Cowell,

who's the captain of the SeaDragon, he just wants to hunt the tulkun.

Got ya !

(WHOOSH ES)

I thought you were the intelligent species here,

-Scoresby. -Shut ya cakehole, Garvin .

(LAUG HS)

I got a call saying James Cameron wanted to meet with me.

And it's one of those calls

that you have to do it no matter who you are.

(LAUG HS)

Dr. Garvin is a marine biologist and for him ,

it's exciting to be a pioneer.

It's like discovering, even better than a new country,

a new planet where the life is completely different

to anything we've seen on Earth.

On one hand , he's excited about studying these creatures,

but he's also part of them being hunted and slaughtered .

So, he's got this big conflict.

-Come about! -Comin' about!

Get me around !

Scoresby's a character that takes up a lot of space.

He's a big personality. He's full alpha.

They were looking for an actor that could kind of do that.

-Kill something ! -Yeah !

I went and saw Brendan in a play.

And we taped him and we showed it to J im and J im was intrigued .

Well , when you can't get out of it,

better get into it.

I kind of didn't believe it when I got the call .

Action !

COWELL: I think working with James is so much about

trying to get into his mind and his world .

(WATER SPLASH I NG)

So you kinda gotta get into the film that he has in his brain .

-(LAUG HS) About time. -Yeah , yeah , yeah .

You know, add a little energy to the scene.

Once I got there, I kind of understood

what he was after and then I could kind of go for it.

You think you're pretty clever, don't ya?

(PAYAKAN BELLOWS)

WI NSLET: As an actor, everyone is so different on this film.

You know everyone's characters are very, very different

and it's been lovely to alljust have to,

you know, muck in and accept the oddness in everyone.

And for me, that's always one of the really fun parts of being an actor.

Say, "Hello" to my little friend .

CLEMENT: I've been acting in films maybe ten, 12 years,

but I'm still like, "There's that guy from the movie" in my head .

And then you have to get to another level where it's not a movie. It's real life.

We're on the planet Pandora. Let's get serious.

It wasn't nothing like this on Titanic.

-(ALL LAUG H I NG) -Nothing like this.

CU RTIS: I can go on and on about these actors.

They just are so generous, and they are a family for us.

And they do set the bar. It's extraordinary.

(ALL CH EERI NG)

It is remarkable because, yes,

this is a gigantic production , but at the same time, it feels there's

this lovely sense of sort of family and community that Jim, I have to say,

is always really good at creating .

-WOMAN : It's fantastic. -(LAUG HTER)

CAMERON : We were blessed on Avatar 2 that the actors really loved each other.

They loved coming in to work.

-CAMERON : N ice to meet you . -I love it. Yes.

CAMERON : I've heard so much about your work.

WI NSLET: I can see that he has been so happy

to have proper time with his actors

and he takes great pride in his relationships with his actors.

We're bringing his remarkable visions to life.

(APPLAUSE, CH EERS)

SIMON FRANG LEN : I wanted to say a couple of things before we started.

Somebody else should be standing here.

My best mate, James Horner.

Can we have a moment for James Horner? And also, let's just remember

and let's hope that he's looking down at us

and that he likes what's on the page and we do him proud .

(EPIC MUSIC PLAYI NG)

The score is the heartbeat of a movie.

We wanted to find a composer

who would pay homage to what James Horner had done.

We want an audience to return to Pandora

and feel the same things that Horner created.

Simon Franglen is not only a long-time collaborator of James Horner,

but he's also an incredible composer.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYI NG)

CAMERON : It's such a beautiful cue.

It's telling you that this movie has grandeur and heart.

We need to make sure that we continue that sense of lineage.

It isn't a separate score.

It has new themes but there is very much the sense

that they should be connected.

This is the child ofAvatar 1 ,

but it has to reflect the film it's being written to.

It's more about family.

And we have this whole new area which is water,

a whole new palette to play with in terms of the things I can do.

You don 't talk underwater.

The music has to act as the dialogue in some ways,

telling you that story, weaving you through

and explaining what's going on in a way that a dialogue line might do.

There is more opportunity for the music to speak.

(SEREN E MUSIC PLAYI NG)

I'm hopefully providing some of the soul .

Music is there to guide your feelings, not to guide your thoughts.

The picture and the dialogue tells you what to think.

I'm trying to tell you what to feel .

(N EYTI RI WHOOPS, G IGG LES)

(ENCHANTI NG MUSIC PLAYI NG)

(JAKE YI PPI NG)

(CH UCKLES)

FRANG LEN : Date night, I go back to James' flying theme.

I've used exactly James' chords

because it's important that there's that connection .

When they leave Hometree, we're moving to a new place.

It needs a slight variation of that sense.

(BLOWS LONG NOTE)

FRANG LEN : There's an internal rhythm to the Na 'vi.

It is part of the culture,

but it also comes from deeper within the planet.

What we're exploring is to factor that connection. Notjust through culture,

through language, but also through music and through

a rhythmic base that may actually fuse between us.

(DRUMMI NG)

FRANG LEN : This is the first swim where we first discover the beauty of the reef

And here, I'm playing you the tune,

but in a less tribal form.

(SEREN E MUSIC PLAYI NG)

-LO'AK: Whoo-hoo ! -(I N HALES SHARPLY)

FRANG LEN : I wanted it to be mermaids singing to you.

-(TU K SCREAMS) -KI RI : Whoo !

(SI NG ERS HARMON IZI NG)

FRANG LEN : They're discovering this whole new world

and now we have the melody coming through.

(SI NG ERS HARMON IZI NG)

FRANG LEN : Same chords that we heard earlier

when we arrived in the Metkayina village,

now we hear the tune that goes with it.

(SEREN E MUSIC CONTI N U I NG)

I'm trying to give you that sense of wonder.

(SI NG ERS CONTI N U E HARMON IZI NG)

FRANG LEN : The idea is about connection to nature.

(SEREN E MUSIC CONTI N U I NG)

FRANG LEN : I think that's sounding great. Let's try it one more time.

The RDA is just naked power.

(ENTH RALLI NG MUSIC PLAYI NG)

FRANG LEN : The RDA is about, "We're gonna stomp on you."

So we use the RDA's themes as blunt force

and get it when they first arrive.

This is meant to be powerful. They're not messing around.

There's this low...

(SI NG I NG NOTE) Bom ba da dum

...phrase which I'm using.

When you hear this, you know that there's metal on the screen.

What is the fabric of the film from a sound standpoint?

(TU LKU N SI NG I NG , CLICKI NG)

(FLAPPI NG)

(SNAPS)

LAN DAU : Chris has been working with us

since our first days ofperformance capture,

designing sounds for this movie.

(MU FFLED RUMBLI NG)

How do you make underwater sound interesting and intriguing?

(WATER G USH I NG)

Our job is to present sound in such a way

that it can be received by the audience in a comfortable way.

You want people to immerse themselves in it,

and never letting the sound get in the way of telling the story.

(SPLASH I NG)

The challenge with Avatar and The Way of Water

is that they take place in the future

and are beyond anything that we know today.

You have the Skel Suit that General Ardmore is in...

-(WH I RRI NG) -Good to meet you , Colonel .

... moving with some subtle servo sounds.

Release, release.

BOYES: Then we have things like the Mako subs.

Ultimately, you'll hear something that really sells that sub.

-PI LOT 1 : Target in sight. -(SENSOR BEEPI NG)

And then we have at the very end of this film ,

the SeaDragon tilting and flipping over and sinking.

(METAL CREAKI NG)

(SPLASH ES)

But in its tilt and then flip over,

I've created a whole new language of steel creaking

that really has a stutter quality to it.

(CREAKI NG)

And now we have new creatures.

The Akula, (CH UCKLES) this demonic shark-like aquatic creature

full of nothing but aggression.

(G ROAN I NG)

In my mind, I thought, "Oh, the skimwing needs to be

"a really aggressive version of the ikran."

(SCREECH ES)

'Cause they're both flying creatures, I thought,

"Yeah , I've got some really great sounds."

You put it in front of J im for the skimwing and he right away said ,

"The skimwing's really a bird. It's got to have a raptor quality."

(SCREECH I NG)

Out went all those sounds, and I went back to work.

-(SKIMWI NG SCREECH ES) -(SCREAMS)

I went a completely different direction.

And I got this amazing recording of a great blue heron .

(H ERON CLICKI NG)

(SCREECH I NG)

(SPLASH ES)

BOYES: The tulkun , it's the toughest creature I've ever dealt with.

(BELLOWS)

In any given scene that there's a tulkun, I spent a week

making every sound I could come up with from marine mammals.

-I went and recorded whales in Maui. -(BLOWI NG)

A lot of those sounds are in the film,

but more for blowholes and movement and things like that.

It's actually an intellectual species.

The tulkun have a language that they speak that is unique.

(TU LKU N WH ISTLES)

BOYES: The tulkun has the ability to communicate in a way

that emotes very human emotions.

(TU LKU N WH ISTLES)

Sadness, happiness, excitement, concern,

everything you can think of

(TU LKU N CLICKI NG)

(TU LKU N MOANS)

And if the sounds emote emotions like, "I'm so excited to meet you. . ."

(TU LKU N SI NGS)

...and "Yeah, I'm hurt. . ."

(TU LKU N MOAN I NG)

...then the audience goes, "Whoa, I get exactly what's going on here."

(I LUS SQU EAK)

The ilus, they're the fun, happy aquatic creature,

in a way, almost a puppy.

(SQUAWKS)

But they're very dolphin-esque...

(I LUS CLICKI NG , SQU EAKI NG)

...and they have components of a lot of dolphin

and a lot of Weddell seal that were recorded here in New Zealand.

(I LU CLICKS, SQU EAKS)

For a sound designer and a re-recording mixer,

water is hard because it's very broad in its frequency.

And so that is the biggest challenge,

I think, really as a mixer, to give the water a visceral quality

that speaks to the audience without it getting in the way

and eating up too much acreage for everything else.

LAN DAU : In addition to score, the movie also needed Na 'vi songs.

(SI NG ERS HARMON IZI NG)

There's a specific vocal sound that you hear in Avatar 1

which we continue with Avatar 2.

My process on writing the vocal lines,

I would write pages of lyrics and I would give them to Jim

and say, "This is what Zoe or whoever might sing."

I would get a translation from Paul Frommer into pure Na 'vi.

Then I would make a phonetic version.

You can't just make stuff up.

There had to be a reason behind everything .

Then, I would make a backing track.

I would record it. I would give it to Zoe to practice to.

-(SI NG I NG I N NA'VI) -(FROMMER CORRECTS I N NA'VI)

(SI NG I NG I N NA'VI)

FRANG LEN : Then the vocal would be recorded live on set as a single take.

(SI NG I NG I N NA'VI)

FRANG LEN : What you hear in the film, that's her performing it

because it was important to Jim that it was a visceral performance.

It wasn't about it being a song .

It's about it being a ritual .

The things that have become part of the Na 'vi ritual world

had to be part of these lyrics as well.

(SI NG ERS HARMON IZI NG I N NA'VI)

FRANG LEN : Each bead represents a point in time.

I'm wondering whether you have, for instance, maybe a gap.

You have a refrain section that's always the same

then a unique section and you pull the next bead

up to the refrain section

-and then you sing the refrain. -SALDAÑA: Sure.

Songchord with Zoe singing it is in its purest form

and it has now become the main family theme.

Initially, welcoming the birth of Neteyam.

(SI NG I NG I N NA'VI)

-Neteyam ! -(BABY SQU EALS)

NA'VI PEOPLE: Neteyam !

Then also talking about the magic of Kiri's birth .

Here is an example of a lyric.

"I experience adorn light A miracle arrives

"An impossible birth Welcome, Kiri,

"I take you to my family To my heart, to my heart."

(SI NG I NG I N NA'VI)

FRANG LEN : Jim comes from the view, the music is there to help your heart rate

and help your soul ,

and that's what I'm trying to do here.

Thank you , everybody. We're done. Have a great day.

(ALL APPLAU DI NG)

LAN DAU : Sound and music also connect us to Pandora.

And it helps us go on an emotionaljourney.

Simon and Chris' work may not be visible on the screen,

but through them , we are transported to the world .

(SHOUTS)

(TU LKU N BELLOWS)

JON LAN DAU : People oftentimes get confused as to why we're here in New Zealand.

They think we come for all the incredible locations.

We didn't film outside one day.

What brought us back to New Zealand

is the passion and the craftsmanship of the crew that exists here,

and also their willingness to embrace and learn new technologies.

For the crews here, it is a passion and you see that

across the board, whether it's in the grip department,

the electric department, the makeup department,

the hair department, the costume department.

And the pride that they have

in what they bring to the craft of filmmaking is amazing.

We're really spoiled in New Zealand for international productions coming in

and also for New Zealand productions as well .

We have amazing crew who bring a great attitude to the table,

a real can-do willingness to try anything.

(G U N FI RES)

There's none of the "Oh, I can 't do that,

"because it's not my department or that's not myjob" or anything.

Ifyou're in a fix and you're busting to get something done,

everyone pitches in.

Wötä Workshop is an amazing place.

Richard Taylor has made a community of artists

that live and work in a place together.

And it's quite large.

It's very busy.

Always.

We're just busy bees.

We jump around from one department to the next all day long .

I think also that working with your hands is kind of a dying art.

Handcrafts in a country like New Zealand are still very well praised

and certainly has been incredibly to our benefit on this project.

We're a nation of, um , can-do people.

We make things work.

I'd say it's the experience level of the crew

and what we can do in a relatively short space of time.

(LAUG HS) We're flexible and friendly.

I think we're a nation of doers, not talkers.

We just get things done.

KIM SI NCLAI R: Everyjob like this

means more people get into that field and the existing people expand .

One of our main props makers has gone from five employees to 30 on this job.

They'll be trained up and available to the industry in the future.

To have it known that the craftsmanship

and creativity of a New Zealand or a Kiwi company

is something that draws someone like Jim who has such an eye for detail

andjust to know that

that level of creativity and passion for these projects,

it draws people here.

JAMES CAMERON : The Wötä FX people are based here

and that's, I think, the greatest capability

of its kind in the world .

I don't think there's anybody out there that can do what Wötä does.

New Zealand has influenced the film

even though you never see New Zealand in the film .

'Cause we're on this other planet and it's built digitally.

But I feel like you can see influences of the geography on the planet Pandora.

'Cause the forests in New Zealand are really quite amazing places

and I feel like you see a little hint of that

and with the clothing and some of the Na 'vi culture,

you feel like a little New Zealand influence.

CLI FF CU RTIS: I've worked for over 20 years, but this was something special.

This was an invitation for me

to bring who I am as a Mäori , as an indigenous person .

(BLOWS SHARPLY)

And I'd never been so inspired .

CAMERON : There's something going on here in New Zealand.

The Mäori and their protective relationship with nature.

They're more connected to the land and they're more respectful .

J im was really inspired by our culture, the Polynesian Mäori culture.

He's creating the fantasy world in Pandora where he can draw inspiration.

It's nice, I think, for us to see how rich it makes that world

and it resonates for us as humans.

CAMERON : The fact that we're shooting these films

and doing the entire postproduction

and all the visual effects in New Zealand, I think of it as a New Zealand production.

I love it here.

I love the feeling of connection to people that you have here.

There's a social spirit, a sense of "We're all in this together

"and we're all Kiwis and we all respect each other."