Original subtitles

Casting was a real challenge.

MARG ERY SIMKI N : For every actor who does performance capture in these movies,

there's a level of gameness you have to have.

You have to be willing to jump in the pool .

(G U NSHOTS)

We were able to find people from all over the world ,

with all different cultural backgrounds to come play these characters.

Not just in the adult characters in the film , but also the kids.

-Breathe in . -(I N HALES DEEPLY)

-Breathe out slowly. -(EXHALES SLOWLY)

-Lo'ak, your heartbeat is fast. -Sorry.

Lo'ak, played by Britain Dalton , turns out to be

a very, very central and pivotal character.

The CG animators loved Britain Dalton

because he just boomed right through in his character.

Anything he did is in the animation.

LAN DAU : Lo'ak is someone that we follow in this movie

who we have to understand as the outcast,

understand as the troublemaker, but still feel a compassion for him .

Come. I will show you our village.

SIMKI N : The casting of Tsireya was challenging.

What I realized was uncompromisable

about whoever we cast was a luminosity.

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

Stay calm ,

and dive.

She has a loveliness

that is very special and really important for this character.

Plika didn't kill those boys.

You bonded again?

Look. I saw it all , alright?

The demon ship killed his mother right in front of him .

He got the young bulls and the reef boys all together to attack the ship.

They were all killed .

But because of the Sky People !

Not because of him .

He defied the elders.

Yeah , but that doesn't. . . That doesn't make him a killer.

(SIG HS) No, Entu . By the tulkun way, it does.

Yeah , but does he have to pay for it for the rest of his life?

Look, he knows what he did was wrong .

We must tell my father.

(SIG HS) No, I'm in enough trouble with my dad as it is, okay?

It's not you but I'm , like, frickin' pissed at my dad right now.

He's getting up on my back about everything .

-Your father will understand this. -No, he won't!

He doesn't understand anything !

Nobody does.

Alien blood . Demon !

That's all they see.

I See you .

I See you .

You are Brother of Tulkun.

You are one of us now.

CAMERON : Cut. That was nice instinct to grab his hand . That was good .

The youngest child , Tuk, is played by Trinity Bliss.

She came in as a seven or eight-year-old ,

but she had an intellect and a maturity that was above her years.

Trinity was the easiest.

We saw a lot of really good people. And then there was Trinity.

WOMAN : You are refusing to see what really happened .

These boys took her outside after hours in the dark

when they were not supposed to,

when they were supposed to be home with their family.

MAN : Are they here?

DI RECTOR: Stop them . Try to stop them .

Say, "Mom , Dad , stop."

Mom , Dad . J ust stop. I . . . I made them take me.

WOMAN : What are you talking about, sweetheart?

They wanted to go out without you guys knowing ,

and I told them if they didn't take me, then I would tell you guys.

WOMAN : Why did you do that? Mommy told you not to go outside.

I just really wanted to be like the big kids.

WOMAN : Sweetheart, it's dangerous out there.

You have to listen to us.

I know, and I'm very sorry.

CAMERON : Okay. Cut.

Try to pull a power move.

"I know where you're going . And I will tell Mom . . ."

Why won't you bring me?

It's just a little, like, field trip, something like that.

But with older kids.

WOMAN : You really think you can keep up with us?

Yes. I can run . I can run a lot in school .

You know, I've raced boys.

WOMAN : Are you gonna complain if you come with us?

-No. -WOMAN : No complaining?

No.

I'm telling .

WOMAN : Telling mom what?

That you guys are going .

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

Yes, I would .

DI RECTOR: Alright, let's do a contest to see who can make the sassiest face.

(BLOWS RASPBERRY)

(WOMAN BLOWS RASPBERRY)

(WOMAN BABBLES PLAYFU LLY)

(BLOWS RASPBERRY)

CAMERON : (CH UCKLI NG) Okay.

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.

Jamie had a self-assurance,

which is really different than confidence.

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

but also a vulnerability, also where you can sympathize with his character.

No way you're rolling out of here, baby brother.

Look, I gotta warn Kiyra about the pingers.

No. You've gotta keep your skxawng ass here.

He's an outcast. There's nobody else to warn him .

Bro...

why do you always have to make things so hard?

DALTON : No. You mean why I can't be the perfect brother like you?

Perfect little soldier boy.

Well , I'm not you !

He's my brother and I'm gonna go save him .

Oh , he's your brother? No, I'm your brother!

You're not my brother, get off me.

-You're not gonna go anywhere ! -Get off me !

(BOTH G RU NTI NG)

All right, that's it. You're not going anywhere !

I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

You done?

Yeah .

U nso !

There's a human child in our story called Spider.

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 a daunting task for Margie Simkin .

Spider was our big challenge.

We are casting somebody to work now,

and he wasn't going to appear live action on camera

for years to come from when we cast him .

So we were finding out from people if they had siblings

and how large their siblings turned out to be,

how tall their parents were.

We were gaming and trying to guess how a child would grow.

You know, which, in my entire career is

probably the nuttiest thing I ever had to do.

Jack Champion , aptly named

'cause he is kind of our champion in a way.

He's kind of an amazing young guy.

You know what really sucks?

That you guys can breathe Earth air for hours with your giant lungs

and I can't breathe your air for ten seconds.

Yeah , monkey boy. That really sucks.

-It does. -For you .

CHAMPION : You are selfish !

SIGOU RN EY: (LAUG HS) Ow!

Hey, Mom !

Sometimes, I think she's just going to open her eyes and smile at me.

So, who do you think knocked her up?

Because I think it might've been Ned .

Oh , my. . . (CH UCKLI NG)

-Perfect. -You do not deserve to live.

MAN : Think about it, think about it for a second . Hold on , hold on .

He was the teacher's pet. He was there with her in the lab all the time.

SIGOU RN EY: Yeah , well , stop thinking . 'Cause you're not good at it.

MAN : Wait, but they're two Avatars.

Maybe they were out in the woods one night, all alone.

(CH UCKLES)

You're Ned's love-child .

SIGOU RN EY: Gross !

Sometimes, it's not so great to know who your dad was.

-Gross ! -(LO'AK LAUG HS)

Guys. I mean , sometimes it's not so great

to know who your father was.

LAN DAU : Each child actor delivered beyond our expectations.

In the end , honestly, it's about performance.

And these kids have the essential and distinctive characteristics

of their characters.

It's so great to work with the young cast,

and they're all amazing.

-KI RI : Dad ! -Let's get it done.

(G RU NTS)

(G RU NTI NG)

People don't realize the role

that a stunt team plays on a movie.

On the Avatar sequels,

we rely on them to not do stunts that stand out as spectacular.

We ask them to do stunts that play as part of our story's narrative.

STEVE BROWN : With a James Cameron film,

the action fuels the story while the story also fuels the action

and it makes it so dynamic and it makes it so engaging

that it makes you want to know what happens next.

J im , of course, doesn't like things to just be animated .

You're gonna do them for real.

The only thing we're not real is us being blue.

(G U NSHOTS)

WARREN : I've got a dry team and I've got a wet team.

Some of the things that we're doing are gonna be 30 feet in the air.

We'll let the actors do it full-on and we'll catch their movement,

their acting and everything, and then we'll build it up

and we'll let those seasoned professionals,

those parkour professionals do that same motion.

Who do all the slinging , climbing , falling ,

grappling and all the action through the air.

LO'AK: Whoo-hoo ! Yeah !

WARREN : Those guys never slip.

BROWN : So from fighting, falling, parkouring,

we had the best in the world for each individual piece.

(BOTH G RU NTI NG)

Flying ikran is much more difficult than it ever was before.

Jim wanted people jumping on, jumping o flying around.

He even wanted that bird to fly on the stage

and be able to come to a landing.

We have multiple riggers and stunt performers operating the bird ,

helping it turn left, right, circling, flying, diving.

So we had to have our performers in sync with the creature.

(SALDAÑA WHOOPI NG)

WARREN : The wet team, you know, their breath holds are amazing.

One of my top guys, his breath hold is 11 minutes down there,

which is ridiculous.

A lot of the people came from Cirque du Soleil,

synchronized swimmers, Olympic hopefuls,

so they can move like you've never seen before in that water.

Dude's been falling off horses the same way since Truman was president.

You know, when I first was approached by Garrett,

and he's like, "We've gotta invent some stuff.

"And it's probably not possible, but if anybody can figure it out,

"James Cameron thinks I can, so let's do it."

WARREN : For the water sequences in this movie, we had to figure out

how to make some of these creatures fly underwater

and how we were going to do it.

Are we going to use this thing called the Jetovator

and use underwaterjets to help make it work?

It was like a high horse-powered squirt gun .

We gotta be the first people to actually ever take it underwater.

DEN ISON : I kept getting ripped off.

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

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

And you're. . . (MIMICS WHOOSH I NG) And there goes your hand , you know,

like, it's so fast.

WARREN : Jim built an amazing boat.

This vessel is something the military's gonna say, "Oh , we want that."

It's the Picador, and it can drive like a racecar.

Not like a race boat, a racecar inside the water.

Stop on a dime, spin, turn, take off quickly.

It's unbelievable and it looks amazing 'cause it is futuristic as well.

And it looked like it was burning rubber on water

and it equates to some of the most amazing action

I've ever seen in the water.

For the last few days, we've been working on the Picador

going around looking for skimwings, and we're being taken out.

Things are hitting the boat, we're flying out of the boat,

we're crashing into things, we're getting killed,

we're getting speared and we're doing all these different reactions.

WARREN : We shot the whole SeaDragon battle

here in the US before we got to New Zealand .

That helped drive how we would shoot practical in New Zealand.

The first part of the process

is J im saying to myself and my team , "Go kill people.

"Let's see what it looks like."

And we did . We'd come back and he'd say, "Yes, liked that.

"No, don't like that." He'd whittle away the pieces he likes

and the pieces he doesn 't like.

And then he'd inject the stuff that he likes

and once we get that together,

you have this beautiful creation that is the living , breathing fight scene.

(G RU NTS)

We then go over to the practical side of it in New Zealand

and we have real people with real guns and real masks

having to deal with the problems of getting shot with arrows,

getting grabbed by their throats,

lifted in the air, slammed into other people.

At one point...

Get down !

...there's this huge explosion on the SeaDragon

and I'm telling you right now, Jim's marching orders to me was,

"Let's do this for real. I want fire out there.

"I want air cannons. I want people running ,

"I want flames licking at people's heels.

"That's what we're doing . We're making real cinema."

Fighting underwater, what it reminds me of is,

if we were in the gym and we're hitting a heavy bag

and you're hitting that heavy bag as fast as you can,

as many times as you can and as hard as you can

while holding your breath. See how long you last.

That's probably what your limit's gonna be underwater.

The final battle is amazing , it's epic.

At one point, Quaritch and Jake have this huge knife fight

while this ship is capsizing, turning, listing and falling over on itself

We had to build this huge truss-enabled skeleton of the ship

and drive it with these computerized winches

so that it was able to turn at the right time at the right speed.

BROWN : And this is one of the processes that makes

this film feel so real is that it was real.

Now we're underwater, we're really fighting under water.

And so that's part of the process of making it real.

One of the things I love about working with Jim

is that he will create that environment for you.

If we need real fire, there's gonna be real fire on that stage.

If we need those physical things in our hands

to interact with to make it real, it will be there.

WARREN : This movie is notjust some amazing trip into another world,

it's also still a reality-based movie that's right here in your face.

The action is real, visceral,

cinema quality and awesome, and it takes you for a ride.

Climb ! Go up !

WARREN : We've got flying creatures that come out of the water.

We've got guys with little tiny submarines.

We got crab suits.

We've got a big whale-like creature slamming on ships.

And that's why I love it. It's greatness.

The Lab is the backbone of virtual production for us.

The Lab is made up of numerous different departments,

including Environments, Motion Edit, Kabuki, Sequence,

Post-Viz, Software Development.

It is the Environments department that is responsible for building

all of the sets and assets for the movie.

Every costume piece, every prop needs to be built digitally.

They have built tens of thousands of items that go into our virtual world.

The Lab is our construction workers.

They build sets virtually.

My job is essentially to take

a lot of these designs that Art department makes

and put it together in such a way that we can shoot a film

here on the stage, using the virtual camera in the virtual production system.

DEAN LEWAN DOWSKI : We have the jungles

and the underwater environments on Pandora,

as well as the human RDA side of things.

Ben Procter and I deal with all things human-based .

Dylan Cole and myself, we would be working on anything that's organic.

So, that's any of these Pandoran environments.

Once we get those designs from the Art department,

we then interact with the Zulu art department team

and we figure out how much of this area

that we need to build onstage, and they figure out the best ways

to make a proper physical representation of the virtual.

Our job is also to make sure that the virtual world

lines up to the physical build out here.

We will then bring in our troupe,

and we will do a blocking rehearsal

in that environment as a scout for J im with his virtual camera.

That helps us define how we're gonna stage scenes.

AJ BRION ES: It's kind of like the test bed.

We've got environments working , we've got creatures that are being designed .

And so it's the first time that, actually, those elements kind of come together

and we start to put scenes together. And so, we get Jim's feedback

and things get tweaked here and there, and kind of start to mess with animation,

how creatures move and how the action is blocked in

until he gets it to where he's happy.

And action !

LAN DAU : We then do performance capture.

It's only about performance.

It's not about a camera shot yet.

DON DE CASTRO: My team in the mornings make sure that the actors

that are gonna be on the stage are prepped .

So that when they go inside of the Volume,

they actually catch the characters showing up.

There's 53 markers, on each person

that goes inside of the Volume that tracks their movement,

the way they make their head turns.

And then we run through what's called the ROM,

which is a range of motion which generates how those markers move on their body.

LAN DAU : Also Sequence teams, led by Sequence Supervisors,

who are each responsible for a different sequence.

They stand up with these scene files.

We basically are assigned sequences through the movie

and we then prep that stuff for stage

where they're going to do principle capture.

So if they need whatever creatures they need in the background,

we'll have all that prepped or we'll block the scene.

After we've captured the performances, the editors view the reference footage

and they create a performance edit that shows:

"When do we wanna cut to this moment?

When do we want to cut to that moment, the best of the performances?"

The Lab then takes those selected performances

and turns them into what we call camera loads.

An essential part ofprepping camera loads is what we call Kabuki.

Kabuki takes the facial performance that we capture with the head rig

and it Kabuki's it. . . Facial projects onto a CG model

the mouth and eyes of the characters,

so that they're not inanimate.

It's de-warped and then projected onto the geometry of the character.

Also with the eyes and the mouth

just pasted onto the 3D model. It looks pretty good.

You still get all the emotions from the actor coming through.

It comes back to us as camera loads.

So then we take all that motion , nice and clean ,

put it back on the proper characters in the proper costumes,

in the proper environment with all the animation they need.

And we can see when they look, and when they blink,

and when they smile, and then Jim goes and puts a camera on that.

On any given day, we'll have about three stages going .

And then I'll put two stage operators per stage.

We're responsible for lighting, environment changes,

if there's animation changes that we have to do on the fly, we can do that.

And then try to make sure

the day goes as smooth as possible. (CH UCKLI NG)

We'll open up a particular set for whatever scene we're working on ,

and then we can hook up to James Cameron 's camera

and he can hop in there and look around.

It's like he's in the middle of a forest,

but, really he's just here in the empty stage.

I have. . . We call them stage ops, stage operators.

So when I'm working virtual camera, I have people who are running the system ,

playing back the actors' performance to me in an environment

in a world with clouds and birds, and creatures of all kinds.

And they have to be able to manipulate all that.

I'll move the camera through it, and together we make these shots.

The stage operator's job is to manage the virtual world .

So when you see the forest, every tree, every light,

we have control over that, and can manipulate it on the fly

depending on what Jim wants to see.

BAI LEY: When James Cameron is out in the Volume,

he's looking through the camera and he sees my digital environment.

And then when he turns around , that's mirrored in my computer

turns around as well , so he can stand in the middle

of his empty Volume, but see a whole rain forest around him.

Anytime he wants to move a tree,

or make some sort of creature run faster, he'll ask me to do it.

It's a very exciting process, actually.

Because we're actually doing the movie at that point.

CAMERON : A couple of my stage ops were working on the first movie,

so they've been doing this now for 1 4 years, 1 5 years?

They love it.

They love it. They love the challenge. They're so excited every day coming in.

I've never seen them have a bad day.

The sheer amount of data, that we have flowin' from the stage

to the Lab, the Lab to Editorial and cycling it back through ,

and then through Editorial again to Wötä and then Wötä back to Editorial.

That is a beast, and that takes wrangling.

TIM BICIO: We did this crazy thing.

We sat down with Wötä and said , "Let's make these movies together,

"and let's build a pipeline, and build tools together."

Because we've done that, we can then take this data

that we've created over here, and we can throw it on their file system,

and they can open it up in their tools natively

and begin working on it day one,

exactly where we left off.

BAN EHAM: That, in a weird way, is one of our biggest successes.

The fact that you do have unlimited ability

to reiterate and change stuff as you go,

that's Pandora's box.

JON LAN DAU : We formed a troupe of actors to play many of the characters

that are in the Na'vi world .

Many of them then went to New Zealand and suited up in blue screen outfits

to be stand-ins to represent the Na 'vi characters for live-action.

They are the Na 'vi culture.

They could tell you how the Na 'vi move.

They could tell you how the Na'vi speak.

KEVI N DORMAN : I am part of the Troupe.

We fill in the many different crazy things that these projects call for.

Some were from an acting background like myself

and some were from dance and movement or stunts,

and from that group they can pick from to fill any of the various roles needed .

In the very beginning , it was a bunch of scouts.

Scouting involves basically shooting the entire movie

before shooting the entire movie.

VELA-BAI LEY: Just figuring out the landscape of the different scenes

and J im exploring how he would like to capture certain elements.

I think the way to really test this

is to put a harness on you and start pulling up.

This is where J im would first hear these words out loud

and see these environments and the people in them.

-What's your name, kid? -Spider.

Cut! Great. That's going to work really well .

Troupe is the Swiss Army Knife.

We do everything from dialogue...

Great to meet you . Heard great things.

...standing in, motion doubling.

JOH N NY ALEN DER: We are trained actors, we're all trained stunt men, dancers.

That allows us to come in prepared , even though

the day of they say,

"Okay, this is what's going on. You got 10 minutes to prepare."

We're like, "Okay. Let's take the challenge. Let's do this."

ROSEMONT: Each day, you don 't know what you're doing,

which makes it extremely exciting .

Performance capture is acting ,

but what's being captured is our movements.

We have reflective dots all over us

and the cameras up in the ceiling record our movements,

but we're also still acting with our faces and our voices.

Na'vi kids younger than me do it with their bare hands.

So, we're really actingjust as much as

one would act in a traditionally shot movie.

J ust less costuming .

It's almost like being a kid again , too, 'cause it's all imagination .

It's raw, it's real , it's right there.

BORROWMAN : I've probably played about 18 different characters.

Maybe more, maybe 20. Twenty different characters.

DORMAN : I would say there probably isn 't a single scene in the movie

that I have not done something in,

whether it's doubling or playing a character

or doing something at some point.

Whee !

We had so many scenes with humans and Na'vi characters

that we need multiple scales to capture a scene.

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.

It's myjob to watch what the actor does and mimic some of their movements,

but more importantly, their spatial positioning in the performance space

so that the digital characters that we're currently actively filming

will be looking in the right place and reacting in the correct manner

so it will match up just right.

DORMAN : We were brought back to New Zealand because

all of the live-action is happening here.

That is kind of the other side of the coin of the capture scenes that we did in LA.

LAN DAU : When the characters are moving,

just a little bit of the eyeline being off

is gonna look really weird in that scene.

So, Kacie would play the human ,

we would play the avatar, and then on the other offset

the humans playing the humans

and then one of us with a puppet on our back playing the avatar.

Don't move. Not a step.

LAN DAU : These puppets have a real presence.

They're physically there and sometimes intimidating .

Working with Jack, most of his interactions are with avatars and Na'vi

so any time he's doing a scene, it's usually done in that

offset type fashion where he's working with a puppet

or he's working, you know, with one of the monitors

and there's also a lot ofphysical interaction with Jack.

So, there's avatars putting their arm around him , patting him on the back,

things like that.

So, when he's doing his actual live-action scenes,

us as the Troupe help facilitate all those contact points.

LAN DAU : That first part might be one of us in a blue suit doing the actual grab,

making sure the physical contact is legitimate.

Then, on the other side, after the grab, when Jack looks up,

it might have to be a 9-foot tall puppet.

There's a lot of roles that were in the scripts,

a lot of smaller roles that were left uncast

that Jim had decided that the Troupe could play those smaller roles.

You grab that sucker, right?

If it's an acting beat they can pull from our group and get what they need .

ALEN DER: When we got our helmets on,

and you got this mic right in front of your face,

you're looking at your other actor that's in a funny suit.

All that goes away when you're performing.

We eat Na 'vi. We ride Na 'vi.

Think Na 'vi.

KEVI N H EN DERSON : It's just the job of an actor

to use their imagination and be in it.

And the most important thing to be in is just

the emotional connection you have with the other person.

We all got to play all these smaller characters.

We will fight to protect our brothers and sisters !

I would never be able to express in words how proud I am

to be a part of this troupe with these people.

We feel like we're a part of this Avatar family with everybody else.

This journey has been this big adventure.

And we're all connected because of that.