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In case the scope of that project wasn’t enough, the crew wasn’t just shooting one Avatar sequel but two whole movies and the first act of the fourth one. It was an epic undertaking, but combining the shoot across nearly three films also had its advantages.
“It’s like making one long miniseries, and there are great production advantages to doing it that way,” says Landau. “If we have a scene that takes place in John’s office in movies two, three, and four, we can go pre-light John’s office once, shoot it once and strike out of it once. If we did it as three movies, we’d pre-light it three times.”
More Than Skin Deep
Avatar made a big splash in 2009 with the level of technology it used for motion capture and filming in 3D. The Way of Water built on that—most noticeably in its pioneering underwater motion capture techniques, but as Landau points out, the actors’ performances were at the center of everything.
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“It starts with the closeup. If you don’t find the characters compelling, it doesn’t matter what technology you throw at them,” Landau insists. “So we said, let’s make the fidelity of our performances even better than they were in the first movie.”
Instead of recording actors’ faces with one high-definition camera, they would use two. Then, using technologies like deep learning, effects firm Wētā FX delved deeper into understanding what the actors were doing.
“They don’t drive a performance from the skin on the outside,” Landau says. “They drive a performance from the muscles on the inside.”
