Avatar’s cast went through hell to make Way of Water, but it was worth it

James Cameron couldn’t make this happen. Avatar 2As any other person on the planet. Avatar 2. The pitch of “Avatar, but more water” already sounded extreme, but the obvious route of “dry-for-wet” photography — a method films like Aquaman Wakanda for Ever: Black Panther used, filming actors on floating rigs against green screen to simulate underwater motion — wasn’t enough. Cameron insisted on shooting “wet-for-wet,” which required him to reinvent the performance-capture technology used on the first film, construct an enormous “stage” tank capable of simulating every oceanic location in the film, and train his actors to free dive in order to act as the swimming Na’vi. This is how Kate Winslet was able to achieve a free dive time that allowed her to hold for seven minutes and fourteen seconds.

“You really can’t in any way call it an animated film, because everything is just based on something real,” The Way of Water AvatarPolygon is told by Russell Carpenter, director of photography. “The huge tank that Jim designed could do all kinds of things — it could represent a beach, it could represent being deep underwater — and months and months of motion capture was done with that.”

In the years preceding its release, The Way of Water Avatar, Disney and 20th Century Studios touted the Navy SEAL-level demands that Cameron’s shoot put on his actors. The movie title and the story were not even known at that time. Avatar diehards were treated to photos of Winslet, Zoe Saldaña, Sam Worthington, and Cliff Curtis floating in a pool of ping-pong balls. The visionary director also gave instructions to some actors using pool noodles. One particularly shocking photo saw Winslet swooping a white cape around as she plodded across the bottom of the “ocean” floor, nose clip and goggles in place. It was a torture chamber. But watching the completed film, in which most of the human cast has been painted over with digital Na’vi makeup, navigating CG oceanscapes tinkered with by a team of animators, I can only think… The hell was totally worth it.

Photograph by Mark Fellman/20th Century Studios

Like everything Cameron does, the choice to do wet-for-wet “photography” was not just a creative gamble. In the end, the R&D budget for Water is the Way and its unknown number of sequels paid for a tank that went 32 feet deep, held 90,000 gallons of water, and could simulate appropriate waves and currents depending on whether the Na’vi were swimming in deep ocean or shifting tide pools. The New York Times recently asked Richie Baneham, a visual effects supervisor with Cameron’s company Lightstorm Entertainment, why the water effects were worth every penny.

“It’s about the credibility of the actor’s performance,” Baneham said. “If an actor is genuinely in water, there’s a viscous resistance. It informs the actor’s choices. That’s what we’re chasing. That’s what makes it feel real.”

He’s right! There’s a tangible difference between The Way of Water Avatarand recent dry-for-wet cinema. Topo the Drum-Playing Octopus is my favourite. Aquaman, but Jason Momoa’s Arthur Curry often looks like he’s floating in a vat of hair gel. Namor takes Shuri to Talokan, an underwater city. Wakanda for Ever: Black PantherRyan Coogler is a director who finds beauty and serenity in the blue-hued landscapes but limits submerged travel. This quick shot shows the Talokanil performing a water-based Mesoamerican version of the ballgame. It looks more like zero gravity space photography than it does anything that resembles the viscosity and clarity of water.

The dry-for-wet method doesn’t really dent the dramatic quality of either movie. If the characters are in Aquaman Oder Wakanda Forever dive under for a water-based set piece, the script quickly veers back toward land to avoid the uncanny… submarine canyon? But Cameron’s all-in approach pays off, allowing him to luxuriate in the calm waters, then let it rip when the waves kick up.

Image: 20th Century Studios

There’s a physical sensation to the water work in Way of WaterThis is likely to be amplified with 3D and high frame-rate photography. When Jake Sully and his tsurak fly out of the ocean, then dive back in, there’s real weight to the action, as if actual liquid mass has been displaced. There’s a delicacy to how Kiri wipes her hand through a pod of banana-peel fish things, and a resistance to the hand motion, all thanks to Sigourney Weaver actually shooting underwater.

While no human being would ever want to swim for eight hours in the pool, with all their clothes on, it was necessary to ask the cast to make realistic motion, said Deborah Lynn Scott (costume designer). Scott, the Way of Water costume team didn’t just create clothing for all the performance-capture work in the movie, Scott tells Polygon — many of the costumes were remade in white for underwater use. If Na’vi chieftess Ronal wears a cape into battle, Winslet wore one in the tank.

“Each piece took around 200 hours to make — it’s a very labor-intensive process,” Scott says. “So you don’t want to ruin it. We did an incredible amount of underwater shooting with actors wearing clothes and wigs. We needed to know: If Lo’ak has braids in front of his eyes and swims forward, where did those braids go? Then, what if? [his hair] settles down and gets in his way, what’s his movement with it? The interaction between performance and costume can’t be done without having the real costume.”

The tactile philosophy was even applied to the Na’vi’s tulkun pals. According to Carpenter, it took a squad of divers wearing performance-capture suits to jump in the pool and fill in when a Pandoran whale was called for, so actors like Britain Dalton, who plays Lo’ak, could float alongside the creature, or be hurled off it with a significant splash.

Photographs by Mark Fellman/20th Century Studios

The ultimate test of Cameron’s wet-for-wet vision comes when the Na’vi battle the humans in the final act, and a tulkun flips over the whale-hunting ship The Sea Dragon. Recalling Cameron’s work on Titanic, the confrontation finds human and Na’vi characters alike sloshing about in flooded rooms and zipping across the seabed. Quaritch’s teen son Spider, played by Jack Champion, swims alongside his found Na’vi family in the sinking ship. This moment might have broken the illusion if it was entirely CG. The actors weaved in and out a kind of metal obstacle track, either for performance capture or to add live-action elements. Carpenter said that Spider sequences were the focus of most of Carpenter’s work on set as director of photography. He calls the difficulty of lighting for Spider’s reflective breathing apparatus and matching the physics of the performance capture “a major pain in the butt.” (He also says, amazingly, the already complete Avatar 3More underwater photography was done using live action and performance-capture. Water is the Way.)

Reactions to the underwater footage are as varied as eyes. However, after many years spent watching the cast of The Way of Water AvatarIn spite of the hard work involved in making this thing, my smile was infectious. The payoff is one of a kind: palpable yet alien, and in service to selling Jake and Neytiri’s Na’vi family as a real set of beings surviving an unfathomable war. That’s Cameron’s real trick: Yes, the imagery looks cool, but the realer it feels when Kiri floats inches above the sand, being one with nature, the more these digital creations have a soul.

In 2009, Cameron and his VFX team at Weta hoped to unlock true humanity in a CG character by focusing on the eyes of the Na’vi. But 13 years later, thanks to the magic of sense memory, they’ve come closer than ever. Just a bit of water was all it took.