Way Of Water Problem 30 Years Ago

James Cameron was confronted with one major problem while making Avatar: The Way of Water, and his work on a film over 30 years ago ended up being the key to solving it. 13 years after the release of Avatar, Cameron’s sequel continues the story of Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) as they deal with the return of human forces to Pandora. The sequel famously took many years to make, with Cameron working with a dedicated team to not only write the stories for four movies but develop new technology and filming methods to pull them off.

In the special features that accompany Avatar: The Way of Water‘s digital release, Cameron reveals that some of the biggest problems to overcome involved filming actors underwater. Reflections from air bubbles and the water’s surface, in particular, were a major challenge. While having actors free dive eliminated the air bubbles, a different strategy from his 1989 movie The Abyss was used for the surface reflections. Check out Cameron’s comment below:

“It turns out that to be able to capture underwater, you can’t have a lot of air bubbles because 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 actors’ bodies so we 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? 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. We used black plastic beads on The Abyss to break that mirror surface so it looked like we were 1000 feet down instead of 60 feet down. That’s what gave me the idea [of using translucent ping pong balls to cover the surface] and I proposed that.”

Avatar: The Way of Water’s Underwater Filming Explained

With so much of Avatar: The Way of Water taking place either on or in the water, Cameron and the production was faced with the unique challenge of making an aquatic CGI environment look real. There was only one water-based scene in the first Avatar, and it was accomplished in a dry environment, with Worthington miming swimming while suspended on wires or being pushed around in an office chair.

Determined to make the sequel’s water-based scenes look more real, it was decided early on that actors doing performance capture for underwater scenes would actually do these scenes in the water. A massive water tank was built and the main cast all learned how to free dive, holding their breath for several minutes at a time. Doing performance capture this way meant that actors’ movements and emoting underwater would now look more genuine, thus leading to more life-like visuals when these underwater scenes were rendered digitally.

While filming the underwater scenes in Avatar: The Way of Water using this method was undoubtedly a massive undertaking, it’s clear that it paid off in a big way. The sequel is breathtaking to look at as a whole, but the underwater scenes, in particular, are a major highlight. Although it isn’t obvious on the surface that Cameron’s work on The Abyss benefited Avatar: The Way of Water, the newest sequel evidently owes a big debt to the 1989 gem.

Source: Avatar: The Way of Water Special Features