For thirteen years, James Cameron worked tirelessly on Avatar: The Water Sensethe sequel to Avatar, one of his most resounding hits. It was a decision that even affected other projects. His dedication to creating the technology necessary to sustain a story that depends on being visually believable set him apart from film.
But, finally, the premiere of Avatar: The Water Sense It showed that his effort was justified. With an amazing digital effects section and the announcement of being the first step towards new stories and settings, the film dazzled. Much more, it became one of the highest grossing in history and was a definitive step in the technological advance regarding underwater shots.
Beyond that, he once again made it clear that for the director, creation in the cinema is a type of art defined by innovation. All of James Cameron’s films have left their mark on the cinema. Either for its witty use of traditional science fiction platitudes for the benefit of emotional stories or for its technical advances.
Avatar: The Sense of Water is now available on Disney+
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In fact, each part of his extensive film repertoire is a fresh look at ways of storytelling in pictures. Horror, drama, comedy, suspense. From the iconic saga Terminator to his invaluable contribution to the franchise alien. No genre seems far from the filmmaker’s talent for turning each of his stories into an entertainment hit.
James Cameron and his look at the future of cinema
With Avatar: The Water Sense it becomes more evident than ever. The film is a journey through the contributions that technology can provide to cinema. Based on the premise of an environmental epic with emotionally complex characters, it is, at the same time, a sample of the possible advances in the audiovisual field.
On this occasion, the director managed to give his digital protagonists greater expressiveness. And he did it thanks to system Facial Action Coding by Joe Letteri and Visual Effects Supervisor Richard Baneham of Lightstorm Entertainment. The method, used in the first film, was reinvented in Avatar: The Water Sense. This became more intuitive and closer to the performance of the actors.
For the shoot, a process was created that included multiple layers of information in motion capture. Which implied working on digitally translating the effect of kinetics on muscles, tissue and skin. If before the team took pains in a credible appearance, in Avatar: The Water Sense experts wanted movement—even micro-expressions—to look natural.
Thanks to the acting of the actors, the team was later able to integrate their facial expressions with a more precise type of technology. The technology around the performers’ heads was upgraded with two high-definition cameras, allowing faces to be accurately captured. The result gave the characters greater expressiveness and more realistic gestures.
A challenge for the director and his team
In Avatar: The Water Sense, the plot moves to the reefs of Awa’atlu, home of the Metkayina clan. There, Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) lead a tribe with essentially aquatic customs. Something that differentiates them from the characters of the previous installment —and from their version of Pandora—, shown from the point of view Omatikaya. Forest dwellers and sea dwellers have completely different lifestyles. Something that the director and his team tried to show in all its fullness.
By doing so, the motion capture system in Avatar: The Water Sense it also had to be adapted for underwater use. What, in addition, included a greater performance in the speed of the shots when capturing details such as movements and splashes.
Two 250,000 gallon capacity tanks were also built at Lightstorm Studios in Manhattan. Finally, the company created an unprecedented type of immersive experience with two green screens linked together around the artifacts. Which allowed an unknown integration of performance and technological advances.
The details of Avatar: The Water Sense
Each element of the landscapes of Pandora —fauna, plants and even the furrows in the soil— was digitally generated. But unlike the first film, James Cameron devoted more effort to seemingly unimportant elements in Avatar: The Water Sense. From the way water reacts to light, to wet spots on sand. The creative team strove for the setting to be a journey through an unknown landscape, yet full of beauty and life.
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The result is an extraordinary perspective on a fictional world, as powerful as it is warm. The planet imagined by the filmmaker is not just an enclave of life. It is also a journey through a plot that links nature to man through a transcendental idea. Something that his technical section tried to reflect with a neatness that went down in history in the seventh art.