AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH PRODUCTION
DOP Russell Carpenter, ASC talks virtual scouting, performance capture and lighting Pandora in the latest Avatar instalment “It is its own ecosystem doing these films”
WORDS OLIVER WEBB IMAGES DISNEY
After the layout is where Cameron wants it to be, people are brought in to block out the scenes before the actors come onboard and the performances begin to take shape. “The actors wear performance capture suits, and it is very important to make sure that there are no distractions so Jim can really hone in on their performance. I finally come onto the project at this point, like the alien from the world of living creatures, rather than CGI creatures.” Carpenter compares this process to a layer cake. “On other films you are going from A to B to C and your destination basically,” he says. “Here, you have got a cosmos where all of this information is flowing around all the time, constantly being updated. It is a hive of different minds and departments. As a DOP, I am not getting all the information I need in one coherent package because it is still being worked on as we go. People had
been working on this film for six years before I even came onboard. It’s how these films are made.” Carpenter spent a year lighting CGI scenes before he could see it all embedded together. “It’s my one job to seamlessly fuse the human characters, especially Spider, into a world that is
completely CGI,” he says. “You want to take the viewer on an immersive journey and not do anything with the technology that bumps the viewer out of that.” Cameron creates virtual shots that are displayed on the on-stage monitors. It is then down to Carpenter and his crew to convert the footage. “We can see
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