PRODUCTION AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH
exactly where his camera went, how high it was, how fast it was moving etc and be able to replicate that with our live action camera,” he explains. “We must also make sure we have enough room on the stage to do what Jim just did. While he’s in his virtual world, we need to make sure we don’t go off the stage.” Shooting the two instalments at the same time proved to be a vital decision due to actors aging out of their roles. “When I first met Jack Champion (Spider), he was a little kid,” says Carpenter. “I called him tadpole. By the time we shot the film the pressure was on because he’s getting older and you can see his facial structures subtly changing. There was a ticking clock on how long he would still look like the age he was supposed to be.” In the middle of production, the crew returned to the water stages in Manhattan Beach to shoot additional scenes before Covid-19 derailed further plans. “Many months were lost. Filming was unable to resume in Wellington. It took a lot of doing to be the first film that would re-enter New Zealand to shoot,” acknowledges Carpenter. “It changed the pace of how we shot and was essential to some of the challenges we faced making these films happen.” Carpenter observes how the aesthetic of The Way of Water and Fire and Ash are very similar, as they were initially meant to be just one film. He points to the setting of Bridgehead City as one of the key distinctions between them. A colossal base established by the Resources Development Administration
YOU WANT TO take the viewer ON AN immersive journey ”
near the Pandoran oceans, Bridgehead was introduced in The Way of Water but featured heavily in Fire and Ash . For the Bridgehead sequences, Carpenter opted for unpleasant, more caustic light that was influenced by Kmart parking lots in the seventies and eighties. “We wanted something really aesthetically different to the Na’vi’s environments, who live in this sort of groovy hippie world. Bridgehead consists of harsh lighting, very straight lines and nothing sinuous and alive as in the world of Pandora.” In terms of his lighting approach for the Pandora forest sequences, Carpenter explains that they could be very fluid in what they were doing. “We wanted to keep the lighting high up off the ground and out of the way,” he says. “Jim said he wanted the forest exteriors to have three distinct colours – warm sunlight, cool tones and light bouncing up from the plants. This always-shifting light then helped shape the Na’vi in an interesting and dynamic way.” Carpenter compares the nature in the film to the Hudson River School, as well as the works of J M W Turner. “It’s this
idea that man has a place in nature,” he tells us. “You would often see these amazing landscapes and the way that the sunlight was hitting them – or how the colours were pulled apart. There may be a human being somewhere in the corner to give everything the immensity of scale. This idea played out in the visual design of Avatar . We tried to place the Na’vi in a natural surrounding and feel that light.” Carpenter relied on the Sony CineAlta VENICE Rialto 3D paired with FUJINON MK and Cabrio lenses to capture the film. “Jim’s dictum was that he wanted the camera system to weigh less than the one used for the first instalment,” concludes Carpenter. “He was working with Sony for years to come up with a camera that fit the bill technically but also could be taken apart, so you could have the lenses and the sensor inside your 3D rig. A month or so before we were set to film, Sony came up with the actual technology. Jim’s theory was that we don’t have the technology now, but we’re going to have it by the time we shoot. That’s a daring game to play, but it worked out.”
PIXEL PERFECT DOP Russell Carpenter’s main job was to expertly blend the human characters into the almost entirely CGI world of Avatar
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