Virtual filming Avatar 2 at James Cameron’s production studio

Showing my daughter Jim Cameron’s virtual camera that renders the scene in real time as we navigate through Pandora. Here are some of the exciting scenes from our production studio tour of James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment with producer/COO Jon Landau, as they are producing Avatar 2,3,4 and 5.

We got to use the virtual camera that Jim uses to see a real-time rendering of the action. It is one of Avatar’s breakthrough technologies; the camera has no lens, just an LCD screen and three reflector balls that use the same sensor array that captures the actors’ motions to know where the camera is and where it is pointing. That position information is run through an effects switcher, which generates low-resolution CG versions of both the actors and the environment of Pandora to the virtual cam’s screen in real time.

This allows Cameron to shoot the scene as the performance occurs, or he can reshoot any scene by walking through the empty soundstage with the device after the actors were gone, capturing different camera angles as the scene replayed. Jon suggested that this infinite edit capacity allows for great flexibility, but it also can afford indefinite delays as a perfectionist bent can take over. For one scene, Jim moved over 200 trees and bushes by hand long after the performance capture. And so the project has faced many delays, with Avatar 2 pushed back to December 2018.

I asked if deep sea footage has worked its way into the budget, like the sub dive did for Titanic. Jon smiled and suggested that the Avatar sequels will explore multiple tribes of Pandora, some under water. The oceans are Jim’s passion, and influenced the organic forms and color palette of the first movie. In Avatar 2, they will explore the oceans of Pandora, with a nod to the master navigator cultures of Micronesia. There are some good humans and some bad humans; and there are some good Na’vi and some evil Na’vi. Their philosophy is that great movies have a message, so we should expect further celebration of environmental conservation and cultural diversity.