Just over two months after the premiere of “Avatar: The Way of Water”the first film returns to theaters remastered so that fans can rediscover the story thirteen years after its release.
The movie, winner of three Oscarsit was one of the first to present itself completely in 3D, opening the door to a new way of consuming cinema which is common around the world today.
For celebrate this expected return Y beat the premiere of “Avatar: The Way of Water”eight curiosities behind the most epic adventure of james cameron.
The Na’vi language was developed especially for the film
To create the native language of the Na’vi community, Cameron summoned the prominent linguist Paul Frommer, who designed a complete system. Early in the process, the filmmaker conveyed to Frommer the kinds of sounds he envisioned for the Na’vi. From there, Frommer designed a linguistic palette. Then, they worked on the structural properties of the language, the rules of pronunciation and how words are built. The result? A language with more than a thousand words, and a specific structure and grammar that the actors learned with talent and speed. The cast also worked closely with dialect coach Carla Meyer to fine-tune the accent of the made-up language.
The music of the film is a creation of the same composer of “Titanic”
The talent behind the soundtrack of “Avatar” is the composer james hornerthe historic collaborator who created two of the most iconic soundtracks of the history of cinema: that of “alien” and of “Titanic”both films directed by Cameron.
The cast trained in Hawaii before shooting began.
In the pre-production stage of the movie, Cameron he took the team to Hawaii, a destination geographically similar to the environment he had envisioned for Pandora, in order to train them in their interaction with space.
“We had to live without sophisticated technology, without too many items or comforts. I was practically naked for three days, digging and climbing, and muddy from head to toe. I was missing essential items, I used to say ‘I can’t handle this’, and Jim would say ‘come on, Neytiri, hold on!’”, recalls the actress Zoe Saldanawho plays Neytiri in the film.
Neytiri joins an iconic list of female characters with Cameron’s stamp
The strong female characters are present in much of Cameron’s films, and “Avatar” is no exception. Like Ellen Ripley in “alien”, Sarah Connor in “Terminator” and “Terminators 2”Y rose in “Titanic”, Neytiri combines strength, elegance, athletic poise, vulnerability and emotional clarity. The director maintains that Saldaña managed to capture every aspect of the character he envisionedespecially his combination of finesse and intensity, as well as incredible physical prowess.
Pandora was conceived as a combination of exoticism and familiarity
When creating Pandora, Cameron he wanted it to be a recognizable place, but without losing its exoticism and unique characteristics. “We wanted to keep the creatures and flora from being Earth-like, different enough to remind us that we were in another world, but at the same time similar enough to make them accessible. Trees over 1,000 feet tall and mountains that seem to float are some of the landmarks that amaze for how incredibly imaginative and far-reaching, yet whose designs emerge from structures that are familiar to all of us,” explains the filmmaker.
Cameron had to wait 10 years to create his characters
james cameron refused to use makeup to create the inhabitants of Pandora due to the limitations imposed by this technique. The height and body size of the characters cannot be modified, nor can facial features such as distance or the size of the eyes.
In 1995 he began to design his aliens using CG technology.but in order to achieve the splendor and vividness that the director had intended for his characters, he had to wait for technology to advance, since the project was too ambitious for the resources of the time.
Only in 2005 was he able to reactivate the creation of the Na’vi and together with his team they developed a new system of “image-based facial performance capture” using a camera that was hooked to the head to be able to accurately film even the smallest gestures of the actors, thus achieving the desired photorealism of Cameron.
Pandora’s Fauna
The pandora animal diversity includes a deer-like hexapodthe fierce Hammerhead Titanotherea rhinoceros-like herbivore with a bad attitude and a head that looks like a club, and the Leonopteryxthe predator king of the skies, a flying animal with scarlet red, yellow, and black stripes, and wings that spread out 80 feet. A smaller, gentler Pandora species is the jellyfish-like Woodsprite, tossing its silky locks to gracefully float through the air at night.
Characters and environments brought to life in Peter Jackson’s visual effects studio
To do the computer generation of the characters and environments of “Avatar”, Cameron and his team turned to WETA Digital, the New Zealand filmmaker’s prestigious and award-winning visual effects studio Peter Jackson. From WETA they assured him that their team of top-level animators would assume the mission of transmitting 100 percent of the performances of the actors to their avatar characters or Na’vi. This involved ensuring highly accurate data was recorded at the time the scene was being shot, and also required over a year of work by the animation team to create the camera rigs for the face that would allow the CG characters to accurately emulate the performance of the actorsas if it were a mirror.
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Avatar: eight curious facts behind the film that revolutionized cinema