'Avatar: The Way of Water' team on creating its striking underwater world

A still from 'Avatar: The Way of Water'. (Image credit: @officialavatar/Twitter)

Avatar: The Way of Water, the highly-anticipated sequel to James Cameron's Avatar, opened today in cinemas around the world. The film's visuals are stunning, with focus on the lush submarine world of Pandora.

In an interview with Variety magazine, the film's crew revealed what went on behind the scenes to bring visuals of such scale on screen.

Virtual production supervisor Ryan Champney did some tests at Long Beach, California and wonderfully improved performance capture --a method in which an actor's movements are captured for transfer into a CGI character.

Champney built four water tanks for the movie.

“The final one took up an entire soundstage," Production designer Dylan Cole told the magazine. "It was rigged in such a way where the performance capture could capture above and below water.

“We have a lot of scenes where people are surfacing or diving, so it wasn’t about just underwater, it was about this transition," Cole added.

The crew also built a boat with a horsepower of 1,000, and the brief was for them to "make it jump".

“We used it for photography, but most of the extreme dynamics are computer-generated," Ben Procter, the second production designer, said.

Production designer Dylan Cole's team created virtual sets in such a way that the water didn't seem clouded.

James Cameron has praised his team's work, saying it is the artists that create art and not technology. In an interview to news agency AFP, he described his film sets as "a big hippie commune with a bunch of really great artists."

His said the big challenge for his team was to extract emotions out performances taking place with green screens in the background.

"The heart, the soul, the emotion, the conflict, creativity... all that happens first, and then all the technical work begins," he told AFP.

(With inputs from AFP) 

Also read: ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Review: Big Blue Marvel