Avatar 2: James Cameron Admits They Have 'Cracked The Code' For Underwater Mo-Cap

James Cameron is returning to work on both the Terminator and Avatar franchise, but he's only directing the latter film. Avatar 2 promises to expand the world of Pandora, and Cameron has admitted that there is a challenge when it comes to doing motion capture underwater. With this movie, however, Cameron admits that they may have made a breakthrough.

Talking to Collider, Cameron explains:

"Well, we're doing it. It's never been done before and it's very tricky because our motion capture system, like most motion capture systems, is what they call optical base, meaning that it uses markers that are photographed with hundreds of cameras. The problem with water is not the underwater part, but the interface between the air and the water, which forms a moving mirror. That moving mirror reflects all the dots and markers, and it creates a bunch of false markers. It's a little bit like a fighter plane dumping a bunch of chaff to confuse the radar system of a missile. It creates thousands of false targets, so we've had to figure out how to get around that problem, which we did."

Basically, whenever you add water to any problem, it just gets ten times harder. So, we've thrown a lot of horsepower, innovation, imagination and new technology at the problem, and it's taken us about a year and a half now to work out how we're going to do it."

Seeing as Cameron is known for pushing the boundaries when it comes to film, it seems that he's very pleased when it comes to his work with the Avatar sequel. He talks about shooting a scene with the new leads of the film:

"We've done a tremendous amount of testing, and we did it successfully, for the first time, just last Tuesday [November 14th]. We actually played an entire scene underwater with our young cast. We've got six teenagers and one seven-year-old, and they're all playing a scene underwater. We've been training them for six months now, with how to hold their breath, and they're all up in the two to four-minute range. They're all perfectly capable of acting underwater, very calmly while holding their breath. We're not doing any of this on scuba. And we're getting really good data, beautiful character motion and great facial performance capture. We've basically cracked the code."

I thought that Avatar had wrapped up its story quite nicely back in 2009, but I'm curious where Cameron wants to take the narrative for this film. It's also worth noting that Sigourney Weaver is set to return despite her character's death in the first movie, and even Stephen Lang, who plays villain Col. Quaritch, is working on this film.

We still don't have any official details on the story of Avatar 2, but the movie is set come out Dec. 18, 2020.

See Also: Kate Winslet Joins Avatar Sequels