Avatar Actors Intense Under Water Training

From training with freedivers, to learning parkour, and even filming underwater, Avatar The Way of Water was one of the most challenging and game-changing films ever made. Here's how the greatest 3D film of all time came to life. Welcome to Explained. After 13 years, it's time to go back to the world of Pandora and live amongst the Na'vi. Like the first movie, James Cameron's second film was also a massive production. So what makes it a bigger masterpiece? A lot of it was literally filmed underwater. So the physical challenges the actors overcame, combined with the unique performance capture systems, is absolutely insane. But how exactly did James Cameron pull this off? For starters, the actors' physical abilities were pushed to the limit. They learned skills like archery. I can only shoot like a Na'vi. I cannot do archery like a human. And even parkour. And this, which was particularly difficult for actors like 71-year-old Sigourney Weaver, who plays a teenager. All the diving and the parkour and all those things, I was determined that I could do everything everyone else could. But the most challenging was filming entire scenes underwater. Usually in films, underwater scenes are filmed on dry land. Remember this scene from the first Avatar film, where a thanator chases Jake over a waterfall? You can see the stuntman landing in the water and then mimicking the motion of being swept away by the current. Then he swims underwater and up to the surface and is pushed towards an object. While this technique may have worked for a short scene, Cameron had to find a more natural way to film longer underwater scenes in Avatar 2. The way of water connects all things. So he literally had the cast train with freedivers in Hawaii for months. They learned special techniques to hold their breath for several minutes and stay calm. We did work with world-renowned freedivers that train Na'vi SEALs. He gets us in a meditative state and he helps us lower our heart rate. He helps us learn how to, through breathing techniques, put a lot more oxygen into our bloodstream and eliminate a lot more carbon dioxide so that we can sustain our breath. But the natural urge to breathe can be strong. So Kirk Crack, a highly skilled diving professional and coach, taught them how to distract themselves if that happened. When the desire to breathe comes, he called it the dirty villain. And you ignore the dirty villain. You go, ha, you, go away. And then you try to do all these mind games, like I used to paint myself blue, you know, pretend. And then I'd sing Speed Bunny Boat, like a bird on the wing. Anything you can do to keep from thinking about I really want to breathe. In fact, some of the actors set records on set with Sigourney Weaver doing a breath hold for six and a half minutes and Kate Winslet holding her breath for seven minutes and 15 seconds. Am I dead? Am I dead? You are alive. What was that? What do you think it was? I don't know. It could have been 6.10. It could have been 7.10. It was 7.15. If you've enjoyed the video so far and want to see more of these, hit that like button and subscribe to EXPLAINED. Actors also had to master acting out emotional scenes underwater and avoid blinking as much as possible. And this wasn't an easy trick either. Your movements are very, very different underwater. So rather than sort of sculling all the time or desperately trying to kick your legs to sort of stay in one place, finding that serenity and that calm, that's another thing. So there's all of that to take care of first. What Jim asked us to do, which was, I thought, hard, was when you're underneath the water, you can't go... You know, you have to pretend you're so happy, you have to go... While professional underwater gymnasts performed the dance scenes for the movie, the actors had to learn to perform natural fluid movements for other scenes. And to help them move faster and more efficiently when needed, the actors had jetpacks strapped to their hands. They also had underwater scooters that looked like rideable aquatic creatures. They called me because they had these creatures and stuff underwater, and they wanted to make the creatures move. And I had these underwater scooters. I did a movie for Bethany Hamilton, and I turned it into a shark. So Avatar, when it first started out, they rented a bunch of my underwater scooters, which go like 20 knots or 18 knots underwater, really fast, and you can jump out of the water like a dolphin. So they rented those from me, and then they discovered that they probably needed like 30 of them. The technology behind Avatar is equally mind-blowing. James Cameron built a gigantic pool in the studio that could hold 3.4 million liters or 900,000 gallons of water. That's almost one and a half Olympic swimming pools or 18,927 bathtubs. But motion capture for an animated 3D film in a pool that large was problematic. Traditionally, multiple motion capture cameras, also called mo-cap cameras, are used to film in a 3D space. Actors wear motion capture suits with trackers and act out scenes in halls where mo-cap cameras are mounted on walls and the ceiling. Simultaneously, camera operators shoot reference footage on traditional cameras. But Avatar, the way of water, was different. A lot of the scenes were filmed underwater, so they had to come up with a new performance capture system. For the scenes on dry land, Cameron used a specifically configured Sony Venice camera with a 3D stereoscopic beam-splitting system. Then, to capture the action on the water's surface, he used mo-cap cameras mounted on the ceiling above the pool. And for the underwater scenes, a large number of special motion capture cameras were built and mounted inside the pool. Even the camera rigs used by the underwater cameraman were specially made. Traditional underwater camera housing wasn't an option for the 3D cameras they were using. On the other hand, the usual IMAX beam splitter rigs weren't an option either because they weigh over 100 kilos. So Cameron got in touch with Powell Actil who created the DeepX 3D. This rig weighs less than 30 kilos, which isn't a lot when you're floating in water, and they can be operated by just one person. The cameras were also combined with custom Nikonos submersible lenses, which gave them clean, distortion-free 3D IMAX footage. Besides this, the actors wore head-mounted cameras as well and had waterproof markings on their face to record expressions for animations. But there was one last issue. The cameras were having a hard time focusing on the white motion trackers on the actors' suits, so they filled the surface of the pool with thousands of white opaque balls. This helped cut the light reflections in the water without obstructing the actors from reaching the surface whenever they wanted. Avatar The Way of Water was finally brought to life by VFX House Weta Digital. And one thing's for certain, this film will not only break records once again, it will also transform the future of underwater filming and motion capture. Are there any amazing facts you know about the new Avatar film? Tell us about it in the comments, and don't forget to subscribe to EXPLAINED.