Fire replaces water as the elemental character in James Cameron's novel. Avatar: Fire and Ash. It was even used as a weapon by Varang (Oona Chaplin), the ruthless leader of the volcano-dwelling People of Ash, in their war against the rest of the Na'vi tribes.
“After we understood water in all its complexity in [‘The Way of Water’]“We focused on the fire,” Cameron said of his visual effects lead at the Oscars. “Fire is much the same—you have to be very observant. [this] in the world. This is where understanding physics helps – which I do – and this is where lots of photographs and real world references come in handy.”
To create more realistic CG fire, Cameron needed to apply his understanding of fuel and how it burns, including flow rates, the interaction of temperature gradients, the speed of the burning object, and the formation of carbon and soot.
In fact, fire became the centerpiece of every scene—a character with its own escalating drama. This is where the visual effects masters come in Wētā FX in New Zealand They developed Kora, a high-fidelity physics-based toolkit for chemical combustion simulations. Cora increased the scale of the fire while providing more artist-friendly control. The film contains over 1,000 digital shots of fire, from flaming arrows and flamethrowers to powerful explosions and firestorms.
“Physical fire is really hard to control, so we had to figure out how to push the physics in the direction Jim wanted it to go,” said Wētā senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri. “Because he was very specific about where he wanted to fire, what speed, speed, size, how much or how little energy. He created every component very carefully, guiding your eye along it.”
“Fire serves two roles,” added Eric Saindon, visual effects supervisor at Wētā. “There's always a little subdued fire in the quiet moments, but then there's a fire that becomes much more destructive when the attack occurs.”
In the film's best scene, where the main villain Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and Varang first meet in her tent, the fire takes on a more subtle and mysterious quality. She gives Quaritch a strange “truth drug” to discover his true intentions, seductively playing with fire with her fingers like a sorceress. The scene becomes surreal with camera distortions and zoom shots to convey his hallucinatory point of view.
Quaritch then surprises her his superpower: true. He proposes a partnership to provide him with military weapons so that she can spread her fire throughout the world and he can rule as her equal. “Weirdly enough, they become the power couple of hell,” Cameron said. “He wins her over by sharing his vision.”
The physical properties of fire provided the basis for much of the visual effects work on Avatar: Fire and Ash.
(20th century studio)
Meanwhile, the subtle flicker of the fire with a cool blue at the edges of the flame is like a magic trick. “She knows it's about theater, so she probably has some kind of gel or makeup that she puts on her fingertips so they don't just burn off in the first few seconds,” Cameron continued. “She's able to dip her fingers in some kind of flammable oil, light them and make them burn like candles. Of course, in his mind, all of this is amplified much more by the hallucinogen.”
Cameron praised both actors in the scene, but singled out Chaplin's performance for the strength it brings to Varang's shamanic authority. “She understood how a character would psychologically express his power and how there was a reversal in the scene where the flow of power flows in a different direction at a certain moment.”
The director also praised Wētā's facial capture animation team for achieving a new level of photorealism, thanks in large part to more realistic muscle and skin movements. “The way Oona's performance sounds convincing in this character is a tribute to a lot of research and development, a lot of development in the facial assembly line. But I think it really demonstrates how the idea of CG as a kind of digital makeup really works. What I'm proud of in this scene is that it is the culmination of almost 20 years of achieving accurate verisimilitude in the portrayal of characters' faces as an extension of the actors' work.”
“It was a lot of fun showing Warang to Jim because he knew what he had in mind,” added Dan Barrett, senior animation supervisor at Wētā. “And he incorporated Oona's features into the final animation. He was very respectful of the performance.”
In fact, Cameron argues, Chaplin's performance as Varang is worthy of an Oscar. “It may be counterintuitive, but I would say it’s a purer form of acting,” he suggested. “Now you can say it's a fraud from a cinematography point of view in the sense that the cards are stacked in our favor because that perfect performance will always be there and will repeat itself as I shoot with different cameras. But it's not a fraud from an acting point of view.”
Cameron has recently become more active in demonstrating how the performance tracking process works to academics and current SAG-AFTRA members so they can better understand it. “It was just us filming the scene, and I even wrote new scenes so it wasn't a make-believe dog and pony show. And they were shocked,” he added.
