Avatar Post Team - Ep 2 - Performance Matters

Steve Rivkin: Look this film is perform by actors 100%.

Theirs is a spoken line in here that wasn’t perform not just than actor reciting a line in the recording group, they acted out this film and it is one of the reason why I think the film is so effective is that performances read trough this characters in a way that you might think of that as a prosthetic make-up or giving an actor the ability to be thin or fat or old or young without having the hindrance of prosthetics or fat suit or something like that this is new a freedom for actors to be able to do play characters that they couldn’t play in real life but still give a performance.

John Refuoa: And they once very adamant about being faithful to the performance that was given. And if there was technical issue with that performance the way couldn’t use it then we didn’t use it, you know what if that, the performance of the actor give as much as much you wanted to use.

It wasn’t modify, it wasn’t exaggerated, that’s what happen and you can see in some of the clips when you see actual performance of the actor and the CG character and you can see that’s the performance that was going on.

Steve Rivkin: Purely approaching it from the performance and looking at what does the performance are the same. And from which actor not necessarily having viewers affected to one specific tape because you can combine performances from the context and in the same take. So, Jim could basically shoot the very best selection of performances in a master or should always coverage. And we’re trying to wrap our brains around this idea that you editing something that isn’t necessarily the way it’s going to be edited while you just specifically looking at the performances only.

And then later on to be able to analyze the coverage, already having the best performances so you don’t have to worry of it this tape that have the great close up didn’t have as good a performances in it, everything was pre selected so basically Jim had the freedom to create a scene base on all the best performances so the we could go and figure out a scene construct that was as to the film but it was really a challenge, I think to and a discipline that we struggle with so I try to figure out how the heck you cut a film without actually edited it would.

Unknown Speaker: it started like conceptional.

Steve Rivkin: Right, it’s a performance set and then an edit of shots and in the more conventional sets. But it was like, the film had to be edited at least two and three times ultimately in one film was put together then we have to do the normal things that you do, got to compress the film down and what is essential, what is sensual so it was really challenging.

John Refuoa: We usually, you know how the movie, you get your dialects which is a combination of what shot, but there’s a close up or wide shot and what performances is of that shot.

But in Avatar we have to separate them. So the performances will completely separate from what shot they’re going to be in. And that was the challenging thing for us to do adjust to that and so once we figure out what all the performances is are then we did the shots the best convey those performances. So it was interesting that it was really interesting prost but it get takes a lot in getting use to.

Unknown Speaker: I know this is the round that you guys have of was there’s something that adds to if there’s some sort of motion capture with that actual—

John Refuoa: Absolutely. The rig now was that was created, the gem help create basically there was a camera amounting on the boom in front of that performance that was going up. So that little camera captured all the details of the face. Every little thing, every facial movement and all the eye moves. And then that was translated directly into the CD creation. So you can actually seen, we actually use the same companies in view shots that we got back. With batch and reference and when we use the eye moves for sync because it match perfectly to every little thing that we actually did was it.