Everything Everywhere All at Once: How the ‘Avatar’ Movies Obliterate Traditional Boundaries Between Prep, Production, and Post

Director James Cameron and his team tell IndieWire how and why they created a more fluid relationship between departments on "Avatar: Fire and Ash."

When it comes to filmmaking collaborations, one doesn’t typically think of the composer working closely with the production designer, or of the costume designer hashing things out in a room with visual effects artists. But then, the “Avatar” films are not your typical movies.

“It’s basically everything, everywhere, all at once,” director James Cameron told IndieWire of the collaborative process on “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” which saw all of the department heads in constant communication from pre-production through post. “There’s very little that’s linear about the process,” added visual effects supervisor Richard Baneham. “It’s a cyclical collaboration. You get to touch base with all the other disciplines and you’re informed by everybody else’s skill sets all the time.”

That meant that people whose work is traditionally thought of as the final part of the process — like composer Simon Franglen — were in the room with concept artists to make sure the fantasy world of Pandora was fully realized and cohesive from top to bottom.

“It’s a fabulous thing,” Franglen said, explaining that he teamed with production designers Dylan Cole and Ben Procter, costume designer Deborah L. Scott, and prop master Brad Elliott to form what they called “culture club,” a group tasked with figuring out every detail of Pandora’s characters and their lives. “We had to create a cultural backdrop, and that needs to have a coherence and resonance.”

Because Franglen wanted his music to provide a sense of place, working closely with Cole and Procter was essential — and collaborating with Scott was no less important, since the way characters dressed said something about their culture and what kind of music they would play and listen to. “I asked Simon to come in early and work on the indigenous music, because we’ve got to support the ceremony,” Cameron said. “What does the ceremony look like? What are they singing? What are they chanting? A lot of the melodic stuff has to be composed at that point, long before Simon’s got cut scenes to work with.”

While Franglen was working on the indigenous music, Scott and the production designers were looking to real-life models to create their designs. “Everything starts with research,” said Cole. “We don’t just pull this stuff out of thin air. We try to draw upon the amazing variety of landscapes and environments and indigenous cultures around the world and honor and celebrate them.” For each of the clans — including new groups like the Wind Traders and the Ash people that were introduced in “Fire and Ash” — the department heads worked together to make sure every design choice was dramatically motivated and not merely “cool.”

“With the Ash, we’re drawing upon their environment, so they’re constructing like the Na’vi would construct, but they’re using burnt wood and bones and hides,” Cole said. “They’re intelligent and talented craftspeople.” To that end, Scott approached the Ash as people whose talent for working with their hands informed their clothes. “They use their environment to manufacture their own clothes,” Scott said, noting that one of the unusual aspects of the “Avatar” movies is that her design process comes in two stages.

“After we start designing on paper, I get into the workshop and start building samples, then full costumes,” Scott said. “That’s where the cultures really come alive, because I have an incredible team of people that are brilliant with their hands and can make virtually anything.” Scott designed and built hundreds of actual costumes to serve as reference points for the visual effects artists who would create the final versions for the movie — the second step in the clothes’ evolution.

 ”Everything is created physically, with Deb working with artisanal weavers and so on,” Cameron said. “Because the costumes won’t look real if they’re not worn by somebody and studied in the way that they sway and move and have weight. It takes an enormous amount of preparation and research to work toward the end goal, which is [the visual effects group’s] responsibility of absolute photo reality.”

“It makes everything become real, so that when I pass it along to the visual effects team it becomes real again,” Scott said, adding that one of the pleasures of the way the “Avatar” movies are made is that she is able to constantly refine and develop her costumes throughout production and post. “ When you shoot a live action film, you design the costumes, you put them on the actors, and that’s it. They perform it and you’re stuck with it. In the performance capture process, it’s not infinite. You can continue to design as you get into the editing.”

To that end, Scott was able to modify her designs according to the performances. “With someone like Oona [Chaplin, as Ash leader Varang], for instance, it started off as a very minimal costume. By the time we were able to observe her performance cut together, I said, ‘This is amazing — let me get back in there and work with that per the physical performance.’ It’s never-ending, almost. But that’s the beauty of it.”

Another department head who worked closely with the editors was casting director Margery Simkin, who said she relied on the editing team’s judgment as she would send them audition tapes early on. “If they don’t cringe when I show them somebody, I feel like I’m okay, because they’re going to have to look at these people again and again for a long time,” Simkin said. She noted that because of privacy concerns surrounding the “Avatar” sequels, she also had to lean on the editors to help edit auditions to show Cameron — something her team would typically do itself.

“Because of the secrecy, it all went up on some secret system we weren’t allowed to have anything to do with,” Simkin said. “So the editors had to help a lot in presenting this stuff to Jim. People don’t always understand that there’s a sales aspect to casting — that editing those tapes properly is the key to getting the people we think are best in the roles.”

Simkin added that while the editors helped her sell the actors to Cameron, the production designers helped her sell the movie to the actors. “When we’re trying to lure certain people, we show them these gorgeous drawings,” she said. “That helps them understand the world they’re going into, because most of them haven’t done work like this and they don’t understand what it’s going to be.”

Cameron says that because everyone hits the ground running right from the start, the “Avatar” movies don’t use pre-visualization in the traditional sense — as they prep, they’re already compiling the building blocks for what will end up in the finished film. “I’m not a big fan of keyframe pre-viz,” Cameron said. “I feel like that’s somebody else blocking and directing my movie. I’d rather just get together with a bunch of creative people and start. We always say, ‘We fix it in pre.'”