Avatar sequels will feature underwater performance capture

With James Cameron hard at work on the forthcoming Avatar sequels, it has fallen to producer Jon Landau to give an update on how the back-to-back productions are coming along.

As is appropriate for a film series that has changed the face of modern filmmaking, Cameron is doing some more innovating with the sequels, including scenes of underwater performance capture.

“We have kept a team of digital artists on from Avatar in order to test how we can create performance capture underwater,” says Landau. “We could simulate water [ in computer graphics ], but we can't simulate the actor's experience, so we are going to capture performance in a tank.

“They are looking at what we did before with reflective markers," continues Landau, before stressing the importance of, "how we record reference photography so that as we are going through the editorial process and the postproduction workflow, we can see what the actors did and make sure that the final performance up on screen represents that.”

The producer went on to confirm that the sequels will “wrap up the story arc of our two main characters”, just in case you’d forgotten there’s a story to be told alongside all the technological bells and whistles.

Avatar 2 is tentatively scheduled to open in the UK on 19 December 2014, with Avatar 3 set to arrive on 18 December 2015. Don't be suprised if they don't meet that deadline...