Behind the Scenes of ‘Avatar 2,’ Including Giant Tank: Photos

The movie, which cost $350 million to produce, was filmed in a number of formats, from 3D to Imax to high frame rate, for the biggest of big-screen experiences.

Cameron used 3D cameras rather than converting the movie to 3D in post production.

The success of “Avatar” kickstarted a 3D boom in the early 2010s. But Cameron thinks it didn’t last because movies were converted in post-production.

“I think the studios blew it,” Cameron told The New York Times. “Just to save 20% of the authoring cost of the 3D, they went with 3D post-conversion, which takes it out of the hands of the filmmaker on the set and puts it into some postproduction process that yielded a poor result.”

Much of the reason that “The Way of Water” looks so good is because much of it was filmed in a 120-feet-long, 60-feet-wide, 30-feet-deep, and 250,000-gallon tank.

Much of the movie takes place in the oceans of the fictional planet Pandora. The tank had wave and current machines to better recreate the underwater action of “The Way of Water,” according to The Los Angeles Times.

The cast learned to hold their breath for extended periods for filming.

The cast told The New York Times in a story published in October that Kate Winslet held her breath for seven minutes during filming, a new on-set record.

When asked why he insisted on the actors doing this, Cameron responded: “Oh, I don’t know, maybe that it looks good? Come on!”

“You want it to look like the people are underwater, so they need to be underwater,” Cameron said. “It’s not some gigantic leap — if you were making a western, you’d be out learning how to ride a horse.” 

The “Way of Water” crew developed new methods to film motion capture underwater.

The crew first experimented with rigging actors in the air on wires while wearing motion-capture suits, to simulate motions in the water. But Cameron rejected it without even seeing a test, according to The Los Angeles Times. 

When pivoting to actual underwater filmmaking, they “quickly found out that the infrared gets absorbed in water, which is normally how we do motion capture, so we had to go to ultraviolet light … that would transmit through water but would also be picked up by the camera sensor,” production supervisor Ryan Champney told The Times.

“The Way of Water” and its underwater filming seem heavily inspired by Cameron’s own passion for oceans and deep-sea diving.

In the time between “Avatar” movies, Cameron broke the record for the deepest solo dive in history in 2012, when he traveled to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench — seven miles down, called the Challenger Deep — in a specialized, state-of-the-art submersible.

He even joked in 2018 that he makes movies like “Avatar” to fund his deep-sea explorations. 

“Some people think of me as a Hollywood guy … (but) I make ‘Avatar’ to make money to do explorations,” Cameron told The Daily Telegraph.