Why the name Avatar? Does it have a cinematic significance?
Avatar signifies a genetically-created biological body that is remotely controlled by human consciousness. In our film, Jake has been recruited to travel to Pandora, to replace his genetically-identical twin brother, who died before the mission. Jake’s brother’s DNA was combined with that of Pandora’s indigenous Na’vi to create a human-Na’vi hybrid…or avatar. Now only Jake can “drive,” or telepathically operate, what was once his brother’s avatar. Through his avatar body, Jake is given a new purpose, new challenges, and an adventure that will take him to his limits - and beyond.

You waited for 14 years to realise your vision — how did it finally come together in terms of the technology required?
With Avatar, despite wanting to push the technology, when we really evaluated it way back in 1995, we felt like we were too many steps away. When we pushed the technology for The Abyss we were a step or two away from being able to do that so we pushed and got there but with Avatar it just seemed like we were four or five or six steps away from being able to do it, years away.
We knew that within a single production we wouldn’t be able to push it that hard or that far, no matter how much money we threw at it. So I said “‘Okay, fine, the timing’s off” and threw the script in the back of a stack of files and that was that. But sometime in 2005, we realised that we were now ready to make Avatar happen with all the Performance Capture technology and the photorealistic characterisation and the other CG required to make a film like Avatar.

After Titanic, would the audience accept a story about alien people?
We’re telling the story of what happens when a technologically-superior culture comes into a place with a technologically-inferior indigenous culture and there are resources there that they want. It never ends well. It’s also a love story about an awakening of perception through the other person. That person must teach him something and there has to be a greater reason for him to be in love with her other than the fact that she’s a hot, blue alien chick.
The Na’vi in my mind represent an aspect of ourselves that we want to be. When you see the Na’vi and you see how they live in their world and how kind of fearless and beautifully agile they are, it’s such a celebration of human emotion and human behaviour maybe at a time historically. So maybe the Na’vi are in a sense our better selves, maybe they are something that we know are losing in ourselves that we need to get back to. So to me that’s how this works. And I think that’s how the movie works. When you see the film, you want to be like them. You want to be them.

Will the Na’vi find acceptance on earth?
They better be ready to go blue, I guess. I mean, we spent a lot of time on the character design and we based them closely on the actors. We found out that in our very early testing, going back almost four years with this, that the closer the architecture of the face was to the actor playing the character the better the performance translated. In other words, we originally had this conceit of, like, “Well, it’s going to be a CG character. It doesn’t have to look like the actor.” But that turned out not to be the case. Take the case of let’s say Zoe (Saldana)] for example; in theory, she doesn’t appear photographically in the film but we wanted the character to be based on her, the way her mouth and face and eyes look and then we just kind of stretched and dilated it. Her eyes are four times the size of a human eyeball by volume. They’re huge. We knew that being driven by the performance that she gave that it’d still have heart and soul which was the critical thing. I think that after the first few minutes you forget that they’re blue.

Where does your story draw from - mythology/ fantasy or sci-fi? Also then what category of films does it fall under?
I think it’s tricky to pigeonhole Avatar as science fiction. Because you immediately think of robots and time travel and space travel and all that. And even though it takes space travel to get us there to Pandora, once we are on Pandora it is really much more of an action adventure fantasy. And there’s a love story in that too!

How has the process been different for Avatar as compared to other 3D films?
We’d developed a fusion digital 3D camera system for my 2003 documentary, Ghosts Of The Abyss, and I’ve refined and honed the system on Avatar. We’ve used the very latest digital 3D technology for Avatar and that along with the very latest performance capture effects, something that has never before used in making films.
Performance capture is where an actor’s movements and expressions are electronically tracked and translated into computer-generated imagery to bring the character to life. Basically, Worthington and Weaver, wearing black leotards, would act out their roles as Avatars and the camera would superimpose the computer-generated creatures on to the images while shooting.
I think that 3D is a revolution that’s taking place and Avatar will have its part in that revolution. The live action element of it - that’s where Hollywood as a community is lagging behind. The 3D renaissance or 3D revolution is right now pretty much being driven by animation - Pixar, DreamWorks - and there are a few live action films but they are lesser titles. That’s not to throw them under a bus, but they are smaller movies.
There hasn’t been a main kind of tent-pole movie made in live action 3D yet; it hasn’t happened until now. So Avatar will be the test case.

Why did you choose Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana for this project?
Sam had all the qualities that I was looking for to play Jake. We had to work on the accent a little bit. But he did it. As Sam does with all things, he conquered the accent, he conquered the physicality, he conquered learning how to work with performance capture suits, stuff that was experimental.
Zoe as Neytiri captured every aspect of that character that I wanted: her beauty, her lithe grace and athleticism, her vulnerability, her incredible strength, her emotional clarity. And you see all that.
I think that a lot of actors think performance captures is something off-putting or something that will limit their art. But Zoe and Sam Worthington and the others including Sigourney found out every quickly that it’s very liberating. They embraced it. And had a lot of fun with it.

What goes into creating a new, different world?
For me, Avatar is the opportunity to do the kind of movie I’ve always dreamed of making, in which you create an environment, plants, landscapes and creatures. I guess I’ve been working towards it for all this time. And I searched for the best possible artistes and technicians to make this a reality. We’ve created everything - right from the characters (Na’Vis), to the creatures, plants, costumes, weapons, vehicles and a whole new culture and language.

Where did you draw the CGI team from?
We roped in Academy Award-winning visual effects powerhouse Weta Digital for this. Weta has proven itself a leader in visionary effects with their groundbreaking photo-real characters like Gollum (Lord Of The Rings) and King Kong. Along with their world-class capability comes a genuine passion to blaze new trails and we were sure that they could breathe life into the Na’vi characters.