{"id":120418,"date":"2025-10-14T01:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T01:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/120418\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T01:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T01:09:08","slug":"avatar-motion-capture-is-most-empowering-form-of-acting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/120418\/","title":{"rendered":"Avatar Motion Capture Is ‘Most Empowering Form of Acting’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tZoe Salda\u00f1a\u00a0said in an interview with Beyond Noise <\/a>that James Cameron<\/a> is \u201cconsidering a documentary about the making\u201d of the \u201cAvatar<\/a>\u201d movies, which the Oscar-winning actor is keen on because it will \u201cfinally give us a chance to explain, in a meticulous way, why performance capture is the most empowering form of acting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt gives us the credit, the ability to own 100 percent of our performance on screen,\u201d said Salda\u00f1a, who has long been a champion of motion capture acting and has been outspoken about award bodies such as the Oscars needing to consider it. \u201cWith animation, you might go into the studio for [a few] sessions; that\u2019s as much as they\u2019ll need you for the whole movie. You go into a studio, however you\u2019re dressed, and you lend your voice, right? Performance capture means that \u2018Avatar\u2019 wouldn\u2019t exist if Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, myself, and the entire cast didn\u2019t get up and put those dots on our faces.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe put on that little unitard with all those dots on it, and step into a volume \u2013 that\u2019s what we call the set \u2013 that\u2019s rigged on the ceiling, with all these cameras in measured positions,\u201d she added. \u201cThey\u2019re all pointing into this space that finds us, and feeds that information into the system that is Pandora.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSalda\u00f1a plays Neytiri in the \u201cAvatar\u201d films, which include 2009\u2019s \u201cAvatar,\u201d 2022\u2019s \u201cAvatar: The Way of Water\u201d and the upcoming \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash<\/a>.\u201d Cameron intends to make two more \u201cAvatar\u201d movies.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt takes an average of seven years between [each \u2018Avatar\u2019 film],\u201d Salda\u00f1a said. \u201cFrom the archery, the martial arts, the free diving, the scuba diving \u2013 so that you can hold your breath under water for longer than five minutes \u2013 to the language [James] conceived out of thin air, to physically training with former gymnasts, circus performers, and acrobats so you can learn how to walk like an extraterrestrial human species\u2026 That\u2019s all us, and a group of incredible stunt actors that make our characters feel bionic. God bless them. With the technology that Jim creates, he gives the artist the power of complete ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSalda\u00f1a spoke to\u00a0The Independent\u00a0<\/a>last year and called out the Oscars for continuing to snub motion capture performances. Be it the actors in the \u201cAvatar\u201d movies or Andy Serkis\u2019 acclaimed motion capture work as Gollum in \u201cThe Lord of Rings\u201d and Caesar in \u201cPlanet of the Apes,\u201d motion capture acting has yet to break into the Oscar races.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOld habits die hard, and when you have old establishments, it\u2019s really hard to bring forward change,\u201d Salda\u00f1a said on the topic. \u201cAnd I understand that, so I\u2019m not bitter about it, but it is quite deflating when you give 120% of yourself into something. I mean, not winning is ok, not being nominated is ok, but when you\u2019re overlooked and then minimized and completely disregarded\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCameron\u00a0told\u00a0Variety<\/a>\u00a0as part of a Salda\u00f1a cover story last year that the Oscars are overdue to recognize her work as Neytiri in the \u201cAvatar\u201d franchise. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve worked with Academy Award-winning actors, and there\u2019s nothing that Zoe\u2019s doing that\u2019s of a caliber less than that,\u201d the director said. \u201cBut because in my film she\u2019s playing a \u2018CG character,\u2019 it kind of doesn\u2019t count in some way, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. She can go from regal to, in two nanoseconds, utterly feral. The woman is ferocious. She is a freaking lioness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d opens in theaters Dec. 19 from Disney and 20th Century Studios.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zoe Salda\u00f1a\u00a0said in an interview with Beyond Noise that James Cameron is \u201cconsidering a documentary about the making\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[73460,56379,18,117,19,17,56378,327,73461],"class_list":{"0":"post-120418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-avatar","9":"tag-avatar-fire-and-ash","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-james-cameron","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-zoe-saldana"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}