Waterbending is practical only up to a point.
The water that comes in the frame is VFX.
But the object that’s knocked over is practical.
So there’s a mix and match.
But again, it is a VFX-heavy show.
We’re in four different environments that don’t really exist in our world today."
The use of bending is not the only significant point of VFX in the series.
For most of the shows run, Team Avatar is accompanied by large, digitally constructed animal companions.
I have to hand it to them; they did a brilliant job throughout the whole series.
Whereas for Appa, special effects built the upper half of Appa.
So that our actors could be sitting on a saddle.
And then, visual effects created the bottom half."
So it could tilt and rock and spin.
So, it gave it that illusion of movement.
So when they were going somewhere, they’d end up going like that.
And here we are, clouds are going by, and you’re way up in the air."
For the actors, there was a Momo doll… And Momo was a huge hit, the doll.
Everyone said, ‘I want one!
I want one!’
It was very sweet."
And then also being underneath the bridge and creating a whole water world that was pretty unique.
The opening and then at the other end of the opening of the sequence, the chase.
To me, that was a great challenge.
We had a lot of fun doing that.
We had Aang on wires floating.
So he could rotate slowly and feel as if he was suspended in the air.
And I just added a little bit of flicker, just to motivate it.
So that [special] effects could accentuate it up to the point where they felt it was realistic.
So, from my end, it was very simple."
Like many other projects these days,Avatar: The Last Airbenderutilized The Volume consistently throughout the production.
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I’ve worked on smaller rear projection or Valios screens and LED screens for other shows.
This one was much larger.
It was about 90 feet wide and about, I can’t remember, 25 feet high.
And we had the ceiling as well, that projected an image.
If the A-camera moved, the B-camera wouldn’t be static; it would see the background moving.
And that would be unusable.
So we ended up shooting straight on and then profiling a bit more just to get a different background.
So that was something we had to adjust."
I think that we’re creating four different worlds that the Airbender goes through.
The entire interview with Michael Balfry can be seen here:
Avatar: The Last Airbenderis now streaming onNetflix.
