Sigourney Weaver Says She Hopes James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ Performance Capture Tech Can Be Shared Across The Industry: “It’s A Much Purer Experience For The Director And Cast” — Red Sea

Sigourney Weaver took part in a brief career Q&A session at the Red Sea Film Festival this afternoon, during which she praised her Avatar director James Cameron and said she hopes the unique performance capture technology he developed for the animated films can be shared across the industry. 

“I look forward to the time when we can share this technology,” Weaver told the audience in Jeddah, adding that Cameron’s tech allows filmmakers to avoid issues around lighting, costume changes, make-up, and “all that, you know, waiting for the clouds or waiting for the sun,” she said. 

“It gets rid of it. So it’s a much purer experience for the director and the cast,” Weaver said. 

Cameron and his filmmaking crew developed a new form of performance capture tech to produce his Avatar films. With complex rigs, the filmmaker can record an actor’s movements live and blend the resulting image with digital creations. Over the years, Cameron has been shy about the specifics of his inventions, and during a recent interview with CBS, he described his hesitance “to pull the curtain back” as a mistake. 

“For years, there was this sense that, ‘Oh, they’re doing something strange with computers and they’re replacing actors,’ when in fact, once you really drill down and you see what we’re doing, it’s a celebration of the actor-director moment, and the actor-to-actor moment. It’s a celebration of, I call it, the sanctity of the actor’s performance moment,” the Titanic filmmaker explained.

“Now, go to the other end of the spectrum, and you’ve got generative AI,” he continued, “where they can make up a character, they can make up an actor. They can make up a performance from scratch with a text prompt. It’s like, no. That’s horrifying to me. That’s the opposite. That’s exactly what we’re not doing.”

Weaver described Cameron as a genius during the Q&A in Jeddah, but also said the filmmaker is a great actor’s director. 

“He has a fierce reputation, and he is a perfectionist, but he’s a really playful and funny guy,” she said. 

“He’s so full of surprises, you wouldn’t think that this sort of scientist-inventor who’s such a genius at all this technology would be an actor’s director. When we’re acting, he’s right there with us. He’s not in video village 100 feet away. He has really enhanced the adventure of filmmaking.”

Avatar 3 is due in theaters Dec. 19.

Red Sea runs until Dec 13.