Behind-the-scenes footage of Kate Winslet working on Avatar: The Way of the Water compared to what viewers saw on the big screen is being praised as ‘amazing’.
As if you don’t have enough to think about already when acting, how about adding in motion-capture suits – oh, and why not throw in that you’ll have to do it all in water too?
And behind-the-scenes footage from Avatar sequel The Way of the Water has revealed just how impressive a feat it really is.
A video by Wētā FX – the New Zealand-based digital visual effects and animation company which worked on Avatar: Way of the Water – was shared to Instagram by Film Seal.
The clip shows a split screen of the actors behind-the-scenes, alongside what ended up on the big screen, with Kate Winslet (who plays Ronal) paddling her way through a swimming pool wearing a motion-capture suit and headpiece.
A camera crew surrounds her as she swims towards a grate with a noodle attached – a.k.a. Ronal’s spiritual sister animal, elder mother Tulkun Roa.
Spoiler alert – As a result of being slowed down because of having a newborn calf with her, Roa is killed by the sky people’s hunters, and Winslet manages to pull off the heart-wrenching scene lamenting the loss and screaming in fury all while working with a pool noodle and grate rather than any sort of visual representation of the animal.
And it’s not taken long for fans of the franchise to weigh in on social media.
One Instagram user said: “The acting skills are so great!! if y’all think it’s easy imagine looking at nothing and give those reactions…”
“This movie blows my mind,” another added.
A third commented: “I can’t even begin to imagine how hard that must be, where they act to nothing, only to their imagination.”
And a fourth resolved: “[Winslet] is amazing. To pull that kind of emotion when she’s looking at a pool noodle tied to a grate.”
Winslet herself has previously addressed the differences which come with acting in water versus on land too.
In an interview with Variety, the actor explained one part of working in the water which she found most ‘hard’ was having to try to ‘tune out all of the other things’.
She revealed: “So there’s a countdown to when you’re taking your big peak inhalation before you go under. Once you get down there, everyone has to do a certain sequence of signals to let everyone else know that they’re okay.
“There’s a lot of technical stuff that you have to go through before you can just perform and it is quite strange. Obviously, everything happens much slower in the water, your body doesn’t always move as quickly as you might like it too.”
Winslet joked: “Especially if you’re doing a battle sequence. [It was] really frustrating realising that I wasn’t as good with the spear as I was on dry land, that was very irritating.”
