Unnatural selection
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday December 11, 2009
A brave move to Hollywood is paying off for Avatar star Sam Worthington. By Gerard Wright. The film had everything and its star had nothing. Science-fiction action movie Avatar had the finest technology its director could imagine. That director was one of the few in the world a studio would back to the tune of half a billion dollars.Avatar, which will hit the screen in Australia from this Thursday, is the result of three massive bets,by a studio, a director and an Australian actor.The $500 million wager - a reported $320 million in production, another $150 million in marketing - was made by 20th Century Fox and its production partners.It is a bet on director James Cameron: Canadian-born but pure Hollywood, mercurial, single-minded and notably egotistic but also blessed with a touch even Midas would envy. As the creator of the Terminator movie franchise and reinventor of Titanic, the global box-office record holder with takings of $1.8 billion, Cameron has earnt a swag of Oscars. Avatar is the first film he has directed in a dozen years.Cameron, in turn, has staked his reputation on groundbreaking technology, including camera systems he has developed himself, and a then-unknown Australian actor, Sam Worthington.Worthington plays Jake Sully, a paralysed and embittered ex-Marine recruited to join a force invading a distant moon, Pandora, where he will be transformed into a hybrid alien. The force wants to mine the planet for a precious mineral that sells on Earth for $20 million a kilogram. Pandora's inhabitants, the Na'vi, are not inclined to take part in a joint venture. In this story, the humans are the aliens.Worthington's Sully is one of those required to change their minds. He is genetically engineered by Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) to become an "avatar", three metres tall, blue-skinned and mobile once again.Zoe Saldana plays Neytiri, one of the indigenous inhabitants and Sully's eventual romantic interest as he goes native.Brief screenings of parts of the movie have shown the effects are as intrinsic to the story as any of the characters. Through a process Cameron describes as "emotion capture", the computer-generated images of the actors' facial expressions are rendered more lifelike. One of the main innovations directly responsible for this is a small, inward-facing camera mounted on a helmet worn by each character. Facial gestures and even eye movements can be tracked and fed into the composite image."Sam and I were little guinea pigs, at first," Saldana says. "We were scanned every three weeks. They needed microscopic analysis of our skins, because even that, Jim [Cameron] wanted to replicate. It wasn't just capturing the motions, it was capturing the emotions."There was nothing about the way we shot this film that was traditional. It freaked us all out."Weaver, who worked with Cameron on the acclaimed Alien sequel, Aliens, says she had one prevailing thought after she was given the Avatar script."How is he going to do this at all? How are you going to create a world where there are floating mountains and all these creatures and this whole other environment and this whole other humanoid race?"To begin with, "an old-school tough guy," Cameron has said. Which was Sam Worthington's cue.Perth-born and raised, Worthington followed his heart to a NIDA audition."Travelling around Australia, met a girl, whaddya do?" he recalls. "She said, 'I want to go to drama school, can you audition with me to cheer me along.' So I did, with no intention of being an actor. She got up, thought she was amazing, I'm going yeahhh! ... I got up, my turn, mutter mutter mutter, crap crap crap, and they went: 'Hang on a minute, keep going."'Worthington's performance portfolio steadily expanded, from single-episode appearances in JAG and Blue Heelers to sustained roles in Love My Way and The Surgeon.Despite an AFI-award winning performance in Somersault in 2004 and a starring role in Geoffrey Wright's remake of Macbeth, both of which established him as a viable film actor, Worthington remained uncertain about his direction."I had kinda hit a glass ceiling in Australia with regards to my career," he says. "I'd just turned 30 and that's a big move for any man - you kind of assess where your life's at and was it really where I wanted it to be."I was at the point of, 'My work's suffering because I'm not getting brave. I'm still struggling to figure out who I am and what I want, what relationships are, let alone what the f--- I'm doing in my job."'Worthington sold up and downsized, humbled somewhat by the proceeds from the sale of his life's accumulation - $2000.It was equal parts reinvention and a bet on his future, in the only place where a gamble of that nature could pay off.The breakthrough came at the first meeting with Cameron - "Jim" - in early 2007. Worthington sensed a kindred spirit who would respond to some newfound assertiveness."So when Jim called me, I went with him and I said: 'Mate, I've sold everything. I've got two bags - a bag of books and a bag of clothes."'You're auditioning me, granted, but I'm also seeing if I want to be along on this journey with you. So let's work together."'In terms of strict chronology, Avatar is not Worthington's breakthrough role. That came earlier this year with his place on the underbill to Christian Bale in Terminator Salvation. But the approach from Cameron was in early 2007, when he was relatively unknown in Hollywood.Worthington drew on a variety of inspirations to convey himself into the wheelchair-bound body of an ex-Marine and thence into the otherworldly hybrid Na'vi. Not the least of them was his then seven-year-old nephew, Ridley.The essence of Jake Sully, Worthington says, is bravery but also of "wonderment and of being a petulant, smart-arse kid."I thought to play it like Ridley is a smart way in, because it balances with my bravery. At seven years old he rules the world. You cannot tell a seven-year-old what to do. He'll run around naked and we'll all laugh. If I did that I'd get arrested."The week before Christmas will be an especially intense time in Hollywood, probably at the Cameron residence in Malibu, maybe even for Worthington, as all await the box-office judgment of Avatar.Cameron and his production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, have chosen to think optimistically and are already planning a sequel, although this was not supposed to be public knowledge.Just as Worthington let slip that he had indeed signed for three Avatar films, the hotel room phone rang."That's Jim now," Worthington laughs, "telling me off for answering the damn question."AVATARDirector James Cameron Stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver Rated M. Opens Thursday.Playing the bluesThe transformation of Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and much of the rest of the cast into the blue-skinned Na'vi takes place through motion capture, a variation of which has been used for biomechanical study at the Australian Institute of Sport for more than a decade.Before each day's work, the actors would don form-fitting leotards, dotted with tiny sensors. The movement of these sensors would be captured by dozens of ceiling-mounted cameras on the digital set and then fed into computers, which, in turn, transmitted them to Peter Jackson's Weta Digital facility in Wellington.Among Cameron's innovations was the installation of a headpiece with a tiny, inward-facing camera. This meant the actor's facial expressions and even eye-response could be captured and transformed digitally €” one of the criticisms of previous motion-capture films, such as Beowulf, was that the lifeless eyes of the characters negated the impact of what was supposed to be lifelike animation.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
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