‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’: Spider (Jack Champion) scenes were recorded twice and two years apart

‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’ continues to lead the Spanish box office five weeks after its release, exceeding the 40 million euros raised in our country alone during its run. On the world stage, it also climbs the charts, reaching almost 2 billion dollars. We’re learning more and more details about the work behind the 3-year filming of the sequel and the meticulous post-production work that followed. In an interview with Vanity Fair, director James Cameron and his cinematographer Russell Carpenter talk about it one of the great technical challenges: the character of Spider (Jack Champion), a human being among the Na’vi.

“It was terribly difficult”says Cameron, since human youth was present in many of the Na’vi scenes and the post-production process was complicated. Like this, the actor had to film his scenes twice: the first time to act as a replica and reference for the rest of the actors and the second time to actually film him acting. Two years passed between one version and another, where Champion touched the growth spurt in the midst of the pandemic and went from thirteen to fifteen years old. Due to the change in voice and pitch, they erased their opening speeches and re-recorded them. But that wasn’t easy either.

The cinematographer ensured that each scene had its own color palette in terms of lighting and they had to strictly repeat the scheme from the first sessions. “You have to guess exactly how, when and where the light is”says the carpenter. If it wasn’t accurate, the public could tell. “We work very, very hard”.

It was also important that the repeated scenes from the original film have the same colors. “We worked hard to make sure the blue coming out of the hibernation pod was the same as in the previous film”. This hard work earned Carpenter numerous nominations for Best Cinematography, and he already received an Academy Award in 1998 for his work in “Titanic,” also directed by Cameron.

What’s next for Jack Champion

Jack Champion is now 19 and his career has just begun. It is clear that we will see him as Spider in the next installments of ‘Avatar’, but also has other future projects, such as ‘Scream VI’ which release date is set for March 10th this year. In the slasher Champion he plays Evan and is accompanied by a very powerful cast, with stars such as Jenna Ortega, Melissa Barrera, Courteney Cox, Liana Liberato, Tony Revolori, Samara Weaving, Hayden Panettiere and Mason Gooding.