The Avatar franchise is, if nothing else, a technical achievement. The things that it does with motion capture technology, digital effects, and theatrical 3D are truly incredible, and unlike anything any other movies are doing today. For that reason, it was pretty much expected that Fire and Ash would be nominated for an Oscar in Visual Effects, which it was. However, the film’s other nomination was a bit more surprising to me, as it was in the field of Costume Design.
The Oscar nominees for Costume Design usually go to people who design and create the physical outfits worn by actors in films. Anyone who has seen a behind-the-scenes shot of an Avatar production knows that what the actors wear on set is usually limited to what looks like a sweat suit and a large camera rig on their faces. All the costumes are created digitally. However, after seeing THR’s conversation with costume designer Deborah L. Scott, it all makes a lot more sense.
While the final product that you see on screen may be entirely digital, it turns out that the process of designing and crafting a costume for Avatar: Fire and Ash isn’t all that different from doing it for a traditional live-action film. Scott explained…
I’m the only department that makes finished products for everything you see in the film, from costumes to hand props and hair grooms, as well as performance capture suits for live action, which are white duplicates made in materials that behave the same way as the real sample, which is really important to Jim.
Scott, who previously won an Oscar for designing the costumes for James Cameron’s Titanic, explains that her designs for Avatar start with a pencil and paper, just like they would for any film. Costume samples are also created physically so that they can be accurately scanned by the digital artists at Weta. Once the samples are in the computer, the work continues digitally, and Scott is still involved in fine-tuning the design.
There are some benefits to doing costume design on a digital production. Physical costumes all need to be designed and created before filming begins. Scott reveals that some costume elements for Avatar: Fire and Ash, like those for Oona Chaplin's Varang, weren’t created until later, after she saw the way certain actors carried themselves on set, which gave her inspiration for certain looks.
At the same time, because the costume design for Avatar is both physical and digital, there’s arguably a lot more work going on in the design process to get everything just right. Scott is clear that there is nothing different in costume for Avatar compared to other films, and she’s glad the Oscars recognized that, saying…
This is real costume design work. So it’s like a door opening to a new era to have that nominated and recognized as an alternate way of designing costumes. Quite frankly, I don’t think the movie got nominated for the live-action costumes. That’s not what people are talking about. They’re not nominating for the process, but for the result.
It certainly does feel like we’ve entered a new era of costume design. It’s just another place where the Avatar franchise has clearly changed moviemaking forever.
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