What we're interested in with performance capture is the totality of the performance.

Physical, emotional, facial, the eyes, everything.

The actor creates the emotion; the actor creates the moment.

It's our job to make sure that everything the actor did is preserved in their CG character.

You are very hard on them.

I'm the father, it's my job.

Everything that Jake Sully as a Na'vi does, Sam has done.

I thought we lost them.

You can capture the emotion, you can capture the subtleties, the nuances of the movements.

You can capture the eye and capture the ticks, everything, capture it all.

I'll be nice once then I won't.

The moment I saw her for the first time, I was just like you're just so beautiful.

Blue has never looked more beautiful.

This is not a squad. It is a family.

The amazing thing is that the technology gives me that portal to bring my 14-year-old self to play this girl.

Avatars only. Go around.

In making a movie set on Pandora...

Pandora doesn't exist. Avatars don't exist at nine ft tall.

We have actors working in a volume with markers on their body, facial head rigs on their head and we capture 100% of their performance in the digital world.

At the beginning of the day, the first thing we do is get into the performance capture suit and that is a skin-tight two-piece and it's totally filled with ping-pong-like bulls around us,

so they can then track my arm and then translate that into the virtual world.

They have all these little cameras that send these little rays which gives an image of you moving around, so every little movement is your movement.

And then we put a head rig on and it's a helmet and it has a camera that's right in front of your face.

One of the big advances that we've made technologically on the sequels is the facial performance capture.

We're capturing a much higher fidelity of performance.

But I know one thing. This family is our fortress.

I've done a lot of green screen, I've done a lot of blue screen but never anything of course like this where there really is no screen. You're just acting in a space.

Now you must stand with us.

I've always thought that being in the volume is about playing an imagination and there is no kind of fear or no shame.

You can do whatever you need to do to get to that truth.

Saving their lives. That's all that matters.

I have had to work completely differently than I ever have before and it's been an amazing experience to go back in time.

Why am I different?

It is just remarkable to be able to see the movements and the performance go straight into the character. It's like, there's Kate and there's Ronal.

So that has been fascinating to me.

What is this? Tonowari. What is this?

I find as a director, I'm much more attuned to the actors 'cause that's all I have to worry about.

I'm not distracted by the camera move or the extras in the background, I'm just there for them.

That's all I care about.

That's all I'm watching.

It's an amazing process.

It's also the only way to do it.

It's the only way to make this film.