DEEP BLUE SCENE
The inside story of how Kate Winslet and Sigourney Weaver learnt to act underwater – and hold their breath for minutes at a time
For the cast of Avatar: the Way of Water, a return to Pandora meant a return to performance capture technology – the technique through which an actor’s movement and facial expressions are used to bring their entirely digital Na’vi character to life.
Onscreen it’s seamless, but behind the scenes there’s a catch – to capture the nuances of an actor’s performance, they must wear special dotted bodysuits and heavy head-rigs, fitted with cameras that are trained on their faces at all times.
“I remember it only bugged me for the first week of the first Avatar,” says Zoe Saldaña. “After that you forget about it. It’s a much more traditional way of getting into character. It’s very theatre-like. You have to rely a lot on your imagination.”
But The Way of Water presented the actors with an even more daunting challenge: to get the look right they also had to perform underwater for prolonged periods of time, without the use of breathing apparatus, which would have obstructed the facial capture process. Instead, the cast had to learn how to act while holding their breath – often in scenes that would last minutes at a time.
“This is the biggest diving water movie of all time,” says Kirk Krack, a freediving instructor who was tasked with training the cast to hold their breath like a Navy SEAL. “This isn’t just short little 30-second sequences in the water. You have actors like Sigourney Weaver doing very active three-minute breath holds. And because some of their characters were born in the water, they needed to look as natural as possible. So no holding your breath with your cheeks puffed!”
For months, Krack put the cast through an intense training regime in order to increase their breath-hold times. His main training technique is called “static apnea”. “We build your overall best breath-hold time ever, lying face down, on dry land.”
Holding your breath out of water is harder, but less dangerous, than practising underwater, so Krack uses these breath-hold times to calculate what will be needed for a scene. “Activity reduces your breath-hold time,” he says. “So if you can do six minutes on dry land, then I know that if we put some action into a scene, we can probably get around three minutes underwater.”
Filming took place in an enormous, elaborate water tank, using pumps to simulate waves and currents. Each
‘This isn’t little sequences in water. You have actors like Sigourney Weaver doing three-minute breath holds’ KIRK KRACK, FREEDIVING INSTRUCTOR
actor was shadowed by a safety diver, while Krack himself was on hand to give the actors a mix of oxygen and nitrogen (nitrox) before their dives. “It leads to slightly longer times and can negate the risk of hypoxia,” he explains. Even so, for the cast, performing 30 feet underwater was a challenge. “It was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do,” Sam Worthington says. “The freediving techniques we learnt helped, but you still have to overcome your panic. It was worth it, though. The audience can tell that the actor is underwater just by how their body is moving. You can’t replicate that with wires.”
Some actors, however, turned out to be naturals. “Kate Winslet is just a water person at heart,” says Krack. “She did exceptionally well. She had a really long, complicated scene to prepare for and she had a competitive aspect to her, she wanted to really get good at it.” There has even been speculation that Winslet’s top time of over six and half minutes broke the freediving acting record held by Tom ‘does-his-ownstunts’ Cruise.
“Everyone wants to know that,” laughs Krack. “What I will say is that Kate was on a nitrox mix before that dive. When I trained Tom for Mission: Impossible, he did six minutes on just normal air. So it’s a bit different. That’s not to take anything away from Kate, though. Even with a nitrox mix you’re fighting the urge to breathe. It’s all her hard work and determination.” SK