The director of the upcoming Netflix series Avatar: The Last Airbender teased some of its opening scenes in an article posted by Student Filmmakers according to ComicBook. During the article director Michael Goi (American Horror Story) expressed some technical information about the series and its opening scene. Goi has kept many of the show’s details hidden until the best moment possible, but during the article not only did he share his experience with his work on Avatar but also teased how the series would open.
According to ComicBook, Goi stated, “On the show I am currently executive producing, directing, and shooting for Netflix, Avatar: The Last Airbender, much of the show is shot on the largest virtual production stage in the world. The visual effects artists working on the volume images are the top in their field, and the reality that they can achieve is truly astounding. But I felt it was important to keep an element of unreality to make the results more organic. And so, for the very first shot on the first day of filming, which was a shot of a boat with two passengers getting swept into a massive ice cave. I added a bit of magic.”
Goi also shared, “The ice cave walls were in virtual production, the ice shelf was a practical set piece, and the wave of water was a four-foot trough placed in the foreground of the camera with a split diopter filter in front of the lens. The resulting image combined the elements of different specialties to create a new reality that enhanced the fantasy of what was happening. In early production meetings, I proposed doing the shot this way with the assurance that I had done it before. I had never done it before. It just seemed like it would work in theory, and it seemed like it would be fun.”
All this information sounds very familiar to many fans as it follows and adapts from the original medium. Avatar: The Last Airbender is based on a Nickelodeon animated series that follows a 12-year-old air nomad named Aang who finds out he is to be the next Avatar. The Avatar is an all-powerful being that can harness and control all four elements which consist of water, fire, air, and earth, and brings balance to the world. Aang could not take the pressure of so much responsibility so he fled only to be caught in a storm where he froze himself for 100 years. Netflix’s adaptation is not the first live adaptation of the adventurous series as one had originally premiered in 2010 directed by M. Night Shyamalan (Glass).
Avatar: The Last Airbender will premiere sometime during 2023.