If the head of Kiri, a vibrant teenager in Avatar: The Waterway by James Cameron, tells you something, it’s not surprising. This 14-year-old girl character is played by Sigourney Weaver, who celebrated her 73rd birthday last October. And the craziest thing is that we believe in it so much the special effects and the talent of the actress make her character endearing.
The motion capture combined with the performance of the actress makes the spectator quickly take up the cause for this heroine full of life who must adapt to a new existence in a world where she learns to become familiar with the ocean.
“I asked Sigourney to provide me with photos and family films from when she was a teenager,” James Cameron told 20 minutes. As she didn’t have many at her disposal, we also based ourselves on images ofAlien of Ridley Scott which she shot when she was 26 years old. The director did not want to tap into Aliens, the return which he directed himself in 1986, preferring the first part of which he loved “the superbly lit close-ups, being a big fan of Ridley Scott. »
image and voice
The process took place in three stages. It was necessary to “capture” the 73-year-old Sigourney Weaver, regain her appearance at 14 before creating the character of Kiri herself based on this preparatory work. “We wanted the viewer to completely forget Sigourney, insists James Cameron. For this, it was also necessary to rework his voice which is very recognizable. The actress immediately reassured the filmmaker. “You won’t have to do anything: I’ll be 14,” she told him. And she managed to regain the vocal timbre of a teenager after weeks of hard work. “She really spoke with a teenager’s voice”, is surprised James Cameron.
She was so inhabited by her character that she could not find Kiri’s voice during post-production and James Cameron mostly kept his first recordings. “What Sigourney has done proves that technology can only work if it relies on humans,” insists the filmmaker. When we see the dynamic Kiri riding an eel in the seabed or being scolded by her father, we completely forget that her interpreter has largely reached the age of being a grandmother.