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Doing Digital Design

What was new and important technologically in the work Stromberg was involved with was the creation of a virtual art department for “Avatar”—a department responsible for making, as he says, “low-res, high-end videogame-quality sets, fairly detailed, but not enough to bog down the system” as Cameron used those sets while shooting actors green-screen in order to see his characters in the virtual world he envisioned.

As Stromberg explains in the audio clip below, the production developed a virtual camera system for this work, which allowed Cameron and his team to move cameras within those virtual sets while recording the actors, and essentially, as he says, “to direct the movie in the virtual world.”  And that breakthrough, Stromberg adds, allowed him to art-direct in that same, virtual world. Click below to hear him explain this “Swiss Army Knife” approach for both designing, and directing, in this virtual world. This ability was especially crucial, Stromberg suggests, because, as you will hear below, he could go on “a digital production scout” each day after shooting in order to prepare the nuances of the next day’s virtual set. In other words, “I think this was probably the first time a production designer has been in an artificial, digital world to art direct,” suggests Stromberg, “and that was a thrill.”

(Apologies for the slightly muddied audio on Robert’s end—he was on his cell phone on a long car trip when we chatted recently. His insights, however, make it most definitely worth a listen.)

Much of this virtual camera approach, Stromberg adds, made members of the production feel like they were “on covered wagons heading west.” He credits award-winning visual effects’ guru Robert Legato for designing the original concept years ago during Cameron’s initial R&D phase, and says the technology is now “many levels beyond that.”   

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