'We Had A Diverse Crew': Avatar 2 VFX Supervisor Pavani Rao Boddapati

Pavani Rao Boddapati shared how a lot of the crew for 'Avatar 2' was Indian.

Pavani Rao Boddapati, visual effects sequence supervisor at Weta FX in New Zealand, in a recent interview opened up about Avatar: The Way Of Water, a film she has been working on since 2018. She spoke about working with James Cameron, the most challenging scenes to shoot and more.

In an interview with Hindustan Times she opened up about the massive crew it took to create the visuals. She spoke about the diversity of the crew and more, she said, "This is Weta FX’s biggest visual effects film we have ever done since we've been around. 1,700 people have worked on it. That's the biggest crew we've had. I think there's 19-20 countries from around the world and it's a very diverse group of people. If you come one day and visit our studio in Wellington, you'll see there's people from everywhere."

I had people from India, Europe, Americans, Kiwis, everyone you can think of. You go into the kitchen, you can hear every language, it feels like you're in an airport."

Pavani Rao Boddapati, VFX Supervisor

During the interview, she also recalled one of the most challenging sequences that they had to shoot which involved Sigourney Weaver’s Kiri talking to her father Jake. Pavani said, “That was one of the first shots we had worked on back in 2018 because it was very new technology to get this light underwater with interaction and we worked on it for almost six to eight months. That shot is very special to me because it was a test bed for us to figure out how we were going to do lots of shots like that. It was completely ground up from our renderer to our lighting to our compositing, just new technology and workflows to allow us to do shots like that.”

Pavani also added how James Cameron supported the team. She said, “We have calls with him a couple of times a day and he is very expressive and enthusiastic in his praise. There are some key phrases where when he's finaling a shot, he'll say, 'Bingo, Bongo' or he'll say, 'You nailed it!' and those become memes. And the artists love it. Whenever Jim in a recording says, ‘You've done it, you've nailed it, or Final!’. That becomes the high point of the day. He is very generous in his praise and he is very happy with what we've produced."

 There are at least three more sequels planned by the writer-director, according to Pavani and they will soon start working on it.