{"id":7986,"date":"2009-12-15T10:15:01","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T18:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/?p=7986"},"modified":"2009-12-15T10:15:01","modified_gmt":"2009-12-15T18:15:01","slug":"saldana-the-challenge-of-avatar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/2009\/12\/saldana-the-challenge-of-avatar\/","title":{"rendered":"Saldana: The Challenge of Avatar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For <strong>Zo\u00eb Saldana<\/strong>, working in <em>Avatar<\/em> meant more than just learning her lines.<\/p>\n<p><strong>James Cameron<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Avatar<\/em>, a 3-D science fiction movie releases this week, and Saldana plays Neytiri, a blue-skinned alien warrior, a role for which she has been preparing since 2006.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7987\" title=\"120809Saldana\" src=\"http:\/\/www.trektoday.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/120809Saldana1.gif\" alt=\"120809Saldana\" width=\"140\" height=\"150\" \/>Playing Neytiri didn&#8217;t mean just memorizing lines. Since Saldana joined the production of <em>Avatar<\/em>, she has been in training for the role, which required performance capture (wearing special suits filled with sensors to translate human movements into pixels).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I joined the production in 2006 and we began shooting in the early spring of 2007,&#8221; explained Saldana. &#8220;So from 2006-07, I was training: six months of martial arts training, movement training, horseback riding, archery, weight training and learning a language that was created for the movie.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Like with <em>Star Trek XI<\/em>, Saldana had to maintain a strict silence about the movie. &#8220;It was hard,&#8221; she said, of the need for secrecy, &#8220;but because it was going to be so special, in the end I was so happy to have been a part of it from the beginning.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The performance art was something new for Saldana and took getting used to. &#8220;It was weird at first because it was new, but it was immediately replaced by the fact that I felt like I was really there,&#8221; she said. &#8220;We worked with this for so long, for over 14 months, that it grew to feel normal to me. It was just like acting on a stage, and no different from if we would have been wearing prosthetics. Just another technical thing you have to take into consideration. Once you do all the work, it&#8217;s no different in any approach that you would have towards any traditional film.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Zo\u00eb Saldana, working in Avatar meant more than just learning her lines. James Cameron&#8216;s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2413,2401],"tags":[3011,2410],"class_list":["post-7986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cast-crew","category-star-trek-xi","tag-avatar","tag-saldana"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","newsphere-slider-full":"","newsphere-featured":"","newsphere-medium":""},"author_info":{"display_name":"T&#39;Bonz","author_link":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/author\/tbonz\/"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/cast-crew\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Cast &amp; Crew<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/categories\/star-trek-xi\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Star Trek: XI<\/a>","tag_info":"Star Trek: XI","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7988,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7986\/revisions\/7988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trektoday.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}