WSU alumnus wins second Oscar for ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’

Washington State University alumnus Eric Saindon took home his second Best Visual Effects Oscar during last night's Academy Awards as part of the team behind Avatar: Fire and Ash.

Saindon was able to relish the win alongside his 16- and 19-year-oldchildren and the team that brought Pandora to life to the tune of a $1.4 billion worldwide box office.

Awards season is a busy one for Saindon, who spent the weeks prior to his Oscar win flying between his home in New Zealand to London, New York, and Los Angeles.

"This is a really fun time of the year because you're going to all of these different awards events getting to sit down and talk with really amazing people about their work and share with them what you've been working on," Saindon said.

Director Ryan Coogler, whose film Sinners won four Oscars, and Best Actor nominee Ethan Hawke, were among the Hollywood luminaries Saindon exchanged insights and stories with.

While the result is the same as in 2023 when Saindon and his colleagues won an Oscar for Avatar: The Way of Water, the evening was far less perilous.

Timing is everything

Recalling his first Oscar win in 2023, Saindon said the timing was particularly fortunate.

Had he not stood up and hugged his wife upon winning, the pain might not have been enough to prompt his swift exit for emergency surgery to repair his ruptured small intestine. And because he was in Beverly Hills, he received treatment at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from one of the world's foremost surgeons.

"Winning the Oscar actually saved my life," Saindon recalled.

The $49 he spent on traveler's insurance that covered the hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. medical expenses was the best money he's ever spent.

Returning to Pandora

Treating audiences to the latest adventure on Pandora required three years of filming and a further two years of post-production. Principal photography for the second and third Avatar films took place simultaneously, with additional filming for the latest entry helping to flesh out beloved characters.

Across a three hour and 17 minute film, there are only four shots without any digital effects, Saindon said. If you rendered all of the film's effects with a single central processing unit, it would have taken 140,000 years to complete the task. Fortunately, New Zealand-based Weta FX - where Saindon works as a visual effects supervisor - had more than one computer available for the job.

The evolution of performance capture technology between the Lord of the Rings films and Avatar is staggering. Each actor who appears as a member of the fictional alien race Na'vi on screen has a small camera hovering in front of their face, which is covered in black dots. Visual effects artists then use a neural network to interpolate how muscles beneath the skin would move to create a given expression. This creates an effect that is a much better match to the facial performance being given by the actors.

Everything that the audience sees has to be done with purpose. That's why it takes years to make a movie - everything is thought out.

Avatar director James Cameron hates to fake things, Saindon said, and will go to tremendous lengths to ensure what is being done by everyone from the biggest named actors to the most minor extras makes sense to the audience. Numerous physical props are used to give actors something real to work with.

And it goes even further: To ensure actors who were playing instruments during a scene looked authentic, the film's composer Simon Franglen designed and 3D printed new musical instruments for the actors to play. These instruments were never seen on film, but were held and played by actors and replaced by computer-generated versions.

"Everything that the audience sees has to be done with purpose," Saindon said. "That's why it takes years to make a movie - everything is thought out."

Saindon's work wasn't just behind the scenes. In the latest Avatar film, he also appeared as an on-cameraextra.

"My kids said I looked fat," Saindon said with a smile.

Giving advice

Asked what advice he'd give WSU students pursuing a career in visual effects for film, Saindon recommended prioritizing technique rather than a particular program.

"The buttons you'll be pressing are always changing, so by the time you graduate the software will probably be different," he said. "If you learn the artistry of filmmaking, you'll be much more successful."