In a very practical sense, costume designer Deborah L. Scott supervises and is part of a visual effects team when working on writer-director James Cameron’s Avatar movies. That includes the latest, Avatar: Fire and Ash (20th Century Studios), for which she recently earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design.
While the film is a mesh of disciplines such as live-action performance capture and sophisticated visual effects, Scott and her creative ensemble design and make physical costumes for VFX artists to work off of–giving effects artists a tactile feel, a sense of texture and physicality on which to base the wardrobe they’re creating for a live-action film in a virtual world. Conventional process often has effects artisans creating costumes from 2D design illustrations. But that is not the case for the Avatar franchise given the complexity of costumes for the films. The clothing is essential to defining the diverse array of characters, including new clans such as the Ash people and the air-traveling Wind Traders in Avatar: Fire and Ash. Thus a more detailed physical template is needed–actual wardrobe as it relates to not only the body but also the essence of each protagonist–in order for VFX artisans to fully realize what the story and its characters require. The work brings together hand-crafted and technological artistry.
Scott related that Cameron and the late revered producer Jon Landau were adamant that the costume designer be involved from the very outset of the process all the way through postproduction for the Avatar films. In essence, Scott found herself supervising the effects artists when it came to the costumes they were creating. Scott oversaw the attire and how it evolved to help ensure that it properly defined what Cameron intended for each character.
Having this guiding creative hand in the effects process relative to costumes is a dynamic Scott has embraced. Earlier in her career she had never envisioned a costume designer being part of the VFX team in such a manner. Over the course of the Avatar films, she has developed a close collaborative bond with the artists at renowned effects/animation studio Wētā FX.
Scott hopes this bond between costume design and visual effects carries far-reaching implications. The Costume Designers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognize, she observed, that this is “another frontier for us,” underscored by the Best Costume Design Oscar nomination for Avatar: Fire and Ash and dispelling the notion that costumers have to “design something and leave.” There is great value to having the costume designer stay on to support the characters and the narrative.
2nd career nomination
Avatar: Fire and Ash marks Scott’s second career Oscar nomination. She won the Academy Award for costume design in 1998 on the strength of Titanic, her first collaboration with Cameron. Some 10 years later, she reconnected with Cameron on the original Avatar film and has gone on to create for the subsequent two movies in the series–Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash. She’s found the Avatar odyssey to be a most gratifying creative experience.
The process, she related, generally starts with a conversation. “He doesn’t micro-manage,” said Scott of Cameron. “What he does is communicate.” Scott shared that she and Cameron “mostly talk about the characters–and the narrative of the characters.”
The conversation often centers on the journey of each character through the script. “I do a lot of designing on paper with my team,” said Scott. “He looks at the illustrations and once we hit it, we’re good to go.”
Scott observed, “What draws us to each other is we like a challenge. We’re comfortable with being challenged. All of his movies take you to places of great challenges.”
For Scott, such challenges are “a gift,” noting that Cameron strives “to expand the world of Pandora instead of staying stagnant.” Scott added, “Jim is never going to stand still,” a mindset and approach that keep the proverbial door open to the possibility of a fourth and/or fifth Avatar movie. With one film informing the next, Scott related that she has seen “the encyclopedia of what we do on Pandora grow.” Scott said she’s learned a lot from the visual effects artists throughout the Avatar experience and she feels that they in turn have learned from her relative to the art of costume design.
In addition to the Oscar nomination, Avatar: Fire and Ash earned Scott a Costume Designers Guild Award nod in the Excellence in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film category. She also garnered Guild nominations in 2010 for Avatar and in 2023 for Avatar: The Way of Water. Also in 2023, the Costume Designers Guild presented Scott with a Career Achievement Award. Sometimes such an honor signals the winding down of a career but quite the opposite for Scott who now finds herself in the nominees circle for both an Oscar and a Costume Designers Guild Award on the strength of Avatar: Fire and Ash.
Scott’s Oscar nomination is one of two garnered by Avatar: Fire and Ash–the other being for Best Achievement in Visual Effects.
This is the 14th installment of SHOOT’s 16-part The Road To Oscar Series of feature stories. Shining a light on such disciplines as directing, cinematography, producing, editing, music, production design, costume design, visual effects and animation, this series will appear weekly all the way through to the Academy Awards gala ceremony. The 98th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 15, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood in Hollywood, Calif., televised live on ABC and streamed on Hulu.
