Avatar’s Laz Alonso says he was being filmed by 197 cameras simultaneously!

Laz Alonso spoke to BlackRazzi.com about a few of his upcoming films, one of which included James Cameron’s Avatar. During the interview he revealed some mind blowing stuff about how many cameras he had filming him during his scenes.

“Technologically speaking, we are being filmed by 197 cameras simultaneously, every single take. It’s something you just can’t explain in words this man has created. At first it was intimidating because I’ve never worked in that environment before. You don’t know what to expect or how it works, or anything about it. But then you realize it’s actually very liberating because in film you have only one to three cameras max at one time. You usually have to save your energy cause you got to do your wide shot. You can’t let it all out in your wide shot because by the time you come to your close up you’re spent. So you have to save everything until you get to the close up and then unleash. Usually close ups are at the end of the day. Whereas here (Avatar filming), every single take is close up, every single take is wide shot, and every single take is a medium shot. And he goes in later to figure out which take he wants to use for which moment. It’s very liberating because you can give 100% every single take.”

We won’t actually be seeing Laz on screen (not that I know of anyway) as he will be playing one of the Na’vi, an alien race on the planet Pandora.

Update: Here’s a making of video: