Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender is an animated series that has captured the hearts of millions. Its popularity has only grown since its conclusion, along with its spin-off show The Legend of Korra. And Netflix knows this all too well, as Avatar became their most streamed show in the summer of 2020. Now, Netflix has big plans for Aang and his friends in the upcoming live-action reboot of Avatar: The Last Airbender. The show is set to hit Netflix in 2024, and we got our first glimpse of it during Netflix’s Tudum event this past June.
In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Four Nations are made up of the Water Tribe, Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, and Air Nomads. “Benders” are individuals with the incredible ability to manipulate their nation’s element. When the Fire Nation launches a conquest of the Four Nations, two young members of the Southern Water Tribe, Katara and Sokka, free Aang. Aang, the young Avatar who has been frozen in ice for a century, is the only one who can master all four elements. He must complete his training to put a stop to the Fire Nation’s war on the world.
Netflix’s Live-Action Avatar: The Last Airbender – Cast, Teaser, & Everything We Know
We had the opportunity to speak with Imaginary Forces’ Anthony Gibbs & Tosh Kodama, the creative directors behind the teaser trailer for Avatar: The Last Airbender. They shared their insights on the process of designing the teaser and the attention to detail that went into every element. Note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, and the show covered here would not exist without the labor of the writers and actors in both unions.
Exploring Avatar: The Last Airbender Live-Action Teaser
FilmmakerFocus: How did you become involved with designing Netflix’s Tudum teaser for Avatar: The Last Airbender?
Tosh Kodama: Well, they approached us with a concept, and while we had some creative input, the main idea came from them. The challenge was ensuring authenticity and attention to detail, given the massive fan base. Translating the animation to live-action required careful consideration.
Comparing the differences between the two. A lot of it was really making sure that the subtleties and everything felt true to the original. So, that’s where a lot of our challenges were at was all the little details, understanding the four elements, understanding how they move, because the thing about this is it’s a pure teaser. We get into it’s just starting to bend the different elements, but we never get there, we just tease this idea that it’s about to bend, but we never actually show the bending of things.
Anthony Gibbs: Yeah, we were given the concept, which was built around the different elements and the elemental symbols, and how you tease something out with so little, that was our main challenge. How do you build that anticipation just around four symbols, and so obviously, the elemental powers, whether its fire, water, air, in very subtle ways, we had to build that kind of energy throughout the tease, and it was a lot of fun doing that.
When you came aboard to design the Avatar Tudum teaser, were you already familiar with the Avatar franchise?
Anthony Gibbs: I’d watched it with my kids, and I’d watched it – I don’t want to age myself! – as a young man, so I was very familiar with it, and I thought I loved the show and that I was a big fan until we met with the rest of our team. I didn’t realize how big it was until half our team were avid Avatar enthusiasts and much bigger fans than I was, and I thought I was a big fan!
Tosh Kodama: I was familiar with it, but very casually, so just like Anthony said, I did watch it with my kids, but I didn’t finish out the show at all. It was a few episodes here and there, so I was the least familiar with it, but I got schooled very quickly, because we have some huge fans on our team!
Anthony Gibbs: We both did!
Did you have the opportunity to see any footage from the Avatar series before creating the teaser?
Tosh Kodama: No, we didn’t see any finished scenes at all. We saw some daily, but it was very rough.
What can you share about the process of creating a teaser like Avatar‘s, where you’re just showing tiny glimpses of things?
Anthony Gibbs: Obviously, one thing you could pull from the show was that each element definitely has its own distinct personality, and so, although it is showing the elements and showing a little bit of the behavior, you can have a little bit of fun in that, where fire is a lot more aggressive than air, which is a lot more flowy, and we try to get some of that character in there to wet the appetite a little bit for things to come. Also, making sure that each symbol was very distinct from one another in its behavior, that was another part of the challenge, because we were trying to tease out so little. And some of that was done through sound, wasn’t it Tosh?
Tosh Kodama: Yeah, the sound design was a huge part of it. I mean, talking about the personality of each symbol, each of them has their own sound, and we really had to dial that in. So, even without the visuals, you could really understand each of those different elements.
Anthony Gibbs: And we started it quite dark for that very purpose, to let some of the sound do the work and kind of lead you in, so hopefully the first time, but if not the second, you understand what you’re listening to or what element it is before the curtain is kind of lifted.
In general, what can you share about the process of designing a teaser that is meant to be cryptic, whether with Avatar or anything else you have worked on?
Tosh Kodama: I think it’s trying to fully understand each element and the characters of each of them. And to do that, you can’t just go in and say ‘Do these subtle, beautiful air movements, you’ve got to go beyond that. So, if we showed you all our tests, we have these blasts of air, we have tornados, we have all kinds of stuff that we created, and at one point we thought they were really cool, but then we realized we had to pull it back.
To be able to do something so constrained and subtle, you kind of have to go beyond that. A lot of times, it’s just finding that sweet spot and pulling it back and making sure that it is a pure tease and not showing too much, and letting the audience feel that space and think ‘Oh, I saw it then!’, and they think they saw more than they actually saw where you just see subtle wind or subtle rocks moving, but you’re just creating an atmosphere where the audience can start using their imagination and fill things in.
Anthony Gibbs: Yeah, and even though it’s kind of a top-down view, we wanted to make it feel like the audience are in that same environment with all the little particulates that we put in with the audience and the logos themselves. And having the logos feel so tactile and textural, I think it helps that kind of connection, and it feels like they could reach out and touch the symbols and really feel immersed, and coming back to sound, that was another way of bridging of that gap?
Will you be involved with designing any of the trailers for Avatar going forward?
Tosh Kodama: We hope so, but we don’t have anything in the works.
What would you say was the most challenging element to convey through such a short teaser?
Tosh Kodama: I think maybe Earth.
Anthony Gibbs: Yeah, inherently there’s less movement there. Air, you can visualize how that would work, and fire is a no-brainer, it’s quite a dynamic element. But Earth, it’s very still.
Tosh Kodama: And again, we went way too far with these elements, and there was a point where we had the rocks moving. And that’s like ‘That’s not a teaser. You’re just showing bending’, so we pulled that back, and it works much better the way it is now. You don’t want to actually show the bending, then you’re giving it all away.
Which element would you most want to take on in any further marketing of Avatar for Netflix?
Tosh Kodama: They’re all pretty fun! Like, fire, we went through so many versions of fire and it’s amazing. We learned so many details of what goes into fire and flames, and the beauty of it and how aggressive things are and the turbulence of it, we did a whole immersive study on that. But also, the way air moves it quite beautiful, too.
Anthony Gibbs: I think like actors, everyone wants to play a bad guy, and I think fire is the bad guy. So, I think for me, the beauty and the pyrotechnics of that sort of movement, there’s a lot to play with in there. Air…
‘s one where you have to show a bit of restraint, but there’s also beauty in that kind of movement.
