Avatar Featurette

[randomer909]

Performance Capture Featurette

Everyone has been saying that James Cameron developed some special camera that has changed cinema forever Well now you can see what he actually did, and it's really interesting to see. He really has revolutionised cinema, and brings a lot more respect for Avatar from me now

[Fitz1980]

The stuff that they developed was really neat epically because it was designed to capture the nuances of the actor's performances.  It's that kind of attention to detail and concern for performance/human drama that sets Cameron above most other big action/sci-fi directors in Hollywood.  Truth is he could have probably made the movie for half of the budget if he just shot the "human" segments live action and than had the actors record their lines for the Na'vi scenes.  Than as he said "a team of CGI artists could spend the next 2 years animating the movie and creating the characters of the Na'vi's world."  But instead he didn't want the Avatars and Na'vi to look like animated characters speaking with the voices of the cast.  He wanted them to have the nuances of the actors' performances. 

[genxnaturist]

I wonder how much, if any James Cameron was influenced by movie AI.  Much of the technology used here seemed to have been used to lesser degree in AI, this seems to clearly be next step taking those methods to next step and added new technologies.

[Fitz1980]

I wonder how much if James Cameron was influenced by movie AI. 

Perhaps a lot.  I've been a fan of Cameron since I was in high school, class of 1998.  The first website I ever made was a fan page for him and his movies when I was in HS.  Around 1999 I saw reports of him having this project in the works called Avatar that would be over half CGI, but mixed with live action.  I figured it would be some "Tron" or "The Matrix" type story where people would jack themselves into some computer simulation.  Never imagined that it would have been what it turned out to be.