Some people about Time Magazine have been exposed to a sneak peek at James Cameron’s Avatar due out late December this year. Not surprising, but they have a lot of wonderful things to say about it.
More than a thousand people have worked on it, at a cost in excess of $300 million, and it represents digital filmmaking’s bleeding edge. Cameron wrote the treatment for it in 1995 as a way to push his digital-production company to its limits. The movie pioneers two unrelated technologies–e-motion capture, which uses images from tiny cameras rigged to actors’ heads to replicate their expressions, and digital 3-D.
I couldn’t tell what was real and what was animated–even knowing that the 9-ft.-tall blue, dappled dude couldn’t possibly be real. The scenes were so startling and absorbing that the following morning, I had the peculiar sensation of wanting to return there, as if Pandora were real.
As with any report or tidbit we hear about Avatar, the focus seems to be about how amazing this will be. No real word on plot, story, or anything else, just the groundbreaking technology used.
So I question, will Avatar become the next Watchmen? A film so hotly anticipated for WHAT it is, and exposing itself to a limited audience struggling to meet its production costs? Surely once the advertising ramps up, Avatar will be painted up as a breakthrough from the critically acclaimed Cameron that has been over a decade in the works. But will it own up to its insane budget?
Are they taking one for the team to develop the technology. Perhaps the film itself won’t make much if it does topple those imposing production dollars, but the technology used to bridge the Uncanny Gap, and give us a computer generated image that can fool the mind to thinking its looking at reality will be used in future endeavours.
This will set a new standard for CG in movies and effects, no doubt. Everyone is convinced of that. But will the MOVIE make it big, or will we be too busy seeing if its pretty or not
