Avatar (2009)

"Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world, and in here is the dream."

My third trip to Pandora - Does it still hold up?

A film fourteen years in the making and definitely worth the wait. I read the scriptment to this when it turned up online in the late 90s' and couldn't wait for Cameron to get started, but it was shelved as the technology was not up to scratch. Although bummed at the time, Cameron knew what he was doing.

Cut to 2005 and Cameron had yet to follow up Titanic with a feature film, what was he playing at? He'd been developing cameras and perfecting 3D technology is what with the IMAX documentary films Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep. Having witnessed Weta Digital's ground breaking motion capture work on Gollum and Kong he thought the time was ready for Avatar.

Cameron systematically deleted all copies of the scriptment from the interwebs and announced he was gearing up for post-production on two films, Battle Angel Alita (based on a Japanese Manga and with a, Cameron trademark, strong female lead) and the mysterious Project 880, which because of the scriptment deletion was widely thought to be Avatar. And so it was.

Filming started in 2007 using a ground breaking process that will inevitably change film making going forward. The following is from an article on popularmechanics.com's website that explains this technique:

By Anne Thompson

Stage render by Axel De Roy; Diagrams by Locografix

1: The Volume

Most of James Cameron’s space epic, Avatar, was shot on a performance-capture stage, known as the volume, in Playa Vista, Calif. The volume was rimmed by 120 stationary video cameras, which could record the movements of all actors at once in 3D, with submillimeter precision. Data from the cameras was streamed into Autodesk software, which translates actors’ movements into digital characters in real time within a low-resolution computer-generated environment. So riding a fake banshee mockup onstage instantly translated to CG footage. Multiple cameramen were used on set for reference video, but because the volume essentially captures performances from every angle at once, Cameron could digitally render whatever angles and shots he wanted after the performance, adjusting the camera movements while viewing playback.

2: Digital Closeup

Like many actors in Avatar, Zoë Saldana plays a fully computer-generated character, Na’vi princess Neytiri. To map her movements to her digital doppelgänger, Saldana wore a motion-capture bodysuit with reference markers and stripes. She also wore a head rig designed by Cameron that aimed a smallvideo camera at her face. That camera tracked green ink dots, painted on Saldana’s face, throughout the scene, giving Cameron closeup-level detail of changes in expression to map to Neytiri’s CG face.

3: On-Set Playback

To shoot a scene within a totally CG world, Cameron had virtual production supervisor Glenn Derry rig up augmented-reality cameras. Cameron could watch from the sidelines as his actors’ performances were instantly mapped to their CG characters and displayed via an on-set screen. Or he could use a portable, motion-tracking virtual camera to walk through the volume and view the CG environment of the movie on its LCD screen.

4: Final Render

To transition from the CG produced on set to the photorealistic world of the finished movie, Cameron sent his rough footage to Weta Digital in New Zealand. There, special-effects programmers used a facial solve program and facial action coding to translate the actors’ every minute muscle movement—blinks, twitches, frowns—to believable expressions on the faces of Pandora’s aliens.

Two years later and the film was ready to be unveiled across the world, but not in the usual way.

August 19th 2009 - Four months until release and except for a showing at Comic-Con the previous month the world had yet to see a picture, let alone a trailer for 'the biggest film of the year.' Yet Cameron and 20th Century Fox had something big planned. In two days the would take over IMAX cinemas and additional 3D screens around the world to unveil 16 minutes of the film as an extended trailer. I traveled down to London and watched the trailer twice, once in a regular cinema using RealD tech, and for the second time at the BFI IMAX. I was blown away. The images on screen were mind blowing - December 18th couldn't come soon enough.

I've seen the film three times now, twice in IMAX and once in 3D at a regular theatre and the film holds up. The story maybe simple and predictable but nobody sets up pay-off's better than Cameron which is why his films do so well. The film is perfectly structured, the acting from the humans to the Na'vi is spot on for the roles they are playing and the visuals have never been seen before. Weta have outdone themselves with motion capture and have mastered dead eyes which have been issues with previous motion capture films. I saw Christmas Carol over Christmas and the motion capture there doesn't quite convince. ILM, who also worked on Avatar due to the immense workload, asked Weta to give them the code they'd work out to get convincing eyes and Weta said 'no.' You gotta keep the holy grail close to your chest I guess!

There is only one thing I miss from the scriptment. A creature called a Slinger, whose head can detach from its body to capture prey, just seemed way too outlandish but is based a a sea creature Cameron documented in his Aliens of the Deep documentary. I got the The Field Guide to Pandora the other day and was pleased to see the Slinger included in the book so he was designed for the movie and will hopefully appear in the sequel or in the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray.

10 out of 10