Recently I got a chance to see Avatar in digital 3D. The movie was a great viewing experience and I was completely on the Earth-like moon of Pandora every step of the way.
The movie has set a milestone in the film industry, the same way that Star Wars, E.T. & Jurassic Park did. In Avatar the animation looks so real that you feel like being on Pandora.
A story told from the heart
Aside from the special effects, Avatar also has a story line that told from heart and makes you think about our own planet Earth. The scene like the army distroying the big tree which is a shelter of the species on planet Pandora, reminds you about the dead trees on our own earth.
It intoduces you with the future, where We may end up on another moon like Pandora trying to steal resources. The story also points towards the America’s attitude towards rest of the world.
The movie takes us to the world of Pandora, a moon that orbits the giant planet Polyphemus in Alpha Centauri-A, our nearest star system. The year is 2154, when Earthlings have figured out how to travel through distant space, and need to for the energy needs. Cameron’s attention to detail in this movie’s each frame is just amezing.
Pandora has got a great amount of valuable mineral, but is also home to the Na’vi, an indigenous people who are blue, around eight feet tall, and have hair that acts like a plug and play USB device to all the animals with which they share a bond — viperwolves, hexapedes and the horrible leonopteryx, which looks like a giant, flying reptile. So cute! Isnt it?
The rainforest world of Pandora is why you need to see “Avatar” on the big screen and in 3D. The movie truly immerses you in this strangely familiar planet.
The Indian connection
Well, The movie name “Avatar” reminds me about the hindu religious belif about bhagvan Vishnu taking a “Avatar” (appearing on earth by taking birth as normal human being to save the earth from bad boys..). As per Hindu mythology, Vishnu has taken 10 avataars (DashAvatars) till date.
In the movie “Avatar”, the hero also takes a “Avatar” on Pandora to save the planet and the native people. Wondering who will save earth and us.
Avatar: What’s the Future of Film? (DiscoveryNetworks)
James Cameron has been working on “Avatar” for four years and planning for 15, his first movie since 1997’s “Titanic,” is indeed a milestone.
The 3D experience
The 3D experience is at the heart of Avatar. To film the live-action sequences of Avatar, Cameron used a modified version of the Fusion camera. The new 3D camera creates an augmented-reality view for Cameron as he shoots, sensing its position on a motion-capture stage, then integrating the live actors into CG environments on the viewfinder. This immersive 3D brings a heightened believability to Avatar’s live-action sequences—gradually bringing viewers deeper into the exotic world of Pandora. In an early scene, Sully looks out the window as he flies over the giant trees and waterfalls of the jungle moon, and the depth afforded by the 3D perspective gives the planet mass and scale, making it as dizzyingly real for viewers as it is for him.
About 25 percent of the movie was created using traditional live performances on sets. The rest takes place in an entirely computer-generated world—combining performance capture with virtual environments that have never before been realized on film. Conjuring up this exotic world allowed Cameron to engage with hammerhead thanators, direhorses, pterodactyl-like banshees, hundreds of trees and plants, floating mountains and incredible landscapes, all created from scratch.
The swing camera and Motion-capture technology
Motion-capture technology is capable of recording a 360-degree view of performances, so actors must play scenes with no idea where the “camera” will eventually be. Cameron wanted to be able to see the actors moving within the virtual environments while still on the motion-capture stage (called the volume). So he challenged his virtual-production supervisor Glenn Derry to come up with a virtual camera that could show him a low-resolution view of Pandora as he shot the performances.
The swing camera is another of Avatar’s breakthrough technologies. The swing camera has no lens at all, only an LCD screen and markers that record its position and orientation within the volume relative to the actors. That position information is then run through an effects switcher, which feeds back low-resolution CG versions of both the actors and the environment of Pandora to the swing cam’s screen in real time.
