Dublicator

Avatar by James Cameron

by Bianca Gubalke

Avatar by James Cameron

Avatar by James Cameron is most probably the most captivating 3D fantasy-science-fiction-action movie we have seen so far and it will definitely influence the way movies will be made in the future.

While the story has a wonderful mission and can be understood – without words – on many different levels, it touches both sides within us: the deeper knowledge and longing for wholeness and harmony with Nature … and the destructive violence of  power and greed that are in constant confrontation within the fabric we human beings are being made of – and as we see it with the indigenous humanoid culture of the Na’vi on planet Pandora… it’s no different. Not yet. . .

What fascinated me most was…

~ the concept of the Avatar itself – according to Cameron “… an incarnation of one of the Hindu gods taking a flesh form. In this film what that means is that the human technology in the future is capable of injecting a human’s intelligence into a remotely located body, a biological body…” which I’d like to expand into reflections as to who we ourselves actually are when incarnating in a chosen body (?) and going through a life experience or life situation;

~ the whole idea of a vast bio-botanical neural network of constant connection (think Akasha), communication and interaction – which in my view could have had much more depth, but it’s beautiful as it is presented and might just open the space to some future cinematograph who’d take these tentative beginnings much further;

~ the technical side with its amazingly photo-realistic computer-generated characters and environments

~ and the Graphic Design of it all of course!

Avatar by James Cameron

We can learn a lot from writer, producer and director James Cameron, who we all know from grand best-selling movies like “Aliens” and “Titanic”.

His goals were clearly set and he didn’t let time interfere with his vision. While he wrote the script as early as 1994 and decided that Avatar would have synthetic, computer-generated actors and a couple of leading roles “who appear to be real but do not exist in the physical world” as he expressed himself, he decided that since in his view the technology at the time wasn’t ready to translate his vision in an adequate way, he waited for the right timing and focused on refining the technology for the following years.

Until 2006.

In September 2006 he declared that he would be using his own Rality Camera System to film in 3D where two high-definition cameras would be used in a single camera body to create as perception of depth.

Additionally, Cameron used  new sophisticated motion-capture animation technology to create incredibly photo-realistic computer-generated characters. The difference now was that Cameron’s new virtual cameras allowed him to watch directly on a monitor how the actors’ virtual counterparts interacted with the movie’s digital world in real time and adjust and direct the scenes just as if shooting live action – instead of the normal motion-capture systems, where the digital environment is added after the actors’ motions have been captured.

“It’s like a big, powerful game engine. If I want to fly through space, or change my perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale.”

No wonder, to create the Pandora complex as seen in the film required over a petabyte of digital storage.

Official Avatar Movie

I see you

“I see you” could become a code word for all those having watched Avatar – and I warmly recommend you do, ideally in 3D!

I loved it – I see you there again maybe. . .

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