The director James Cameron and his army of artist-technicians have created an epic movie Avatar, a sci-fi motion picture comprising of the state-of-the art 3-D visual effects generated by Computer Graphics (CG). Avatar is a mind-blowing environmental conscious visual effects thriller leading the audience to an emotional journey of redemption and revolution. In Avatar, James Cameron, has fulfilled his vision that spanned more than a decade in its making.
Avatar, a 300 million dollar movie in the making was released in Dec 2009 and has been a huge blockbuster and an epic among many viewers around the world. It is a futuristic story in the year of 2154; Jake Sully, the paraplegic ex-marine undergoes an experiment to exist as an Avatar, a genetically engineered hybrid body (remotely controlled body grown from human DNA mixed with the DNA of Na’vi) that allows himself and other such human to breathe and co-exist in an alien environment (the Na’vi environment) an exotic planet Pandora, rich in bio-diversity.
Jake is accepted by the Na’vi clan and undergoes a comprehensive training from the Na’vi chief’s daughter Neytiri.
These course of events takes the viewers to the eccentric but environmental conscious Na’vi tribe in a world of flora and fauna, the Pandora world; a rain forest where it hardly ever rains but consists of gigantic trees and phosphorescent plants, of six-legged flying horses, panther dogs and hammerhead dinosaurs.
As Jake adapts and settles in Na’vi he realizes his actual role in the environment is its exploitation, and is caught in a dilemma, to fight along with the Na’vi as they are attacked by the American forces or to betray Na’vi and exploit their environmental forests that possess a mineral coveted by his countrymen. The course of events and the consequences that eventually follow are for its viewers to visualize and experience on viewing the movie 3-D visual effects on the big screen or at home; they are not discussed in our review.
The technology of Avatar has a huge advantage over other sci-fi thrillers or visual effects movies of the past by the invention of advanced CG characters. The CG characters (the Na’vi tribe and the humanoids in the Pandora world) resemble the actors who play them although with some distinguished differences in a number of fundamental proportions. The Na'vi’ are 10-ft.-tall, blue-striped people with yellow eyes that are twice the diameter of human eyes, and are spaced farther apart and are much larger and leaner than humans, with longer necks, and they have different bone and muscle structures, including most obviously, their three-fingered hands. Blue make-up would have made the skin opaque, but with CG, the characters have a translucent skin which behaves like real skin, in which the pigment at the surface does not mask the red glow of the blood beneath, such as when strong sunlight hits the backs of the characters' ears. All of these subtleties combine to allow the creation of seemingly living creatures.
In 1995, Cameron saw the rapid progress in CG characters, and thought that his dream project that gives the audience a feeling of another world might be possible to make. Having already created CG milestone characters in "The Abyss" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," Cameron wanted to push the CG arts to new heights, and so the visually ambitious AVATAR was written. But when the treatment was broken down by CG experts, Cameron realized that the technologies required for photorealism were still years off, so the project was shelved by a decade.
When Cameron revived the project in 2005, it seemed the techniques required were right around the corner. Cameron's team sought to go far beyond prior efforts, to ensure that the characters looked realistic. To do this, they developed a new "image-based facial performance capture" system, using a head-rig camera to accurately record facial performances with unprecedented clarity and precision. Instead of using the motion capture technique of placing reflective markers on the actors' faces to capture their expressions, the actors wore special headgear, resembling an American football helmet to which a tiny camera was attached. The rig faced towards the actors' faces and the camera recorded facial expression and muscle movements to a degree never before possible.
Another innovation created especially for AVATAR was the Virtual Camera, which allowed Cameron to shoot scenes within his computer-generated world, a new way of directing motion-capture film making. The system displays an augmented reality on a monitor, placing the actor's virtual counterparts into their digital surroundings in real time, allowing the director to adjust and direct scenes just as if shooting in live action. According to Cameron, "It's like a big, powerful game engine.” After working out the details of how to exactly capture the actor's performances, the next step was to take the aid of Peter Jackson's Academy Award winning visual effects powerhouse WETA Digital, in New Zealand for the creation of groundbreaking photo-real characters of the likes of Gollum in the “The Lord of the rings” or the CG character “King Kong”.
WETA assured him that their team of world-class animators would make it their mission to convey one hundred percent of the actors' performances to their Na'vi or Avatar characters. This involved insuring that highly accurate data be recorded at the moment the scene was performed, and it also required over a year of work by the animation team to create the "head rigs" that allowed the CG characters to emote exactly like the actors whose performance they were mirroring. To film the shots as CGI interacts with the live action, a unique camera referred to as a "Simulcam" was used, a merger of the 3-D fusion camera and the virtual camera systems. While filming live action in real time with the “Simulcam”, the CGI images captured with the virtual camera or designed from scratch, were superimposed over the live action images and shown on a small monitor, making it possible for the director to instruct the actors how to relate to the virtual material while shooting a scene.
In all the years of development and four years of production, the Avatar crew attended to every detail in the making of Avatar. In Avatar, James Cameron has developed a sci-fi thriller encompassing a combination of 60% of computer-generated characters and 40% of live environments with traditional miniatures.
Cameron's collaborators excel, beginning with the actors. Whether in human shape or as natives, they all bring terrific vitality to their roles. In preparation of the filming sequences, all of the actors underwent proficient training specific to their characters such as horseback riding, archery, firearms and hand to hand combat. They also received dialect training in the Na'vi language created for the film. The part-artist, part scientist director, Cameron, also sent the cast to the jungle in Hawaii to get a feel for a rainforest setting before a shooting on the soundstage.
The sci-fi blockbuster won the best picture and director at the golden globe awards in the beginning of this year. It was nominated for 9 Academy’s in the beginning of this year and won the Oscars for for best Visual Effects movie, best cinematography and best Art Direction. Even though critics may point out that Avatar has been a progeny of past Hollywood pictures with the narrative of the story resembling “Dancing with Wolves”, and may have an occasional downside on the dialogues or a rare occasion of a diminished clarity in the animation, overall the161 minute film Avatar, is a novel discovery for film making, with its evolution of visual effects guarantying its audience a breathtaking live action filled with spectacular visual effects , emotion, drama and occasional humor.
The Avatar Team (The actors, The director, James Cameron, and other technical crew and artists significantly involved in the making of Avatar.)
Avatar brings forth a message of love to its viewers and its script and screen play promotes an importance of living in peace and harmony with nature and the people around you. Avatar has taken cinematography into a progression with its usage of cutting edge visual technology by the development of head rig cameras and the virtual camera. The movie’s evolutionary 3-D visual effects are an exemplar for 3-D visual effects movies of the future.
Article written by Sennen Pinto, a torch bearer member. A special thanks to the web support torch bearer team members Rohit Verghese and Merwin Pinto for assisting in collecting pictures for the article. The article was previewed and edited by the editorial torch bearer team before submission.
