
James Cameron’s New 3-D Epic Could Change Film Forever - edw519
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/11/ff_avatar_cameron?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
======
grellas
The technology associated with film-making has evolved incrementally ever
since its inception: from the 1890's Edison Kinetoscope shorts that could be
watched by only one person at a time to the 2-reeler comedy shorts circa 1915
to D.W. Griffith's breakthrough with silent feature-length films in _Birth of
a Nation_ to the first talkies with 1927's _The Jazz Singer_ to the
introduction of color in select 1920's movies such as _The Black Pirate_
(eventually evolving into beautiful technicolor productions) to Disney's
feature animations in the 1930's to the first experimentation with 3-D in the
1950's with _The Blue Lagoon_ and other gimmick films featuring knives and
other assorted objects being hurled gratuitously at the audience to the
widescreen film techniques of the 1950's featuring elongated landscapes that
made one dizzy watching them to the modern digital special effects movies
featuring CGI in a leading role.

Throughout this history, film-makers have continually experimented with
different camera techniques and different types of cameras.

This item relating to Mr. Cameron appears to be another incremental step in
this long process. It looks to be interesting and possibly intriguing.

What is being lost in the modern film innovations, however, is what I would
call the essence of film-making, which is a play-acted script featuring real
people but presented as human drama/comedy/satire/etc. using the recognized
camera techniques that distinguish cinema from a live play - rapid cutting,
point-of-view camera angles, etc. As things go increasingly digital, and
become more and more subject to manipulation of images bearing less and less
connection with our real world experiences, we get more and more a sense of
watching a cartoon as opposed to real people. It is no coincidence that, in
this context, many of the modern plots are drawn from cartoon sources (
_Batman_ , _Spider Man_ , many others). As this emphasis on special effects
has increased, what has become increasingly lost is the quality scripts (with
their corresponding wit, drama, fantasy) that once could be taken for granted
in quality film-making. The result is an increasingly _artificial_ experience
to which it becomes harder and harder to relate.

Over the centuries, it is the great _stories_ that have moved us, from epic
poems to the great novels and, yes, even to the cinema of old warhorses such
as _Gone with the Wind_. Today, technology has become as much a substitute for
story-telling as anything else. Yes, it constitutes progress in a real sense
(incremental though it may be) but, insofar as it has detracted from inspiring
story-telling by serving as a tin-hat means of attracting audiences without
the need to develop a great story, it has brought a net loss. Just watch a
silent movie like _Sunrise_ (1927) and tell me that CGI and other gimmicks
have brought a net improvement to what truly can be inspiring about film.

It is, of course, possible to combine great new technology with great stories
but not when the technology itself is being featured as the primary
attraction.

~~~
roc
I don't buy the argument that the past had a higher rate of quality scripts.
To me, that position has always smacked of selective reporting combined with
the old 'back in my day' argument.

The undeniably great stories of western civilization total a hundred or so
works over the course of our history. So the works of any given decade or
generation will _always_ be found wanting in that comparison. It shows
nothing.

If anything, the old studio system was _designed_ to shovel out disposable
content even more so than the current configuration.

Now I don't have a comprehensive study to support my position, but until
commonly accepted wisdom has one for _its_ stance, I disagree.

~~~
cchooper
These days, the commonly accepted wisdom is that movies were always as bad as
they are now, and anyone who says otherwise is just idealizing the past. I
offer the following evidence that the quality of movies is not constant over
time:

1939: Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Gone With The Wind, The Wizard Of Oz,
Stagecoach, Ninotchka, Wuthering Heights

1940: Rebecca, Fantasia, His Girl Friday, The Grapes of Wrath, The
Philadelphia Story, The Great Dictator

1941: Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon, The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels

Rather than relying on personal taste, I took these from various 'top 100'
lists. I haven't seen all of them myself, but the ones I have seen are a mile
apart from anything released this year, or any recent year.

~~~
NikkiA
IMDB reports that 2322 movies were released in 1939 alone, is it really
surprising that there were a handful of good movies among them?

1980 for comparision, IMDB lists 6007 movies (8000+ if you include TV movies),
and contains modern (popular) classics such as Stir Crazy, Superman II, Empire
Strikes Back, Airplane!, The Blue Lagoon, Ordinary People, Urban Cowboy. The
Shining, Caddyshack, Raging Bull, Friday The 13th, The Fog, The Blues
Brothers.

Hmm, looks like 1980 was a much more 'classic' era than the 40s for hollywood,
but you wouldn't have heard that from film buffs in the 80s.

Hollywood has always been a great abuser of the 'sling lots of shit at the
wall and see what sticks' approach to 'greatness', they're just slinging a lot
more shit these days.

Even if we take a really contemporary year and do the same study, we see a
pattern of greats no matter what year, take 2005 at random:

Batman Begins, Sin City, V for Vendetta, Revenge of the Sith, King Kong,
Brokeback Mountain, Harry Potter/Goblet of Fire, Serenity, Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory, Mr & Mrs Smith, Wedding Crashers, Munich, Saw 2, Hostel,
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Madagascar, Pride & Prejudice, Land of the
Dead.

Ah, but the movie buff will point out that they're not _established classics_
like Gone with the Wind, or Wizard of Oz. Not yet, anyway.

Edit: Btw, for 2005, the number of movies was 28,000+. Is it any wonder that
there is a lot of formulaic stuff in there as well?

~~~
cchooper
There is not a single great movie in your 2005 list. In fact _Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy_ is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

As for the 1980s, this was indeed a much better decade than the current one.
The 70s were even better, much better than the 40s.

> is it really surprising that there were a handful of good movies among them?

Not good movies, great movies.

------
vaporstun
Damn, nobody liked it when I submitted the exact same link with the exact same
title 2 days ago. :(

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=991197>

Oh well. Still glad to see that people get to read it. I was especially
impressed by push in technology that Cameron has made. I had no idea he was
behind a lot of the push to get 3D projectors installed in theaters and how
much he did to influence the creation of the 3D cameras used in filming this
and other movies. There are many technical accomplishments that have been made
with this film that most people watching it will never know (or care) about.

~~~
spicyj
Yours used a straight apostrophe. ;)

------
mumrah
Maybe it's just me, but these blue dudes are not quite out of the uncanny
valley.

~~~
baddox
The blue dudes are very human-like, yet are not humans. Therefore, even if you
saw them in real life, they would be in the "uncanny valley." The real uncanny
valley only applies to attempted depictions of humans. Heck, a shorn
chimpanzee is practically in the same uncanny valley as the blue dudes.

~~~
shpxnvz
* The real uncanny valley only applies to attempted depictions of humans.*

In my experience the same reaction, though sometimes muted, applies to just
about any living thing Hollywood attempts to computer generate. I can't
remember having ever seen a convincing depiction of a dog, cat, or even insect
for that matter.

It's entirely possible that an alien humanoid biological creature would appear
to be obviously living to us in the same way as other non-human animals, and
thus subject to the same "uncanny valley."

~~~
electromagnetic
The uncanny valley can be used to good effect though: zombies for instance.
It's very hard to make a zombie scary if you've got it too low on the uncanny
valley that people can't get past going "aww it's so cute!"

I haven't got the creepy feeling I have from other attempts, so I'd likely put
them on the upward exponential out of the uncanny valley. I believe this may
be greatly helped by the fact they're _not_ supposed to look human.

It's like the aliens in the new Star Trek, the absolute weirdest was the
comedic throwback of the green chick. The lack of prosthetics to modify her
made her feel so much weirder than any of the others.

The fact that people are going to be going into the movie seeing spaceships
and humans rendered in CGI before they see any of the aliens may help the
aliens out of the uncanny valley. After wading through Disney Land and finding
one of the humanoid robots they don't appear as false as the highly realistic
androids being made in Japan despite not being of as good craftsmanship, why?
Well I just walked through a mile of talking humanoid mice, anything remotely
human is now believable!

However something to point out: Capgras syndrome gives the sufferer this
'uncanny valley' effect to anyone the person knows, they'll believe the person
has been replaced by a duplicate.

------
peterwwillis
Looks like this 3-D camera he developed has been used in films before. Why
didn't they change film forever? Do we expect to enter a new era where
everyone uses James Cameron's insane attention to detail in order to make a
headdress look realistic, or develop a new language and teach it to actors?
The article smells of hype and seems to justify this long-delayed epic "to
out-Lucas Lucas."

I'm no film buff, but the cinematography of certain parts of the trailer
reminds me of the same second-rate "Lets get a really wide shot of this big
computer-generated battle scene" effects-for-the-sake-of-effects schlock
that's been shoved down our throats for the past 10 years. The Na'vi look
really cool. But every time I see a perfectly framed complete shot of a
monster leaping out of some shrubs in slow-motion I want to throw a shoe. We
get it. It looks cool and somewhat life-like. Now can you please show us
something that's designed to evoke a response other than cooing in delight of
your wonderful technical achievements?

~~~
unalone
_We get it. It looks cool and somewhat life-like. Now can you please show us
something that's designed to evoke a response other than cooing in delight of
your wonderful technical achievements?_

We live in a world where people know nothing about cinema except what they see
on commercials during the Simpsons. When you make a trailer, you're convincing
the masses. You expect cinephiles to ignore trailers anyway.

It's the ultimate amateur mistake to assume a movie trailer is worth anything.
It's marketing, and what's more, it's dumb marketing for dumb people.

~~~
Freebytes
The sad part is that the trailer gives an impression of what I believe the
movie is not at first glance. The title of the project would have been better
if changed as well. The title seems like a kids movie and blue anoxeric smurfs
do not seem like they would be enticing to adults; however, I really want to
see this movie... not because of the trailer but because I like the idea of
Cameron returning to what made his films special in the first place. Titanic
was a terrible movie and should have been a dud. It was not enjoyable to watch
for me, and it was the first and only movie I walked out on. (I returned
around the time the boat started sinking.) However, Aliens, Terminator, etc.
are some of my favorite movies. To see his talent is to compare his movies to
their sequels by other directors. Terminator 3 was terrible. T4 was good, but
it did not compare to T1 and T2. And Terminator 2 was one of the only sequels
I believe that was actually better than the original. Anyway, I think this
movie has promise but the marketing itself has been lacking. They should have
focused on the epic aspects of the film in the marketing.

~~~
mahmud
_Titanic was a terrible movie and should have been a dud. It was not enjoyable
to watch for me, and it was the first and only movie I walked out on._

Say what you will, but Titanic was the best thing that happened to my youth:
every girl wanted to see it, over and over again, and no guy could stand it.
Perfect.

------
NathanKP
Link to the full page version:

[http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/11/ff_avatar_cameron/all/...](http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/11/ff_avatar_cameron/all/1)

(I always hate clicking through pages 1-4 when you can just view all four
pages at once.)

------
axod
I don't see why this "Could change film forever".

This is just an advert for a movie.

~~~
mbrubeck
This (long) New Yorker profile of Cameron might be more interesting to some
Hacker News readers. It focuses less on the tech, and more on Cameron's
personality and career:
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_goodyear)

It paints him as a sort of Steve Jobs figure, with a really incredible drive
to create and succeed, often at the expense of all else.

> _She wanted to get married, but Cameron, she says, was not interested in a
> conventional domestic life: “He used to say to me, ‘Anybody can be a father
> or a husband. There are only five people in the world who can do what I do,
> and I’m going for that.’ ”_

> [...]

> _Before beginning production on “The Abyss” (1989), the most ambitious
> underwater movie ever attempted, he went to see Leonard Goldberg, then the
> president of Fox, which was financing the film. “He said, ‘I want you to
> know one thing—once we embark on this adventure and I start to make this
> movie, the only way you’ll be able to stop me is to kill me,’ ” Goldberg
> told me. “You looked into those eyes and you knew he meant it.”_

~~~
redcap
good article, worth reading just for this quote by bill paxton:

“The words ‘No’ and ‘That’s impossible’ and phrases like ‘That can’t be
done’—that’s the stuff that gives him an erection"

------
anigbrowl
Although the article mentions the topic, it has such a broad sweep that it
obscures the real takeaway, which is the way that 3d is employed. All the
stuff about the incredibly detailed CG, backstory etc. is valid and
interesting, but epic levels of such are not really new - _Star Wars_ has a
very detailed alternative universe, and any Tolkien nerd above a certain age
can remember the vast level of supplementary data on Middle Earth that existed
before the movies (Tolkien was a philologist by profession so he had fully
developed multiple languages etc. to invest his imaginary world with a sense
of realism).

The real kicker (from studio and filmmaker's point of view) is how Cameron is
employing 3d. On most films until now it's been a novelty, used to make a
weapon or explosion seem to imperil the audience, or to abuse perspective for
comic effect. Cameron's achievement is to integrate it tightly with the
existing cinematic language of the lens.

Basically lenses can be 'wide' or (confusingly) 'long'. A wide-angle lens
presents a wide field of view while exaggerating perspective, while a long
lens isolates small detail and can reduce the sense depth. Obviously this is
important for framing, but it can be used in other ways; if you wish to
increase tension, shoot someone running towards the camera with a long lens.
S/he will hardly seem to be moving forward at all, and as viewers we fear the
character will be unable to reach their objective in time. Conversely, the
same motion when shot with a wide lens will suggest rapid movement from
background to foreground, giving us a sense of power an inevitability (or
conversely, of weakness and impotence if a character is falling away from the
camera). Obviously I'm just scratching the surface here, but the various
distortions of perspective possible with different focal lengths are a big
part of what gives cinema its dramatic power.

What Cameron has been doing with _Avatar_ is to shoot in deep focus (no using
the aperture and focus controls to blur out the background, a favorite
technique for isolating the subject from the environment) but instead create
depth by altering the angle between the two lenses dynamically, creating the
illusion of a large space in which attention to depth is focused
stereoscopically. Until now most 3d projects have kept the stereoscopic
distance fixed, which yields the feeling of watching the story take place on a
stage in front of one and occasionally having one of the props or actors
protrude outwards toward the audience. By varying the angle between the lenses
in the same fashion as our eyes, Cameron presents a far more immersive way of
experiencing the third dimension.

Much of the skepticism towards _Avatar_ trailers and so forth stems from the
fact that the background is often fully in focus - a technique which has been
used to great cinematic effect (eg in _Citizen Kane_ ) but which has fallen
out of fashion over the years. In videogames, by contrast, such deep focus is
common (since you don't know where the player will want to focus attention in
advance, and also because simulating narrow depth of field dynamically is
computationally expensive). This deep focus is necessary to provide a credible
sense of depth with variable-angle stereoscopy (if we threw the background out
of focus too much, the foreground characters would just seem to be floating in
space), but when you see it projected in regular 2d it looks old-fashioned and
videogame-y.

It's not the CG that looks weird; if you shot an ordinary scene with the same
3d technique it would look boring and flat in 2d (indeed, the difficulty of
emphasizing depth by adjusting focus on a consumer video camera is a big part
of what makes it 'look like video'). So the primary reason _Avatar_ is a Big
Deal for Hollywood is that Cameron seems to have succeeded in developing a 3d
photographic technique that is much more compelling and realistic than the
standard fixed-angle 3d which has been used until now, which actually
emphasizes the separation of the audience from the action. And in order to
fully appreciate this...yes, you'll need to go to the theater.

Cameron has also done other amazing things - being able to integrate the CG
with the live action at production time (instead of imagining it and then
integrating the two image sources over months or years of post-production
work) is also a very big deal, but that's much more 'inside baseball' as the
main beneficiaries are the filmmakers rather than the audience, although it
will lead to better results insofar as it will make it easier for less skilled
or funded production teams to produce convincing blends of real and artificial
images. And there are a host of other technical innovations - there will be
multiple books written for the professional market on how to improve a film by
employing Cameron's techniques; indeed, I dearly wish Cameron himself would
write a book (or several) on his approach to directing, since he is the master
of staging and editing complex visual action - if you need proof of this,
watch a long action sequence from _Terminator 2_ (or any of his other films
actually) and then a similar action scene from Michael Bay or someone similar;
he too has access to huge budgets and armies of technical professionals, but
in films like _Transformers_ audiences can literally lose track of what's
going on, who's winning a battle etc.

But the bottom line is that _Avatar_ will live (or die, but probably live) by
virtue of the way Cameron leverages 3d to put the audience 'in' the visual
story, which is a _fundamentally_ different photographic technique from that
employed up to now.

~~~
jonny_noog
Great to read such an in depth analysis. I had read about Cameron's
integration of CGI with live action at production time, but had not found
anything that explains this different kind of 3D as well as you just did.

I've had this hunch for a while that there are show biz executives out there
hoping against hope that Cameron's new 3D technology - which as you say can
only be fully appreciated in the cinema - will magically save the industry
from the evils of content piracy. Will be amusing to see how that pans out.

As much as I'm looking forward to seeing Avatar, a lot of the conversations
that I've had with people about the movie revolve around the concern that the
movie its self will be overshadowed by the technology. E.g. when _Final
Fantasy: The Spirits Within_ was released, my friends and I went to see it
solely because the CGI looked so state of the art (we're geeks, what can I
say), and it surely had pretty graphics. But the story (what there was of it)
and just about everything else sucked pretty hard. It seems like they were
really counting on the CGI to carry the movie. Either that or they were just
in denial of how crap the other aspects of the movie really were.

So I'm really just hoping that they've ended up putting more into Avatar than
the new technology alone. A story line more original than that which has been
hinted at would be good.

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm fairly confident about this...partly as a fan of Cameron, but also because
story/plot, although fundamentally important, need not be so complex or
original to be good. As a quick tongue-in-cheek guide to previous work of his:

 _The Terminator_ : Robot from the future menaces woman from the present to
protect own existence, future career as CA governor. _Aliens_ : return to th
planet of the Aliens. Even with bigger guns, they are still dangerous. _The
Abyss_ : Undersea explorers find intelligent life at bottom of sea, panic.
_Terminator 2_ : Robot from the future menaces woman from the present to
protect own existence, future governor of CA switches sides. _True Lies_ :
Future CA governor is mild-mannered computer salesman by day, fights
terrorists by night (should be familiar life situation to many HN readers).
_Titanic_ : pretty heiress enjoys shipboard romance with handsome peasant
until angry fiance catches her. Boat sinks, panic ensues.

Seriously, the fact that you can summarize a story easily tells us little
about the process of working it out on screen for an audience. So while
_Avatar_ can be summed up as 'greedy humans want space oil buried under
village of fighting smurfs, conflict ensues', the real story (as with most of
his work) is what happens when an individual's experience of the world places
them in conflict with the status quo, perhaps one that may not even exist yet.
Critics may deride this as formulaic, but Cameron's main theme is the conflict
between the individual and the social, which does not yield to simple analyses
of good vs. evil.

~~~
jonny_noog
Don't forget the implied _Dances With Wolves_ style, "some humans see the
error of their ways and go native." :P

But you're right, it doesn't need to be overly complex or totally original to
be good. There's always room for a well told story, some of the best stories
of modern times are retellings of archetypal themes.

Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of most of Cameron's work, the Terminator
mythology (I even still have the old Terminator comics published by Dark
Horse) and Aliens (also have the Dark Horse comics) probably more so than
anything else. But at the very least, there better be some originality to the
writing, even if still within the overall framework of his easily summarised
story.

------
trevelyan
He gets a lot of bad press, but I find Cameron genuinely inspiring. His
attention to detail and fanatical focus on storytelling is impressive. He
bends the world to his will. Also the way he gets obsessed with things and
pours himself into them with apparent little regard for what others think.

I could care less about whether actors find him difficult to work with, or
what percentage of his work involves revolutionary technology. I am glad he is
out there making his films. Even the bad ones are interesting.

------
CrLf
Out-Lucas Lucas is easy, just throw a decent story in there, and don't get
high on the effects.

Given Hollywoods history in recent years, I'm not to confident that Avatar
will be such a good movie.

~~~
chadgeidel
I thought so too, but Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars:

[http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20...](http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091211/REVIEWS/912119998)

------
byrneseyeview
_As a sign of his commitment, Cameron agreed to give up his entire directing
fee and any profit participation in the movie._

He showed his commitment by giving up a financial stake? It would have shown
more commitment if he'd given up any flat fee in order to get a higher
percentage of the profits.

~~~
sketerpot
I think the idea was to show that he's in it for the art, not for the money.

~~~
byrneseyeview
If I were in it for the money (i.e. if I were a major studio), that would not
be a good sign.

------
mtalantikite
I don't know, not to be nit-picky, but how am I supposed to believe a future
human society can fly special forces to a far away planet and mind-control a
genetically modified species, but still can't get a paralyzed dude to walk
again on the cheap?

Maybe health care just sucks that bad in the future?

~~~
anigbrowl
That's like asking why the people in _Star Wars_ speak English :) Although
this obvious plot query is nominally handled in the film, the real reason is
that Cameron is using his epic canvas to present an exciting metaphor for how
he sees the world, hence the object of desire (over which the conflicts take
place) being dubbed 'unobtainium'.

~~~
mtalantikite
Well, yes and no :) Characters aren't motivated in Star Wars to defeat the
Empire so that they can be rewarded with the ability to speak English again,
but one of the major motivating factors of this story is giving the
protagonist the ability to walk again if accepts and succeeds in his task.

I don't really know anything about the plot, but it seems like I should be
expecting a plot turn where the protagonist is faced with the dilemma of
turning on his peers and his mission for love's sake, or doing something
morally suspect so he can walk again. Just a guess, I really know nothing
about the movie.

------
boredguy8
The most fascinating part of this whole thing to me is having the chance to
see the movie after having read the 'scriptment' over 5 years ago.
<http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/5/8/73755/86297> provided the link, though
I'm not finding the document online any longer.

(BTW, the link is worth visiting for a few other interesting scripts--for
instance, a version of "I Am Legend".
<http://www.horrorlair.com/moviescripts_a_f.html> has more)

~~~
stse
[http://web.archive.org/web/20071214194820/http://feayn.org/~...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071214194820/http://feayn.org/~lewis/Avatar__by_James_Cameron.txt)

------
neilk
Funny, I noticed the game-like quality of the ads, but assumed that it meant
they had finally reversed the relationship between games and movies. Like,
they were releasing a very expensive game and the movie was just a giant ad.

