Waaaaaay back in 1995, James Cameron wrote an 80-page sciptment for a movie titled Avatar. Now if you’re thinking bald headed Japan-America-imation boy that can bend air, maybe you’re forgetting 1995 was the year of Toy Story, Batman Forever and Blues Traveler! What? Blues Traveler isn’t a good enough obscure reference? I love Blues Traveler!
Anyways, a year later, after Mr. Cameron finished the epic story that was Titanic and it won, I believe the technical term is a shitload of awards, he announced he would start production on Avatar, making use of “synthetic”, or computer-generated, actors. A few years go by, lots of Terminators come and go…then Final Fantasy comes out and that plan changed a bit. Though Cameron stated years later that he delayed the movie because the “technology necessary to create his project wasn’t advanced enough” word on the streets was that Digital Domain, the special effects house he was going to use for the project, ate up the $100 million quoted for Avatar pretty fast, leaving Cameron to find a better way to make “Project 880”
In December of 2006 (wow we’re just jumping all around aren’t we…) Cameron explained he was going to use a new type of motion capture animation to make photo-realistic computer-generated characters (say that three times fast) and he was finally starting production on the movie. Unlike normal MOCAP systems where you add the digital environments after the actors motions have been captured, this system allowed the director to view the digital world as well as view the digital cast in real time. This sweet system allows the director to direct scenes as if he was in a live-action movie, control all the aspects of the lighting, camera angles, even the colors of…well everything! Basically, if the director wants to make the entire scene on a slice of white bread instead of a spaceship…he can.
Word has it a few big name directors showed up on set of Avatar while Cameron was testing this bad boy: Spielberg, Jackson and even Ol’ George Lucas saw it in action!
So this brings us to January 2007. Paramount just announces a live-action movie for the “Crazy Japan-America-imation Airbender Kid” screen titled Avatar: The Last Airbender (which if you haven’t heard will suck because M. Night Shy-A-Lay-Suck-A-Lot-A-Lan is directing it) but bla-bla-bla the name Avatar was already registered to Cameron’s movie bla-bla-bla so they add “last airbender” after the title but bla-bla no one cares. But something that same month James Cameron declared (running out of synonyms for proclaim, damn I used another one) the movie will be in 3D! Also, he’s sated that every movie he makes (Terminator 4,5,6 and maybe True Lies 2) will be in 3D. Makes sense, even the PS3 was showcasing 3D games at CES last week.
At this point I revealed (add another check to the list of synonyms) this movie really feels like a late-night infomercial. “Not only will this movie use state of the art deign and programming software but we at 20th century Fox will make it 3D! And if you call in the next 30 minutes we’ll make 60% of the movie computer-generated elements and 40% live action!!!”
So after 14 years, Avatar is to be herald (kinda a stretch on that one) May 22, 2009! Let's just call Avatar James Cameron’s Chinese Democracy (hope it dose better)
But wait, if you call now James Horner will…oh shut up.
Brandon Dyer
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