{"id":5185,"date":"2009-08-22T10:22:28","date_gmt":"2009-08-22T15:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/?p=5185"},"modified":"2018-12-08T15:56:31","modified_gmt":"2018-12-08T20:56:31","slug":"thoughts-on-the-avatar-day-footage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/2009\/08\/22\/thoughts-on-the-avatar-day-footage\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts On The ‘AVATAR Day’ Footage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Avatar1\"<\/a>\u201cYou\u2019re not in Kansas anymore!\u201d<\/p>\n

So intones Stephen Lang\u2019s Col. Quaritch in the opening moments of the sixteen minute preview of director James Cameron\u2019s upcoming science-fiction epic Avatar<\/strong> which screened yesterday evening at IMAX theater locations around the country.<\/p>\n

Yes, the line\u2019s use could have been clich\u00e9-ic and hyperbolic. Except for the fact that Cameron\u2019s film may just be able to live up to the hype and expectation that has slowly been building up around the project for the last couple of years. Hype and expectation that in no little part has been fueled by Cameron himself, with talk of immersive 3D presentation and photo realistic, computer generated characters and creatures.<\/p>\n

(Surprisingly, reports from around the country state that not all showings of the preview were sold out. I say surprising, because when the free tickets for the event were made available last Monday online, the website offering them almost immediately crashed and experienced delays for several hours afterwards.)<\/p>\n

Last night was Cameron\u2019s \u201cproof of concept\u201d demonstration, and he brought the goods. The first of the five scenes previewed, all from the first half of the film, introduces viewers to the film\u2019s basic conceit. A couple of centuries in the future on the planet Pandora, humanity has established a research outpost. However, since the planet\u2019s atmosphere is not oxygen-rich like here on Earth, an ingenious way of exploring the planet has been devised. Copies of Pandora\u2019s indigenous intelligent population, the Na\u2019vi, are created and controlled via a sort of telepathic remote control. Everything that the Na\u2019vi body experiences is experienced by its controller back at the base. It is as if the controller is their Na\u2019vi avatar. Quaritch warns the group of Marines about to begin their assignment on the world that \u201cEvery living thing that crawls, flies or squats in the mud wants to kill you and eat your eyes for jujubes\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The second scene shows us the process in which is used to transfer control to a na\u2019vi avatar. The film\u2019s hero, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a former marine now confined to a wheelchair. He looks at the avatar program as a way to, in at least some way, regain his mobility. Once the transference process is complete, Jake in his Na\u2019vi body, quickly jumps up and ignoring doctor\u2019s and technician\u2019s orders, begins moving about a laboratory.<\/p>\n

It is here where Cameron begins to show off the leaps in computer-generated imagery that he claims to have made for the film. We see Jake\u2019s Na\u2019vi avatar close up in several shots. We see his feet and hands close-up enough to see pores, hair, wrinkles and finger prints. The depth of detail is amazing and breathtaking.<\/p>\n

\"Avatar2\"<\/a>The following three scenes showcase Jake in his Na\u2019vi avatar moving through the jungles of Pandora. In one sequence, he and some others encounter some weird six-legged beasts that look like a cross between an elephant, a rhinoceros and a hammer-head shark. The scene culminates in a pell-mell dash through the forest as Jake is chased by another, even more ferocious creature.<\/p>\n

The fourth scene features Jake meeting one of the indigenous Na\u2019vi, Ney\u2019tiri (Zoe Saldana) in a clearing at night. They don\u2019t see quite eye-to-eye at first, but they must come to an understanding as the final scene shows Ney\u2019tiri and a few other Na\u2019vi showing Jake, now in native garb, a ritual which bonds him to a flying, dragon-like creature.<\/p>\n

Each of these segments have an increasingly higher technical difficulty but each sequence shows no sign of slippage in the quality of work being presented. A little voice kept reminding me that eight foot tall, blue, cat-like humanoids and strange six-legged elephant-rhino-hammerhead shark creatures do not exist in real life, but yet, there they were in front of me on, and popping out of, the screen. The environs of Pandora are an impressive bit of world building and one suspects that Cameron probably has reams of notes on a hard drive somewhere that delve into far greater detail than will ever be seen or even hinted at in the final product how the ecology of the planet works. It is a hostile world and danger looks behind or underneath every tree, fern and bush. For all intents and purposes, Pandora is a real world that Cameron has somehow managed to transport us to while keeping us in the safety of our comfy cinema seats.<\/p>\n

But will this film be as game changing as some insist it will be?<\/p>\n

Possibly, but we can\u2019t really make that judgment until well after Avatar<\/strong>‘s December 18th premier. Several factors yet to be played out, including how the final product works as a film and how other filmmakers follow in Cameron\u2019s footsteps in regards to using the new technology and techniques he has developed for the film, will inform that verdict more than any excitement-fueled decree made today will. The 3D process used in the 1950s showed much promise, but virtually no filmmakers beyond Alfred Hitchcock (with Dial M For Murder<\/strong>) and George Sidney (with the musical Kiss Me Kate<\/strong>) really tried to push it much further than its exploitation roots. From the footage shown, Cameron seems to be using it in a similar way, as a way to draw the viewer into the world he has created rather than have the film thrust things out at the viewer.<\/p>\n

As a way of generating excitement and showing what he has up his sleeve, Cameron has definitely succeeded in what is probably the most interesting bit of marketing of a motion picture in a long time.<\/p>\n

In the meantime- here is the standard trailer for Avatar<\/strong> that was released Thursday. It does contain some footage not seen in yesterday\u2019s preview.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cYou\u2019re not in Kansas anymore!\u201d So intones Stephen Lang\u2019s Col. Quaritch in the opening moments of the sixteen minute preview of director James Cameron\u2019s upcoming science-fiction epic Avatar which screened yesterday evening at IMAX theater [click for more]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1695,84],"tags":[42,1849,3,57,46,1653,7885],"series":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5185","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-features","8":"category-news","9":"tag-3d","10":"tag-avatar","11":"tag-coming-soon","12":"tag-directors","13":"tag-imax","14":"tag-james-cameron","15":"tag-promotional"},"aioseo_notices":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[2],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":false,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5185"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=5185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}