The Tech Behind Cameron’s Avatar

December 14, 2009  |  Tech Worth Talking About, Today's Headlines

It’s rare here at 101 to 87 that we get to cover mainstream consumer topics. We try to stick to our niche and keep educating on technology innovation. Believe me, if I could write about Tiger Woods or Sarah Palin, you’d never get me to shut up. I could say a lot about their current PR efforts and comebacks gone wrong, respectively.

So the fact I get to write about a movie, a new James Cameron epic saga, well it‚  practically a holiday around here.

His newest movie Avatar, due this Friday, is a look at a group of human characters struggling to protect themselves from a distant planet‚ indigenous lifeforms made up of 12 computer-generated characters. The humans are transported between their world and the avatar planet. The storyline features all of Cameron’s typical cliches — war, love, struggling handicap soldier desperate to become useful again.

Ok back to tech.

The movie began filming back in 2007 in New Zealand with a $200 million budget.  It’s achieve absolute movie mayhem now with an estimated $500 million spent. But it is predicted to make profit during the holiday week and will most likely scoop all technical awards at the Oscars.

While James Cameron does admit to a god complex, and has quite the ego, you have to give him credit that he’s brilliant and passionate about making movies. This isn’t just his vision, he wrote and directed Avatar.

For Avatar, Cameron developed a new 3D camera system call FUSION with HD expert Vince Pace so that live action shows being filmed with human characters could also feature virtual ones too. No more old school green screen an Cameron will be able to direct his virtual cast members as if they are real people on a live action set, rather than making ‚ fake spots‚ for them in editing. The new 3D format is said to revolutionize the moving industry. It’s rumored that Spielberg and Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) are using the same 3D technology to do the new series of movies from The Adventures of Tin Tin.

The filming experience has been different than anything else on camera. See how Avatar’s filming will be the new Star Wars for the next generations.

There are numerous amounts of technology behind Avatar, some that will eventually change the way we watch all movies, what toys look like, video games etc. And while one trend this year was to self-animate ourselves into “avatars” Cameron gives us a real look at this type of conversion. Take my favorite girl Zoe Saldana for example.

Saldana describes the experience on filming Avatar here.

We’ll continue to cover the technology behind Avatar throughout the week.  For some unbias, user-generated reviews go here. Otherwise we’ll see you in the lines at Crossgates on Friday.