Avatar has now made $512 million domestically, scored the top two awards at the Golden Globes, and is likely to be the highest grossing movie of all time. Director James Cameron should be ecstatic. And he is — as long as you don’t call his movie animated. After hearing that Meryl Streep had reportedly compared Avatar to the work she did in Wes Anderson’s stop-motion animated film The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Cameron said backstage at the Globes: “She did a voice performance for a day or two.” To prove the point that performance-capture relies on human actors just as much as computers, Cameron and Co. have put together a featurette illustrating the acting process Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, and Sigourney Weaver went through. It may not be enough to get these folks a Oscar nom but it should earn them more respect in Hollywood. Check out the clip below.
I understand that Cameron wants to make it clear that Avatar isn’t animated, but he acts like it’s some sort of dirty word.
i agree- its almost like he acts his film is better because its “not an animated film”… but while, he’s dissing on Meryl, whats to say that what Robert Zemeckis is doing is any different? theyre both using motion capture technology- i guess the only difference is, is Zemeckis’ films are purely animated and Avatar is a hybrid between live action and yes animated… kinda like Who framed Roger Rabbit (also done by Zemeckis btw)
it’s nothing like Roger Rabbit. it IS like Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol. But Cameron claims that what he has done with the facial capture and the virtual camera is a leap beyond what Zemeckis has done with his performance-cap films.
Is he still dissing Meryl when he’s right?
Paige, did you even watch the featurette? How is that comparable to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
I don’t think he is acting like it is a dirty word. He just wants people to understand the massive amount of work that went into this and it isn’t like sitting in a booth talking into a mic.
Yeah because animation gets a connotation in this country, mainly because people relate animation to children, so I can see why he doesnt want it to be dubbed animated.
Roger Rabbit was half live action half animation…
He’s not putting down animation but wants to make sure that people realize that Avatar is performance capture driven film. Cameron wants his actors recognized for their hard work in this movie. That every action and emotion coming from the characters was done by an actor.
Zoe Saldana to me was the heart and soul of Avatar. She totally rocked as Neytiri.
i totally second that! Zoe @ Neytiri was real – lively – awesome!
And isn’t this exactly the same thing Andy Serkis did 10 years ago when he played Smeagol/Gollum?
VERY TRUE! AND KONG!… regardless, I found Zoe Saldana quite good in Avatar.
Yeah, it’s not a new concept. I agree, though, Zoe Saldana was very good.
Nah, it’s not the same thing. Artists used CGI to animate Gollum’s facial expressions. Andy Serkis coulda been sticking his tongue out the whole time during filming.
In Avatar, we see Zoe Saldana’s actual facial expressions. Cameron developed a new technology to capture that.
But the WETA animators used Andy Serkis’s facial expressions as a foundation for their facial animation. If you watch footage comparing the facial expressions Serkis made during filming to what the animators ultimately put on screen, you’ll that Serkis was 100% involved with making Gollum seem real. Andy Serkis was in no way “sticking his tongue out the whole time during filming.” He WAS Gollum.
I would say that the technology is more in line with how Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen was created rather than Lord of the Rings (no disrespect to Gollum’s amazing animators!). Ironic that both Manhattan and the Na’vi are blue…
NO, because Gollum WAS NOT mocaped, he was animated (!!!)
[rotomation].
Cameron didn’t create this clip because of Streep’s comments at the Golden Globes. Instead, it’s part of a 30 minute show running on Fox and FOXMO channels throughout this week and next, and probably longer. Just search your DVR for “Avatar” and you’ll find the 30 minute episode of “behind the scenes” from Avatar. I’m sure this kind of stuff was originally created for the DVD special features.
In fairness, this is an exciting innovation and development. Whatever you think of Avatar (specifically its story and its director’s jackass image, of which he himself is aware), this technology will prove significant moving forward.
Andy Serkis was awesome as Gollum and Weta Workshop did a great job working on the motion capture for both LOTR and Avatar. If any of the stars in Avatar had been nominated for an oscar after Serkis wasn’t, I would have been pretty cheesed off. Serkis was amazing both in the studio using his imagination and out in the field interacting with the other characters on location.
PS People shouldn’t act like animation is a lesser medium. Animators also often reference facial expressions and movements used by the voice actors when animating characters, and beyond that, it’s disrespectful to act like the only performances in animated movies are by the voice actors. In animation “acting” refers to both the voice, and the way the character was animated. Animators need to push emotion through the mediums of clay or 2D drawing or computers etc. and still make people fall in love with a mobile trash compactor alone on Earth.
While I agree with Cameron….there is no way I would call anything sam Worthington has done “acting”. His australi-brit-ican accent in every movie is horrible.
Mark in what last two movies that Sam filmed did you hear a australi-brit-ican accent? I thought not only was Sams American accent fabulous but his acting surpassed even Christian Bale in TS-4. Sam is another Australian who is making a name for himself fast as a great actor worldwide. Aussie already knew of his great acting ability since he is not new to the acting just new to Hollywood. Now to get back on topic; Cameron was only educating people the difference between Animated movie and the technology he helped developed. Voice over work is done in a sound booth; what Cameron did was have his actor’s act while filming their emotion and movements than using new technology to add their Pandorian features around their action and movements!It is two different techniques and Cameron was just educating people.
While I respect the new ground that Cameron and Co. have broken with this updated motion capture technology… it still does NOT beat the real thing, i.e. watching actual humans perform. It was very interesting to watch this featurette and see the live actor’s performance split screened with the CG translation of said performance because in all instances, the live performance was better and more affecting. For instance, in the scene where Jake admits he knew the military were coming, there are subtleties in Worthington’s and Saldana’s faces – especially in their eyes – that the computer didn’t capture (especially since the Na’Vi eyes are big and yellow). Here’s hoping that CG motion capture does NOT eventually replace live actors, because a lot will be missed.
No worries, there will “always” be theatre, stand-up comedy, camp-fire stories, black&white, animation, 2D and 3D movies and foreign movies even with these new ways of translating data. More to the question, can we keep up with the consumption of stories with our own personal production of stories?
Okay, this was cool
I lamely got chills during the part where Zoe Saldena is blowing up at Jake’s confession, and the images are next to each other… cool!
lol i kinda did too… she was very good in that scene… she’s also a good screamer
Because animation has connotations of being childish and not-to-be-taken-seriously. And Cameron obviously wants his work taken seriously. I think it makes sense to do the featurette because his actors really did put so much hard work into the project–they didn’t just sit around and do voice-overs.
Great featurette: Hope exactly material like this makes it on the dvd. It will be one of the best dvd’s ever!
Ok, James Cameron is like a very good TEAM MANAGER, whenever you get the press saying one player in a team (think CGI) is the reason for a successful result, the manager reminds them that yes they played well, but also highlights the part the rest of the team play that was just a critical if less obvious or dramatic such as the defenders saving a score as opposed to the attackers clocking all the winning points. This is just exposing the VERY REAL WORK OF THESE WONDERFUL CASTE working as a team!
Of course, the categorisation of film into drama, comedy, animation is partly artificial and so on but does have significance on criteria by judges so to be a “blend” of ALL these is advantageous perhaps with this? Also the technology is NEW! People need to have information before they can make decisions so it’s great exposure. Also the real qualities of real people is important to EVERYONE in an aesthetically “soulful” way, so this is shown and it very good to see and helps elevate the movie emotionally.
The actors don’t have tails and they can’t fold their ears back, so obviously the CG characters are at least partially animated.
Andy Serkis could not be nominated because in the end the Gollum you see on screen was animated using key frames by 3D animators only using Serkis as reference. ALl animation whether hand drawn or CG usually uses real world performances as reference material and Serkis’ was no different. The animators can also improve upon what Serkis did. It’s not 1:1 performance like in Avatar where what you see on screen ARE the actors performing! Gollum was animated, not Andy Serkis’ actual performance, it was only referenced. Avatar was the performance capture of the actual actor’s performance.
Sam Worthington in the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtiRWVWIr5c
I didn’t see Avatar in the movies and I regret that. But I recently saw it on a big screen t.v. and I was totally captured and embraced Pandora. Luv Avatar! One of my favorite movies.