Apparently folks weren’t paying attention over a year ago when James Cameron’s right-hand-man Jon Landau first spoke of Avatar 2 employing motion-capture technology adapted to underwater use, but he did.
The technology is still in testing phase with a dedicated team (as it was), though Landau has explained a bit more why they’re so keen on it.
“We could simulate water, but we can’t simulate the actor’s experience, so we are going to capture performance in a tank. We are looking at what we did before with reflective markers… how we record reference photography so that as we are going through the editorial process and the postproduction workflow, we can see what the actors did and make sure that the final performance up on screen represents that.”
Landau was talking to a tech conference at this point, but you can still see that they’re pushing forward with developing these techniques, which does sound like quite a challenge. The whole point of those reference dots is to have a perfectly accurate representation of how the face moves, and once you add water distortion between the face and camera.. well that kind of bones the whole idea. Undoubtedly they have or will have figured it out by the time Avatar 2 rolls, but even I can see the big challenge there.
Obviously Landau is in the super-progressive cinema tech camp, so he had a few things to say about hot-button topics like 3d and HFR. For example…
“What Peter Jackson presented, is what Peter Jackson wanted to present. Audiences went to The Hobbit expecting the same tone as the Lord of the Rings films, but The Hobbit is a different film with a different story and a different tone, and Peter Jackson made absolutely the right creative choice for him and should be respected for that.”
He’s got more to say, which you can read in THR’s full coverage of the panel.
via /Film
4 comments
taking the lightstage under-water? good idea. gotta thank your lucky stars sometimes for people like Cameron who just get to the top of their game and keep pushing forward.
Are you kidding? I LOVE nuts and bolts. Good read/video. I think a futuristic sci-fi tone like Avatar’s is way better suited to HFR, as opposed to the more worn and aged and old timey feel of The Hobbit….not to mention, as he says, people were expecting the exact same feel as LOTR. Also; when it was first announced that The Hobbit was going to be in 48 fps, I remember reading stuff about using HFR is a limited capacity- NOT for an entire film. Like, say, if a static tripod shot were to quickly pan…couldn’t they just bump up the frames during that pan, to eliminate strobing? And then when the pan settles again to a static shot, bring it back down to 24? I feel like that might gel. Or it might be to obvious that the frame rate was changing and it would be disorienting. Who knows. Or maybe (to take it a little further than a split second thing) have a slower-paced scene be in 24 fps, and then an action scene with a lot of quick movement and camera work be bumped up to 48 or 60? I’M most interested in HFR in this capacity. Either way, I’m hyped for whatever they’re doing for the Avatar sequels. JC is The Sequel Master.
I wasn’t blown away by Avatar’s story, but I enjoyed the 3D (which I try and avoid) and the overall world of Pandora was very interesting.
I just hope Cameron is not entering his Lucas phase where more attention is being paid to the technology and/or the design of the monster fish swimming around than the actual story. What makes Cameron so great is his ability to blend special effects and great storytelling.
People actually still care about Avatar? The need for this sequel is somewhere between the need for sequels to Peter Jackson’s King Kong and The Abyss, and this is probably going to be both.
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