In the end, the famous director has made his "Avatar" dream come true after 15 years of concerning and waiting for the development of technology. The movie has subjugated audience all over the world and even overshadowed fever "New moon"...
Just 3 weeks after being publicized in theaters all over the world, "Avatar" has earned more than 1 billion dollars.
So how can "Avatar" be hot like that? That depends a great deal on the talented director James Cameron. His unique ideas are shown in every stage of making the film.
Character portraits
Unlike other directors, Cameron does not want to rely on makeup techniques as these techniques often cause some limits to eye position, arrangement and body size. Most importantly, they will somehow act as an obstacle between characters and cameras.
Avatars in the film will still carry specific features but main ones will be changed. For example, the eyes of Na'vi are of double size compared with the eyes of people on the Earth and lie far from each other. James wants to invent creatures with amazingly lively appearance.
Until 2005, James Cameron found the solution for stiff eyes. He used hats which were stuck with cameras and directed to the faces of characters. With this new technology, the first time in film-making history, eye movement will be recorded.
Another innovation created especially for "Avatar" is the virtual camera system. This system also helped Cameron greatly in building character portraits.
Neytiri - a Na'vi girl on Pandora planet - with featured appearance: long tail, raised ears, green skin, yellow eyes, each hand and foot has 4 fingers
Attractive eyes of Neytiri
Computer Graphics
Image effect in the movie was created by the WETA Digital Staff who have achieved Oscar Award with director Peter Jackson. After over one year working thoroughly on computers, the contribution of WETA Digital to Cameron and the film is greatly remarkable.
In Avatar, the most important thing is to achieve the absolute truthfulness in the action of the majority characters. All high-tech characters in the movie can be described as real and soulful ones. Moreover, the characters in Avatar were located in a world created by computers but looked alive. More than 1 thousand terabytes was the needed capacity to store all high techniques in the movie. This is an amazingly number compared with the memory used for Titanic!!!
Motions such as tail waging or ear dropping are designed to create similarity with emotional expressions of the film characters
The success of Avatar was also made due to the Fusion Camera System. It took Avatar staff 7 years to complete this system and made it operate perfectly in the filming duration.
Actress Joe Saldana and her portrait Neytiri in the film
Actress Sigourney Weaver acts as Doctor Grace
Avatar of the veteran Jake Sully
Actor Sam Worthington acts as Jake Sully
Pandora planet buildup
In Avatar, director Cameron created an outstanding Pandora but still remained its undiscovered features. Pandora is a mixture of familiarity and classicality. With the direction from Cameron, the film-making staff did not feel that he was creating a nothingness Pandora.
Pandora with giant mountains hung in the mid air
and species with incredible power
Most of shots in the film were made in Wellington, New Zeadland where imposing background was created. The film studio required 150 contractors to establish. Most of the background is bases of people on Pandora.
Completion of a Masterpiece
Unlike other films, director Cameron and his coworkers started first image records in the pre-production stage. These records were sent to WETA once a month.
Seeds of magical trees perch on the body of Jake Sully
Another important factor in the final stage which also contributed to the success of Avatar was made by composer James Horner. With this film, Horner combined classical symphony factors to highlight the historic features of the film with sounds bringing audience to a different world. In Avatar, viewers had chance to enjoy "I see you" performed by female singer Leona Lewis.
