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So you couldn't distinguish it from real fire and water ?

 

Being that all of those scenes took place in CG environments, I didn't necessarily look at it that way. But they were very photorealistic effects. Maybe you could see the movie before you run me through the ringer over trivial wording.

 

This

features both. Not in their finest moments, but there ya go.
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Wow. I was one of those who dissed and wrote this one off because I was underwhelmed by the trailer. I almost feel ashamed.

 

This will be the first in a long line of people here changing their tune after seeing the movie. ;)

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I bet my last dollar that phonelines around the globe are on fire with conversations between directors, DPs and producers about how to convert their current pre-production projects into 3D -- maybe even some in-production films.

 

Also, consider the impact of 3D on piracy. Does anyone really want to watch a non-3D, VHS-quality "cam" copy off bit torrent of AVATAR?? No way

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I bet my last dollar that phonelines around the globe are on fire with conversations between directors, DPs and producers about how to convert their current pre-production projects into 3D -- maybe even some in-production films.

 

Also, consider the impact of 3D on piracy. Does anyone really want to watch a non-3D, VHS-quality "cam" copy off bit torrent of AVATAR?? No way

 

By that same logic, the picture is disposable after its theatrical run, as seeing on TV won't convey the same impact as in 3-D. Hence the term "gimmick."

 

To the guys that are talking about the CGI foliage... It sounds like you're impressed with screensavers.

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By that same logic, the picture is disposable after its theatrical run, as seeing on TV won't convey the same impact as in 3-D. Hence the term "gimmick."

 

Perhaps you haven't heard yet about 3D Blurays?

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I bet my last dollar that phonelines around the globe are on fire with conversations between directors, DPs and producers about how to convert their current pre-production projects into 3D -- maybe even some in-production films.

 

I'm sure. <_< Do you have stock in this film or something?

 

Honestly, my trouble is with James Cameron. I don't care about "Avatar", but James Cameron's so dang cocky, it's kind of sickening. I imagine the boss from “The Office” if he suddenly became a famous movie director - giant pictures of himself splattered all over his house. Not to mention, ALL his movies - minus the new tech stuff - are corny and stupid. I mean, compare “The Abyss” to any one of Martin Scorsese’s films. Minus the (at the time) new tech stuff, his movies have terribly corny dialogue and characters stock full of clichés. And I’m including “Titanic” where the only good human romance dialogue/moments were directly lifted from "Say Anything". The rest was cool tech stuff.

 

I like "The Terminator" cause of Arnold, he's funny.

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I saw the movie this morning in digital 3D.

 

Overall, it was very impressive, probably the best sci-fi fantasy/adventure film since, well "Star Trek" (my personal bias on display here) or "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King". There are many "oh my god" sort of moments during the movie where you get goosebumps from seeing such amazing imagery.

 

Also easily the best-done 3D movie I've ever seen. Cameron really has taken the technology up a major step.

 

I also liked that the wild imagination on display was tempered by a notion of making the technology and the biology plausible, as long as you didn't ask too many questions. It was nice to have an alien planet where the air wasn't breathable and the gravity was different, though not much different than Earth. That and the fact that the aliens didn't speak (much) English.

 

The colors and the lighting effects were beautiful.

 

Now the downsides:

 

#1 The story, despite the level of imagination involved, was fairly predictable. Not always a problem with genre movies, especially when the set pieces are so impressive as they are here, but I rarely was surprised by any plot development.

 

#2 As impressive as the 3D CGI landscapes were, they rarely reached a level of photographic realism as would a movie shot in real environments, giving big stretches of the movie the feeling like I was watching the most expensive video game ever made. The 3D helped take the edge off of the animated look by creating believable depth cues, so I suspect that in 2D, this movie is going to feel even more CGI-ish.

 

#3 I think this IS the most expensive movie ever made, which is going to make copying its technical level and approach hard.

 

#4 Shooting the movie in HD and doing the efx at 2K just didn't seem like there was enough resolution. Although I have this problem with 3D movies in general, they always seem a bit blurry. But it's amazing that Cameron had such control over the 3D process that I didn't get eyestrain after nearly 3 hours.

 

I would be hard-pressed to call the movie "revolutionary", though 3D filmmaking has been taken to a higher level -- I mean, overall the impression is like more of the same wall-to-wall CGI-driven effects movies ala "Revenge of the Sith", just improved upon, done much better (in fact, the final battle kept reminding me of "Return of the Jedi" but with better effects and directing). "Evolutionary" may be a more accurate word.

 

--

 

By the way, I saw the trailer for "Piranha 3D", which was shot in 2D and converted to 3D in post... and looks it. It felt like someone took chunks of the frame in post and decided whether to make the foreground, midground, or background, it looked like some old Viewmaster slide.

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Didn't the digital projection also failed (due to system crash, not DRM) during the London premiere with Cameron himself?

 

I'm going to watch it in IMAX 3D - glorious 70mm-prints instead of tiny digital projectors... Many friends wanted to see it in "Digital 3D" for the same price as IMAX and I had to convince (but it's digital! they sound like Cameron himself) them otherwise (one even missed the premiere due to the DRM-crap sitting about 200m away from the IMAX were it worked perfectly...)

 

I've heard that the polarization filters of IMAX are not up to date and that it might cause some trouble (ghost pictures) when sitting not directly in front of the screen (my tickets are about 6 seats from center - might that cause problems?)

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Shooting a 3D movie in 4K will not make the movie any sharper. As James Cameron has pointed out it is the lack of temporal resolution that makes 3D movies look blurry. 3D movies need to be shot at a minimum of 30 frames per second and 48 fps is required for backward compatibility with 24 fps. James Cameron has promised that Avatar 2 will be shot at 48 frames per second.

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If 24 fps was the limiting factor in sharpness, then a 65mm movie would not look any sharper than a 35mm, or a Super-8 movie for that matter.

 

I saw "Captain EO" shot in 5-perf 65mm 3D, and it was sharper than "Avatar". And I've seen true 15-perf 65mm IMAX 3D movies, such as "Wings of Courage", and they are definitely higher in resolution, so this notion that there would be no improvement in resolution in 3D by, well increasing resolution, is NONSENSE. I've seen it with my own eyes!

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I allowed myself to get engrossed in the story and enjoy it. But I can see it from both standpoints. Those who are well studied in cinema storytelling can clearly see through the plot tricks that James Cameron likes to use. The various basic character archetypes that Cameron has used for years were mostly all in the film. In Avatar he used a lot of foreshadowing. So much so to the point that it telegraphed a lot of the important plot turns, that took away from any surprise. If watching the movie through the eyes of a cinema study you can easily see the man behind the curtain pulling all the levers.

 

I went to see it with a group of people who know nothing about the mechanics of cinema story structure and theory and they thoroughly enjoyed. So I just allowed myself to enjoy it the way they did.

 

I also really feel the theme of man attempting to dominate nature and place profit over everything else is an extremely important topic to explore today. As a world society we are literally at a cross roads where we could easily choose to be the humans that were depicted in the film.

 

 

 

 

As far as the 3D, I have to agree it is the best 3D I have ever seen. Cameron wasn't so concerned with making objects jump out at you, as it was precise control of extremely shallow depth of field. That in essence is what separated the subject from the background.

 

It was nice but I still did not hear the collective gasp of astonishment the way I'd heard when I saw The Dark Knight in IMAX. That first shot of the Chicago skyline, the entire audience literally gasped as though we were floating above the building.

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At this point what gag is original? I'd never heard of Unobtanium and looked it up to see if it was real. Once I'd discovered where it came from I thought it was a great gag, and a great theme for the movie.

 

He's essentially making the social statement that continuing to drill and dig for finite sources of fuel is futile and unsustainable.

 

 

I wonder if Cameron knows that every engineer on the face of the earth involved in bleeding edge technology laughs about having made something using Unobtanium. I first heard it when Roger Penske referred to his unlimited sports racing cars as having axle shafts made out of Unobtanium.

 

It's not a very original gag.

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I bet my last dollar that phonelines around the globe are on fire with conversations between directors, DPs and producers about how to convert their current pre-production projects into 3D -- maybe even some in-production films.

 

Also, consider the impact of 3D on piracy. Does anyone really want to watch a non-3D, VHS-quality "cam" copy off bit torrent of AVATAR?? No way

 

 

I doubt there is a mad dash for all production to go 3D, Avatar budget is being estimated at $200-$300 million, with an additional $200 million for marketing and distribution. I'm sure most of the studio heads are keeping all of this in context and not jumping to hyperbole.

 

Perhaps you haven't heard yet about 3D Blurays?

 

Yeah, 3D Blu-ray will be as big a hit as DVD Audio...............

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I tried watching Blu-Ray Journey to the Center of the Earth using disposable red and blue glasses and a cheap 60 hertz HDTV and I was not impressed. However the new Blu-Ray 3D specification requires a Playstation 3 with next years firmware update, uses 50 percent more bandwidth and more expensive polarized glasses with a 120 hertz television so 3D done right is going to be a whole different story and may be better than a 3K television.

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Are you sure? Wasn't the AR supposed to be 1.78:1 in 3D presentations, and 2.39:1 in 2D?

I also saw it in 2.40 in Real-D.

 

I'm not sure of the whole story behind this, and sorry if it's brought up elsewhere here, but apparently theaters (some or all, I don't know) showing it in 3D got a memo about Cameron wanting it to "fill as much of the screen as possible"--in flat, the 3D effects are supposed to jump out past the black bars, I guess. Auditoriums with top masking were to show the flat version, and ones with side masking, the scope version. G-Force did something similar, if I remember correctly.

 

The one I saw Avatar in had top masking, but was still 2.40. They were sent the scope drive by mistake, and just decided to play it.

 

About the movie itself, I liked it, even with the one-note story, weak parables, cliched dialogue and predictability. The CG was big and epic and very good, but nothing really "revolutionary" or "changing the face of movies forever" etc. The 3D was pretty cool--at one point I reflexively tried to brush some falling leaves out of my eyes. Some of the mouth movements of the Navi were spotty and video game-like. The Sigourney Weaver avatar was really weird and "wrong"-looking the first couple of times it was shown.

 

There was one awful part near the end, a closeup of the colonel's face while he was inside the robot suit. It (his face) was pasty green and looked flat and completely fake.

 

The sound mix was fantastic.

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The problem with James Cameron and his statement that for stereo movies he would much rather have 2K at 48fps than 4K at 24 fps is that 4K offers 4 times as much resolution as 2K so shooting in the 2K format is too much of a resolution hit.

I'm not so certain that the current 4K is true 4K in terms of the Red Camera.

 

I'd much rather see more detail than resolution.

Edited by Marcus Joseph
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Sure, even though Blu-ray sales have tripled year over year, they are still only 3% of DVD's sales. At the same time DVD sales are going down every year. As much as the studios hope it, Blu-ray will not replace DVD.

 

Netflix announced that far more people stream its movies than request Blu-ray.

 

Care to place a bet on that?
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Sure, even though Blu-ray sales have tripled year over year, they are still only 3% of DVD's sales. At the same time DVD sales are going down every year. As much as the studios hope it, Blu-ray will not replace DVD.

 

Netflix announced that far more people stream its movies than request Blu-ray.

 

The bet is not whether Bluray sales will match DVD. The bet is whether 3D Bluray and 3D at home will become more popular than DVD audio. Still want to take that bet?

 

My guess is that people will be lining up for 3D televisions and Blurays to see films like AVATAR at home. You can take that to the bank.

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The actual resolution of Red One is probably closer to 3K. To give the 4K format a run for its money you set up dual 2K projectors with each projector running at 96 frames per second so that each eye receives 48 fps. That way you not only have stereo 3D but you also have 4:4:4 color fidelity.

 

Blu-Ray sales can theoretically capture 100 percent market share by introducing combo packs with one side of the disc a Blu-ray copy and the other side of the disc is DVD.

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The bet is not whether Bluray sales will match DVD. The bet is whether 3D Bluray and 3D at home will become more popular than DVD audio. Still want to take that bet?

 

 

Do YOU want to take a bet that, in three to four years, 3D will be in its 25-year hybernation cycle again?

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