Avatar 3D - Visual effects

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Just came from the cinema where I watched James Camerons Avatar. Of course the 3D version. The story is simple and nothing special. If you know Pocahontas and Last Samurai you know this story too. But I was very very impressed with the 3D effects. Not that cheap stuff from 20 years ago. Just wow.

The 3D Effect made an impressive film from a rather unspectacular story.

Do you think this effect wears off very fast just like HDR in photography?
Could this lead to a new wave of 3D photography in the near future?

What do you think?
 
I do a lot of 3D modeling and rendering for my job as a product designer and I've dipped my toes in character modeling.. for me the film would be more interesting from a tech perspective, but to be honest most outlandish CGI in movies these days just leaves me cold.
I know I'm not watching some actor really making that jump.. where's the real magic?.. most of what you see is all churned out by computers and is all made to look as stunning as possible.
If I'm going to watch an all CG movie, I'd rather go see one from Pixar 😉
It makes watching Bladerunner all the more impressive imho.. no computer trickery!

I'm a firm believer that special effects should be as invisible as possible.. they shouldn't be there screaming at you in your face, rather they should support the actors and be subtle enough that you don't get distracted by it, making the story all the more believable.
 
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As far as I can tell, if 3d is adopted, it's a bit of a death knell for 'film style' photography. I don't mean because of any sort of resolution/editing/workflow type deal either. Watching the movie I just felt that there are so many components of traditional framing and composition that are just broken when presented in 3d.
The most glaring to me is the use of depth of field in 3d. As I see it, the main benefit of 3d is immersion, pulling the audience into a scene. As such, anything that pulls them out of the illusion is bad, right? The single most distracting visual element throughout the movie was oof elements in the foreground. In a 2d image, oof foreground elements are part of a single plane and are an abstracted element of composition which can be used a number of helpful ways. In 3d however, you have to deal with giant abstract shapes being projected into the audiences' lap, which is certainly not subtle.
Even mild separation between background and subject in closeups was distracting, because the dof in the shot does not mirror what the human eye would naturally create.

The most impressive and useful 3d shots in the entire movie, to me, those that presented a scene with actual feelings of depth. One in particular had the head scientist in a corridor, doing something important in the foreground, behind her was the corridor. That is what I was looking at the whole time, the sense of depth there, in a non-jumper scene, was more immersive than any projected snowflakes in my lap or animal claw lashing out from the screen.
 
The most impressive non-CGI scene, to me, was the one where the Colonel is lecturing a roomful of mercenaries. The camera is over his shoulder and you're looking at the fifty or so rows of people stretching back into the gloom of the hall...not a dramatic moment by any means, but it felt incredibly real.

I do think the 3D was most effective in static scenes--as you said, where people are working, or we just get to see everyday life.

Dumb plot (white man goes native and saves the day!!), but quite an absorbing spectacle. I really enjoyed it.
 
I actually went to see it just so I could see what the 3D fuss was all about. While it was interesting at first I found that the novelty wears off after the first 15 minutes and then it starts getting quite annoying.

As for the plot, I actually was quite surprised by the ending. I expected that it would end with almost all the aliens killed, their land taken and just a few of them left to build some casinos. But I guess the actual ending was much more realistic.
 
I enjoyed it and was very pleased that the 3D effect worked for me--the classic red/green lasses don't work with my vision and give me a headache after a few minutes. The polarized glasses were fine.

It was a fun spectacle but not much to it. Plot was fairly generic and the aliens weren't alien enough, I thought.

Good proof of concept and I hope it makes enough money to keep the studios interested so we can see the form develop. I think I agree with Matt above, but I am also confident that a new style will, if given a chance, develop that will make better use of the tech. Look at how badly color was used in most of the early color movies and then consider how it has been used by current directors/cinematographers.

Worth the price of admission to me but I doubt I'll bother with it on DVD.
Rob
 
I'm not sure, but there is not a lot of scenes in this movie that was not retouched... I'm talking about compositing...

The thing is : it's really cheaper to create a scene completly from multiple pictures and CG rendering (simple still or little animation) and put it in "motion" using compositing techniques. THE big fuss right now is Fusion from Eyeon. Sometime, it's hard to believe what you can do with this little beauty... Even a scene that don't look retouched is completed with this kind of software. The art of compositing is to make thing completly "invisible"... It's like having photoshop with a really more powerful engine and a real 3D integration.

But anyway, whatever they invent or they ask me to do, I still workship Blade Runner 🙂. All Hail Ridley, All Hail Film!

And Curse you Red One, you dream killer...
 
The master of special effects for all times was the late Eiji Tsuburaya. No measure of computer trickery will top the work he did with real "3D" miniatures, wires, explosives, hand drawn mattes and animation, and rubber monster suits.
 
that polished turd is what 200 million bucks gets you these days!?!?
They should of given that budget to someone who cares more about making an interesting movies then trying to give me eyeball orgasms.
😀
 
cmogi10 said:
that polished turd is what 200 million bucks gets you these days!?!?
They should of given that budget to someone who cares more about making an interesting movies then trying to give me eyeball orgasms.
😀
Click to expand...

I thought it was a $300 million turd.
 
I actually thought for a long time it was a 400 million dollar turd, the first google response was 230, another said over 300...

I guess I'm going to go back to my original title of a 400 million dollar turd.

🙄
 
This movie represents a real breakthrough in computer generated reality. It will gross billions. People are voting with their pocketbooks. The story is nothing special, but the total immersion was a breakthrough technology that will get people back into the movie theaters. It was the most amazing film that I have seen since watching my first movie in the early 1950s. I loved Blade Runner, but I never felt as if I was in a future Los Angeles.
 
No words:

lucas-green-screen.jpg


Got it from The Movieblog.
 
Jamie123 said:
As for the plot, I actually was quite surprised by the ending. I expected that it would end with almost all the aliens killed, their land taken and just a few of them left to build some casinos. But I guess the actual ending was much more realistic.
Click to expand...

You are joking. No big budget film ever ended like that. What you describe would be the a realistic end but not a film end.
 
Double Negative said:
I think it's just a matter of time before all movies and TV, computers, etc. are 3D. If not holographic. The anagram (red/blue) glasses are hip and all, but... The polarized type are much better.
Click to expand...

The photo industry has said so for a full hundred years by now. But it still is a freak format, whose brief outbreaks of popularity never lasted for more than a year or two. I don't believe that will change for the next hundred years either...
 
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