Posts Tagged ‘Avatar 3D’

(Reuters) – When “Titanic” director James Cameron released his film “Avatar” last year, there were not as many theaters equipped with 3D equipment to screen the 3D version as he would have liked.

So, on Friday, film studio 20th Century Fox is releasing an “Avatar: Special Edition” version of the biggest blockbuster of all time ($2.7 billion in global ticket sales) exclusively in Imax 3D theaters and venues equipped with digital 3D.

Cameron spoke to Reuters about the nine minutes of new film on the “special edition,” the movie’s success, and whether movies or science is his favored pursuit.

Q: Why a new one? The first was pretty good.

A: “There are a couple of factors. There’s footage I think people would be interested in. I don’t want to completely reinvent the movie and turn it into something it’s not. It’s really more an embellishment; it’s a fuller experience.

“The other factor is I think people want to see ‘Avatar’ in movie theaters. That’s just my instinct. This all came about because when “Alice in Wonderland” came out, they had booked all the Imax 3D screens. We were still doing well, still selling out … but we lost all those screens in one night. So, we knew there was still a market for people seeing the film.”

Q: Many people, me included, thought, ‘they already made $2.7 billion! How much more do they want?’ Money grubbers?’”

A: “Yeah, we are just money grubbing vampires. (smiles) No, I think making money is called good business. At least, in this country it still is. And two, it’s a side-effect of giving people what they want. If we’re correct and this is what people want, then we’ve done a humanitarian service (laughs).”

Q: Right, Hollywood does perform humanitarian services.

A: “Sometimes. (laughs again) Sometimes it can, but it’s usually just liberal guilt…

“No, it’s like an illuminated manuscript, there’s just more to it. I also want to encourage people to remember the movie in 3D on the big screen. And this will be the last hurrah … It’ll disappear from big screens — other than an occasional Imax may want to book it — for 10 years, 20 years, maybe forever.”

Q: So, the new footage, what are people going to see?

A: “We got different kinds of stuff. Some of it little things, 10-, 15-, 30-second pops that just show up here and there where if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll ask yourself, ‘did I see that before, or is that new.’

“Then, there are going to be things like a big action scene where they hunt these herd animals that didn’t even exist in the first movie because we’d cut them out. There are new creatures, a big flight scene, almost like a Buffalo hunt. I think it’s one of the top visual scenes in the film.

“There’s an emotional scene that plays out at the end where Tsu’tey is dying and there’s a very emotional scene with Jake and Neytiri. Everybody thought I was crazy when I took it out. I did it for pace and tempo, but I was playing it pretty conservative. I was concerned about eye fatigue on a 2-hour and 40-minute film. I was concerned about sensory overload…

“We never got much criticism about length. I was expecting a lot. I was expecting at least critics to say, ‘really good film’ or ‘pretty good film, but too long,’ but we didn’t get much of that. It seemed like we had permission to go longer.”

Q: So, you and Fox have the two top grossing films of all time. Can you now get about anything you want from Fox?

A: “Do they listen to me more, now? Probably not, if they weren’t going to listen to me after ‘Titanic,’ they’re not going to listen to me now, any more or any less.”

Q: You’re doing another ‘Avatar’ film. Is there a third?

A: “The next script will be essentially two scripts, and I don’t know if we’ll shoot it together or shoot it separately. We’ll release it separately, obviously.

“If that works, there will probably be another one, but at that point, I probably won’t be directing them. I do want to do the second and probably the third film myself just because it’s so much a part of me and my philosophy and ideas.”

Q: Beyond movies, you’ve become a bona fide expert on deep underwater exploration. When all is said and done, what do you want to be remembered for — big movies or exploration?

A: “What goes on the tombstone?” (laughs)

Q: Well, without having to ask it that way, yes.

A: “I’m satisfied with ‘innovator’ because it requires innovation to do all this deep ocean exploration. We’re building lights, cameras, robotics, submersibles, fiber optic systems, and I love all that stuff. I love imagining something, building it, and making it work in the ocean…

“On the filmmaking side, there’s the innovation of how you make the movie and there’s the innovation of what the movie is, meaning the story, the characters, the creation of a world, the imagination required for that. I love all that stuff. The problem for me is task managing in such a way that I don’t get so focused on one that I forget about doing the other.”

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Most of you know now that Cameron’s Avatar has crowned the filmmaker once again with the Worlds highest grossing movie of all time earning a whopping 3 billion dollars at te box office. While this position has contributed greatly to the traction 3D cinema currently spellbinding entertainment consumers, there is on glaring drawback in Mr. Cameron’s opinion, companies jumping on the 3D bandwagon and putting out horrible conversions.

Movies like Clash of the Titans andThe Last Airbender were shot in traditional 2D and converted into 3D after seeing Avatar’s success.

“I think it’s horrible and absolutely the wrong way to go,” Cameron said before the re-release of Avatar in 3D with added footage.

“I think it’s a quick, knee-jerk reaction to seeing the gold rush happen and the studios just wanted to jump in on it and that’s the only way they could do it. It’s the studio making the decision and then handing it over to some company to process it through a sausage grinder and come up with some kind of faux 3D, or a 2 1/2D mess,” he added.

The interesting footnote is he plans on re-releasing 1997’s Titanic in a 3D redux. Cameron fully admits that the conversion will be a “2.9D”, but goes on to add, “We won’t succeed. It will wind up being 2.9D, but it will still be .9 better than the 2D we released before. These other slapdash conversions, where they are not spending the time and money and not involving the filmmaker, are like 2.2D,” The Herald Sun quoted the 55-year-old filmmaker as saying.

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Cameron settling down? Not at all. He is already preparing for a fresh underwater 3D drama called Sanctum. Not only is it a more intimate and much smaller project than Avatar, but it’s Cameron’s chance to prove that 3-D can be used well in movies that aren’t big blockbusters. Sanctum is being directed by Australian filmmaker and Tropfest winner Alister Grierson and features an Aussie cast including: Rhys Wakefield (7′s “Home and Away”), Allison Cratchley (7′s “All Saints”), Richard Roxburgh (Van Helsing), Alice Parkinson (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Daniel Wyllie (Animal Kingdom). Inspired by a real experience that producer Andrew Wight went through, Sanctum will show how he ended up trapped with 14 other people in a cave system for two days. “It’s really a character driven piece and the 3-D should only be part of enhancing the experience,” Cameron says.

James Cameron recently revealed the release dates of a 3D Blu-ray version of Avatar to the Wall Street Journal in an interview. His exciting revelation is now unfortunately being contradicted as Fox Home Entertainment stepped up to the podium to shoot down Cameron’s claims. According to Fox, the claims of a 3D Blu-ray version of Avatar been available in November of this year are false. Read the rest of this entry »

Titanic will sink once again thanks to James Cameron’s 3D blockbuster Avatar. The 3D sci-fi adventure movie has grossed a massive $1.858 billion in just 39 days of been released and its earnings are increasing by the second. Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster Titanic grossed a total of $1.843 billion when it was released 13 years ago. Avatar is also expected to take the US domestic record soon and leave Titanic feeling the Avatar blues. Currently, Avatar is in second place on the U.S domestic rankings, with a gross of $551 million, however It is rapidly catching up to Titanic’s $600.8 million and it is expected to become the new record holder in the next few weeks.

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 AVATAR is making big news in the Orient this week.  In China, all 2D versions of the movie are to be pulled from the cinema to make way for a patriotic biopic on Confucius. Now it has been revealed that a 42 year old Taiwanese man has died ‘from excitement’ after watching James Cameron’s 3D blockbuster. Read the rest of this entry »

The epic 3D blockbuster AVATAR is taking the definition of success to a whole new world. Not only has the film grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide at the box office and is closing in on Titanic’s world record of $1.843 billion. AVATAR has now earned its visionary director, James Cameron two Golden Globe awards. AVATAR won the best movie drama and best movie director categories at Sundays show. The Golden Globes winners are often known to do well at the Oscars too which is the world’s top movie honors show held in March. Recently I had the great pleasure of sitting down to watch Avatar for the second time with 3D Legends Bernard Mendiburu (who wrote book ‘3D Movie Making’) and none other than Ray Zone.

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Whilst AVATAR is busy topping the box office worldwide, it appears that China has plans of its own for Cameron’s 3D epic. According to reports, the state-run China Film Group will be removing all 2D versions of the movie from Chinese theaters to replace them with a patriotic biopic on the life of Confucius. The 3D version of the movie and let’s be honest, the better version, will still be available. However, due to the lack of 3D cinemas on the mainland China’s censors fear that the move could cause some unrest due to the prevention of AVATAR’s general distribution. Read the rest of this entry »

With AVATAR on its way to becoming the world’s top grossing film of all time,  other directors are starting to acknowledge the benefits of 3D cinema. Currently Avatar is in second place right behind another Cameron film, the 1998 blockbuster, Titanic. It looks like once again the titanic will sink, this time courtesy of 3D and big, blue aliens. The global success of AVATAR has even convinced George Lucas to bring his classic Star Wars trilogy back to life in the third dimension he has recently revealed. During an interview with Access Hollywood, Lucas told the world how Cameron’s 3D epic has convinced him that the technology has evolved to the point where he is ready to reconfigure his much loved trilogy. Lucas said, “We’ve been looking for years and years and years of trying to take ‘Star Wars’ and put it in 3D. We’ve been struggling with it, but I think this will be a new impetus to make that happen.” May the third dimension be with you. Read the rest of this entry »