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James Cameron's Avatar Not Using Any Cameras?

March 25, 2007
by Alex Billington

In an interview with B-movie star Michael Biehn at the Grindhouse press events, he spoke on his possible involvement and footage he had seen of James Cameron's science fiction projects Avatar and Battle Angel. Biehn has previously worked with Cameron quite a bit on Terminator 1 and 2, The Abyss, and Aliens previously and is friends with the legendary filmmaker. He was questioned about what he saw, and provided some interesting response.

Although he's not confirmed and hasn't heard from Cameron whether he's actually cast, he's hopeful. He has had two very good meetings that went very well where he saw the presentation that he saw Fox.

"He has these scripts… I know Avatar he wrote like 6 or 8 years ago, but the technology was not there. I mean I've read the scrpt, it's like Lawrence of Arabia in space. That's what you're looking at."

After hearing that it's going to be that epic, he continued on about the cameras and lack of optics.

"Jim basically was talking to me about the technology of shooting this stuff and he said to me, 'Well, we don't really use a camera, Michael. We're not talking about film, we're not talking about HD… We don't use a camera.' And I said, well, what do you mean you don't use a camera. And he said, 'well there's not actually opticals when we shoot this stuff.' And I was like, 'well, what the fuck are you talking about?'"

He proceeded to say that he tried to have him explain it, but he couldn't understand a word he was saying. What does this mean? Well we're not even sure. I am assuming that this is a motion capture like system that uses infrared, not optical cameras, and then the CGI on top is photorealistic.

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Reader Feedback - 6 Comments »

1

[...] Läs mer om detta på Firstshowing.net eller en intervjuv med Cameron hos BusinessWeek. [...]

Metamedium - Om film och digitala medier » Blog Archive » Film inte längre fotografiskt on Mar 26, 2007

2

"Cyberface" is the technology they're referring to.

He will still have to film the human actors, I'm assuming, because this technology is based on apllying the dynamics of video footage of an actor playing their part, used as a basis for micro-manipulating a wire-frame CGI model 'caricatured' according to specific muscle movements of their face.

It would probably require a special lighting to isolate those muscular movements. But here's an example, from a new york times article on the subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/movies/15waxm.html?_r=1&ex=1161576000&en=c37d34ebc6cc27cc&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=slogin

djoser on Sep 22, 2007

3

Bwhahahahahahahahah@B-movie star Michael Biehn… He must be smoking crack. what B-movie has he done?

REAL6 on Oct 24, 2007

4

when this film will out in the cinemas and returns of james cameron behind the cameras i think this movie will be awsome

tony reed on Apr 4, 2008

5

HA HA! Tony Reed can't speak proper English! HA HA!

Frnnkdlxx on Apr 10, 2008

6

The Incredible Hulk movie will be the first to employ this technology.

Can't wait to see Ed Norton's performance! As Bruce AND the Hulk!

DJO on Apr 10, 2008

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