The Future Is Here.

“The ideal movie technology is so advanced that it waves a magic wand and makes itself disappear” – James Cameron.

There is at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $ 300 million wisely, while making profit of over $ 2 billion dollars, in seven weeks.Cameron’s magic wand combined with  pyrotechnics is not just another movie to watch with 3D glasses, it is the film that pushes cinematography onto another level.

Avatar puts the main stakes on the “performance capture” side of the technology. Actions made by real actors are transformed into actions of computerized 10-foot-tall aliens, on a planet called Pandora.

To understand with exactly what type of technology we are dealing with, let us take a look at few quick facts:

• The idea for this project came across Cameron’s mind 15 years ago. The director had to wait all this time to develop the technology. The author of Aliens participated in expansion of the 3D cameras needed for the movie.

• The movie is made out of 40 percent action by real actors and 60 percent photorealistic computer generated imagery. This makes Avatar one of the first films to use more computer generated technology than any other resource.

• The actors playing the aliens had cameras attached to their heads so that they filmed close-ups of their faces. Dots painted on their faces allowed motion-capture software to record their facial expressions, providing a ‘framework’ from which the character generator artists worked.

• Each frame (1/24 of a second) of the computer generated image scenes took an average of 47 hours to complete.

• Almost during the entire movie two camera lenses can dynamically converge on a focal point with the help of a computer, which is crucial for sweeping camera moves and action sequences.

Anyone who follows Cameron as a cinematographer, understands that it is all about pushing the envelope. Big box office numbers and a true celebration of “Cameromania” at the academy awards. Titanic took 11 Oscars in 1998, Avatar is hoping to take all nine golden statuettes it has been nominated for.

But the question that arises in the society and the film industry is what academy of motion pictures will decide? Shall 60 percent of footage made by technology, controlled by humans shall receive the desired prize or cinema has to stay as a simply glamorous genre of art where acting, literature and many other components come together in an organic way?

“Avatar as a movie is significant in terms of how cinema in general will be viewed now on, but on a personal level I didn’t love it much” said Claude Kerven – Chair person  of the directing program at the New York Film Academy.

At the end of the decade Avatar is defining the rebirth of the film!

As we have been observing various media outlets including music, television, print media and others – all are going through the phase of change. Technology drags us and our knowledge into the future. Cinema as part of the entertainment world is simply one of those industries that tries to survive and make a buck.

When Rob Marshall made a movie Chicago (2002) it brought the genre of the musical back.  Five academy awards and enormous international acclaim. He thought that the old fashioned way of movie making can still be appealing, but is it?

In 2009 -  Avatar and the musical Nine hit the theaters across the country, almost at the same time. One is the visual masterpiece while other tries to talk about Pasolini’s neo-realism and Fellini’s vision with blended Broadway dances and music. Obviously it was clear since the first day that star cascade of Nine (including such names as Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench and Sofia Loren) could simply not compete with Cameron’s vision! Obviously real stars of Avatar are the character generator artists and not the actors, in fact Sigourney Weaver is the only internationally known celebrity that appears in the movie, rest of the cast members are semi-famous starting actors. But this only proves the demand from the public for something new, and that something can be brought by technology!

“To be honest the script was weak, it reminded me of Pocahontas, and Cameron’s political message was not clear at all, but it is a visual masterpiece” – said Derek Katzer – digital cinema grad student at the DePaul University.

With weak or strong script it is apparent the director and his crew just re-invented the cinema.  As Roger Ebert said:  “Cameron got re-elected”.

The idea of the film became different and in the minds of millions of viewers the so called “fourth wall” that always existed between the screen and the audience was taken down in a most organic way. Watching 2D we always have necessity to take the wall down and be in the movie.  World known directors tried to bring that element to us, but only now with the right use of technology and just a bit of imagination picture becomes  so clear, that it is frightening. The audience can feel the story.

At this point it is hard to say where technology will lead cinematography, but one thing is true, demand for such films will increase and new generations will be craving for their own 3D TV-sets or perhaps even 3D iPhones, with their personal designer 3D glasses from fall collection of Gucci or Prada. Worldwide Avatar was received with warm critique and a sold out movie theater halls for weeks in advance, which only proves humans welcome the entrance of the future.

From that standpoint, the major point for the director has to be making  a movie that will bring income and satisfy people’s needs. Is it ok to use as much technological developments as possible or does s/he has to rely on already existing clichés to make a good movie?

Digital media developments have not only fundamentally transformed movies but have altered its role as a witness to reality by rendering “realities” not necessarily linked to documentation, by engineering environments that incorporate audiences as participants, and by creating event-worlds instead of avant-garde that mix realities and narratives in forms not possible in traditional cinema.

This hybrid cinema melds montage, traditional cinema, experimental literature, television, video, and the net. The new cinematic forms suggest that traditional cinema no longer has the capacity to represent events that are themselves complex configurations of experience, interpretation, and interaction.

In near future cinema as we know it now will simply be old fashion genre of motion pictures. The future is in our hands, all we have to do is open our imagination and re-invent.

To quote Abraham Lincoln – “The best thing about future is that it comes day by day”.

As humans we can learn how to accept our future step by step, film by film,  software by software and maybe one day planet by planet.

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