Some interesting news about the score.
http://marketsaw.blogspot.com/2008/04/n ... ed-in.html
AVATAR Thread
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John Johnson
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AVATAR Thread
London. Greatest City in the world.
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Monterey Jack
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AndyDursin
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I hope not, and I'd expect not...sounds a bit more detailed than that. Either way, I'm really excited about this as Horner's been turning out one superb score after another, albeit most of them under the radar in movies nobody is watching.
I'm really looking forward to this -- the trailer in particular! Let's see some footage
And the score is basically the only one I'm really looking forward to of all the summer movies.
I'm really looking forward to this -- the trailer in particular! Let's see some footage
And the score is basically the only one I'm really looking forward to of all the summer movies.-
Paul MacLean
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I'm not mad on the moaning vocals of Zimmer's/Gerard's Gladiator, but Annie Lennox's vocals helped make Horner's end title for Apollo 13 one of the best pieces of film music of the 90s.Monterey Jack wrote:Ah, you know this "alien language" will just consist of everybody's favorite, Moaning Woman.
As far as Avatar, I'm encouraged by the musicians' characterization of Horner as a "visionary". I've yet to hear Avatar of course, but based on Horner's body of work so far, I do agree with that characterization. I have high hopes for this score.
Between Avatar and Edge of Darkness, I am feeling the first real hope of hearing interesting, inventive and unique film music in some time.
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AndyDursin
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I saw Cameron at E3 tonight talking about the movie and the videogame that will be out at the time of the film's release. As you might expect this film is meant to be a technical, visual exercise and I'm looking forward to it, though his dry, lengthy explanation of the plot made it sound like a really, really old-fashioned story about a primitive (alien) culture being attacked by "evil military" types with lots of technology.
I hope the story is more advanced than that -- because the way he broke it down, it sounded as simplistic as "Ewoks: The Battle for Endor" -- but I have a nagging suspicion it's going to be mostly about the visuals. Even so, this will be one of the few times I'd pay a premium to see it in 3-D as it's being developed especially for that process.
Ubisoft is doing the game, and some screenshots were posted earlier tonight, giving you a quick glimpse of the movie's art direction:
I hope the story is more advanced than that -- because the way he broke it down, it sounded as simplistic as "Ewoks: The Battle for Endor" -- but I have a nagging suspicion it's going to be mostly about the visuals. Even so, this will be one of the few times I'd pay a premium to see it in 3-D as it's being developed especially for that process.
Ubisoft is doing the game, and some screenshots were posted earlier tonight, giving you a quick glimpse of the movie's art direction:
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Paul MacLean
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I hope this 3-D process works. I have been jaded towards 3-D ever since I saw Spacehunter (whose 3-D effect made an already-crummy film unendurable).AndyDursin wrote:I saw Cameron at E3 tonight talking about the movie and the videog Even so, this will be one of the few times I'd pay a premium to see it in 3-D as it's being developed especially for that process.
I was rapidly becoming cross-eyed watching that thing, and about halfway thru that film I started fishing around on the theatre floor to see if anyone from the previous show had left a pair of glasses. Fortunately someone did, so I removed the right lens from my glasses and replaced it with the left lens from the discarded pair so I could at least have a normal viewing experience!
I hope I don't have to go thru that again!
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John Johnson
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AndyDursin
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No word on a trailer yet John. Cameron is so tight lipped and secretive I'm not sure we'll be seeing one until he's good and ready.
This was in Nikki Finke's blog today. Cameron feels 3-D is the way to go -- some of his comments are quite interesting on that end...
Director Jim Cameron acknowledged he's still in post-production on Avatar and has been since even before live action photography ended in March 2008.
"I feel like I've been living in a cave for a year," he told the "Produced By" Conference taking place today and tomorrow. He also enthusiastically endorsed the Avatar videogame which debuted at E3 last Monday. "I'm not personally a gamer, but my younger brother Dave is a big gamer," Cameron noted, and together they made sure they liked it. He noted that "in some cases the videogame branded with film hasn't been as good as a film." He didn't name names, but he said specifically that the Avatar game will be "the same quality level" as the movie. Cameron also told the audience he is up-converting Terminator 2 to 3-D if it’s cost effective. But he didn’t mention Titanic even though that possibility was floated on the Internet this week.
There was a long line at Sony Studios in Culver City to hear Cameron speak. The Producers Guild Of America hosts initially said journalists could cover Cameron's presentation but then said no at the last minute. (I had a tech pal inside so this report is based on his notes.)
Cameron talked again about how he wrote the script for Avatar back in the mid-1990s when he and Stan Winston co-founded Digital Domain. But when he took the screenplay to their special effects lab, Cameron was told it was just not possible to make the film with the current technology. So he sat on the project for more than a decade.
Cameron and his people on the panel expressed confidence that, by the time Avatar is released by 20th Century Fox on December 18th, there will be "several thousand 3-D screens" capable of showing the film.
He likened where 3-D is right now to the 1930s and 1940s when making color films was considered a "premium" project, and it wasn't until the early 1970s when filmmakers had to get "permission" to make a black-and-white film. "Unless you have the Woody Allen clause. Then you can make black-and-white films even now. But in 20 years, you're going to need the Woody Allen clause not to make 3-D."
Cameron also explained that so much has changed since he shot the Universal Studios Tour's Terminator 3-D ride: back then in 1995, each camera weighed 235 pounds and he had to shoot it wide open so he used so much light no one else could do night shoots at the same time. For Avatar, he created the Fusion Camera System technology for photo-realistic computer-generated characters through motion capture animation.
Though claiming reluctance to slam another filmmaker, Cameron bad-mouthed Lionsgate's My Bloody Valentine 3-D because it was a step backwards to the old 1970s model of "3-D shock horror where they're jabbing stuff in your face".
Cameron said that, by contrast, he wants 3-D to be less noticeable so it doesn't "take people out of the experience". He stressed that Avatar is not going to hit audiences on the head with 3-D even though almost every shot is green screen. But not 3-D constantly. He wants "one immersible experience" with 2-D and 3-D together and the audience so engrossed that they "won't notice the difference" .
Finally, he gave Jeffrey Katzenberg huge props for being a "proselytizer" for 3-D with exhibitors.
This was in Nikki Finke's blog today. Cameron feels 3-D is the way to go -- some of his comments are quite interesting on that end...
Director Jim Cameron acknowledged he's still in post-production on Avatar and has been since even before live action photography ended in March 2008.
"I feel like I've been living in a cave for a year," he told the "Produced By" Conference taking place today and tomorrow. He also enthusiastically endorsed the Avatar videogame which debuted at E3 last Monday. "I'm not personally a gamer, but my younger brother Dave is a big gamer," Cameron noted, and together they made sure they liked it. He noted that "in some cases the videogame branded with film hasn't been as good as a film." He didn't name names, but he said specifically that the Avatar game will be "the same quality level" as the movie. Cameron also told the audience he is up-converting Terminator 2 to 3-D if it’s cost effective. But he didn’t mention Titanic even though that possibility was floated on the Internet this week.
There was a long line at Sony Studios in Culver City to hear Cameron speak. The Producers Guild Of America hosts initially said journalists could cover Cameron's presentation but then said no at the last minute. (I had a tech pal inside so this report is based on his notes.)
Cameron talked again about how he wrote the script for Avatar back in the mid-1990s when he and Stan Winston co-founded Digital Domain. But when he took the screenplay to their special effects lab, Cameron was told it was just not possible to make the film with the current technology. So he sat on the project for more than a decade.
Cameron and his people on the panel expressed confidence that, by the time Avatar is released by 20th Century Fox on December 18th, there will be "several thousand 3-D screens" capable of showing the film.
He likened where 3-D is right now to the 1930s and 1940s when making color films was considered a "premium" project, and it wasn't until the early 1970s when filmmakers had to get "permission" to make a black-and-white film. "Unless you have the Woody Allen clause. Then you can make black-and-white films even now. But in 20 years, you're going to need the Woody Allen clause not to make 3-D."
Cameron also explained that so much has changed since he shot the Universal Studios Tour's Terminator 3-D ride: back then in 1995, each camera weighed 235 pounds and he had to shoot it wide open so he used so much light no one else could do night shoots at the same time. For Avatar, he created the Fusion Camera System technology for photo-realistic computer-generated characters through motion capture animation.
Though claiming reluctance to slam another filmmaker, Cameron bad-mouthed Lionsgate's My Bloody Valentine 3-D because it was a step backwards to the old 1970s model of "3-D shock horror where they're jabbing stuff in your face".
Cameron said that, by contrast, he wants 3-D to be less noticeable so it doesn't "take people out of the experience". He stressed that Avatar is not going to hit audiences on the head with 3-D even though almost every shot is green screen. But not 3-D constantly. He wants "one immersible experience" with 2-D and 3-D together and the audience so engrossed that they "won't notice the difference" .
Finally, he gave Jeffrey Katzenberg huge props for being a "proselytizer" for 3-D with exhibitors.
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John Johnson
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Monterey Jack
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AndyDursin
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At least he's using real actors -- not motion captured ones -- to work in with the green screened backdrops.Monterey Jack wrote:I'm just thrilled that Cameron has stopping picking over the corpse of the Titanic and is making another movie...unless it turns out to be one of those creepy, sterile Robert Zemeckis "mocap" things.
And I'm with you -- I look forward to the day when Zemeckis starts making real movies again. Sigh. This CHRISTMAS CAROL looks like more Xbox cut-scene rendering.
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Monterey Jack
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AndyDursin wrote:At least he's using real actors -- not motion captured ones -- to work in with the green screened backdrops.Monterey Jack wrote:I'm just thrilled that Cameron has stopping picking over the corpse of the Titanic and is making another movie...unless it turns out to be one of those creepy, sterile Robert Zemeckis "mocap" things.
It was bad enough when the prankish, jokester Zemeckis (Used Cars, Back To The Future) turned into the awards-season Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Contact), but I'd still take those movies over these eerie, "photorealistic" CGI-athons. Beowulf was actually kind of entertaining, but I would have liked it a lot more if it either featured real actors, or if the animation were more stylized and, well, "cartoony". This neither-fish-nor-fowl mocap thing lacks the subtle facial tics of the former and the squash & stretch of the latter. It's just a fancy retread of rotoscoping in traditional animation, and rotoscoping pretty much sucked anyways.And I'm with you -- I look forward to the day when Zemeckis starts making real movies again. Sigh. This CHRISTMAS CAROL looks like more Xbox cut-scene rendering.
The stuff they've shown for this movie, like those drawings up thread, looks like any video game. Not excited at all.
A true rarity--I'm more interested in Horner's score than the big sci-fi movie it's written to accompany. Horner's latest scores have really renewed my decades-dead interest in him.
A true rarity--I'm more interested in Horner's score than the big sci-fi movie it's written to accompany. Horner's latest scores have really renewed my decades-dead interest in him.
John
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AndyDursin
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I'm also really looking forward to Horner's score. His Perelman scores (HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, THE LIFE BEHIND HER EYES), plus THE NEW WORLD, were all terrific.JSWalsh wrote:The stuff they've shown for this movie, like those drawings up thread, looks like any video game. Not excited at all.
A true rarity--I'm more interested in Horner's score than the big sci-fi movie it's written to accompany. Horner's latest scores have really renewed my decades-dead interest in him.
As I wrote before, I'm also skeptical of this film's story. Cameron's description really did make it sound as quaint as ALIENS meets DANCES WITH WOLVES -- this tale of an indigenous people being attacked by more technologically advanced weaponry and "the choice" a crippled marine has to make after he "assumes" one of the former's bodies (as an "avatar"), just sounds so simplistic to me. Is it going to be worth a 3-hour film (Cameron has confirmed the running time as being that long?). The visuals had better be groundbreaking.