Avatar - New Technology In Cinema Industry

Science-fictional film "Avatar"(2009) is a joint US-British product, filmed by James Cameron. In its first showing weekend "Avatar" has collected 21 million dollars in Russia, 73 million in the U.S.A., and $ 232 million in total all over the world.This film is called a revolutionary breakthrough in technology of film industry. It was the first usage specially developed motion capture systems (performance capture).

Previously when filming 3D movies, motion capture systems was common. Cameron shared it while filming and camera, placed on the head, was used to capture facial expressions and other separate camera filmed body movements. This enabled the absolute realism of the characters: suspended equipment recorded the facial expressions, movements of muscles, eye movement with accuracy unprecedented before (with this method approximately 95% of the actor's actions sent to their digital copies). A remote camera gave the crew a much broader space for motion capture, comparing with the standard filming equipment.

Unlike motion capture systems used before, where the digital environment was added after the actors' movements were captured, a new virtual Cameron’s camera allowed him to trace on a monitor interaction of virtual copies of the actors  with the digital world of cinema in real time. Director could regulate and control the scenes, just as in ordinary filming with ordinary actors. The virtual camera the director sees not actors on a background of film studios, but the characters in the tropical forest.

The new approach allows the crew to refuse partly from services of make-up and technicians that are responsible for the creation of images of aliens, werewolves, witches, demons and other characters. Now you can be anyone or anything, choose the age, even change the sex, without wasting time on the complex make-up, that also causes discomfort.

But that is not the only technological innovations that were used. The film was made in 3D stereoscopic format. The director has applied its own technology «Reality Camera System» with two high-resolution cameras that increase the depth perception.

The film consists of 40% of live action and 60% of computer graphics. This is a new level of interaction and computer movie. It took more than a petabyte (1,000 terabytes) of digital space to store all the computer-graphic film assets (plants and insects, animals, mountains and clouds, rocks, etc.) to create a world of Avatar. For comparison while filming “Titanic” it took only 2 terabytes to create (and flooding) the ship and thousands of passengers.