KEY POINTS:
Academy Award-winning filmmaker James Cameron believes Wellington company Weta Digital will create the fantasy worlds he needs for his first big film since Titanic, a science fiction blockbuster which will begin shooting in April.
Cameron will film Avatar using a blend of live-action photography and new virtual "photorealistic" production techniques, for release in new digital 3D cinemas expected to be introduced in time for the US$200 million ($294 million) film's release in the winter of 2009.
It will require image-based "performance capture" techniques pioneered in New Zealand's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and a virtual camera system, to create computer graphics which will be blended with live action in Wellington.
The film is expected to provide a welcome workload for Weta Digital and Weta Workshop, which spent a year on pre-production work for a $192 million computer-generated movie, Halo, only to have the project "postponed", reportedly after the Universal and Fox studios pulled out.
Now Weta's digital technology expertise will be used on a large cast of virtual creatures which mimic the emotions of human actors.
Earlier movies like the Lord of the Rings did so on a limited basis, but none had gone as far as Avatar would do to create an "entirely photorealistic world", Cameron told The New York Times.
"This film is a true hybrid -- a full live-action shoot, with computer generated characters in computer generated and live environments. Ideally at the end of the day the audience has no idea which they're looking at."
Characters played by human actors, with tiny cameras on headsets recording their performances, will be inserted into a virtual world.
"With new tools, we can create a humanoid character that is anything we imagine it to be -- beautiful, elegant, graceful, powerful -- evocative of us, but still with an emotional connection."
The science fiction epic has been written by Cameron, about a soldier who is part of Earth's invasion of an alien planet but then joins the indigenous races' resistance fight after falling in love with a local inhabitant. He eventually leads the indigenous race in a battle for survival.
The lead actor will be a young Australian Sam Worthington, (Somersault and Dirty Deeds) and the female lead will be Zoe Saldana (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl).
Fox said in a statement that the film's new image-based process of capturing not only actors' movements but their facial expressions would allow Cameron to work intimately with the cast while seeing in real-time, the computer-generated worlds and characters.
"This revolutionary approach allows Cameron to direct scenes with computer generated characters and environments exactly as he would on a live action set."
The edited performances and scenes, incorporating Cameron's hands-on camera work, will be turned over to the Oscar-winning visual effects house Weta Digital part-owned by Peter Jackson.
"Weta's artists will incorporate new intuitive CGI (computer-generated image) technologies to transform the environments and characters into photorealistic 3D imagery that will transport the audience into the alien world rich with imaginative vistas, creatures and characters," the Fox statement said.
Principal photography for Avatar will take place in Los Angeles and New Zealand.
- NZPA
