Avatar

AVATAR

As foreign as this name might sound, this movie, Avatar, takes us not only in foreign lands but also ahead of time in a 22nd century colonial and romantic journey visualized by in 1995 by the great producer James Cameron.

The order

James Cameron is the mind behind this project

• "avatar is the sum total of my childhood and

curiosities"

However one specific thing pushed him to write

this movie:

• he wanted to challenge the visual effects company of which he was the CEO to go "beyond the beyond"; "so far ahead nobody could catch us"

The order

Therefore James Cameron under the guidance of his visual effects company, seeked for FOX's support and them three became the project's sponsor

Cameron had consequently a double hatted role of being a sponsor and the "architect" of this project.

Environemnent

This project is not only cinematographic but also innovative in the special effects industry

In the cinematograthic environnement Cameron says himself that Avatar is the bigest

movie he has ever produced including titanic ; and the results have proven it :

• Highest-grossing 2009 release
• Fastest movie to gross $1 billion

The same can be said in the special effect sector

• Highest 3D gross
• Highest IMAX gross

Objectives

• As said earlier there was not a specific objective to the project despite the will of Cameron to challenge his visual effect company into creating the biggest science fictional movie : cinematographic goal

• Another objective was responding to the vision that Cameron had of this science fictional world by developing innovative special effect tools : scientific goal

Resources

"For Avatar, a Huge Budget Supported By Many Players"- New York Times

This self-explanatory title not only shows the movie was supported by multiple entities but also the it required a humongous budget :

• indeed the production by itself required 237 millions USD
• if we add to this the marketing budget we might reach a total budget coming near 500 millions USD

This budget was not only provided by 21th Century FOX but also by DUNE Entertainement.

Organization

Before the production, Cameron and his team started with a preparation time.

It consisted in dividing the team in two units:

• a research unit: on technology "could we really do what we wanted to do?"
• a development unit: design, techs, art

They had a a time limit of a year supported by FOX

Organization

Click to edit text

Choice of decors

• the characters: to Cameron, the blue color was essential to the realization of these magical characters that are the Na'vis

He also wanted them to look like aliens however not too much to the point that the viewers won't be able to relate to them

• the environment: due to his fascination about nature , Cameron wanted nature to be a the center of his decor: it was also a way for him to enhance the dichotomy between the very advanced technological tools present in the movie and the environmental awareness message hidden in the movie

The movie was filmed all around the world: china, new zealand and hawaii

Choice of decor

Zhangjiajie National Forest park; China

The production

• Tool used

In September 2006, Cameron announced that he was using a camera of his own invention, a modified Fusion Camera System, to film the Avatar scenes in 3D

The system uses two Sony HDC-F950 HD cameras linked together to reproduce stereoscopic vision due to the separation between human eyes

To create Avatar, they used a data processing centre of about 1,000 m2 , using 4,000 Hewlett-Packard servers representing 35,000 processors53 ,

Creating the Na'vis characters and the virtual world of Pandora required more than a petabyte of disk space and each minute of the film represents 17.28 gigabytes

The production

Filming

Shooting of Avatar began in April 2007 in Los Angeles and Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. Cameron describes the film as a hybrid with scenes shot in a conventional way and others with computer-generated characters and environment

The motion capture shoot, which captures the actors' movements and translates them into computer-generated images in a virtual world, lasted 31 days

Before shooting began, Cameron also sent all the actors to the jungle in Hawaii so that they could feel the atmosphere of a tropical rainforest by themselves before shooting in the studio. The filming of Avatar with the actors lasted only four months in total, but it took four years of work to finalize the film.

The production

Teams and actors

Decors: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg

Costumes: Mayes C. Rubeo and Deborah Lynn Scott

Photograph: Mauro Fiore

For the music: The soundtrack of Avatar was created by the American composer James Horner, who had already worked with James Cameron on the films Aliens, the Return and Titanic. It took 9 months of work from March to November 200959. It consists of fourteen titles (twenty in deluxe edition), lasting a total of 1 hour and 18 minutes (1 hour and 36 minutes in deluxe edition)60.

The production

Actors

Several actors are trying to get the role of Jake Sully, among them we find Matt Damon, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Chris Pine (who considers it to be the worst audition of his career), but James Cameron chooses rather an actor relatively little known, in order to make the "ordinary" side of the hero more credible. At the time of the lead role in Avatar, Sam Worthington was sleeping in his car.

COMMUNICATION DEPLOYED

FOX's biggest investment was on the movies marketing.

Indeed about 150million were invested in the digital campaign of avatar

- Social media

Social networks are frequently tapped for film marketing, and “Avatar” successfully built connections and conversation on Facebook (close to 1.3 million fans), MySpace (close to 800,000 friends) and Twitter (over 25,000 followers). According to Sysomos, a social media analytics firm, “Avatar” was the most talked about film on Twitter in January 2010. Some of those tweets resulted from a “Tweet to Listen” promo that required fans to send a message on Twitter in order to listen to music from the film. “Avatar’s” social media strategy also branched out to YouTube (close to 11 million video views), Flickr (over 1 million photo views) and a TypePad blogging community (close to 4,000 members).

- Avatar’s Website

Toys and video games

- The Interactive Trailer

Avatar’s interactive trailer soars over previous movie trailers thanks to its integration of social media feeds, and 11 points of interaction that provide viewers with one-click access to each character. (Viewers can simply click on a character in the trailer in order to unlock additional content.) The trailer was built using the Adobe AIR platform, which gives developers flexibility. The result is that fans receive a more exciting experience, similar to that offered by Banshee jumping in the film. The trailer is a moving and frequently refreshed gateway to the film, seemingly alive and fluid the moment it begins. The trailer also includes three options to purchase tickets.

Risks analysis

Technological risks: In 1995 there were technological tools nor visual effects designs existing to make a movie with such a science fictional magnitude. From 1995 to 2004 they research and developed the tools: a dozen revolutionary technical processes have been invented

Human risks: many scenes of the movie required specific physical aptitudes that the chosen actors did not necessarily had; they therefor had to undergo special training to really get into the shoes of their characters.

Actors had to play with machines they'd never worked with before; it required more physical effort.

Financial Issues: the budget for this movie has been a big obstacle in its realization at the beginning. Indeed FOX has longingly hesitated to support the project pushing Cameron to seek a backup in DUNE Entertainment

Marketing risks: the concern is that a strong communication on social networks, gave the impression to the viewers that they had already seen half of the film once it was released in the cinema because parts of the film were available online.

What about Avatar 2

• Is the making of this movie financially possible?
• Did Avatar 1 set the bar too high technologically

Thank you for watching