The "Avatar" Effect
 

Do you think "Avatar" has had a positive, negative, or has had no affect on cinema at all?


Before Avatar, 3D was still on the rise. Animated movies mostly. Once and awhile a live action film, but not many. Since the release of Avatar and the $2.7 billion it's made, many films are now being shot and released in 3D. WB has said that the majority of its big budget films are now going to be released in 3D, and it takes no stretch of the imagination to believe this is because of Avatar. This in and of itself is not a bad thing, if people want to pay to see a movie not shot in 3D, it's up to them. I have no problem with it. But where I do see a problem is shooting in 3D.

The "Fusion" camera system Cameron and Pace developed for Avatar is clearly the most popular 3D camera on the market. The only films I know of being released this year that were shot with the "Fusion" are Resident Evil, and Tron Legacy. I'm sure there are others also. Scorsese is apparently shooting a film in 3D (most likely with the Fusion system), the next Transformers will most likely be in 3D, my point being that famous filmmakers are catching on to the 3D "revolution". Some filmmakers hate 3D, recently Wally Pfister came out and said that himself and Nolan both dislike 3D. Good for Pfister and Nolan. They are future proofing there films. Tron Legacy, Resident Evil, Avatar, they will all look like shit in 10 years.

The problem with the current 3D set up is that you can only capture the images at 1080p. This is significantly lower then the average film you see in the theater. Batman Begins for example has a master of 4k. For long into the future this movie will look good on pretty much any format it is shown on. But in 20 years when TV's resolutions are much higher, what will Avatar look like? It will look disgusting compared to the ultra high resolution digital cameras that will be out by then. Hollywood filmmakers are allowing themselves to capture images at a lower resolution with less information, in part because of the release of Avatar. And we the consumers are fine with settling for less.

Because of that I say Avatar has had an overall negative effect on cinema. For the next five or maybe even 10 years a lot of movies will be shot at a lower resolution then in the 90's. And no one cares.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

Short term it has had a negative effect.

Long term it will have no effect. Almost every time there is a monster hit H'wood trips all over itself trying to imitate the "formula" or "magic" of the hit. When the Sound of Music made more money than any film before it, h'wood sunk millions into 70 mm, epic length, road show musicals. Most of them tanked and you wouldn't even recognize the titles (Finian's Rainbow, Paint Your Wagon, and the apotheosis of them all Star!). It took 10 years for the producers to realize that Sound of Music was a non-reproducible event. If your film was 70 mm and 200 minutes and even if it had Julie Andrews you still couldn't bring out the audience that SOM had. Same story with Jaws and the plethora of "animal attack" films that followed, Star Wars and its imitators, etc. Even Titanic spawned a series of monstrously expensive historical epics that did nothing to further the art of cinema, the careers pf the people who made them, if not the box office (Pearl Harbor, Gangs of New York, Australia). Even the fallout of tiny films like The Blair Witch project can set cinema back big time. So many independent filmmakers squandered so much money trying to make the next Blair Witch that it was frankly sad.

Resolution (4k vs 8k vs 1080 vs 16 perf IMAX) doesn't make or break a film's beauty or artistic merit. There are beautiful films that benefited from primitive technology and couldn't be enhanced by all the new technology in the world. Casavettes shot on fast film stock. Compared to the studio output of his contemporaries his films looked grainy, but that was their appeal. Is Casavettes a short sighted fool who failed to "future proof" his film? Of course not. Nor is Welles for choosing to film without sync sound, nor all the Italians who did the same thing even though their films were being distributed world wide, nor all the Japanese who clung to silent film until 1936.

Sure, there will come a day when the polished sheen of Avatar looks dated and reveals a look or texture distinctive of a style or period of filmmaking, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it will look like shit. T2 has a distinctive "blue sheen" and grain structure that was common in H'wood action films shot using spherical lenses during that time period (The Abyss, Strange Days, Independence Day). Does it look like shit? No it just has a texture and look indicative of a period. Just like Taxi Driver, The Last Detail, The Conversation all have a grainy look due to the fast stocks that had just been developed for location photography.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

ditto.

Studios seem to think now w/ Avatar, 3D is the badass of things. Avatar made it work. That was a miracle. We've yet to see many films use it well. I liked the 3D in Avatar, as well as the film...I thought it was overall good. 3D is a gimmick...it will pass as it did before. It's not CGI, it doesn't help filmmakers do things to convey a story better (in the form as a useful tool...which can and has been abused). It's a gimmick and we all know that.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

The theaters are now flooded with 3-D films I don't want to see. That will change, of course, when STEP UP 3-D and PIRANHA 3-D come out. (And if they ever get around to making CRANK 3-D and TRANSFORMERS 3-D--at least the Megan Fox parts.)

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

None. I know very few people who actually saw the movie, or who even know who Howard Hugues was.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

Did you tell them Hughes was buck-ass nekkid in it?

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

I'm inspired by the Christina Hendricks thread, so I would like a 3D film with her in it (maybe with an extra D). It would also be nice if the theaters handed out pillows for the audience members to hug while watching the movie.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

Currently: negative. Its success has led to studios post-converting their films to 3D in hopes of raking in some extra dough, and that sucks for everyone in the pipeline.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

Avatar was already released in IMAX theaters, where the detail of of the images was magnified to far more than what a home display is going to be capable of. Of all the adjectives to describe the experience, "disgusting" wasn't one of them.

However, directors have been shooting with HD cameras for years. There's no guarantee that if these films had been shot 2D, they would've been shot on film.

Digital cinema cameras probably'll be moved to higher resolution sooner than that. The Red One camera currently available is capable of 4K, and at least one 3D film has been shot using that camera (My Bloody Valentine 3D).

http://www.red.com/shot_on_red/

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

It can. For UP, the filmmakers varied the effect of the 3D depending on the mood they wanted. They kept the 3D inside the house flatter, for example, to make i more claustrophobic, while they made the 3D more pronounced in the outside adventure scenes.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

Yeah, but I think the HD of now will not age will. I mean if we still have some motion blurring (ex. Public Enemies etc) and it looks bad now, it'll look worse on TVs with a higher resolution. Film atm is still better than HD, That'll be a game changer when something better looking than film (most likely digital in the future) exists. HD cams currently aren't up to the visual quality of film THOUGH it does make it easier in some things FX and mobility being huge factors.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

So you think Avatar would be as enjoyable as 2D as in 3D? I think, like anything else, 3D is a tool. There's tons of awful and unnecessary CGI these days, and plenty of unnecessary and awful 3D. But I don't think anyone is saying CGI is a gimmick and shouldn't be used. I feel the same way about 3D.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

THE AVIATAR - the little-known true story of Howard Hughes' journey from his Las Vegas hotel room to the planet of Pandora, where his surveyors have located new oil fields under the ancestral home of the Navi. Unable to leave his room, Hughes is shown a device known as an avatar, invented by one of the CIA-planted scientific geniuses working for him and enabling him to "visit" the planet in the form of one of the natives so he can check on the terrain himself. Instead, he meets Neytiri, whose D-cup measurements remind him of his famous RKO discovery, Jane Russell, and he forgets all about the oil.

Leonardo Di Caprio, Martin Scorsese and James Cameron reunite for the biggest 3-D sci-fi biopic of them all.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

Ok maybe I should revise my posts. I think Avatar made 3D work. I was talking about more how studios will use it as a crutch on films. That's what I intended to mean but...my lack of whole sentences to make a point messed it up. I do think 3D is a gimmick and it's going to be hard as hell to get another filmmaker to make it work well. Of course hearing scorsese do 3D, raises my eyebrow in confusion not cuz it's bad but I didn't see him doing it, maybe he'll do something with it too. But I dunno. We'll see.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

Agreed, UP and Avatar are the 2 best movies to use 3D.

It did enhance the story/mood, but most studios do not understand that. They only want a movie to have 3D jump out at you, this not what most people want. Most want a great story that is flimed correctly.

CGI, music, film stock, 3D, FX...is not the only reason a movie does well, they need to be used correctly to make the story move the person watching it.

Sound was the advancement that truely changed movies forever. Color did not have as big of an impact, it did add alot, but not like sound.

3D is great when done correctly, but I would not want every movie I watch to be in 3D. Taking out Sound (Voices and Music) and color, now that would be a bummer.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

As with 2D, it will eventually boil down to Story and how well it was made. As for it being gimmik, they (movie studios, tv manufacturers and all associated products developers) are all spending a hell of a lot of money on this technology. I prefer movie in 3D compared to one shot like Cloverfield and Quarantine, those made me sick (literally) watch them.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

I'm confused....what are you trying to say w/ those 2 films? Cloverfield and Quarantine (watch REC the spanish original...good flick) were shot in 2D. They've never been 3D converted. Maybe you don't like how they were actually..shot?

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

^ I'm assuming he's talking about the shaky, running-cam affect. I know several people who get queasy watching movies filmed that way.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

I think the effect was positive, because now more filmmakers have the option to shoot in 3D. Not every movie will be 3D worthy; it's a unanimously positive effect.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

I did not like Avatar 3D. The constant reminder that the depth perception was different was a very big distraction for me. That was my first 3D film. If that's the benchmark, I'm not impressed. I won't be seeing any other 3D movies.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

But, in just the past few months, we've had two films (Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans) that were not shot in 3D but the studio forced conversion into 3D. Reviewers of each of those films (I've no desire to see either) stated that 2D was the preferred viewing method. How can the effect be "unanimously positive?"

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

I'm aware of the Red One and the soon to come out Red Epic (5k). This isn't so much of a digital vs film thread. In fact it's not at all. But now that you've got me started....

35mm film could be scanned at up to 6k. I've heard that Blade Runner was even recently scanned at 8k. So right now, film wins in terms of resolution. 35mm also has more latitude, and much more accurate colors. Having seen the Red One image side by side with a 35mm image, I can assure you that film picks up colors much closer to what the human eye sees then digital. 35mm capture more information then digital, for now, but that isn't what this thread is about.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

The Brown Bunny 3D

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

Everyone remarking about "now there's a bunch of 3D movies flooding the marketplace that I don't want to see" fails to realize that, 3D or otherwise, it's still the same bunch of crappy movies we get year after year. One or two masterpieces, maybe a dozen REALLY good films, and a whole lot of forgettable swill that a vocal group of Internet fanboys jerk themselves into a frenzy over because "ZOMG it's so bad-ass!!" and then promptly forget within weeks.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

Yes, that is exactly what I meant.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

I think 3D makes movies worse, because it's utterly distracting from the story. With Avatar, that helped, because the story was so poorly written.

CGI is something that can be used badly by looking fake or used well by being used in a realistic manner (or alternatively in a hyper-stylized way). But unlike a lot of people who see 3D as a natural evolution towards realism like color was, I think it's the opposite. When I watch a "2D" film, it looks real to me, depth perception seems accurate and it is like looking into a window. In a "3D" film, people and objects look like flat cardboard cutouts in a pop-up book. I think there's a place for it, every now and then and rarely, for stylistic visual purposes, but I just can't fathom watching most movies and TV in 3D. Imagine a Woody Allen film or Dexter in 3D. It would be a joke.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

I don't think every single film lends itself to 3D, but again, it's a tool. Some will use it well, and many won't.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

My problem with this movie isn't the 3D, it's that it wasn't as photorealistic as James Cameron hyped it to be. When his blue CGI people are dropped into a real world setting, they look photorealistic; but when they're in a scene surrounded by CGI jungle, CGI animals, CGI sky, and CGI mountains, the whole thing looks animated to me... like a moving painting. This was one of my biggest complaints about the Star Wars prequels. (Off the top of my head, the battle of Geonosis in Episode II comes to mind.) I was hoping digital effects had advanced a bit more between the Star Wars prequels and Avatar, to the point where CGI characters and scenery always look 100% photorealistic, but I guess it hasn't. Then again, maybe the culprit is Hi Def TV; watching Avatar in 1080p makes every scene SO clean and SO crisp that it may actually detract from the photorealism Cameron was trying to achieve with his CGI characters and scenery.

I just hope the success of this movie doesn't mean more movies will be filmed entirely inside a studio against a green screen rather than traveling to locations or stepping outside to capture the effects natrual sunlight has on scenes and their subjects.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

What I love is now Cameron is speaking out against post-production 3D and encouraging people to use the 3D cameras... which, of course, his company invented and patented.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

Well, it helps that it does provide a better 3D image.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

I strongly think movies that reach that level of achievement have a negative influence for the short term. In that copy cats come along rather quickly and are NEVER as good. Years from now after everybody is done trying to out gimmick each other maybe, and then maybe, the storytelling aspects and good direction will start to play again in movies that want to utilize the new technologies that James Cameron explored. After all, the countless Star Wars rip off movies that followed the 1977 epic are long forgotten but the work ILM started back then changed the look of movies for decades following and eventually resulted in good movies being made.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

I agree. There needs to be something 'real' in the composition to sell the illusion.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

There were certain things that I would call "photorealistic". I remember the floating mountains, the "heights" and the final battle's aircraft all looking 'real'.

Honestly, my 3D experience was better than the 2D. The 3D gave so much to pay attention to, that I was more immersed and thought less about how 'real' it was. The 3D/theater gave it a grain that isn't present in the DVD. So I think that the DVD isn't quite as impressive. Still a fun, enjoyable flick, though. And, as I said when it came out, I'm more 'appreciative of the craftsmanship' of it than anything.

It's effect? I looovvveee that it's a sci-fi movie that made big bucks. I want to see more of them. The 3D fad (it's still a fad, for now) is obvious. But that's the thing about movies. Just because Avatar was made and made $2bil, it doesn't mean that we'll see a bunch of similar movies. It's still something that only James Cameron (and maybe a few others) can tackle.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

I actually enjoyed the film more at home, on Blu Ray in 2D, then I did in 3D. When it comes to image quality, I'm really picky and like to see all the details clearly, with 3D that is nearly impossible. When the image is dimmed and stuff is popping out at you its hard to fully take in beautiful imagery.

Re: The "Avatar" Effect
 

Well, the results speak for themselves.