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James Cameron's "Avatar" (grading and discussion)

Grade "Avatar"

  • Excellent

    Votes: 166 50.0%

  • Above Average

    Votes: 85 25.6%

  • Average

    Votes: 51 15.4%

  • Below Average

    Votes: 11 3.3%

  • Terrible

    Votes: 19 5.7%
  • Total voters
    332
trevanian said:
The main 3D guy on the show, Vince Pace, was credited as second unit DP, I guess for the stuff shot in L.A. Pace is a real shooter, he has done tons of underwater stuff and he may even be an ASC member by now.

While there have been directors who act as their own DP (hack-types like Peter Hyams, plus maestros like Soderbergh), they are few and far between, and really have to be credited on film as such. Even directors who COULD have acted as their own DPs, like Kubrick and Ridley Scott, never did ... in fact, it is significant to note that Kubrick often employed world-class cinematographers, though his later films did use a promote-from-within style that was more in keeping with the Bond films.

As far as I know, the really heavy-duty AVATAR tech coverage in print sources has been limited to just AmCin and Cinefex, mainly because production and studio agreed to minimize tech coverage until the movie had been out awhile ... a strategy that meant other interested mags wound up dropping AVATAR because interviews and publication wouldn't have taken place till months after its release. So I guess to get serious info on the film, you've got to go to online interviews or just those two mags, at least until the dvd arrives. Kind of confuses the issue with respect to nominations and such, since a complete b-t-s picture might not emerge till AFTER the Oscars.
Click to expand...

For us, as interested third parties, it's hard to come by information about the BtS stuff, but I would think the industry itself is well aware of who did what on that picture (Hollywood being so thoroughly unionised).
 
ST-One said:
trevanian said:
The main 3D guy on the show, Vince Pace, was credited as second unit DP, I guess for the stuff shot in L.A. Pace is a real shooter, he has done tons of underwater stuff and he may even be an ASC member by now.

While there have been directors who act as their own DP (hack-types like Peter Hyams, plus maestros like Soderbergh), they are few and far between, and really have to be credited on film as such. Even directors who COULD have acted as their own DPs, like Kubrick and Ridley Scott, never did ... in fact, it is significant to note that Kubrick often employed world-class cinematographers, though his later films did use a promote-from-within style that was more in keeping with the Bond films.

As far as I know, the really heavy-duty AVATAR tech coverage in print sources has been limited to just AmCin and Cinefex, mainly because production and studio agreed to minimize tech coverage until the movie had been out awhile ... a strategy that meant other interested mags wound up dropping AVATAR because interviews and publication wouldn't have taken place till months after its release. So I guess to get serious info on the film, you've got to go to online interviews or just those two mags, at least until the dvd arrives. Kind of confuses the issue with respect to nominations and such, since a complete b-t-s picture might not emerge till AFTER the Oscars.
Click to expand...

For us, as interested third parties, it's hard to come by information about the BtS stuff, but I would think the industry itself is well aware of who did what on that picture (Hollywood being so thoroughly unionised).
Click to expand...

I'm a pretty regular contributor to ICG, the union local 600's mag, which covers cinematography, and we were shut out of AVATAR completely, with no possible story till January (basically giving CINEFEX an exclusive, probably due to the long relationship between that mag and Cameron), which wouldn't work schedulewise for the editor.

Sometimes it happens that a DP only wants to give a single interview per film, and when that happens, the coverage usually only shows up in AmCin (which might be the case on ALICE IN WONDERLAND, since that DP also cancelled interview coverage for at least one other tech mag already), but I don't think that was the case with the AVATAR DP, who is not a biggie, not yet anyway.
 
Hyperspace05 said:
trevanian, I assume you saw this, but the ASC magazine did an interview/story about Fiore's work on Avatar a few weeks ago: http://www.theasc.com/magazine_dynamic/January2010/Avatar/page1.php
Click to expand...

Haven't read any print stuff on the movie or seen the picture, but yeah, I mentioned AC's coverage a couple posts up. Again though, they had to push their coverage from December to January because of production and studio dictates. That doesn't work for most publications, but I'm guessing AC does it on an as-needed basis (about a third of the feature film ICG pieces I write seem to appear in the issue the month before AC covers it; kind of the opposite of the old Cinefex days, where we'd be coming out 3 to 6 months after everybody else.)

Thanks for the link; maybe I'll take a look at it; by now I'm actually interested in seeing what is part of the record regarding the new role of DP in a mocap show.

Since about the time the AVATAR article cancelled and I switched over to LOVELY BONES, I've had another assignment, an open-ended offer to cover the issue of future 3D mocap developments. Haven't gotten a whole lot of interest from the parties I've contacted (which is odd in and of itself, most of the time places are clamoring to talk about their stuff as long as it doesn't break NDA), so maybe it'll point up some new leads for me.
 
Hi folks.

This might slightly seem unrelated at first, but I wanted to share it.

In this video, you can hear Siskel and Ebert talking about Titanic the first week or so of February after its December release, when that film seemed on track to be the top grosser of all time, and I thought it appropriate to share it now, since we are at the same week and the same point with Avatar. Please note that onn another thread I linked to RedLetterMedia's panning of Avatar.

So here is the contradiction.. I agree with many of the points Plinkett (RedLetterMedia) discusses, but yet I loved Avatar. I loved it... even though everything that Plinkett said made snese (his reviews are better than most films anyway). I think the reason I love it is best articulated by Siskel at the end of the video of Titanic, he was talking about Titanic, but he very well could be talking Avatar today.
 
ST-One said:
Hyperspace05 said:
An 8+ minute documentary about the Sound mixing/editing of Avatar can be found here: http://soundworkscollection.com/avatar
Click to expand...

How different these short clips look in 2D...

I wish they hadn't gone through the Jurassic Park sound library.
It's a (little) bit distracting to me to hear the Thanator make sounds like the T-Rex or that Direhorses sound like Velociraptors.
Click to expand...

Do you really believe that? I know that is a common theory floated out there, but I have yet to see two samples presented that proves it. :vulcan: And Direhorses sounded like Velociraptors? That's a new one... :rommie:
 
I did more than read, I listened to the video. It didn't support the case for Avatar at all, so I thought I'd make a cheap Siskel joke instead.

Here's an excerpt of what the fat guy said in the video about Titanic:

It's all so well written. One reason the audiences have been so big, I think, is that at last an epic doesn't insult their intelligence or bludgeon them with violence and gore. It's a vast picture but it's on a human scale like Lawrence of Arabia. Everything is at the service of the characters, and so people go back more than once even when they really do know how it's going to turn out. Maybe they want to remind themselves of the craftsmanship of classic, epic film making when the word "epic" referred to the story and not just to the budget and special effects.
Click to expand...

None of that applies to Avatar. It was not well written (though it was well directed). Even Cameron's wife regarded it as something of a joke of a script.

Avatar does insult the intelligence. Come on, creating fake Na'vi bodies inhabited by humans to make the aliens feel more comfortable about us?!

Avatar does bludgeon us with violence. The whole climax of the movie is violence, as was the lead-up to the climax.

Nothing is there to serve the characters. The characters are there to move the beautiful CGI along.

In Avatar's case, the word "epic" refers to the budget and special effects, not the story, which everyone immediately nailed as "Dances in Ferngully".
 
I was making the point that, at the end of that clip, Siskel said that his kids were finding out what epic films were, that there is a big dffierence between what can be done on TV and what can be done on film. Cameron may be the only perosn who, despire the advances in home theater technology, are still giving people reaosns to go to the theater, and not just for the visuals.. just for the "epicness" of teh story, the craftsmanship of the filmmaker through each and every bit..
 
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