Avatar

James Cameron on directing

...you can read all the books about film-making, all the articles in American Cinematographer and that sort of thing, but you have to really see how it works on a day-to-day basis, and how to pace your energy so that you can survive the film, which was a lesson that took me a long time to learn.

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Avatar Movie Review

by Charles Robertson

James Cameron creates an amazing alien world in Avatar. My favourite scene is the dragons sunning themselves on the rocks. Obviously a parallel to the destruction of aboriginal habitats for Corporate wealth, this movie was considered unamerican by right wing media and personalities. But politics aside, Cameron brings back Signoury Weaver from his Aliens movie in this visually stunning film. Perhaps not since The Wizard of Oz, has an alien world been so perfectly realized. However, unlike the Wizard of Oz, the acting and the script are not so perfectly realized, but that hardly matters to the average movie goer. What Cameron is great at is filming the impossible. Cameron's Titanic was a true-life epic adventure which record-setting audiences went to see. Cameron proves he is still the king of the box office by providing thrilling adventure in a brilliantly imagined world. Absolutely worth the price of admission.

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Cameron's thoughts on Avatar and 3D

[On the future of 3D] "With digital 3D projection, we will be entering a new age of cinema. Audiences will be seeing something which was never technically possible before the age of digital cinema - a stunning visual experience which 'turbocharges' the viewing of the biggest, must-see movies. The biggest action, visual effects and fantasy movies will soon be shot in 3D. And all-CG animated films can easily be converted to 3D, without additional cost if it is done as they are made. Soon audiences will associate 3D with the highest level of visual content in the market, and seek out that premium experience."

(When asked how did he come up with the story for Avatar) Well, my inspiration is every single science fiction book I read as a kid. And a few that weren't science fiction. The Edgar Rice Burroughs books, H. Rider Haggard - the manly, jungle adventure writers. I wanted to do an old fashioned jungle adventure, just set it on another planet, and play by those rules.

On Avatar (2009): My approach to 3-D is in a way quite conservative. We're making a two-and-a-half-hour-plus film and I don't want to assault the eye every five seconds. I want it to be comfortable. I want you to forget after a few minutes that you are really watching 3-D and just have it operate at a subliminal, subconscious level. That's the key to great 3-D and it makes the audience feel like real participants in what's going on.

I can't think of anything that I see on a screen these days without thinking how much better it'd look in 3-D! If I see a movie I really like...Like, I'm watching King Kong (2005) I think, "Man! That'd be great in 3-D!" Everything's better in 3-D! Everything! A scene in the snow with two people talking...in 3-D...It's amazing! You're in the snow! You feel the snow.