American Cinematographer - January 2010 - 35

ASC, whose credits include The Kingdom, Tears of the Sun and The Island (AC Aug. ’05). “Jim saw The Island and Tears of the Sun, and he was apparently impressed with the way I’d treated the jungle and foliage scenes in both films,” says Fiore. “They brought me in for a three-hour interview, and [producer] Jon Landau walked me through the whole 3-D process, the motion-capture images, the promos and trailers they had done. The next day, I had a 30minute interview with Jim, and we hit it off. They were already deep into production on the motion-capture stages in Playa del Rey, [Calif.,] and they were preparing to shoot the liveaction footage in New Zealand.” The technology employed on Avatar enabled Cameron to design the film’s 3-D computer-generated environments (created by Lightstorm’s inhouse design team) straight from his imagination. By the time Fiore joined the show, the director had been working for 18 months on motion-capture stages, shooting performances with actors who would be transformed into entirely CG characters. Glenn Derry, Avatar’s virtual-production supervisor, contributed a number of innovations A virtual diagram shows a pair of “remote research stations” that were built in a former Mitsubishi factory in New Zealand. Gaffer Chris Culliton explains, “Because we had these exact virtual models of the warehouse and the sets, we were able to design and test the lighting and greenscreen weeks before we arrived in Wellington. As you can see, on the real set we decided to go with 24-light Dino softboxes rather than 20Ks on the rolling truss; the ability to change the bulbs and the diffusion allowed us more options for a soft, ambient push. Between the Dinos, we also hung 10K beam projectors to create a hard, warm sun feeling where needed.” that helped Cameron achieve what he wanted. With all of the locations prebuilt in Autodesk MotionBuilder and all of the CG characters constructed, Derry devised a system that would composite the motion-capture information into the CG world in real time. He explains, “With motion-capture work, the director usually completes elaborate previs shots and sequences, shoots the actors on the motion-capture stage, and then sends the footage off to post. Then, visual-effects artists composite the CG www.theasc.com characters into the motion-capture information, execute virtual camera moves and send the footage back to the director. But that approach just wasn’t going to work for Jim. He wanted to be able to interact in real time with the CG characters on the set, as though they were living beings. He wanted to be able to handhold the camera in his style and get real coverage in this CG world. “Jim used two main tools to realize his virtual cinematography,” continues Derry. “One was a handheld ‘virtual January 2010 35

http://www.theasc.com

American Cinematographer - January 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 2010