Avatar

Avatar is a American sicience fiction film by James Cameron. The film was released in traditional 2-D, as well as in 3-D, using the RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, and IMAX 3D formats. Avatar is officially budgeted at $237 million. Other estimates put the cost at $280–310 million to produce and $150 million for marketing.

Name: Avatar

Directed by: James Cameron

Produced by: James Cameron Jon Landau

Music by: James Horner

Cinematography: Mauro Fiore

Studio: Lightstorm Entertainment Dune Entertainment Ingenious Film Partners

Distributed by: 20th Century Fox

Release dates: December 10, 2009(London premiere)

               December 18, 2009(United States)

               January 2, 2010(China)

Running time: 162 minutes

Country: United States

Language: English

Genre: action thriller science fiction

In 2154, the RDA corporation is mining in Pandora, a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system. The corporation intends to exploit Pandora's reserves of a valuable mineral called unobtanium. A species called Na'vi, a ten-foot-tall blue-skinned species with tails, inhabit in Pandora. They live in harmony with nature and dislike human's behaviour of mining in their habitat.

Pandora's atmosphere is toxic to humans, so scientists grow Na'vi bodies modified with human DNA, called avatars, controlled by genetically matched, mentally linked human operators to mine unobtanium for human. Jake Sully, a paraplegic former Marine, replaces his twin brother who was murdered to control the avatar.

However, Jake is attacked by a predator and lost in Pandora. Neytiri, a female Na'vi, saves him and brings him to her Hometree. Over three months, Jake grows close to Neytiri and her clan called Omaticaya, eventually rejecting RDA's agenda.

In order to mine unobtanium beneath the Hometree , human decides destroy it. Jake reveals his original mission to the Neytiri and her clan, and Neytiri sees him as a betrayer. Then, the human’s forces arrive and destroy the Hometree. And Jake is imprisoned by Quaritch, the leader of the forces, but he escapes.

Then, Jake comes back to the Omaticaya to regain their trust. With the assistance of Neytiri, Jake assembles over two thousand Na'vi from other clans to repel the humans. Finally, they defeat the human’s forces. The remaining corporate personnel are expelled from Pandora.

Sam Worthington as Corporal Jake Sully, the film's protagonist, is a disabled former Marine who becomes part of the Avatar Program.. Cameron cast the Australian actor after a worldwide search for promising young actors, preferring relative unknowns to keep the budget down. Cameron felt that he has that quality of being a guy you'd want to have a beer with, and he ultimately becomes a leader who transforms the world.

Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine, an exobiologist and head of the Avatar Program.

Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacón, a Marine combat pilot assigned to support the Avatar Program.

Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge, the corporate administrator for the RDA mining operation and one of the film's primary antagonists.

Joel David Moore as Norm Spellman, an anthropologist who studies plant and nature life as part of the Avatar Program.

Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch, the head of the mining operation's security detail.

Dileep Rao as Dr. Max Patel, a scientist who works in the Avatar Program.

Zoe Saldana as Neytiri, princess of the Omaticaya, the Na'vi clan central to the story, who is attracted to Jake because of his bravery.

C. C. H. Pounder as Mo'at, the Omaticaya's spiritual leader, Neytiri's mother, and consort to clan leader Eytucan.

Laz Alonso as Tsu'tey, heir to the chieftainship of the tribe, and Neytiri's formerly betrothed, prior to the events of the film.

Wes Studi as Eytucan, the Omaticaya's clan leader, Neytiri's father and Mo'at's mate.

In 1994, director James Cameron wrote a 80-page scriptment for Avatar, reportedly in just two weeks. In August 1996, Cameron announced that after completing Titanic, he would film Avatar, which would make use of synthetic, or computer-generated, actors. The project would cost $100 million and involve at least six actors in leading roles. Visual effects house Digital Domain, with whom Cameron has a partnership, joined the project, which was supposed to begin production in the summer of 1997 for a 1999 release. However, Cameron felt that the technology had not caught up with the story and vision that he intended to tell. He decided to concentrate on making documentaries and refining the technology for the next few years.

From January to April 2006, Cameron worked on the script and developed a culture for the film's aliens, the Na'vi. Their language was created by a linguist Dr. Paul Frommer. The Na'vi language has a vocabulary of about 1000 words, with some 30 added by Cameron. The tongue's phonemes include ejective consonants (such as the "kx" in "skxawng").

In July 2006, Cameron announced that he would film Avatar for a mid 2008 release and planned to begin principal photography with an established cast by February 2007. The following August, the visual effects studio Weta Digital signed on to help Cameron produce Avatar. Stan Winston, who had collaborated with Cameron in the past, joined Avatar to help with the film's designs.

In September 2006, Cameron was announced to be using his own Reality Camera System to film in 3-D. The system would use two high-definition cameras in a single camera body to create depth perception.
Meanwhile, while all this preparation was going on, Fox was wavering because of its painful experience with cost overruns and delays on Cameron's last picture, Titanic. Cameron installed a traffic light with the amber signal lit outside of co-producer Jon Landau's office to represent the film's uncertain future. He began shopping it around to other studios, and showed his proof-of-concept to Dick Cook, the chairman of The Walt Disney Company. However, In October 2006, Fox finally agreed to commit to making Avatar after Ingenious Media agreed to back the film, which reduced Fox's financial exposure to less than half of the film's official $237 million budget. After Fox greenlighted Avatar, Cameron and Landau switched the traffic light to green.

Principal photography for Avatar began in April 2007, and was done around parts of Los Angeles as well as New Zealand. Cameron described the film as a hybrid with a full live-action shoot in combination with computer-generated characters and live environments. The live action was shot with a modified version of the proprietary digital 3-D Fusion Camera System, developed by Cameron and Vince Pace.

In January 2007, Fox had announced that 3-D filming for Avatar would be done at 24 frames per second despite Cameron's strong opinion that a 3-D film requires higher frame rate to make strobing less noticeable. According to Cameron, the film is composed of 60% computer-generated elements and 40% live action, as well as traditional miniatures. Motion-capture photography would last 31 days at the Hughes Aircraft stage in Playa Vista, Los Angeles, California. In October, Cameron was scheduled to shoot live-action in New Zealand for another 31 days. More than a thousand people worked on the production. In preparation of the filming sequences, all of the actors underwent professional training specific to their characters such as archery, horseback riding, firearms, and hand to hand combat. They also received language and dialect training in the Na'vi language created for the film.

Prior to shooting the film, Cameron also sent the cast to the jungle in Hawaii to get a feel for a rainforest setting before shooting on the soundstage.

During filming, Cameron made use of his virtual camera system, a new way of directing motion-capture filmmaking. The system displays an augmented reality on a monitor, placing the actor's virtual counterparts into their digital surroundings in real time, allowing the director to adjust and direct scenes just as if shooting live action. Using conventional techniques, the complete virtual world cannot be seen until the motion-capture of the actors is complete. Cameron described the system as a "form of pure creation where if you want to move a tree or a mountain or the sky or change the time of day, you have complete control over the elements". Cameron gave fellow directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson a chance to test the new technology. Spielberg and George Lucas were also able to visit the set to watch Cameron direct with the equipment.

A number of revolutionary visual effects techniques were used in the production of Avatar. According to Cameron, work on the film had been delayed since the 1990s to allow the techniques to reach the necessary degree of advancement to adequately portray his vision of the film. The director planned to make use of photorealistic computer-generated characters, created using new motion-capture animation technologies he had been developing in the 14 months leading up to December 2006.

a motion-capture stage six times larger than any previously used, and an improved method of capturing facial expressions, enabling full performance capture are applied. According to Cameron, the method allows the filmmakers to transfer 100% of the actors' physical performances to their digital counterparts.

Besides the performance capture data which were transferred directly to the computers, numerous reference cameras gave the digital artists multiple angles of each performance. Moreover, Digital effects was performed fully. Each minute of the final footage for Avatar occupied 17.28 gigabytes of storage.

"Watching Avatar, I felt sort of the same as when I saw Star Wars in 1977."

—Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times

"the script is a little bit obvious, but that is part of what made it work."

—A. O. Scott of At The Movies

"It extends the possibilities of what movies can do. Cameron's talent may just be as big as his dreams."

—Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers

"Embrace the movie—surely the most vivid and convincing creation of a fantasy world ever seen in the history of moving pictures."

—Richard Corliss of Time magazine 

"Avatar is a great epic, a imaginative film which brings us a new life experience."

"Avatar is a combination of great special effects and perfect plot."

"Avatar gives me a lesson—our human beings should examine our own conscience and protect our nature."

—All from filmgoers

Composer James Horner scored the film, his third collaboration with Cameron after Aliens, and Titanic. Horner recorded parts of the score with a small chorus singing in the alien language Na'vi in March 2008. He also worked with Wanda Bryant, an ethnomusicologist, to create a music culture for the alien race. The first scoring sessions were planned to take place in Spring 2009. Leona Lewis sang the theme song, "I See You". An accompanying music video, directed by Jake Nava, premiered December 15, 2009 on MySpace.
Austin Film Critics Association
Top 10 Films
Broadcast Film Critics
Best Action Movie
Best Art Direction
Best Cinematography
Best Editing
Best Sound
Best Visual Effects
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association
Top 10 Films
Florida Film Critics Circle
Best Cinematography
Golden Globe Awards
Best Director
Best Film – Drama
Las Vegas Film Critics Society
Sierra Award (Best Art Direction)
Phoenix Film Critics Society
Best Cinematography
Best Film Editing
Best Production Design
Best Visual Effects
Santa Barbara International Film Festival
Lucky Brand™ Modern Master Award
St. Louis Film Critics
Best Visual/Special Effects
Most Original/Innovative or Creative Film
Visual Effects Society Awards
Lifetime Achievement, for Making of

Avatar Official Movie Website