James Cameron?s Avatar open-ed this weekend to great critical acclaim and a tumultuous reception from audiences worldwide, who were swept into an immersive audio-visual experience that is poised to change the face of cinema, and possibly the whole of visual entertainment.
While the film itself is a fairly straightforward hero?s journey yarn, featuring vivid, breathtaking visuals, a spectacular fantasy setting, and frenetic, adrenaline-pumping action sequences that are quintessentially Cameron, this time it?s the technology that has everyone in thrall. And quite rightly so.
3-D cinema itself has been around since the 1950s (audiences in India may remember My Dear Kuttichatan/Chhota Chetan), but has always remained a novelty on the periphery of the mainstream, mainly due to complicated, glitchy technology and economics that did not make for pretty numbers. But recently, improvements in digital 3-D filmmaking technology have led to a resurgence in 3-D films, especially in the animation market. With Monsters vs Aliens, Bolt, Ice Age 3 and the delightful Up firmly establishing the viability of animated 3-D films, more audiences are putting on those weird glasses and enjoying the added dimension to their movies.
However, Avatar takes things to a whole new level. It?s a reach-out-and-you-can-touch-it experience, drawing you into the film?s world and immersing you in it like never before. Plenty of 3-D films have used cliches like swords being thrust towards you, or arrows flying at you, or vehicles hurtling out of the screen?but Avatar completely changes the rules by eschewing the ?sudden 3-D surprise? approach in favour of delivering total 3-D immersion that starts from the first frame and never lets up. All manner of jungle foliage rustles and waves and disappears behind you as the camera moves past. Creatures leap, fly and run at you, across you and over you. Rooms and corridors stretch out into the screen, and people walk past you into them. Simple, everyday objects such as chairs, desks and doors either seem so close that you can actually touch them, or so far away that they recede into the screen. Little flourishes like raindrops, falling flowers, rustling leaves, cracked glass and flickering tongues of flame add to the feeling of actually being in the film?s virtual world.
All this wizardry is made possible thanks to the wondrous Pace/Cameron Fusion Camera System that captures images in a similar way to the human eye. Unlike earlier 3-D filming systems that involved two separate cameras set far apart and could only shoot straight ahead, the Fusion Camera uses two lenses that can be placed as close together or far apart as required, to focus on objects at any level of depth, and change focus and angles within the same shot. This means that you get to see a composite of images shot at theoretically infinitely different levels of depth?to give you a lifelike 3-D image, almost like you see in the real world. Additionally, the actors are filmed using a ?performance capture? system, which involves them performing with hundreds of sensors attached to them. All this is brought into the digitally created environment, and the director can then control the scene as he likes, using a video game-like virtual camera control system. It?s all very sophisticated and horribly expensive for now, but the results are nothing short of magical.
Thanks to the level of immersion that is possible with the technology behind Avatar, we are possibly on the brink of the next exciting leap forward in visual entertainment. In other 3-D films, the third dimension is merely a gimmick that?s good for some ?money moments?. In Avatar, it?s integral to the storytelling, bringing the world to life and contributing immensely to creating audience empathy with the world and its characters. Despite the rather corny script and story, I still found myself caring about Pandora and its flora & fauna?simply because I was standing in it, as opposed to watching it on a screen.
It?s an invaluable tool for future storytellers, because empathy is the single most powerful reason that makes movies, and indeed video games, effective. It is empathy that makes us cry when Carl loses Ellie in Up, or be gripped by fear when Jennifer Love Hewitt is about to open her bedroom door in whatever generic slasher flick she?s in, or grind our teeth in satisfied rage when Kratos finally brings down a creature that is 20 times his size in God of War. And this feeling of empathy is so much greater when you experience the world from within rather than from the outside.
If Avatar paves the way for more films and video games that use its pathbreaking technology, it could infuse new life into an entertainment industry that badly needs innovations to bring back the mojo.
The author is game designer and gaming journalist based in Mumbai
