James Cameron’s 3D movie “Avatar”

After a hiatus of more than ten years, James Cameron is finally directing a movie again.

There is every indication that James Cameron is up to much more than simply making his next movie; it looks like James Cameron will revolutionize cinema and filmmaking. He is taking his career, and the film industry with him, to the next quantum level.

At the World Premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean – Dead Man’s Chest, he said that Terminator 2 and his other movies are very pre-millenial, and that his next two movies (Avatar and Battle Angel) will be just as good if not better. This is probably James Cameron’s way of saying that Avatar and Battle Angel will be truly, unbelievably, unquantifiably brilliant. And has he ever disappointed us?

That in itself would be excellent news, but there’s more. James Cameron has developed an entirely new camera system which will be used for the first time to shoot Avatar and Battle Angel. These cameras shoot genuine 3D footage, and work essentially by having two cameras in a single rig. The cameras film the action from slightly different angles, and the two data streams are integrated to create 3D footage. This is directly analogous to how human vision works.

The cameras are digital, and speculation abounds on whether he will shoot the movies at 40fps instead of the traditional 24fps, on the grounds that the action he will be filming would be incomprehensible with the inferior temporal resolution of 24fps.

Special glasses will of course be necessary to perceive the 3D effect, but they will be proper, color-neutral glasses, completely unlike the blue-and-red pseudo-3D glasses that understandably never caught on in the eighties.

James Cameron’s 3D camera system is not a gimmick – it is the real deal, as we would expect from the world’s foremost filmmaking scientist.

It is my hope that James Cameron’s 3D camera system will revolutionize the film industry and have the same effect as color did in the 1950s, and sound before that – namely, to renew the public’s interest in getting out of the house and watching movies in theaters again. Here’s hoping.

James Cameron is currently shooting Avatar in Los Angeles, New Zealand, Hawaii and Playa Vista, California. The film will be released this year, on December 18th.

James Cameron wrote the script and is of course directing the movie. He is also producing it, along with Jon Landau. Josh McLaglen, who was 1st AD on Titanic, is attached as associate producer. The cast includes Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, CCH Pounder and Laz Alonso.